1861 - Political Events

Political Events

Prussia's Friedrich Wilhelm IV dies at Potsdam January 2 at age 65 after a 2½-year period of paralysis and insanity. He is succeeded after a reactionary 20-year reign by his 63-year-old brother, who has been acting as regent and will reign until 1888 as Wilhelm I.

Italy unites as a single kingdom while the United States disunites.

Kansas enters the Union as a free state January 29, but Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina secede between January and May, following the course taken by South Carolina late last year.

Delegates from six seceding states meet at Montgomery, Alabama, February 4 and form a provisional government, the Confederate States of America. Mexican War hero Sen. Jefferson Davis (D. Miss.) has formally withdrawn from the Senate in January and is named provisional president of the C.S.A. (He receives a letter of support from former president Franklin Pierce, newspapers publish the letter, and Northerners vilify Pierce as a traitor.)

The U.S. Senate narrowly defeats last year's Crittenden Compromise March 2 as congressional Radicals rattle sabers (see 1860). The Senate does not act on a proposal made by Crittenden in January to submit his proposals to a national referendum.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it," President Lincoln says in his inaugural address March 4. "Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it." Lincoln has arrived at Washington in secret and been greeted only by Maine-born congressman Elihu (Benjamin) Washburne, 44, (R. Ill.), a brother of Israel Washburn who added an "e" to his name in imitation of his English forebears before heading west for the boom town of Galena, Illinois, where he prospered.

Georgia-born Confederate vice president Alexander H. (Hamilton) Stephens, 49, says in a speech at Savannah March 21 that the United States was created on the false idea that all men are created equal. The Confederacy, he says, "is founded upon exactly the opposite idea: its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

Civil War begins April 12 as Fort Sumter on an island in Charleston harbor is bombarded by General Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard, 42, who has resigned as superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to assume command of the Confederate Army. The U.S. Army has numbered 13,024 officers and men as of March 4. President Lincoln calls for 42,034 volunteers to serve for 3 years, and by July there are some 30,000 green recruits in and about Washington under the command of Mexican War veteran Winfield Scott, but old "Fuss and Feathers" is now 75.

"The War Powers of the Government" by Maryland political activist Anna Ella Carroll, 45, is a pamphlet setting forth President Lincoln's legal justification for sending the U.S. Army against the Confederacy. Carroll has been a prominent spokeswoman for the anti-Catholic, anti-immigration American Party (widely ridiculed as the "Know-Nothing Party"), but Lincoln has her pamphlet distributed to every member of Congress. Pennsylvania Railroad executive Thomas A. Scott, now 37, pays her $1,250 out of his own pocket and has 10,000 copies printed. She travels in the fall to St. Louis, discovers that control of the Tennessee River is more essential to a Union victory than controlling the Mississippi, and upon her return in November submits a plan to Scott for implementing a Tennessee strategy that will prove decisive to the successful conduct of the war.

The Fire Zouaves (11th Regiment, New York State Volunteers) leave New York for Annapolis April 29 aboard the steamship Baltic, full of enthusiasm but practically untrained. Former second lieutenant Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth, 24, has resigned his commission after the firing on Fort Sumter, returned to the city, enlisted more than 1,000 volunteers—mostly from the city's firefighters, and been elected colonel by his men in a meeting at Palace Garden. Merchant A. T. Stewart has persuaded other well-to-do citizens to contribute $60,000 to arm the regiment with Sharp's rifles (in 10 different models) and 16-inch knives, and outfit them in "Zouave" uniforms consisting of grey jackets, baggy grey breeches, red shirts, and red fezzes. Colonel Ellsworth sees the Confederate flag fluttering from the top of a three-story Alexandria, Virginia, hotel May 24, dashes impulsively into the building with seven companions, pulls down the flag, and is shot dead by the hotel's proprietor, James W. Jackson, who is then shot dead by one of Ellsworth's Zouaves and becomes a hero to the South. A personal friend of the Lincolns, Ellsworth becomes the first major Union casualty; his body is taken to the White House May 25 and lays in state in the East Room. It reaches New York by special train early the next morning and is taken to Room 41 of the Astor House, where Ellsworth's parents and relatives have come down from Mechanicville; the body is taken to City Hall, where an estimated 10,000 people file past Ellsworth's bier before his coffin is moved by steamboat to Albany, where the body is displayed at the Capitol before being moved by special train from Troy to Mechanicville for burial. Streets and towns all over the North are renamed Ellsworth in honor of the dead hero.

Former U.S. senator Stephen A. Douglas dies of typhoid fever at Chicago June 3 at age 48. Senators from the Confederate states follow Sen. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi out of the U.S. Senate in June, but North Carolina-born senator Andrew Johnson, 52, (D. Tenn.) remains in his seat, having opposed secession; the onetime tailor who did not learn to read until adulthood wins plaudits for his courage throughout the North. President Lincoln will appoint him military governor of Tennessee next year with the rank of brigadier general.

Political pressure mounts for President Lincoln to avenge the death of Elmer Ellsworth and take Richmond. Lincoln orders General Irvin McDowell to march on the Manassas railhead 30 miles west of Washington, D.C., and McDowell obeys orders, even though he has never commanded even a company, much less an army of 39,000 men, and his civilian troops have had little training. Congressmen, businessmen, and their wives ride out in their carriages with picnic lunches to watch the proceedings, but many of McDowell's troops suffer heat stroke, thirst, and exhaustion on the long, hot march. Confederate troops, by contrast, arrive by rail (the first use of trains to transport troops to a battle site) and are well rested.

The Battle of Bull Run July 21 begins when 30-pound cannon open fire near the Manassas railway junction across the Potomac July 21. General Beauregard and Virginia-born General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, 54, command 32,000 Confederate troops, who fall back after an initial assault by superior Union forces, but Virginia-born Brig. Gen. Thomas (Jonathan) Jackson, 37, holds fast, winning the nickname "Stonewall" from a remark ("There is Jackson standing like a stone wall") by South-Carolina-born General Barnard Elliott Bee, 37, who is mortally wounded in the engagement and dies the next day. Confederate reinforcements arrive by rail, and Virginia-born Confederate cavalry captain James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart, 28, who resigned his commission in the U.S. Army at the outbreak of war, distinguishes himself in the battle (he is promoted to brigadier general in September with command of the Army of Northern Virginia's cavalry). The battle ends in a rout of General McDowell's forces, with panicked spectators fleeing the scene and blocking the roads and bridges leading back to Washington. The rebels lose 387 dead, 1,582 wounded, 13 missing; the Union 460 dead, 1,124 wounded, 1,312 missing. Among the survivors is Thomas F. Meagher, now 37, who has left his job as editor of the Irish News and joined the New York Volunteers as a captain; he will be promoted to brigadier general early next year and organize the Irish Brigade (see Chancellorsville, 1863).

President Lincoln gives Philadelphia-born "military genius" General George B. (Brinton) McClellan, 33, command of an army to protect Washington, D.C. A brilliant manager, McClellan graduated second in his class from West Point in 1846, fought in the Mexican War, but resigned his commission 4 years ago to become an Illinois Central Railroad executive; he arrives at Washington July 26, finds a collection of dispirited 3-year volunteers, has his military police round up stragglers, instills discipline in the new Army of the Potomac, and engages detective Allan Pinkerton to head a department of counterespionage (see crime, 1850). Pinkerton has gained prominence by uncovering and thwarting a plot to kill the president-elect at Baltimore during Lincoln's journey to Washington for the inauguration (see 1862).

Detective Allan Pinkerton arrests Washington, D.C., widow Rose O'Neal Greenhow, 46, on her doorstep August 23 as she tries to swallow a coded message. She is suspected of having passed three messages to the Confederacy, giving information on the strength they would face at Manassas and when the attack would begin. Greenhow and one of her daughters are placed under house arrest, and when they manage to slip more notes out to Rebel agents they are confined in the Old Capitol Prison, where Greenhow waves a Confederate flag from her window (see 1862).

John C. Frémont fails to put down disturbances in Missouri and is dismissed from his post as head of the Department of the West; his wife, Jessie, calls upon President Lincoln to ask for his reinstatement, she is refused, Frémont will soon lose the fortune that he made in California mining with unwise speculations in railroad stocks, and Jessie will be forced to support the family with her writing.

Confederate forces defeat Union General Nathaniel Lyon, 43, August 10 at Wilson's Creek, Missouri, 10 miles southwest of Springfield. Some 1,200 Union troops under the command of General Franz Sigel attack the enemy rear while General Lyon leads a frontal attack against the main body of the enemy. The 5,400 bluecoats are no match for the combined forces of Confederate troops and Missouri Militia, who number more than 10,000. Commanded by General Benjamin McCulloch and General Sterling Price, they repulse Sigel's attack and carry the day after several hours of bitter fighting in which both sides have sustained heavy losses; Lyon is killed, Sigel retreats toward Springfield.

Union forces under General Benjamin Franklin Butler, 42, capture Confederate forts on the North Carolina coast in late August.

Jefferson Davis wins confirmation as president of the Confederate States of America in an election held in October after seizure of federal funds and property in the South. Davis's wife, Varina (née Howell), 35, confides in a letter to her mother in Mississippi that "the North has a great advantage in manufacturing power" and that her husband is "depressed" about the Confederacy's prospects. She has followed President Davis to Montgomery, Alabama, and then to Richmond.

The Battle of Ball's Bluff on the Potomac October 21 ends in defeat for the Union.

President Lincoln gives General McClellan command of all federal forces November 1. McClellan spends the winter training a 200,000-man Army of the Potomac while Union naval forces attempt to enforce an embargo on Southern ports that was ordered in April (see 1862).

Armored artillery ships built by Indiana-born engineer James Buchanan Eads, 41, go into service for the U.S. Navy. President Lincoln asked Eads early in the year to submit plans for defending the Western rivers; Eads was nearly drowned as a teenager when a steamboat on which he was traveling with his family exploded as it approached St. Louis. Such explosions are common, and Eads went into business at age 22 salvaging sunken hulls; he made a fortune, invented a diving bell in the 1850s, and proposed at the outbreak of war that the government build seven 175-foot steam-driven ironclads; the first was ready in 45 days, all seven were completed within 100 days, and they incorporate innovations by Eads in armament and armament mounting (see transportation [bridge], 1867).

The U.S. Navy has only 28 steam-powered ships in April, but the navy's New York-born engineer in chief Benjamin F. (Franklin) Isherwood, 38, has written a major treatise on maritime steam engines and oversees construction of a fleet that will grow within a few years to number about 600 steam vessels.

Captain Samuel F. Dupont, now 58, is assigned to carry out an attack on Port Royal, South Carolina, whose two forts fall to Union forces November 7 with minimal loss of life, giving Dupont's South Atlantic Blockading Squadron an essential base of operations. All but three of the officers at the Washington Navy Yard resigned at the outbreak of hostilities because of Confederate sympathies; the three include Philadelphia-born ordnance officer John A. B. (Adolphus Bernard) Dahlgren, 51, who has invented a smooth-bore cannon that will be widely used by Union forces in the war. First mounted in an experimental vessel that went on a cruise in the late 1850s, the weapon is made of metal that varies in thickness to match the differences in internal pressure that occur when the cannon is fired.

The Trent affair November 8 precipitates an Anglo-American crisis. Antarctic explorer Captain Charles Wilkes, now 63, commanding the sloop-of-war U.S.S. San Jacinto, stops the British mail packet S.S. Trent and removes former U.S. senators John Murray Mason, 63, and John Slidell, 68, who are now Confederate commissioners bound for Britain and France (see Wilkes, 1842). They are imprisoned at Boston, President Lincoln will avert war by having his secretary of state William H. Seward, 60, order the release of the two men at the start of next year, and they will continue on to Europe, but their efforts to win official support for the Confederate cause will have little success.

The Colorado Territory is formed February 28, the Dakota Territory March 2, the Nevada Territory March 2 (see Comstock Lode, 1859). The Arizona Territory organized August 1 consists of all of New Mexico south of the 34th parallel (northeastern New Mexico has been included in the Colorado Territory).

A united Kingdom of Italy is proclaimed March 17 by the nation's parliament at Turin, joining Lombardy, Piedmont, Parma, Modena, Lucca, Romagna, Tuscany, and the Two Sicilies under Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont's House of Savoy (see 1859). Nice and Savoy were lost to France last year, Austria holds Venice and the rest of Venetia (it will not be united with Italy until 1866), Napoleon III holds Rome, which will not become part of Italy (and the nation's capital) until 1870. Conte Camillo Benso di Cavour has played a major role in creating the new kingdom but dies at his native Turin June 6 at age 50 (see 1866).

Polish statesman Prince Adam Czartoryski dies in exile at Montfermeil, France, July 15 at age 91, having led the effort to reunite his country (see insurrection, 1863).

The Ottoman sultan Abdul Mejid (Abdülmecid) I dies of phthisis June 25 at age 38 after a reign marked by reforms, including the repression of slavery. His 31-year-old brother Abdul Aziz Oglu Mahmud II will rule until 1876 as Abdul Aziz, obtaining enormous wealth and squandering it recklessly in his infatuation with western material progress.

The Royal Navy's H.M.S. Warrior completed outside London October 24 at a cost of £357,291 is the world's first ocean-going iron-hulled armored warship (see H.M.S. Rattler, 1845). Built to counter the French ironclad completed last year, she has a 4½-inch thick wrought iron hull that no enemy naval gun can penetrate and that makes La Gloire obsolete.

Portugal's Pedro V dies of cholera (or typhoid fever) at his native Lisbon November 11 at age 24 after a reign of less than 9 years. He married Stephanie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen 3 years ago but is childless and is therefore succeeded by his 23-year-old brother, who will reign until 1889 as Luiz I.

France's Napoleon III extends the financial powers of Parlement and mounts a grandiose program of public works despite the quickly mounting expenses of his extravagant foreign policy. Political opposition to the emperor begins to grow at a rapid pace.

Britain begins to force Bahrain's ruling al-Khalifa family to accept treaties that will give London control over the emirate's external affairs (see 1783; energy, 1932).

Benito Juárez returns to Mexico City in January as the Conservative government collapses, and he wins election to the presidency (see 1859). Now 55, Juárez is the first full-blooded Indian to be president, and there will not be another one in this century or the next, but the Congress distrusts him, the Conservatives have virtually emptied the nation's treasury, and the new president decides in July to suspend payments on all foreign debts for 2 years. French, British, and Spanish troops land at Veracruz in December to force Juárez to honor his financial obligations and resume the payments. Preoccupied with the Civil War, President Lincoln is unable to defend the Monroe Doctrine that was enunciated 38 years ago (see 1862).

Ecuador elects Guayaquil-born politician Gabriel García Moreno, 39, president. Educated partly in Europe, where he witnessed the revolutions of 1848, he seized power last year with the help of a general and former president after becoming convinced that the republic established in 1830 needed a strong leader with moral principles who could use religion to bridge the differences between classes and between whites and Indians (he will sign a concordat with the Vatican in 1863 dedicating the country to the Sacred Heart). Entrusting education, welfare, and much of the policy planning to the nation's Roman Catholic clergymen, García Moreno centralizes Ecuador's government and works to reduce corruption and strengthen the economy (see 1875).

Buenos Aires provincial governor Bartolomé Mitre defeats a federal army and wins election as president of a united Argentina, ending the rebellion that began in 1853, moving the national capital back to Buenos Aires, and establishing an efficient administration (see 1859). Now 40, Mitre will serve as president until 1868 (see Paraguayan war, 1864).

Former New Granada president Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera raises an army that takes Bogotá in July as Liberals and Conservatives continue to vie for control of the country (see human rights, 1850). Formerly a Conservative, Mosquera is now 62, has become a Liberal, proclaims himself president, expropriates Church lands, and will rule as dictator until a Liberal constitution is adopted in 1863 and New Granada becomes Colombia.

A 5,000-man French army relieves a blockade of Saigon February 25 and gains control of the area after defeating 20,000 Annamese regulars, led by General Nguyen Tri Phuong, who have kept 900 French and Spanish troops pinned down (see 1859). The former governor of French Guiana in South America Admiral Louis-Adolphe Bonard, 56, is given command of French forces in Vietnam November 29 and ordered to establish control of the region; he captures the province of Bien Hoa in December, handing a decisive defeat to Nguyen Tri Phuong (see 1862).

Siamese troops help Cambodia's uncrowned king Norodom abort an attempted coup by his half-brother Si Votha (see 1860). Norodom was educated at Bangkok and has strong connections there (see France, 1863).

China's seventh Qing (Manchu) emperor Xianfeng (Hsien-fieng) dies at Cheng-te in Hopeh Province August 22 at age 30 after an 11-year reign, having refused to return to Beijing (Peking) after the Europeans evacuated it. His antiforeign entourage enters Beijing and seizes power, but the usurpers are crushed in October as the former empress Xiaoqin gains help from Prince Gong (Kung) to enthrone her 5-year-old son Zai-Chun (Tsai-chun), who will reign until 1875 as the Tonghzi emperor Tongzhi (Tung-chih). His mother will serve as co-regent until 1873 together with Prince Gong (who with Dong Yuan Chun establishes Xiaoqin as the dowager empress Cixi). China's first ministry of foreign affairs is established November 11; regarded as a temporary institution that will exist only until the current crisis ends, it will continue long after the crisis has passed.

Madagascar's queen Ranavalona dies after a 33-year reign in which she has been paid to supply French traders with slaves and give them a monopoly in the African island's slave trade. Ranavalona's son will reign until his assassination in 1863 as Radama II, making a treaty of perpetual friendship with France and working to modernize the country.

The British Colonial Office sends former New Zealand governor Sir George Grey back to Auckland for a second term in hopes that he can end the Taranaki War that began last year. Now 49, Sir George has been governor of the Cape Colony since 1854 and won acclaim there for resolving disputes between natives and settlers, but he becomes convinced that the Maori forces of Wiremu Kingi pose a genuine threat to Auckland and takes defensive measures that look to the Maori like aggressive moves. The fighting spreads from Taranaki to the Waikato, with Kingi's followers putting up a valiant defense until they are beaten by imperial troops and colonial militia, who have the support of Maori opposed to Kingi (see 1863; Native Land Act, 1862).

Aborigines at Cullinlaringo, Queensland, kill 19 settlers October 17 in a skirmish whose death toll of Europeans will stand as the highest in Australian history. The dead include pastoralist and ardent nationalist Horatio Spencer Wills, whose 26-year-old son Thomas Wentworth Wills has studied at Rugby and become Victoria's champion cricketer.

The British viceroy to India Earl Canning reorganizes his executive council under terms of the Indian Councils Act, enlarging it to provide room for nonofficial Indian members and instituting departmental distribution of responsibilities (see 1858). Charlotte Elizabeth, Countess Canning, dies of malaria at Calcutta (Kolkata) November 18 at age 44 (see 1862).

Queen Victoria's prince consort Albert dies of typhoid fever at Windsor Castle, in Berkshire, December 14 at age 42. The queen is grief stricken, and the entire nation goes into mourning.

Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin returns to Europe after escaping imprisonment in Eastern Siberia (see 1847). Having traveled via Japan and the United States, Bakunin will be the leading European anarchist until his death in 1876.