The Grand Army of the Republic was an American organisation for former members of the Armed forces, organized during the winter of 1865-66 at Springfield, Illinois, chiefly through the activity of Dr. B. F. Stephenson, late surgeon of the FourteenthIllinois Infantry. The first post was established at Decatur, Illinois, in 1866. The ritual is secret. All soldiers and sailors of the US army, navy and marine corps between April 12, 1861, and April 9, 1865, were eligible for membership, provided they had an honourable discharge. National conventions were held each year. The first commander-in-chief was Stephen A. Hurlbut, of Illinois. Grand army posts were established in nearly every city in the North and West. The last National Encampment was held at Indianapolis, Indiana in 1949. Six surviving Comrades attended that Encampment. The last member of the Grand Army of the Republic, Albert Wollson, died in 1956. Research Grand Army of the Republic
In law, habeas corpus is a writ ordering a person to be brought before a court or judge. The term is particularly applied to a writ so issued so that the court may ascertain whether the person's detention is lawful. From the time of the Magna Charta imprisonment at the discretion of any person has been unlawful in England, but for long the royal prerogative was so indefinite and the power of the crown so great that persons were frequently detained in custody at the discretion of the crown. It was not until the 17th century that the Habeas Corpus Act, passed in 1679 provided the great remedy for the violation of personal liberty by the writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum (that you have the body to answer).
The provisions of the act may be stated generally thus : 1. That on complaint or request in writing, by, or on behalf of, any person committed and charged with any crime (unless treason, felony, etc, expressed in the warrant), the lord-chancellor, or any of the judges shall award a habeas corpus for such prisoner, and shall discharge the party, if bailable, upon security being given to appear and answer to the accusation. 2. The writ shall be returned, and the prisoner brought up within a limited time, not exceeding twenty days. 3. No person once delivered by habeas corpus shall be recommitted for the same offence. 4. Every person committed for treason or felony may insist on being tried at the next assizes, or admitted to bail, and if not tried at the second assizes or sessions, he shall be discharged from the imprisonment. The writ may be applied for by persons confined in any part of England, or Jersey and Guernsey. As the writ originally had to do solely with crimes, the statute 56 George III. cap. c. was passed, which extended the writ to other than criminal cases.
The result was that no person could be illegally confined in England for any length of time, since some friend could always apply for a habeas corpus, which, on a good prima facie case, would be issued. If the party was confined under recognized authority, as a child by a parent, this fact had to be stated.
In times of great political excitement, and suspected treasonable conspiracies, the operation of the Habeas Corpus Act has been occasionally suspended, and during the early 21st century under the pretext of 'combatting terrorism' exceptions made to it. But such suspension does not enable any one to imprison without cause or valid pretext for so doing. It only prevents persons who are committed from being bailed, tried, or discharged during the suspension, leaving to the committing magistrate all the responsibility attending on illegal imprisonment.
In Scotland similar protection of the liberty of the subject was secured by the Wrongous Imprisonment Act of 1701. The English statute was copied in the United States without essential change.
In the United States habeas corpus was suspended on July the 5th, 1861. Attorney-GeneralBates gave an opinion in favour of the President's power to declare martial law and suspend the writ of habeas corpus. A special session of Congress approved this opinion. Thereafter many arbitrary arrests were made, arousing much indignation. On September the 24th, 1862, the suspension was made general by the President so far as it might affect persons arrested by military authority for disloyal practices. An act of Congress, on March the 3rd, 1863, again authorized the suspension of the writ by the President in cases of prisoners of war, deserters, those resisting drafts and offenders against the military or naval service. The arrest of Vallandigham, in Ohio, and of Milligan, in Indiana, caused great excitement. The case of the latter being brought before the Supreme Court of the Union, that body decided that Congress could not give to military commissions the power of trial and conviction, and that the suspension of the privilege of habeas corpus did not suspend the writ itself. In the case of the Ku-Klux rebellions there was a brief suspension of habeas corpus in 1871. Research Habeas Corpus
The Northwest Territory, consisting of the area west of Pennsylvania, north of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi, came under the control of the Continental Congress by reason of the cessions made by Virginia in 1784, New York in 1782, Massachusetts in 1785 and Connecticut in 1786. In 1784 Jefferson brought forward an ordinance for the government of this territory. Its leading features were that it provided for its erection into States, and their entrance into the Union on equal terms with the rest. A clause which would have prohibited slavery after 1800 was voted down.
In 1787 a new ordinance was framed upon this and passed on September the 13th. The credit of its final form, including the forbidding of slavery, has been attributed to Nathan Dane member of the Continental Congress from Massachusetts, and, to Dr. Manasseh Cutler, of the same State, agent of the Ohio Company. The ordinance provided that no land was to be taken up until it had been purchased from the Indians and offered for sale by the United States; no property qualification was required of electors or elected; a temporary government, consisting of an appointed governor and law-making judges might be established until the adult male population of the territory increased to 5000; then a permanent and representative government would be permitted, with the right of sending a representative to Congress, who should debate, but not vote. When the number of inhabitants in any of the five divisions of the territory equalled 60,000, it should be admitted as a new State; the new States should remain forever a part of the United States; should bear the same relation to the Government as the original States; should pay their apportionment of the Federal debts; should in their governments uphold republican forms, and slavery should exist in none of them. It also provided for equal division of the property of intestates, and for the surrender of fugitive slaves from the States.
The Northwest Territory, consisting of the area west of Pennsylvania, north of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi, came under the control of the Continental Congress by reason of the cessions made by Virginia in 1784, New York in 1782, Massachusetts in 1785 and Connecticut in 1786. In 1784 Jefferson brought forward an ordinance for the government of this territory. Its leading features were that it provided for its erection into States, and their entrance into the Union on equal terms with the rest. A clause which would have prohibited slavery after 1800 was voted down.
In 1787 a new ordinance was framed upon this and passed on September the 13th. The credit of its final form, including the forbidding of slavery, has been attributed to Nathan Dane member of the Continental Congress from Massachusetts, and, to Dr. Manasseh Cutler, of the same State, agent of the Ohio Company. The ordinance provided that no land was to be taken up until it had been purchased from the Indians and offered for sale by the United States; no property qualification was required of electors or elected; a temporary government, consisting of an appointed governor and law-making judges might be established until the adult male population of the territory increased to 5000; then a permanent and representative government would be permitted, with the right of sending a representative to Congress, who should debate, but not vote. When the number of inhabitants in any of the five divisions of the territory equalled 60,000, it should be admitted as a new State; the new States should remain forever a part of the United States; should bear the same relation to the Government as the original States; should pay their apportionment of the Federal debts; should in their governments uphold republican forms, and slavery should exist in none of them. It also provided for equal division of the property of intestates, and for the surrender of fugitive slaves from the States.
The Personal Liberty Laws were statutes passed by the Northern American States to protect the negroes within their borders. The first acts were passed about 1840, though Indiana and Connecticut had previously provided that fugitives might have a trial by jury. After the Prigg decision, many of the States passed Acts prohibiting the use of State jails in fugitive slave cases. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 aroused the most violent opposition in the North, and before 1856 many of the States had passed personal liberty acts. Beside prohibiting the use of State jails, these laws forbade State judges and officers to assist claimants or issue writs. Trial was to be given all alleged fugitives. Heavy penalties were provided for the violation of these laws. Such acts were passed in Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Michigan, Maine, Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of the Northern States, New Jersey and California alone sanctioned the rendition of fugitives. Research Personal Liberty Laws
The Red Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum syspila) is a species of Milk snake found in wooded hillsides of Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma and the Dakotas in North America. It is distinguished by a black band on the posterior portion of the parietals and broken spots that occur ventrolaterally. Research Red Milk Snake
Spots (formerly known as spotted swine) is a breed of domestic swine. The present day Spots descend from the Spotted hogs which trace a part of their ancestry to the original Poland China, which consisted of six separate breeds and was referred to as the 'Warren County Hog' of Ohio. One such breed imported into Ohio in the early 1880's was a breed called the 'Big China', which was mostly white in colour, but having some black spots. They were good feeders, matured early, were very prolific and produced these characteristics in their offspring. Three men from Indiana, brought boars and sows back from Ohio to cross with their own good hogs; and thus developed a breed all their own from this background which kept the characteristic colour of large black and white spots.
Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the USA. He was born in 1809 at Hardin County, Kentucky and died in 1865 when he was assassinated at a theatre by John Wilkes Booth. Both in Kentucky and in Indiana, to which in 1816 the family removed, as well as in Illinois, whither they went in 1830, Abraham Lincoln had the privations and also the training of a backwoodsman's life.
In his youth he earned money to educate himself by splitting rails for a neighbour, and so earned the nickname 'rail-splitter'. About this time he also made a flat-boat voyage to New Orleans.
In the Black Hawk War of 1832 he served as captain and private. He tried keeping store and failed, studied law, was postmaster of New Salem in Illinois, and deputy surveyor of the county. As a politician he had better success, and after one defeat served in the Legislature from 1834 to 1842. Meanwhile he removed to Springfield and built up a law practice. From 1847 to 1849 he was a Whig Congressman, but was not notably prominent.
His importance dates from the Kansas-Nebraska controversy. In its progress he became the Republican State leader, and in 1858 he took part with Stephen A Douglas in a series of joint debates in canvassing for the US Senatorship. Abraham Lincoln was defeated, but the discussion had aroused great interest, and his utterances, e.g.: 'a house divided against itself cannot stand', brought him into national prominence. In February, 1860, he delivered a remarkable political speech at the Cooper Institute, New York.
He was pressed for the Presidency by many Western Republicans in the Chicago Convention in May, though Seward was in the lead at the outset. Amid great excitement Abraham Lincoln was nominated on the third ballot, and elected, by 180 electoral votes, over Douglas, Breckenridge and Bell. This first victory of the Republicans decided the Secessionists, and when the new President delivered his conciliatory inaugural address the country was drifting toward civil war.
In the Cabinet Seward had the Department of State, Chase the Treasury, Cameron, and soon afterward Stanton, War, Welles the Navy, Caleb B. Smith the Interior, Edward Bates was Attorney-General, and Montgomery Blair Postmaster-General. Immediately on the fall of Port Sumter the President, on April the 15th, 1861, called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the Rebellion. He soon issued a call for additional troops, instituted a blockade, and summoned Congress to meet in extra session on July the 4th.
As the 'War President' Abraham Lincoln is identified with a great part of the history of the struggle. Foreign complications, military and naval movements, domestic politics, as well as routine administrative duties, all claimed his attention; to the people and the armies he was endeared as 'Father Abraham' innumerable anecdotes are related bearing on his humour, strong common sense and sympathy.
On September the 22nd, 1862, profiting by the partial success of Antietam, he issued a preliminary proclamation fixing the coming January the 1st as the date for freeing slaves in insurgent States. The Emancipation Proclamation to that effect accordingly appeared at the opening of 1863. On the nineteenth of November 1863, he pronounced on the battlefield of Gettysburg his short but famous eulogy.
He was renominated by the Republicans on June the 8th, 1864, and elected over McClellan, receiving 212 electoral votes. 'Malice toward none, charity for all' was the burden of his second inaugural. He had visited Richmond after its fall, and was pondering the questions of reconstruction, when on the night of April the 14th he was shot in Ford's Theatre at the capital, and died the next morning. Research Abraham Lincoln
Abbreviations
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