Message #128894

[Bianca]

During the Civil War, Lincoln appropriated powers no previous President had wielded: he used his war powers to proclaim a blockade, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, spent money before Congress appropriated it, and imprisoned 18,000 suspected Confederate sympathizers without trial.



Lincoln believed in the Whig theory of the presidency, which left Congress to write the laws while he signed them, vetoing only those bills that threatened his war powers. Thus, he signed the Homestead Act in 1862, making millions of acres of government-held land in the West available for purchase at very low cost.

The Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act, also signed in 1862, provided government grants for agricultural universities in each state.

The Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864 granted federal support for the construction of the United States' First Transcontinental Railroad, which was completed in 1869.

Other important legislation involved economic matters, including the first income tax and higher tariffs. Also included was the creation of the system of national banks by the National Banking Acts of 1863, 1864, and 1865, which allowed the creation of a strong national financial system.

Congress created and Lincoln approved the Department of Agriculture in 1862, although that institution would not become a Cabinet-level department until 1889.

The Legal Tender Act of 1862 established the United States Note, the first paper currency in United States history. This was done to increase the money supply to pay for fighting the war.

During the war, Lincoln's Treasury Department effectively controlled all cotton trade in the occupied South — the most dramatic incursion of federal controls on the economy.

In 1862, Lincoln sent a senior general, John Pope, to put down the "Sioux Uprising" in Minnesota. Presented with 303 death warrants for convicted Santee Dakota who were accused of killing innocent farmers; Lincoln affirmed 39 of these for execution (one was later reprieved).

Prior to Lincoln's presidency, the Thanksgiving holiday, while a regional holiday in New England since the 17th century, had only been proclaimed by the federal government sporadically, the last such proclamation having come during James Madison's presidency.

In 1863, Lincoln declared the final Thursday in November to be a day of Thanksgiving, and the holiday has been celebrated annually at that time ever since.