Coming from a Federalist-National Republican political lineage, McCulloch described himself as "an original Henry Clay Whig" who supported all elements of Clay's American System, although he had misgivings about the high protective tariff, which he saw as detrimental to the country's commercial interests. When the Whig party disintegrated in the mid-1850s, McCulloch joined the new Republican party and was quietly antislavery, though like many conservative former Whigs he lamented the spiraling sectional controversy that divided the nation.

Custer found his calling in the Civil War. Two years of staff duty, including a tour as aide to General George B. McClellan (1826-1885), established his military skill, both as a staff officer and in combat. So impressed was General Alfred Pleasonton, commander of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac, that he recommended Custer for promotion. In June 1863 Captain Custer was appointed brigadier general of volunteers and given command of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade. At twenty-three, he was the youngest general in the Union army.

By 1875 Custer was widely admired as the nation's foremost Indian fighter. He boasted a solid record, but the fame came as much from newspaper attention and from his own writings. He published a series of magazine articles and then consolidated them into an autobiography, which reached a large audience. Custer's final campaign, ending in the battle of the Little Bighorn on 25 June 1876, earned him immortality and a place in the national folklore.

[Sarah] Grimké's contribution to antislavery agitation was pivotal, not only because of her considerable talent as a writer, speaker, teacher, and pamphleteer, but also because of her sex, southern nativity, and uncommon courage. As leaders of the female antislavery movement, Sarah and Angelina regularly risked physical harm and slander.

The Confederacy he returned to in February 1864 had fallen on hard times as he found out when [Brigadier General] Winder placed him in command of the stockade at the Andersonville, Georgia, prison in March of that year. The exchange of prisoners had ceased, and the overpopulated compound rapidly became a hell on earth for everyone there. The Confederacy was so short of the basic necessities that even Confederate troops in the field were near starvation. Prisoners ranked last in importance, and Wirz was lucky to be able to feed his charges anything at all.

Holden organized the Constitutional Union party in the state that in February 1861 defeated the secessionist effort to call a convention that could take the state out of the Union. In the brief campaign Holden warned that secession "would end in civil war, in military despotism, and in the destruction of slave property. Let us give the Northern people time. . . . The Constitution will be restored, and Mr.

It is said that another unsuccessful suitor for the hand of this beautiful Southern woman was gallant Dick Garnett, a young West Pointer, in charge of the arsenal at Augusta, then the girlhood home of Miss Stovall. To the handsome youth's proposal of marriage, the fair object of his affection was by no means indifferent. But the young girl's father did not favor this match. The lovers were forbidden to meet and the obstinate lass was finally sent to visit relatives in South Carolina. There was probably no objection to the young man himself.