Extra Credit Questions

[Anita]

Congrats Michael. Well done.

This beautiful inkwell, cast by Tiffany, is made of solid silver mined in Arizona. Note one of the figures is wearing a miner's helmet. It was commissioned by Charles Debrill Poston to commemorate Lincoln's signing of the Arizona Organic Act on February 23 of 1863. The inkwell was presented to Lincoln a few weeks before his assassination. It was donated to the Library of Congress in 1937 by Mary Lincoln Isham. Go here to see the inkwell and read about Charles D. Poston.
https://www.loc.gov/item/scsm001300/

Background. The Arizona Organic Act of 1863 was the legislation that created the Arizona Territory by splitting the New Mexico Territory in two.

"Starting in 1856, the White settlers of this forgotten land had twice petitioned Washington for a separate Arizona Territory, and twice they were told no.

The only thing going for this piece of real estate was the Butterfield Overland Stagecoach, which carried mail, freight and passengers to California. It was a route Southern congressmen had forced through with an obvious eye to the future: This is how the South would get gold from California.

But as Southern congressmen left Washington to form the Confederacy, Northern politicians revoked the Butterfield contract in March 1861, severing small communities like Tucson and Mesilla (now in southern New Mexico) from the rest of the country.

The secession of Southern states gave these rejected folks an alternative, and on March 16, 1861 -- a month before the Civil War broke out -- a secessionist convention was held in Mesilla, pledging Arizona as a Confederate state. On March 28, another convention in Tucson ratified the move, and Arizona again declared itself a slave state.

Historian Robert Perkins surmises that Washington could have stopped this secessionist movement if it had been more considerate. Instead, it did the opposite. It pulled Union troops out of Arizona to mass along the Rio Grande, leaving the population unprotected from Mexican bandits and Apache Chief Cochise, who already was at war with White intruders.

Cochise saw the retreat of the "Blue Coats" as a victory and launched a rampage that terrorized the area.

Help came from rebel Lt. Col. John R. Baylor, who captured Fort Fillmore to give the settlers some protection. He declared the area a Confederate Territory, 670 miles long, with all land south of the 34th parallel from Texas to California, and named himself governor, with Mesilla as the capital.

The people of Arizona welcomed Baylor with open arms, holding another convention on Aug. 28, 1861, to ratify his actions and elect Granville Henderson Oury as its delegate to the Confederate States Congress. By Oct. 1, Oury was in Richmond, Va., seeking formal status for Arizona as the South's only rebel territory.

In early 1862, Confederate President Jefferson Davis created the Confederate Territory of Arizona. That finally got Washington's attention, and President Abraham Lincoln swept in, creating the Territory of Arizona on Feb. 24, 1863. He established the boundary line that divides it from New Mexico to this day. "
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic...z65JA6hKu3

When I travel I enjoy looking for Lincoln connections. A few weeks ago I visited Arizona.