Category: History

On October 24, 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph system was completed, making it possible to transmit messages rapidly (by mid-19th-century standards) from coast to coast. This technological advance, pioneered by inventor Samuel F.B. Morse, brought an end to the Pony Express, the horseback mail service which had previously provided the fastest communication between the East and the West.

Established in April 1860 as a subsidiary of a famous freight company, the Pony Express operated between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, using a continuous relay of the best riders and horses. The nearly 2000 mile route — running through present-day Kansas, Nebraska, the northeast corner of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California — included vast stretches of rugged terrain once thought impassable in winter. Pushing the physical limits of man and beast, the Pony Express ran nonstop. Summer deliveries averaged ten days, while winter deliveries required twelve to sixteen days, approximately half the time needed by stagecoach. When delivering President Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, the Express logged its fastest time ever at seven days and seventeen hours.

Today in History: Library of Congress

Click image for large and very large versions.

On this date in 1803, the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase Treaty by a vote of twenty-four to seven.

France had lost control of Louisiana to Spain at the end of the French and Indian War (1763). In the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800), Spain ceded the territory back to France (along with six warships) in exchange for the creation of a kingdom in north-central Italy for the Queen of Spain’s brother. Napoleon promised never to sell or alienate the property. His promise was good for about 10 months.

The First Consul of the French Republic desiring to give to the United States a strong proof of his friendship doth hereby cede to the United States in the name of the French Republic for ever and in full Sovereignty the said territory with all its rights and appurtenances as fully and in the Same manner as they have been acquired by the French Republic in virtue of the above mentioned Treaty concluded with his Catholic Majesty [Spain].

The purchase included 828,000 square miles — all or parts of the modern states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

With interest the total cost was $23.5 million, or about 4 cents an acre.

. . . the British army surrendered to the Americans and French at Yorktown, Virginia, in essence ending the War for American Independence.

The siege of Yorktown was conducted according to the book, with redoubts, trenches, horn-works, saps, mines, and countermines. Cornwallis had about 8000 men in the little town on the York river, which French ships patrolled so that he could not break away. The armies of Rochambeau and Saint~Simon were almost as numerous as his, and in addition Washington had 5645 regulars and 3200 Virginia militia. The commander in chief, profiting by D’Estaing’s error at Savannah, wasted no men in premature assaults. There were gallant sorties and counterattacks, one led by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton. Casualties were light on both sides, fewer than in the naval battle; but Cornwallis, a good professional soldier, knew when he was beaten. On 17 October he sent out a white flag, and on the 19th surrendered his entire force. Pleading illness, he sent his second in command, Brigadier Charles O’Hara, to make the formal surrender to General Lincoln, whom Washington appointed to receive him. One by one, the British regiments, alter laying down their arms, marched back to camp between two lines, one of American soldiers, the other of French, while the military bands played a series of melancholy tunes, including one which all recognized as “The World Turned Upside Down.”

Lafayette announced the surrender to Monsieur de Maurepas of the French government, in terms of the classic French drama: “The play is over; the fifth act has come to an end.” Lieutenant Colonel Tench Tilghman carried Washington’s dispatch to Congress at Philadelphia, announcing the great event. Arriving at 3:00 a.m. on 22 October, he tipped off an old German night watchman, who awoke the slumbering Philadelphians by stumping through the streets with his lantern, bellowing, “Basht dree o’gloek und Gornvallis ist gedaken!”

Windows flew open, candles were lighted, citizens poured into the streets and embraced each other; and after day broke, Congress assembled and attended a service of thanksgiving.

— Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People, 1965.

October 19th really ought to be a national holiday.

The birthdays today are boring but I did like an item at The Writer’s Almanac that begins:

On this day in 1786, conflicted and love-torn U.S. Ambassador to France Thomas Jefferson composed a now-famous love letter to a married English woman named Maria Cosway. It’s more than 4,000 words long, more than three times the length of the Declaration of Independence, which Thomas Jefferson had composed 10 years before.

He had to write out this letter with his left hand because he had broken his right wrist while leaping over a fountain in giddy delight during a stroll with the woman. . . .

On Sunday, October 8, 1871, fire leveled a broad swath of Michigan and Wisconsin, including the cities of Peshtigo, Holland, Manistee, and Port Huron. At least 1,200 people died (possibly twice as many) as a result of the fire. Approximately 800 fatalities occurred in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. That same night, the Great Chicago Fire erupted in nearby Illinois.

Conditions were ripe for major conflagrations that year. Rainfall during the preceding months totaled just one-fourth of normal precipitation; early October was unseasonably warm; and winds were strong. Vast tracts of forest burned for a week in parts of Michigan and Wisconsin and Chicago firefighters battled blazes daily. Contributing to Chicago’s Great Conflagration were the facts that the bustling midwestern city was built primarily of wood and several woodworking industries operated within the city limits.

Today in History: Library of Congress

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor has an interesting little narrative as well.

Today marks the anniversary of the first American train robbery.

On October 6, 1866, thieves boarded an eastbound Ohio & Mississippi Railroad passenger train near Seymour, Indiana, and entered an Adams Express Company car. Pointing guns at Adams Express employee Elem Miller, the masked bandits demanded keys to the safes. Miller held keys for the local safe only, so the robbers emptied that safe and tossed the other off the train intending to open it later. Signaling the engineer to stop the train, the robbers, later identified as the infamous Reno brothers, made an easy get away. Unaware of what had happened, the engineer sped off into the night while the thieves congratulated themselves on a job well done.

Above from the Today in History page at the Library of Congress, which has more background about train robberies and early railroads including this excerpt from “The Early Days in Silver City” —

I happened to be riding that train. I had gone overland to Safford and Solemisvelle prospecting. I decided to come home Thanksgiving to be with my family at Silver City. I boarded the train at Wilcox. There was a large shipment of gold on the train. Just out of Steins Pass we could see a large bon-fire. One of the trainmen remarked, ‘Wonder what the big fire is, I hope we don’t run into any trouble.’ The bon-fire we discovered to our sorrow was on the R. R. Then as today curiosity got the best of some of us so we had to find out why the train came to an abrupt stop, and what the bon-fire was put on the track. We found ourselves looking into the barrel of guns.

At Slate John Swansburg is taking a Civil War road trip. His first two installments are in — Vicksburg and Shiloh. He made me want to return to both, so I decided to pass the link along to you.

The Congress of the United States abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia on this date in 1850 as part of the so-called Compromise of 1850.

Slavery itself continued in the capital of the United States until April 1862.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States by Howard Chandler Christy (1940). The original is in the House of Representatives Wing of the U.S. Capitol. 39 of the 55 delegates are pictured — but not the three who did not sign or the 13 who had left the convention. Washington is standing; Franklin seated, turned to face us; Hamilton is directly behind Franklin; Madison is seated to Franklin’s left. The person credited with writing the preamble, Gouverneur Morris, is standing behind and just a little to the left of Hamilton, facing us.

Click image for a much larger version.

“Of all the days on all the fields where American soldiers have fought, the most terrible by almost any measure was September 17, 1862. The battle waged on that date, close by Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg in western Maryland, took a human toll never exceeded on any other single day in the nation’s history. So intense and sustained was the violence, a man recalled, that for a moment in his mind’s eye the very landscape around him turned red.”

Stephen W. Sears, Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam

There were 22,720 casualties that day, about a third of them dead or dying.

It was on this day in 1812 that Napoleon’s army invaded the city of Moscow. He began the invasion of Russia in June of that year. The Russian forces kept retreating, burning the farmland as they went so the French wouldn’t be able to draw provisions from the land.

The troops were exhausted and hungry by the time they reached Moscow on this day, in 1812. The gates of the city were left wide open. And as the French came through, they noticed that all over the city small fires had begun. The Russians had set fire to their own city. By that night, the fires were out of control.

Napoleon watched the burning of the city from inside the Kremlin, and barely escaped the city alive. The retreat began across the snow-covered plains, one of the great disasters of military history. Thousands of troops died from starvation and hypothermia.

Of the nearly half million French soldiers who had set out in June on the invasion, fewer than 20,000 staggered back across the border in December.

— The Writer’s Almanac (2005)

The confusion and horror of the French retreat through the Russian winter are well described. “The air itself,” wrote a French colonel, “was thick with tiny icicles which sparkled in the sun but cut one’s face drawing blood.” Another Frenchman recalled that “it frequently happened that the ice would seal my eyelids shut.” Prince Wilhelm of Baden, one of Napoleon’s commanders, gave the order to march on the morning of Dec. 7, only to discover that “the last drummer boy had frozen to death.” Soldiers had resorted to looting, stripping corpses and even to cannibalism by the time the march was over.

— From a Washington Post review of Moscow 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March

It was on September 13, 1759, that British military and naval forces under General James Wolfe defeated the French under Marquis Louis-Joseph de Montcalm on the fields once belonging to Abraham Martin outside Québec. Both commanders were killed. That’s Wolfe’s death on the field above as depicted by Benjamin West. Montcalm died the next morning.

Fewer than 10,000 combatants were on the Plains of Abraham that day for a battle lasting just about an hour. Yet, and even though the war continued for four more years, it was the pivotal battle for North America. Controlling Québec meant controlling the St. Lawrence River. In the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years War in 1763 — it is known as the French and Indian War in America, as the War of the Conquest in Québec — France ceded to Britain its claim to Canada, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley.

The British, unable to pierce Québec’s defenses throughout July, had launched a war of terror. An estimated 1,400 farms had been destroyed — no one knows the number of murders, rapes, thefts and scalpings. Even so, the French held, well arrayed against an assault on the cliffs and shore below the city, and supplied from up river against a siege.

Finally, perhaps in desperation, Wolfe moved his army up river past Québec. On the night of September 12th, he let the ebbing river bring them back down to an obscure pathway up the cliff to the Plains of Abraham. By daylight, seven British battalions were on the field; five more were still coming up the path and artillery was being manhandled up the cliff as well (4,500 men in all). Montcalm, reportedly rattled by Wolfe’s surprise move, decided to assault the probably superior British force in a frontal assault.

The French marched on the seven forward British battalions; the Redcoats were formed two deep, a half-mile wide. The British were ordered not to fire until the enemy was at 40 yards. The French fired at 125-150 yards, to little effect — though they did mortally wound Wolfe. The British held fire. The French attacked without cohesion. The British stood still holding fire.

When the French advance reached 40 yards the British fired. From then it was a rout. In fact the British command needed to order its pursuing troops back. British discipline reformed before French reserves arrived from behind; the arriving French did not engage. (The outcome might have been different if Montcalm had kept his cool and waited to trap the British before attacking.) Each side had about 650 casualties.

The British dug in for a siege. The town, its supplies now cut off, capitulated on the 18th.

And the British spent a miserable Québec winter with nothing to eat — they had destroyed all the farms before harvest.

The British captured Montréal the following September. Canada was British.

Poynter.org has a gallery of front pages from September 11 and 12, 2001.

On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shot while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Leon Czolgosz, a Polish citizen associated with the Anarchist movement, fired two shots at McKinley who was greeting the public in a receiving line.

McKinley died September 14, whispering the words of his favorite hymn, “Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee.” He was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt.

— Source Library of Congress.

Czolgosz died in the electric chair.

See The New York Times articles from the day of the shooting.

On August 26, 1791, John Fitch and James Rumsey, rivals battling over claims to the invention, each were granted a federal patent for the steamboat. They devised different systems for their steamboats. Four years earlier, on August 22, 1787, Fitch demonstrated a steamboat—a Watt-type engine with a separate condenser that transmitted power to oars mounted to stroke in a paddle fashion. The forty-five-foot craft launched on the Delaware River in the presence of delegates from the Constitutional Convention. Rumsey’s craft was powered by direct force—jet propulsion. Fitch went on to build a larger steamboat that carried passengers and freight between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey.

Nonetheless, Robert Fulton is generally credited as the inventor of the steamboat. In 1814, Fulton and Edward Livingston, the brother of Robert R. Livingston, brought commercial success to steamboating when they began to offer regular steamboat service between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi. The boats traveled at the rates of eight miles per hour downstream and three miles per hour upstream. In 1816, Henry Miller Shreve launched his steamboat Washington, which completed the voyage from New Orleans to Louisville, Kentucky, in twenty-five days. Steamboat design continued to improve, so that by 1853, the trip to Louisville took only four and one-half days.

Today in History: Library of Congress

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

It’s only been 90 years (August 26, 1920).