Category: History

The examination of witnesses at the Salem Meeting House began on this date in 1692. Before the 17-month ordeal was over, 25 had died — nineteen executed by hanging, one man tortured to death, and five who succumbed to conditions while in jail. More than 160 people were accused, most jailed and many deprived of property and legal rights. Those who confessed and accused others were saved; those who maintained their innocence were executed.

On February 28, 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first U.S. railway chartered for commercial transportation of freight and passengers. Investors hoped a railroad would allow Baltimore, the second largest U.S. city at that time, to successfully compete with New York for western trade. New Yorkers were profiting from easy access to the Midwest via the Erie Canal.

Construction began at Baltimore harbor on July 4, 1828. Local dignitary Charles Carroll, last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, laid the first stone.

The initial line of track, a 13-mile stretch to Ellicott’s Mills (now Ellicott City), Maryland, opened in 1830. The Tom Thumb, a steam engine designed by Peter Cooper, negotiated the route well enough to convince skeptics that steam traction worked along steep, winding grades.

Library of Congress

The railroad finally connected Baltimore to the Ohio River (at Wheeling) in 1852. In the modern U.S. Here & Now version of Monopoly, the B&O has been replaced with John F. Kennedy Airport.

Abraham Lincoln, a one-term former congressman, spoke in at the Cooper Union in New York City on this date in 1860. Many think Lincoln’s “Cooper Union Address” propelled him to the presidency.

American Rhetoric has the speech text, and the audio of a reading in 2004 by Sam Waterston. Lincoln concluded:

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored – contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man – such as a policy of “don’t care” on a question about which all true men do care – such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance – such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

NewMexiKen likes that line — “contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong.”

… In a recent Times story about the Tea Party movement, [Glenn] Beck’s Fox News show comes up again and again as the bolt of lightning that illuminated the dark sky of Obama’s America for the—mostly aging—people who are turning to radical anti-government politics for answers. One of them is a sixty-six-year-old woman from Sandpoint, Idaho, named Pam Stout.

There’s nothing new about Mrs. Stout. She’s a familiar figure in American life, always latent, but coming to the surface in national emergencies. Richard Hofstadter described her mental world in detail. In the seventeen-eighties she lived in Sheffield, Massachusetts, during a period of tight credit and land foreclosures and was sympathetic to the farmers’ uprising known as Shay’s Rebellion that began there. In the eighteen-fifties she was a non-voting constituent of Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. In the eighteen-nineties she was the wife of a Nebraska farmer who joined the People’s Party and voted for William Jennings Bryan and free silver. In the nineteen-thirties desperate poverty drove her to fall for the simple solutions of Huey Long’s left-wing demagoguery, or Father Coughlin’s right-wing demagoguery, which often sounded similar. In the nineteen-fifties she listened avidly to radio personalities like Fulton Lewis, Jr., and Walter Winchell, thought President Eisenhower was a knowing agent of the Communist Party, and was a passionate supporter of Senator Joe McCarthy. In 2001 she knew that the Bush Administration orchestrated 9/11. In 2008 she showed up at Sarah Palin rallies.

…

George Packer, from a piece about Glenn Beck at The New Yorker

Within a month, three of the six pictured were killed in battle. The remaining three marines became celebrities in a savings bond drive. The photo, the second taken of a flag raising on Mount Suribachi that day, won the Pulitzer Prize. The flag and the smaller one used in the earlier flag-raising are in the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Virginia.

United States General Zachary Taylor was victorious over Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna in the Battle of Buena Vista on February 23, 1847. Santa Anna’s loss at Buena Vista, coupled with his defeat by General Winfield Scott at the Battle of Cerro Gordo in April of that year, secured U.S. victory in the Mexican American War.

The Battle of Buena Vista was fought near Monterrey in northern Mexico. The 5,000 men fighting under General Taylor’s command used heavy artillery fire to turn back nearly 14,000 Mexican troops. During the night, the Mexican army retreated, but Taylor did not pursue.

Library of Congress

… was the first American to orbit the earth — on this date 48 years ago.

Cape Canaveral, Fla., Feb. 20 — John H. Glenn Jr. orbited three times around the earth today and landed safely to become the first American to make such a flight.

The 40-year-old Marine Corps lieutenant colonel traveled about 81,000 miles in 4 hours 56 minutes before splashing into the Atlantic at 2:43 P.M. Eastern Standard Time.

He had been launched from here at 9:47 A. M.

The astronaut’s safe return was no less a relief than a thrill to the Project Mercury team, because there had been real concern that the Friendship 7 capsule might disintegrate as it rammed back into the atmosphere.

There had also been a serious question whether Colonel Glenn could complete three orbits as planned. But despite persistent control problems, he managed to complete the entire flight plan.

The New York Times

E.O. 9066, signed 68 years ago today by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. An excerpt:

Now therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action to be necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any persons to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restriction the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion.

The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order.

Within two weeks the western portion of California, Oregon and Washington, and part of Arizona were designated an area from which “any and all persons” might be excluded. The designation was made by Lt.Gen. John L. DeWitt, the commander of the western defense command. DeWitt was later quoted as saying, “a Jap’s a Jap” and “it makes no difference whether he is an American citizen or not…the west coast is too vital and too vulnerable to take any chances.”

Sounds like today, only the ethnic groups have changed.

The newspaper headline is from just eight days after the E.O.

Two Marine divisions landed on Iwo Jima on this date in 1945; 30,000 troops came ashore that first day. Their initial objective was Mt. Suribachi.

On February 15, 1898, a mysterious explosion destroyed the American battleship Maine in Havana Harbor and helped propel the United States into a war with Spain. The USS Maine was in Cuba, officially, on a mission of friendly courtesy and, incidentally, to protect American lives and property in the event that Cuba’s struggle for independence from Spain might escalate into full-blown warfare. “Yet,” writes author Tom Miller, “the visit was neither spontaneous nor altruistic; the United States had been eyeing Cuba for almost a century.”

On board the Maine that sultry Tuesday night were 350 crew and officers. Shortly after 9 p.m. the ship’s bugler, C. H. Newton, blew taps. The ship bobbed listlessly, its imposing 100-yard length visible from stem to stern. “At 9:40 p.m.,” writes Miller, “the ship’s forward end abruptly lifted itself from the water. Along the pier, passersby could hear a rumbling explosion. Within seconds, another eruption–this one deafening and massive–splintered the bow, sending anything that wasn’t battened down, and most that was, flying more than 200 feet into the air…. In all, 266 of the 350 men aboard the Maine were killed.”

The American press was quick to point to an external explosion–a mine or torpedo–as the cause of the tragedy. An official U.S. investigation agreed. On April 25, 1898, Congress formally declared war on Spain. By summer’s end, Spain had ceded Cuba, along with the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam, to the United States.

In 1976, Adm. Hyman Rickover of the U.S. Navy mounted yet another investigation into the cause of the Maine disaster. His team of experts found that the ship’s demise was self- inflicted–likely the result of a coal bunker fire. There are those, however, who still maintain that an external blast was to blame. Some people, it seems, just won’t let you forget the Maine.

Source: Smithsonian Magazine, February 1998.

From PBS FEBRUARY ONE:

In one remarkable day, four college freshmen changed the course of American history. On February 1, 1960, Ezell Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil—later dubbed the Greensboro Four—began a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in a small city in North Carolina. The act of simply sitting down to order food in a restaurant that refused service to anyone but whites is now widely regarded as one of the pivotal moments in the American Civil Rights Movement.

The Greensboro Woolworth’s lunch counter was integrated in July 1960.

… joined the Union as the 26th state on this date in 1837.

• “Derived from the Indian word Michigama, meaning great or large lake.”
• The State Nickname is the “Great Lake State”. Others include “Wolverine State” or “Water Winter Wonderland”.
• 
• The State motto is “Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice” (If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you).
• The Michigan state flower is the apple blossom, the tree the white pine and the bird the robin.
• Indigenous people in Michigan at the time of contact were the Ojibwa, Ottawa and Potawatomi.

Click image for larger version.

Addendum: The first bullet above is a quotation from michigan.gov, the “Official State of Michigan Portal.” It should be corrected. It is the equivalent of saying, “Derived from the European word …”

There are no “Indian” words. Indian is not a language.

The Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris on January 14, 1784, officially establishing the United States as in independent and sovereign nation. The Continental Congress approved preliminary articles of peace on April 15, 1783. The treaty, signed in Paris on September 3, 1783, required Congress to return the ratified document to England within six months.

Although scheduled to convene at the Maryland State House in November, as late as January 12 only seven of the thirteen states had legal representatives at the ratifying convention. Operating under the weak Articles of Confederation, Congress lacked power to enforce attendance at the convention. With the journey to England requiring approximately two months, time was running short.

Delegates continued to trickle in. Connecticut representatives presented their credentials to Congress on January 13, leaving the convention one delegate shy of the quorum. Richard Beresford of South Carolina left his sickbed in Philadelphia for Annapolis, and, after his arrival, the vote was taken.

The Treaty of Paris granted the United States territory as far west as the Mississippi River, but reserved Canada to Great Britain. Fisheries in Newfoundland remained available to Americans and navigation of the Mississippi River was open to both parties.

Today in History: Library of Congress

… was born in Yorba Linda, California, on this date in 1913.

I was contacted by the staff working with Richard Nixon on his memoirs, RN, many years ago. I was asked to see if I could determine — from among the Nixon papers in my custody — the time of day he was born. As I remember it, my research was inconclusive. Someone else’s must have been helpful. The memoirs begin:

I was born in a house my father built. My birth on the night of January 9, 1913, coincided with a record-breaking cold snap in our town of Yorba Linda, California.

If not for this research request, for other efforts I received a copy of the memoirs inscribed to me: “To Ken, With appreciation for his service to the nation.” I’ve always cherished that inscription.

Nixon, by the way, did not use his middle name or initial. Though you always see him referred to as Richard M. Nixon, he himself signed as Richard Nixon and he titled his memoir RN.

Andrew Tobias gave us all a little perspective when he posted this four years ago:

I am listening to 1776 on my Nano, and it’s 2 degrees Fahrenheit (in Boston, in 1776) and people are dragging 120 tons of can[n]ons from Ft. Ticonderoga 300 miles to General George Washington in Dorchester, and the suffering of the troops — civilians like you and me, who’ve left their families to fight the British — is astounding. Sentries are literally freezing to death. And all I can think about is how upset we get if we’re assigned a middle seat.

… was fought on this date in 1815.

News of the peace treaty between Britain and the United States that had been signed at Ghent on December 24, 1814, did not reach the United States in time to avert the battle. Major General Andrew Jackson’s army of six-to-seven thousand troops consisted chiefly of militiamen and volunteers from southern states who fought against 7,500 British regulars.

The British stormed the American position, fortified effectively with earthworks and cotton bales. The fighting lasted only half an hour, ending in a decisive U.S. victory and a British withdrawal. British casualties numbered more than 2,000 (289 killed); American, only 71 (31 killed). News of the victory reached Washington at the same time as that of the Treaty of Ghent and did much to raise the low morale in the capital.

The anniversary of the Battle was widely celebrated with parties and dances during the nineteenth century, especially in the South. More recently it was commemorated in the “Battle of New Orleans,” as sung by Johnny Horton and others.

President Gerald Ford died three years ago yesterday. I posted this then.

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… I had several meetings with President Gerald Ford in the years after he left the White House. On one occasion I helped him go through items in his garage in Rancho Mirage, California, to find things for the Ford Museum.

One of the items we ran across in a garage stuffed full, was a mover’s wardrobe holding six suits. These had been packed when Ford left his home in Alexandria, Virginia, to move to the White House when Nixon resigned in August 1974. The whole event was rather unprecedented, of course, and Ford had forgotten the suits packed some four-and-a-half years earlier. He asked that the wardrobe carton be taken into the house.

The next day we ran across another wardrobe with another six suits hanging in it. This time he was more circumspect. He asked that it be taken into the house but, he said, “Don’t let Mrs. Ford see it. She wouldn’t let me keep the suits in the other one.”

The former most powerful man on earth was nervous that his wife wouldn’t let him save some old suits. There was a whole lot of Mr. Ford’s character in that incident, I thought — qualified ego, self-deprecating humor, thrift. All characteristics we might find worthy today if you ask me.

[Among other items we found during the time in the garage was the typewriter Ford said he’d used at Yale Law, and one of his baby shoes.]

Washington crossed the Delaware River Christmas night and attacked the British garrison at Trenton, New Jersey, early on the morning of December 26, 1776.

Emanuel Leutze (1851)

Leutze’s painting is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, though there are many copies including one in the White House. There are several inaccuracies in the depiction. Wrong flag; too much light (it was night); it would appear they are crossing in the wrong direction; horses were carried by ferries with the artillery, not in boats; probably everyone stood (the gunwales were higher than pictured). That’s future president James Monroe holding the flag. Click for larger version.