Category: History

Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States and Vice President Gerald R. Ford assumed the office as the 38th President.

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If you saw Jaws or read it, you will remember the harrowing story Quint (Robert Shaw) tells of surviving the sinking of the cruiser Indianapolis. It was on this date in 1945 that the ship, which had carried the Hiroshima atomic bomb, was torpedoed by the Japanese. According to the USS Indianapolis CA-35 web site:

At 12:14 a.m. on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea and sank in 12 minutes. Of 1,196 men on board, approximately 300 went down with the ship. The remainder, about 900 men, were left floating in shark-infested waters with no lifeboats and most with no food or water. The ship was never missed, and by the time the survivors were spotted by accident four days later only 316 men were still alive.

Shark attacks began with sunrise of the first day (July 30) and continued until the survivors were removed from the water almost five days later.

The Navy web site includes oral histories with Indianapolis Captain McVay and Japanese submarine Captain Hashimoto. The Discovery Channel has a wealth of material.

The site dedicated to the Indianapolis is perhaps the best source.

In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors (2001) by Doug Stanton is a book on the voyage, the sinking, the survivors and McVay’s court martial.

In Bohemia, in what is now part of the Czech Republic, there is a town called Jáchymov. When the town was part of Bavaria, it was known in German as Sankt Joachimsthal or in English as Joachimsthal. The town was named for Saint Joachim who, according to some sources, was the maternal grandfather of Jesus.

In 1519, the local sovereign, Count Schlick, began striking one-ounce silver coins in Sankt Joachimsthal. These coins became known as “Joachimsthalers” and then simply “thalers.” The pronunciation changed as the term passed into other languages — dahlers in northern Germany, dalers in Dutch, dallers in English. By 1700 the accepted English pronunciation was “dollars” and the term everywhere applied to any one-ounce silver coin.

After 1497 Spain minted a silver coin called reales de a ocho or pieces of eight (they were valued at eight times the underlying coin, the real). Because the pieces of eight were similar to the thaler, they often came to be called the Spanish dollar. They were the first world currency, and were common throughout the Americas including the English colonies.

Eager still to abandon many things English, on July 6, 1785, the Continental Congress unanimously “Resolved, That the money unit of the United States be one dollar.” The following year the Congress further declared that, “The Money Unit or Dollar will contain three hundred and seventy five grains and sixty four hundredths of a Grain of fine Silver. A Dollar containing this number of Grains of fine Silver, will be worth as much as the New Spanish Dollars.” The decimal system for sub-dividing the dollar was adopted from the French on the suggestion of Thomas Jefferson.

Spanish coinage was legal tender in the United States until 1857. The pieces of eight, of course, are the source for two-bits, four-bits, six-bits, a dollar (the coins could be and were actually cut into eight pieces).

The American currency is based on Bavarian, Spanish and French precedents (and Mexican silver).

True or false, the word “dollars” appears in the Constitution?

Answer in the first comment.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on this date in 1826, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration; Adams, with Benjamin Franklin, was also key in its development.

[Image of first page of Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence with edits.]

Adams and Jefferson were colleagues during the Revolution, but fell apart over political differences during their terms as president (Adams 1797-1801, Jefferson 1801-1809). After Jefferson left office they resumed a remarkable correspondence that lasted until their deaths.

Also, on that same day in 1826, Stephen Foster, the first great American songwriter, was born. “His melodies are so much a part of American history and culture that most people think they’re folk tunes. All in all he composed some 200 songs, including ‘Oh! Susanna’ ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,’ and ‘Camptown Races.'” [American Experience]

And “Old Folks at Home (Swanee River),” “My Old Kentucky Home” and “Beautiful Dreamer.”

We should remember 1967 not as the time the nation turned on and tuned in but as the moment the United States began hurtling toward a nervous breakdown, riven by conflict that would change the country and the world forever. It was the beginning of an era of intense polarization – one in which, arguably, we are still living. More than a momentous year, 1967 was a seedbed for our own times.

So says Princeton historian Sean Wilentz in assessing The Legacy of 1967. While Country Joe and Janis Joplin opened the year in San Francisco, Ronald Reagan was taking the oath of office in Sacramento. It was a time of cultural revolution, but equally one of political counter-revolution.

An interesting look at the year and its legacy.

NewMexiKen has already posted a lengthy item about Little Bighorn, fought 131 years ago today, but I thought the contemporary news reports were interesting, including this from The New York Times:

On June 25 Gen. Custer’s command came upon the main camp of Sitting Bull, and at once attacked it, charging the thickest part of it with five companies, Major Reno, with seven companies attacking on the other side. The soldiers were repulsed and a wholesale slaughter ensued. Gen. Custer, his brother, his nephew, and his brother-in-law were killed, and not one of his detachment escaped. The Indians surrounded Major Reno’s command and held them in the hills during a whole day, but Gibbon’s command came up and the Indians left. The number of killed is stated at 300 and the wounded at 31. Two hundred and seven men are said to have been buried in one place. The list of killed includes seventeen commissioned officers.

It is the opinion of Army officers in Chicago, Washington, and Philadelphia, including Gens. Sherman and Sheridan, that Gen. Custer was rashly imprudent to attack such a large number of Indians, Sitting Bull’s force being 4,000 strong.

Custer, often a reckless but previously a lucky commander, was to have his reputation rescued by what became the life-long work of Mrs. Custer.

… took place 130 years ago today. Dee Brown wrote the following for The Reader’s Companion to American History [login now required]:

In 1876, under command of Gen. Alfred Terry, Custer led the Seventh Cavalry as one force in a three-pronged campaign against Sitting Bull’s alliance of Sioux and Cheyenne camps in Montana. During the morning of June 25, Custer’s scouts reported spotting smoke from cooking fires and other signs of Indians in the valley of the Little Bighorn. Disregarding Terry’s orders, Custer decided to attack before infantry and other support arrived. Although scouts warned that he was facing superior numbers (perhaps 2,500 warriors), Custer divided his regiment of 647 men, ordering Capt. Frederick Benteen’s battalion to scout along a ridge to the left and sending Maj. Marcus Reno’s battalion up the valley of the Little Bighorn to attack the Indian encampment. With the remainder of the regiment, Custer continued along high ground on the right side of the valley. In the resulting battle, he and about 250 of his men, outnumbered by the warriors of Crazy Horse and Gall, were surrounded and annihilated. Reno and Benteen suffered heavy casualties but managed to escape to a defensive position.

Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star is generally regarded as the finest book on the battle; indeed, one of the finest on western American history. James Welch’s Killing Custer tells the story more from the Indian perspective. NewMexiKen posted a short — but compelling — excerpt from the latter two years ago: On the other side of the river.

Landscape photo credit: Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Custer marker photo: NewMexiKen 1995.

It was on this day in 1893 that the verdict was announced in the trial of Lizzie Borden, who had been accused of murdering her father and stepmother with an ax. It was one of the first murder trials in American history that got covered by the national press, not because it involved anybody famous, but just because of the sensational nature of the crime.

The case against Lizzie was entirely circumstantial. No one had witnessed the murders, no weapon was found, and there was no physical evidence linking her to the crime. All the police could prove was that Lizzie had been in the house at the time of the murders, she had a lot of money to gain, and she had recently tried to buy poison at the local pharmacy.

The trial lasted for two weeks, and Lizzie was found innocent on this day in 1893. No one else was ever tried for the murder. She told the press on the day of her acquittal that it was the happiest day of her life, but she refused to say anything else. After the trial, she bought herself a three-story mansion, where she had running water for the first time in her life. She never spoke about the murders in public again.

Most newspapers, including The New York Times, wrote at the time that the trial of Lizzie Borden had been an unjust and cruel persecution of an innocent woman. But a journalist named Edwin H. Porter wrote the first book about the trial, The Fall River Tragedy (1893), in which he distorted much of the evidence and testimony at the trial, in order to make Lizzie look guilty. There have been dozens of books written about the murders since then, most of which implicate Lizzie as the murderer. So even though she was acquitted, she’s become the most famous murderess in American history.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level—I mean the wages of decent living.

Franklin D. Roosevelt in his statement on signing the National Industrial Recovery Act 74 years ago today.

Abraham Lincoln delivered his House Divided Speech at Springfield, Illinois, on this date in 1858.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new — North as well as South.

The speech was made at the Illinois Republican State convention that had nominated Lincoln for U.S. Senator. It was a precursor to the Lincoln-Douglas debates in the campaign that followed, which Lincoln lost. It seems to be about as succinct a statement of the core issue of the Civil War as one could find.