Category: History

And the great barge sank.
And the Okies fled.
And the great emancipater
took a bullet in the head.

In the head…
Took a bullet in the back of the head.

It was not December.
And it was not in May.
Was 14th of April.
That is ruination day.

That’s the day…
The day that is ruination day.

— Gillian Welch, “Ruination Day Part 2”

Lincoln assassinated, the Titanic hit the iceberg, Black Sunday on the Great Plains.

April 14th.

The Civil War was the original big-government overreach: it came from Washington, D.C.; it involved raising new taxes (in fact, it is the origin of a number of taxes); it confiscated rifles from rebels; it did special favors for minorities (in this case, the special favor of recognizing them as human beings and setting them free from lifelong bondage); and, in the end, it imposed a bureaucracy on an unwilling population (that is, it imposed the Union Army on the South). Many things can be said about the Civil War, but not that it was done with the benign neglect of the federales. The moral point was argued for decades, as it is with most issues in a democracy. But that big government freed the slaves is as sure a fact as any in history.

Big Government and the End of Slavery, Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

Here, from AP, is the actual recording 41 years ago today of Astronaut Jack Swigert and then (it seems) Commander James Lovell telling Houston we have a problem.

In the film, Tom Hanks as Lovell has the line.

This report is from the next day’s New York Times:

The Apollo 13 Astronauts, their lives threatened by a serious oxygen leak, were forced to evacuate their command ship late last night and use their intended moon-landing craft as a “lifeboat” for a fast return to the earth.

In cool and cryptic words, they were instructed by mission control here to use the attached lunar module’s rocket to power them back to an emergency splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at about noon on Friday.

There will be great risks and little margin for error or delay. …

Capt. James A. Lovell Jr. of the Navy, the commander, and his two civilian co-pilots, Fred W. Haise Jr. and John L. Swigert Jr., crowded into the two-man lunar module at about 11:40 P.M. Eastern standard time.

NewMexiKen attended the Washington, D.C., premiere of Ron Howard’s film Apollo 13. Astronauts Lovell and Haise were there with several of the other principals from NASA. (Astronaut Swigert, played by Kevin Bacon in the film, died in 1982, shortly after being elected to Congress from Colorado.)

The film was very well done. Late in the movie as suspense builds over whether the astronauts will survive and make it back to earth, I actually had to remind the person next to me: “Relax. It’ll be OK. They make it back. They’re here in the theater.”

On April 12, 1864 — the third anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter — a Confederate force led by the brilliant and brutal Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked Union troops holding Fort Pillow, an obscure post in West Tennessee. What happened after Forrest’s men captured Fort Pillow remains one of the most notorious and controversial incidents of the Civil War.

Disunion: Remember Fort Pillow!

Fort Sumter — a man-made island some four miles from Charleston, South Carolina — was a symbol well beyond its strategic value in the tensions leading up to the Civil War. Since December 1860, South Carolina officials had been demanding the surrender of the fort as state property. To Northerners, surrendering the fort meant surrendering the very idea of the Union.

When Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, he was informed that the small garrison at Fort Sumter was running out of supplies. By April, he ordered a relief expedition and informed the Governor of South Carolina that it would be “with provisions only,” not men, arms or ammunition. This put the next move into the hands of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis ordered that the fort be reduced before the supplies arrived.

The Confederacy opened fire at 4:30 AM on April 12, 1861. The Union garrison surrendered after 33 hours, and the American flag was lowered at Fort Sumter on April 14, 1861.

It was raised there again on April 14, 1865.

“There have been men who, dying, have become stronger. I can think of many of them — Benito Juárez, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ — Perhaps it might be that way with me.”

Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary, who became stronger on this date in 1919, when he was lured into a trap and killed by one of Carranza’s generals.

The first great battle of the American Civil War began on this date in 1862. The Union Army, under Grant, was encamped in a poorly chosen position at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee,. They were attacked by Confederates under Johnston and Beauregard early Sunday, April 6. By the end of the day, Confederates had catured the key position of Shiloh church and driven Union lines nearly to the Tennessee River. Grant, reinforced by Buell, counter attacked Monday morning, regained the lost ground, and forced the Confederates to retreat to Corinth, Mississippi. It was ostensibly a Union victory, though Grant was faulted for a lack of precaution that led to the first day’s disaster. Under criticism to remove Grant, Lincoln replied, “I can’t spare this man, he fights.”

According to James M. McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom: “The 20,000 killed and wounded at Shiloh (about equally distributed between the two sides) were nearly double the 12,000 battle casualties at [First] Manassas, Wilson’s Creek, Fort Donelson, and Pea Ridge combined.”

Shiloh was the beginning of total war.

Jamestown Rediscovery, the web site of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities’ Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological project, tells the story. Excerpts:

Pocahontas was an Indian princess, the daughter of Powhatan, the powerful chief of the Algonquian Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She was born around 1595 to one of Powhatan’s many wives. They named her Matoaka, though she is better known as Pocahontas, which means “Little Wanton,” playful, frolicsome little girl.

Pocahontas probably saw white men for the first time in May 1607 when Englishmen landed at Jamestown. The one she found most likable was Captain John Smith. The first meeting of Pocahontas and John Smith is a legendary story, romanticized (if not entirely invented) by Smith. He was leading an expedition in December 1607 when he was taken captive by some Indians. Days later, he was brought to the official residence of Powhatan at Werowocomoco, which was 12 miles from Jamestown. According to Smith, he was first welcomed by the great chief and offered a feast. Then he was grabbed and forced to stretch out on two large, flat stones. Indians stood over him with clubs as though ready to beat him to death if ordered. Suddenly a little Indian girl rushed in and took Smith’s “head in her arms and laid her owne upon his to save him from death.” The girl, Pocahontas, then pulled him to his feet. Powhatan said that they were now friends, and he adopted Smith as his son, or a subordinate chief. Actually, this mock “execution and salvation” ceremony was traditional with the Indians, and if Smith’s story is true, Pocahontas’ actions were probably one part of a ritual. At any rate, Pocahontas and Smith soon became friends.

Relations with the Indians continued to be generally friendly for the next year, and Pocahontas was a frequent visitor to Jamestown. She delivered messages from her father and accompanied Indians bringing food and furs to trade for hatchets and trinkets. She was a lively young girl, and when the young boys of the colony turned cartwheels, “she would follow and wheele some herself, naked as she was all the fort over.” She apparently admired John Smith very much and would also chat with him during her visits. Her lively character and poise made her appearance striking. Several years after their first meeting, Smith described her: “a child of tenne yeares old, which not only for feature, countenance, and proportion much exceedeth any of the rest of his (Powhatan’s) people but for wit and spirit (is) the only non-pariel of his countrie.

…

John Rolfe was a very religious man who agonized for many weeks over the decision to marry a “strange wife,” a heathen Indian. He finally decided to marry Pocahontas after she had been converted to Christianity, “for the good of the plantation, the honor of our country, for the glory of God, for mine own salvation …” Pocahontas was baptized, christened Rebecca, and later married John Rolfe on April 5, 1614. A general peace and a spirit of goodwill between the English and the Indians resulted from this marriage.

Sir Thomas Dale made an important voyage back to London in the spring of 1616. His purpose was to seek further financial support for the Virginia Company and, to insure spectacular publicity, he brought with him about a dozen Algonquian Indians, including Pocahontas. Her husband and their young son, Thomas, accompanied her. The arrival of Pocahontas in London was well publicized. She was presented to King James I, the royal family, and the rest of the best of London society. Also in London at this time was Captain John Smith, the old friend she had not seen for eight years and whom she believed was dead. According to Smith at their meeting, she was at first too overcome with emotion to speak. After composing herself, Pocahontas talked of old times. At one point she addressed him as “father,” and when he objected, she defiantly replied: “‘Were you not afraid to come into my father’s Countrie, and caused feare in him and all of his people and feare you here I should call you father: I tell you I will, and you shall call mee childe, and so I will be for ever and ever your Countrieman.”‘ This was their last meeting.

After seven months Rolfe decided to return his family to Virginia, In March 1617 they set sail. It was soon apparent, however, that Pocahontas would not survive the voyage home. She was deathly ill from pneumonia or possibly tuberculosis. She was taken ashore, and, as she lay dying, she comforted her husband, saying, “all must die. ‘Tis enough that the child liveth.” She was buried in a churchyard in Gravesend, England. She was 22 years old.

On April 3, 1860, the Pony Express began its run through parts of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. On average, a rider covered 75 to 100 miles daily. He changed horses at relay stations set 10 to 15 miles apart, swiftly transferring himself and his mochila (a saddle cover with four pockets or cantinas for mail) to the new mount.

The first mail by Pony Express from St. Joseph to Sacramento took ten days, cutting the overland stage time via the southern route by more than half. The fastest delivery was in March 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address was carried from St. Joseph to Sacramento in 7 days and 17 hours.
On July 1, 1861, the Pony Express began operating under contract as a mail route. By that time, the Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Company was deeply in debt. Though it had charged as much as $5 a half ounce for a letter at a time when ordinary U.S. postage was no more than ten cents, the company did not make its operating expenses.

The Pony Express officially ended October 26, 1861, after the transcontinental telegraph line was completed, and became an enduring legend.

The History of the United States Postal Service: An American History 1775-2006

Title of this post taken from want ad placed in March 1860 for riders.

… entered Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, on this date in 1865. The Confederate government and army had fled the night before. According to historian James M. McPherson, “Southerners burned more of their own capital than the enemy had burned of Atlanta or Columbia.”

The following day, April 4, President Lincoln, who had been “vacationing” at City Point, Virginia, near the front since March 24, toured Richmond (much of it on foot) with his 12-year-old son Tad (it was Tad’s birthday). At the capitol, Lincoln sat in Jefferson Davis’ chair.

Lincoln returned to Washington on April 9th (the date of Lee’s surrender). He was assassinated just five days later.

The Constitution went into effect 225 years ago today, March 4, 1789.

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.

… became the official national anthem of the United States on this date in 1931. You know what that means? For 155 years is was not the official national anthem. For just 83 years it has been. We could change it. It isn’t etched in granite.

The first (of four) verses:

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Who wants a national anthem that glorifies war?

And another thing singers, it’s an anthem, not a ballad, not a salsa number, not a rap. It’s an anthem, “a solemn patriotic song officially adopted by a country as an expression of national identity.”

Alternative national anthem first verse:

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Or, better yet:

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

… was established 165 years ago today. It is the fifth in seniority among cabinet departments after State, Treasury, Defense and Justice.

Interior manages more than 500 million acres of surface land, or about one-fifth of the area of the United States, including:

• 262 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management
• 95 million acres managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service
• 84 million acres managed by the National Park Service
• 56 million acres managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs
• 8.6 million acres managed by the Bureau of Reclamation

Ohio became the 17th state on this date in 1803.

Nebraska became the 37th state on this date in 1867.

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.

B&O was taken over by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in the 1960s, later the Chessie System and now boringly called CSX Transportation.

In the modern U.S. Here & Now version of Monopoly, the B&O has been replaced with John F. Kennedy Airport.