Category: History

This date, July 7, is significant in American imperial growth. On July 7, 1846, Commodore John D. Sloat captured Monterey and officially raised the American flag over California. On July 7, 1898, President William McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution which annexed the Hawaiian Islands to the United States.

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.”

New York Times columnist John Tierney has an incredible Independence Day essay on how we’d be better off if the confederacy had won the Civil War and become independent. He says he sides with an ecomonmist who believes, “[P]eople in both countries could have been richer and freer because of smaller national governments.”

Oh, there is that slavery thing, but it would have gone away.

Happy Birthday America.

Having failed on July 2 to turn either of Meade’s flanks (Culp’s Hill and the Round Tops), Lee decided on the 3rd to assault the Union center. James Longstreet, who would command the attack, wrote later that he told Lee: “General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as anyone, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position.” But Lee had made up his mind — and he had already issued the orders. Two divisions from A.P. Hill’s Third Corps and one — Pickett’s — from Longstreet’s First Corps were to make the advance. It’s known as Pickett’s Charge, but more correctly it is the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Charge.

To prepare for the assault — to cripple the Union defenses — Lee order a massive artillery strike. The 163 Confederate cannons began firing at 1:07 PM. The Union artillery returned fire with nearly the same number. The Confederate aim was high and smoke curtained the targets. Little damage was done to the Union infantry. After a time, Union artillery commander Henry Hunt ordered his guns to cease firing — to save ammunition, cool the guns, and lure the rebels forward.

Forward they came, 14,000 men in a formation a mile wide, moving across open fields for three-quarters of a mile. The Union artillery opened on them with shot and shell and ultimately canister (shells filled with metal). At 200 yards, the Union infantry on the Confederate front opened fire, while other Union units moved out to attack both sides of the charge. Of the 14,000 in the advance, perhaps 200 breached the first Union line before being repulsed. Of the 14,000, half did not return.

Lee was defeated and withdrew from Gettysburg. While the war lasted 22 more months, the brief moment when the 200 reached the Union line was considered the high-water mark for the confederacy. Gettysburg totals: 25,000 Union casualties; 28,000 Confederate casualties.

Map: National Park Service

On July 2, 1881—125 years ago this weekend—President James A. Garfield was shot at the Baltimore & Potomac station in Washington by a failed lawyer named Charles Guiteau. The President took two months to die, and the trial of his assassin raised issues of criminal responsibility and the insanity defense that American jurisprudence struggles with to this day.

So begins a solid summary of the event and its legal aftermath by David Rapp at AmericanHeritage.com. Be the first kid on your block to know any details of the second presidential assassination in American history.

On July 2, 1863, the lines of the Battle of Gettysburg, now in its second day, were drawn in two sweeping parallel arcs. The Confederate and Union armies faced each other a mile apart. The Union forces extending along Cemetery Ridge to Culp’s Hill, formed the shape of a fish-hook, and the Confederate forces were spread along Seminary Ridge.

General Robert E. Lee ordered General James Longstreet to attack the Union’s southern flank, aiming for the hills at the southernmost end of Cemetery Ridge. These hills, known as the Little Round Top and Big Round Top had been left unoccupied, and would have afforded the Confederates a good vantage point from which to ravage the Union line.

General Longstreet, disagreeing with Lee’s orders, and hoping that the cavalry under the command of General J.E.B. Stuart would soon come up with the army to participate in the attack, was slow to advance on the hills.

Although Longstreet’s soldiers broke through to the base of the Little Round Top, Union General G. K. Warren perceived the Confederate plan in time to rouse his men to take the strategic hill, fending off the Confederate attack.

General Lee had also commanded General R.S. Ewell to attack the northernmost flank of the Union Army. On one occasion Ewell’s troops took possession of a slope of Culp’s Hill, but the Union remained entrenched both there and on Cemetery Ridge, where General Meade was headquartered.

Library of Congress

Map: National Park Service

Adam Goodheart suggests 10 Days That Changed History. He begins:

It’s a badly kept secret among scholars of American history that nothing much really happened on Thursday, July 4, 1776.

Although this date is emblazoned on the Declaration, the Colonies had actually voted for independence two days earlier; the document wasn’t signed until a month later. When John Adams predicted that the “great anniversary festival” would be celebrated forever, from one end of the continent to the other, he was talking about July 2.

The largest and arguably most significant military engagement in North American history began in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on this date in 1863.

In a daring venture, Confederate general Robert E. Lee moved his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in June, hoping for a decisive victory on Union soil. Trying to catch up, the Union Army of the Potomac, under new commander George Meade, moved north and west toward the Confederates, who were widely dispersed. Learning the Union Army was on the move, Lee began to consolidate his forces.

On June 30, Union cavalry led by John Buford skirmished with a small Confederate contingent just west of Gettysburg. Buford, realizing that the field provided good defensive ground, determined to hold the Confederates until the main body of the army came up.

On July 1, a larger Confederate force moved east toward Gettysburg and met resistance from Buford’s dismounted cavalry, soon joined by the First Corps. The battle ebbed and flowed during the day as troops from both sides moved to the action. Ultimately, Confederate forces arriving from the north were able to flank the Union troops and force them through the town. The Confederates failed to keep the initiative, however, and the Union was able to dig in on the ridge south and east — Cemetery Ridge.

Fifteen thousand Americans were casualties that day.

Map: National Park Service

… was assassinated in Sarajevo on this date in 1914, igniting what we know as World War I.

Franz Ferdinand was the nephew of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary. After the Emperor’s son had committed suicide and Ferdinand’s own father had died, Ferdinand was first in succession to the Emperor. He was considered likely to be a reformer, which upset Balkan nationalists.

In all, there were seven assassins along the route of the Archduke’s car, all Bosnian Serbs. The third of the seven, Nedelko Cabrinovic,

threw a bomb, but failed to see the car in time to aim well: he missed the heir’s car and hit the next one, injuring several people. Cabrinovic swallowed poison and jumped into a canal, but he was saved from suicide and arrested. He died of tuberculosis in prison in 1916.

The seventh was Gavrilo Princip.

Princip heard Cabrinovic’s bomb go off and assumed that the Archduke was dead. By the time he heard what had really happened, the cars had driven by. By bad luck, a little later the returning procession missed a turn and stopped to back up at a corner just as Princip happened to walk by. Princip fired two shots: one killed the archduke, the other his wife. Princip was arrested before he could swallow his poison capsule or shoot himself. Princip too was a minor under Austrian law, so he could not be executed. Instead he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and died of tuberculosis in 1916.

It was the Archduke and Sophie’s fourteenth wedding anniversary. The Archduke’s last words were, “Sophie dear, Sophie dear, don’t die! Stay alive for our children.”

In the aftermath of the assassination, diplomatic efforts failed, perhaps because both Austria and Serbia feared loss of national prestige. Austria declared war on Serbia. Germany sided with Austria; Russia supported Serbia as required by treaty. France was obligated to support Russia in any war with Germany or Austria-Hungary. Britain was obligated to support France in an any war with Germany.

Source for quotes and some background: The Balkan Causes of World War One

… died on this date in 1829.

Smithson’s will left the bulk of his estate to his nephew, Henry James Hungerford. But should his nephew die without children—legitimate or illegitimate—a contingency clause stated that the estate would go to “the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge…”

Source: The Smithsonian Institution

The nephew did indeed die without children and in 1838 approximately $500,000 in gold was brought to the United States. After a decade of indecision and debate about how best to carry out the bequest, the Smithsonian Institution was created by Act of Congress (1846).

Here’s what that gift has led to:

• African Art Museum
• Air and Space Museum and Udvar-Hazy Center
• American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery
• American History Museum
• American Indian Museum
• Anacostia Museum (African American history and culture)
• Arts and Industries Building (Discovery Theater)
• Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
• Freer and Sackler Galleries (Asian art)
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (modern and contemporary art)
• National Zoo
• Natural History Museum
• Portrait Gallery
• Postal Museum
• Smithsonian Institution Building (the Castle)

… uttered his famous words “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner) on this date in 1963. As The New York Times put it at the time:

President Kennedy, inspired by a tumultuous welcome from more than a million of the inhabitants of this isolated and divided city, declared today he was proud to be “a Berliner.”

He said his claim to being a Berliner was based on the fact that “all free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.”

The battle at Little Big Horn took place 130 years ago today.

Lt. Col. Custer made two errors of judgment that day. He acted without good intelligence and he divided his force.

By George, some commanders still do that.

On this date in 1497, the Italian Giovanni Caboto, sailing for the English as John Cabot, made landfall. He and his English crew were the first reported Europeans to see North America. (Leiv Eiriksson had been in the area nearly 500 years previously, but left no record.)

Cabot’s own log and maps, if he had them, have never been located, and scholars have debated his route. He may have landed first in Labrador or Newfoundland or even Nova Scotia.

Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage has a good presentation.

The New York Times reviews a new exhibit at the National Archives in Washington. An excerpt:

Ms. Bredhoff has avoided letting this exhibition settle into chronological or thematic or political predictability. Thomas Jefferson’s letter to John Jay, United States Secretary of Foreign Affairs, reporting on the storming of the Bastille in Paris in 1789 — with its description of royalty consumed by rumor, and street mobs consumed by passions — is followed by the testimony of a Rochester election official who describes Susan B. Anthony demanding that she be registered to vote in 1872.

A letter from George Washington in 1775, worrying that the British might have deliberately sent smallpox-infected carriers into the ranks of American troops, is not far from where the 1937 voice of the radio broadcaster Herb Morrison can be heard, sounding as fiery, hysterical and consumed as the gas explosion he describes, which was engulfing the Hindenburg.

Events take on a different character, depending on how they are depicted. Lincoln’s assassination is seen through the eyes of his family physician, Dr. Robert King Stone, who finds a bullet hole on the back left side of the head, a hole “into which I carried immediately my finger.”

The Washington Post reports on the treasure trove in the vault of the Riggs Bank.

The Lincoln check is among a trove of documents gathered over the decades by Washington’s venerable and now-defunct Riggs Bank — which, along with its antecedents, had customers ranging from Davy Crockett to President George H.W. Bush.

The collection includes letters, notes and checks written by, among others, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Brigham Young and Gen. John Pershing.

… joined the Union as the 35th state on this date in 1863.

View President Lincoln’s handwritten corrections to Secretary of State Seward’s opinion on the admission of West Virginia. “Western is not the name. It is ‘West‘ Va.”

On this date in 1893, a jury acquited Lizzie Borden of the hatchet murders of her father and stepmother.

AmericanHeritage.com has an excellent report.

Or so Abigail Adams wrote to husband John the day after the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was fought on this date in 1775. The first major battle of the American Revolutionary War, it was fought more than a year before the Declaration of Independence.

After the action at Lexington and Concord in April (Paul Revere’s ride), the reinforced British were camped in Boston. The Massachusetts Committee of Safety decided to contain the British by occupying the heights of Charlestown north of Boston (and Dorchester south of it). The militiamen, however, did not have artillery to defend the heights once occupied.

By the morning of June 17, some 1,200 Americans were entrenched on Breed’s Hill in Charlestown — not Bunker Hill, which would have been a better choice. Reinforcements increased the number to 1,500 by afternoon. They were bombarded by British cannon shooting uphill and without much effect. Some 2,200 British troops attacked the fortified position around 3:30 — uphill, carrying 125 pound knapsacks. The first two assaults were thrown back, but the third succeeded as American gun powder ran out.

Though the British took the hill, they suffered more than 1,000 casualties — “The dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold.” American losses were less than 500.

The Battle of Bunker Hill encouraged the colonies. It proved that American forces could inflict heavy losses on the British.

An American officer, William Prescott, is said to have ordered during the battle, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

The Massachusetts Historical Society has an excellent web site relating to the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2:30 a.m. [on this date in 1972] in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here.

Three of the men were native-born Cubans and another was said to have trained Cuban exiles for guerrilla activity after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

They were surprised at gunpoint by three plain-clothes officers of the metropolitan police department in a sixth floor office at the plush Watergate, 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, where the Democratic National Committee occupies the entire floor.

There was no immediate explanation as to why the five suspects would want to bug the Democratic National Committee offices or whether or not they were working for any other individuals or organizations.

The Washington Post

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.