Category: History

The Adams Onis Treaty was concluded on this date in 1819. It ceded Florida to the United States and settled, after nearly 16 years, the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase.

His Catholic Majesty [Spain] cedes to the United States, in full property and sovereignty, all the territories which belong to him, situated to the eastward of the Mississippi, known by the name of East and West Florida.

The boundary-line between the two countries, west of the Mississippi, shall begin on the Gulph of Mexico, at the mouth of the river Sabine, in the sea, continuing north, along the western bank of that river, to the 32d degree of latitude; thence, by a line due north, to the degree of latitude where it strikes the Rio Roxo of Nachitoches, or Red River; then following the course of the Rio Roxo westward, to the degree of longitude 100 west from London and 23 from Washington; then, crossing the said Red River, and running thence, by a line due north, to the river Arkansas; thence, following the course of the southern bank of the Arkansas, to its source, in latitude 42 north; and thence, by that parallel of latitude, to the South Sea [Pacific].

The Avalon Project has the complete text of the Treaty.

Joel Achenbach takes aim at the other time a Vice President shot someone. An excerpt:

So Burr called him out. They would settle the matter like gentleman, face to face, with pistols. Complicating matters was that Hamilton had declared an aversion to shedding blood in private combat and insisted that he would “waste” his shot, intentionally missing Burr. Was this suicidal? Henry Adams and various psychobiographers have argued just that: Hamilton was depressed and wanted to die. [New theory: Texas billionaire intentionally lunged into Cheney’s line of fire.] Hamilton wouldn’t practice with a pistol, while Burr practiced regularly. It was going to be a slaughter.

Worth reading at least once a year:

The Address at Gettysburg (November 19, 1863):

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And, from his Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865):

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

On this date in 1803 Marbury v. Madison was argued before the Supreme Court.

On this date in 1856 Dred Scott v. Sandford was argued before the Supreme Court.

Martin Luther King Jr. biographer David J. Garrow writes in the Los Angeles Times:

Just moments after the news of Coretta Scott King’s death, the first inquiring e-mail arrived: How long would it be before the woman some King scholars have for years privately thought of as “the other wife” either stepped forward or was identified by some unprincipled news outlet?

Her story is not exactly secret; it’s one that was known to dozens if not hundreds of people even before Martin Luther King Jr.’s tragic assassination on April 4, 1968. A number of biographers and historians (myself included) have met and interviewed her, and several have made reference to her. But although she was his most important emotional companion during the last five years of his life, her identity has remained hidden for even longer than that of Watergate’s “Deep Throat.”

Garrow continues.

It was on this day in 1945 that the Yalta Conference began, during which President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain, and Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union met to plan the final defeat and occupation of Nazi Germany. It took eight days and nights hashing out the future of the world. The meeting was totally secret with no news reporters allowed and there were no leaks to the press of anything that went on there.

At the time, Roosevelt and Churchill believed that they had to persuade Stalin to help fight against the Japanese and they also wanted him to help establish the United Nations. So they were willing to make the concession that he could continue to occupy Eastern Europe as long as he allowed free elections there.

Roosevelt’s health was failing at the time. He died of a stroke a little more than two months after the Yalta Conference. Some historians have suggested that Roosevelt’s health ruined his ability to negotiate effectively but others have argued that Stalin just had the better hand. He had effectively won the war on the Eastern Front with Germany and Roosevelt and Churchill desperately needed his help.

After the conference Stalin completely ignored his commitment to democracy and installed Communist Party dictatorships in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania, and the Cold War began.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

“The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money.”

“He is not well-bred, that cannot bear ill-breeding in others.”

“You may talk to much on the best of subjects.”

And some advice for any number of politicians (especially Joe Biden) in this description from Edmund Morgan’s wonderful Benjamin Franklin:

At any rate, in an age of great public rhetoric, he never made a memorable public speech—not in any political campaign, not in the Philadelphia Common Council, not in the Pennsylvania Assembly, not in the Continental Congress, not in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He was always Poor Richard, never saying too much in any company, especially very large company. His specialty was listening and then making the right suggestions to the right people at the right time.

Also from Morgan: “Franklin never offended people except intentionally.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff has an interesting piece on Franklin on today’s New York Times op-ed page.

“At noon today, in a nod to the 120th meeting of the American Historical Association, which has been raising Center City’s tweed factor all week, the National Constitution Center will host three celebratory Ben Franklin biographers: Gordon Wood, Walter Isaacson and Stacy Schiff.

“All three would display posters of Philadelphia’s 300th Birthday Boy on their dorm-room walls if they still had dorm-room walls.”

Carlin Romano in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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

From a report in the Los Angeles Times:

Nudging the history books, archeologists studying one of two campsites used by the ill-fated Donner Party during a snowbound Sierra winter 160 years ago announced Thursday that a study had unearthed no physical evidence of cannibalism.

The stranded emigrants settled into two camps during the harsh winter of 1846 and ’47, and previous scientific studies confirmed cannibalism at the principal encampment, on the east shore of what is now Donner Lake.

The new findings do not conclusively prove that human flesh was ever consumed at the smaller camp — where the families of George and Jacob Donner sought refuge — but they do provide insights into their efforts to survive during four months beside Alder Creek.

“It’s possible no cannibalism took place at Alder Creek, and it’s also possible that proof simply can’t be found,” said Julie Schablitsky, a University of Oregon anthropologist. “No body doesn’t necessarily mean no crime.”

Cannibalism has long been the central focus of the Donner Party tragedy, which achieved mythic proportions as a tale of suffering and stoicism set in America’s westward expansion.

The wagon train of more than 80 emigrants was trapped in the teeth of the Sierra by winter, and half died amid starvation. Gory witness accounts by rescuers told of survivors resorting to eating human flesh.

There’s more. Bottom line, it seems the new lack of evidence is inconclusive.

The Zapruder film of the John Kennedy shooting has been stabilized to diminish camera movement. There is no sound.