As the gray light of dawn broke at 4:30 on June 3, 1864, Union troops under General Ulysses S. Grant marched through morning fog to assault General Robert E. Lee’s entrenched Confederates at Cold Harbor, Virginia. What followed was one of the worst slaughters of a horrifically bloody war, as the attackers were mowed down by the concentrated rifle and cannon fire of their fortified foe. In less than one hour the Union army suffered more than 7,000 casualties, as opposed to less than 1,500 for the Confederates. read more...
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NewsInHistory is continually adding more content to our historical newspapers archive—titles new to our collection as well as expanding the date ranges and number of issues for titles already in our archive. This current addition involves 8 newspapers from 6 states. A total of 1,407 issues have been added in this release! Here are the details:
California
Riverside Daily Press (Riverside). 9 issues: 1919-1922
Riverside Independent Enterprise (Riverside). 2 issues: 1920 read more...
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On May 31, 1921, a terrifying and shameful incident in American history began: a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during which a white mob destroyed the Greenwood district, a prosperous African American neighborhood. The death toll from the riot is officially 39—26 blacks, 13 whites—but the real number of deaths will probably never be known. What is known is that during 16 hours of terror, more than 1,200 residences were burned and around 10,000 people left homeless. read more...
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The controversy over slavery was tearing America apart in the 1850s and complicating the application of two territories—Kansas and Nebraska—that wanted to enter the Union. Rather than tackle the slavery issue directly, Congress instead passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 with a “popular sovereignty” provision, which said that settlers in those two territories could decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. read more...
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At five minutes past 11 o’clock the morning of May 29, 1866, an aged, infirm and feeble Winfield Scott—having lost his voice two hours previously—reached out to clasp the hand of the chaplain at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point), and quietly died. Thus ended the life of arguably America’s greatest military leader of the 19th century. His death, 15 days before his 80th birthday, was the final chapter in a 53-year Army career (1808-61) that was without precedent. read more...
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It was the bridge they said could not be built. Perched at the tip of a peninsula, San Francisco was separated from the rest of northern California by the 6,700-foot-wide “Golden Gate,” an opening where San Francisco Bay flows into the Pacific Ocean. With a channel 500 feet deep, strong tides and currents, occasional fierce storms, and the threat of earthquakes, the Golden Gate seemed unbridgeable. read more...
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America in the 1850s was a nation sharply divided over the issue of slavery, a conflict that in 1861 would lead to the tragedy and destruction of the Civil War. read more...
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The Civil War era is an abundant source of fascinating letters, from military personnel as well as civilians. The following letter is a good example. It was written by a Confederate woman in Tennessee to her prisoner-of-war cousin held in Indiana. The letter was printed by a Northern newspaper to mock the “Nashville She Rebel” for her bloodthirsty vows and poor spelling. However, there is no denying the fierce spirit of resistance and independence in her letter, in defiance of the fact that Confederate forces in Tennessee were reeling during the spring of 1862. read more...
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One bad speech cannot destroy a great legacy, but it certainly can damage a reputation. Abolitionists recoiled when Senator Daniel Webster delivered his infamous “Plea for Harmony and Peace” speech before the U.S. Senate on March 7, 1850. Webster was convinced that unless the Compromise of 1850 was passed, the issue of slavery would tear the Union apart. Trying to placate the South, his speech insisted that the U.S. read more...
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Hollywood is notorious for simplifying and glorifying stories about outlaws (think of the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Paul Newman and Robert Redford), and the movie Bonnie and Clyde is part of that tradition. This 1967 film, starring the handsome duo of Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, portrayed Bonnie and Clyde as reckless and daring, madly in love with a devil-may-care approach to life and crime. The reality is far less glamorous. read more...
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I understand that when writing a blog, it’s necessary to show a picture and say a few words about yourself, so that people don’t think a nameless, faceless committee or advisory board is running the show. Here I am, a real person. My name is Tony Pettinato, and I live in Deerfield, Mass. I did my undergraduate studies in English at Oberlin College, my graduate work in Journalism at UC Berkeley, and have been a reporter for six newspapers. For the past fourteen years I have worked at NewsBank, six of those as a managing editor for the U.S. Congressional Serial Set project – NewsBank’s acclaimed effort that digitized and indexed twelve million pages of primary source documents – that gratified my lifelong interest in American history. And that led me to editing this history blog!
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