At 4:30 in the morning of April 12, 1861, a mortar round was lobbed toward Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor—the shot that triggered the Civil War. One of the South’s leading newspapers, the Daily Picayune (New Orleans), had a correspondent posted on New York’s Wall Street in April of 1861. He makes it clear in his report of April 9 that the financial district knew war was looming. read more...
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The nation’s greatest trauma, the long, grueling and bloody American Civil War, essentially ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee’s surrender was not the official end of the war; there were still remnants of other Confederate armies scattered about, but his surrender carried enormous symbolic weight. The other Southern armies followed in short order, with the last Confederate army surrendering on June 23, 1865, in Indian Territory. read more...
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It was a long time coming, but American democracy took a big leap forward when the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on April 8, 1913, giving the public the right to directly elect United States senators. Originally, the Constitution called for state legislatures to elect senators, but efforts to transfer this power to the public began in 1826 and remained fairly constant until success was achieved in 1913, when Connecticut became the 36th state to ratify the 17th Amendment. read more...
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When Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run on April 8, 1974, it was a historic achievement on two levels. For one, he broke what was considered the greatest record in all of sports, the 714 home runs hit by Babe Ruth, the “Sultan of Swing.” Aaron’s achievement was more than just a sports accomplishment, however—the vicious outpouring of hate mail combined with the adoring, buoyant support he received said a great deal about America as an African American broke a hallowed record set by a white man. read more...
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Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States (1829-1837), is an icon in American history. As a military leader he was so tough and determined that his admiring men called him “Old Hickory,” as he led the U.S. to important victories over the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, and over the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. As a president he fought for the rights of the “common man” and ushered in an era historians call Jacksonian Democracy. read more...
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The Confederacy was growing desperate in the spring of 1862. While it was holding its own in Virginia, the Western Theater had become a string of disasters. A young, relatively unknown Union general named Ulysses S. Grant won the first two major Federal victories of the war when he seized Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River in February 1862. read more...
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In a courtroom described as “deathly silent,” Federal Judge Irving R. Kaufman stared sternly at Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on April 5, 1951, and sentenced them to death for the crime of espionage, guilty of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. “I consider your crime worse than murder,” he told the defendants. He also announced: “Plain, deliberate murder is dwarfed by your acts.” Clearly, this was not a judge inclined to show mercy. read more...
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By early April 1862 Union General George B. McClellan had completed an ambitious amphibious operation, transporting the massive Army of the Potomac to the tip of the Virginia Peninsula. His mission: begin the long-awaited march on the Confederate capital of Richmond. President Abraham Lincoln and the Northern public had been impatiently waiting for McClellan to attack ever since he was placed in charge following the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) back on July 21, 1861. read more...
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Susanna Salter and the small town of Argonia, Kansas, both made history when the town elected her mayor on April 4, 1887. She holds the distinction of being the first woman elected to a political office in American history. The significance of this achievement is not lessened by the fact that her election began as a mischievous prank. Nor is her pioneering accomplishment diminished by the fact that she was not a supporter of the women’s liberation movement. read more...
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In early April of 1861, the nation’s attention was on the Union garrison in Fort Sumter, situated in Charleston Harbor and surrounded by Confederate forts, militia, and 19 batteries of mortars and cannons. South Carolina had been calling for the surrender of the fort ever since it seceded from the Union in December 1860, and demands for the fort increased after the Confederate States of America formed in early February 1861. No hostile action on either side had been taken yet; everyone seemed to realize that the first shot fired would begin a civil war. 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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