Despite their determined resistance, the Confederate defenders in Forts Jackson and St. Philip on the Mississippi River could only take so much. The 1,100 men in the two forts knew that they and their combined 126 heavy guns were basically all that stood between the Union war fleet below them and the city of New Orleans, since that important city—the South’s largest—was only guarded by a small militia force, its regular troops having been sent north to fight in the Battle of Shiloh. read more...
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The Great Lakes were a strategically important battleground during the War of 1812. Effectively using a small fleet of warships, the British seized control of Lakes Ontario and Erie in the war’s opening year, thereby gaining the upper hand on their American adversaries. With the ability to concentrate their forces and quickly move men and supplies around the lakes, the British won several key battles during 1812. read more...
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The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth, a 26-year-old actor and fervent Southern sympathizer, shocked and saddened the North. This same reaction was felt by many in the South as well—no American president had ever been assassinated before (although an attempt was made on the life of Andrew Jackson in 1835). Just five days prior to Lincoln’s assassination, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, and it was apparent the nation’s bloody four-year nightmare, the Civil War, was at last coming to an end. read more...
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It is dank and cramped. It is antiquated. It is, above all else, a baseball shrine, venerated by generations of Cubs fans, nestled in Chicago’s Lakeview residential neighborhood. At 98 years of age, Wrigley Field is the oldest ballpark in the National League, second only to the American League’s two-years-older Fenway Park, and the only ballpark left over from the old Federal League. read more...
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During the violent aftermath of the Civil War known as Reconstruction, a horrible massacre occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, when white supremacists in Colfax, Louisiana, killed anywhere from 100 to 200 freedmen and black state militiamen who had barricaded themselves in the local courthouse. The exact number of fatalities will never be known, as many bodies were secretly buried or dumped into the Red River. This ugly incident was a microcosm of the political battles raging throughout the South. read more...
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Early 1861 was a confusing time in the United States. In February seven seceding states formed the Confederate States of America and seized federal forts and other property. By April rumors were sweeping the country about what Lincoln’s policy was going to be, whether an attack upon Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor was imminent, and fears that civil war was about to begin. Right at this time a surprisingly negative editorial was published in a Northern newspaper, declaring “We do not see any hope.” read more...
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President Thomas Woodrow Wilson won reelection in 1916 pledging to keep America out of World War I, which had been raging since 1914. However, Germany’s declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917, and the publication of the “Zimmerman telegram” revealing a German plot to have Mexico and Japan declare war on the U.S., changed America’s position. On April 2, 1917, President Wilson delivered a powerful speech asking Congress to declare that a state of war existed with Germany, a request Congress—and the general public—embraced. read more...
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On April 6, 1973, Major League Baseball’s American League implemented a three-year experiment that became a permanent feature of the league: the designated hitter rule, allowing another player to bat for the pitcher. Since pitchers are normally weaker hitters than position players (since they focus more on pitching than batting practice, and because they do not play every day), this rule has supplied more offense to American League teams. However, baseball purists lamented the implementation of this rule and have opposed it ever since. read more...
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On April 7, 1862, the fierce fighting of the two-day Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee came to an end, with the Federal troops regaining the field and the Confederate army retreating all the way back to Corinth, Mississippi, from where it had started four days earlier with such high hopes. read more...
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By April 1863 the Civil War had been going on for two years, and many people in the South were approaching starvation. Foraging armies—both Union and Confederate—had depleted many areas of food and animals. A severe drought the year before had diminished harvests, contributing to the shortages felt in the spring of 1863. Adding to the misery was the high rate of inflation which drove most food prices beyond people’s means, compounded by speculators who took advantage of the situation by charging ever higher prices. 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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