The delegates from six seceding states who met in Montgomery, Alabama, on Feb. 4, 1861, for the Provisional Confederate Congress moved quickly to address the monumental task at hand: the formation of a new country. In four days they adopted a provisional constitution; the next day they unanimously elected their provisional president: Jefferson Finis Davis. read more...
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On Feb. 17, 1925, Florence Prag Kahn achieved a notable first when she was elected the first Jewish woman to serve in Congress, only the fifth woman overall. She was elected to represent California’s Fourth Congressional District in a special election to replace her husband, Congressman Julius Kahn, who had a distinguished 25-year career in Congress cut short by his death in San Francisco on Dec. 18, 1924. read more...
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One day in February 1909, the once-feared Apache Chief Geronimo was riding alone near Fort Sill, Oklahoma, when he was thrown from his horse and lay all night in the cold. When found the next day he was seriously ill, and died on Feb. 17, 1909, from pneumonia. Geronimo died—as he had lived the last 22 years of his life—a prisoner of war to the U.S. government. He was 79 years old. read more...
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Thomas Jefferson is consistently ranked one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country. He almost did not get the chance to fulfill that destiny, however, as Aaron Burr nearly beat him in the 1800 presidential election—a tangled, complicated political mess that ended up with an electoral ballot tie that had to be broken by a vote in the House of Representatives. Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each ended up with 73 electoral votes (the incumbent president, John Adams, finished with 65). read more...
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At 9:40 the night of Feb. 15, 1898, a massive explosion sank the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, Cuba, killing over 260 men and whipping the American public into a war frenzy against Cuba’s colonial overlord, Spain. The battleship had entered Havana Harbor on January 25 to protect American interests in the face of a popular insurrection on the island against Spain’s harsh rule. The cause of the explosion remains a mystery to this day, despite four separate investigations, but the verdict with the most impact was the conclusion of the U.S. 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 10 newspapers from 6 states and the District of Columbia. A total of 11,387 issues have been added in this release! Here are the details:
California read more...
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Oregon’s admission into the Union as the 33rd state on Feb. 14, 1859, was both a proud advance of America’s “Manifest Destiny” and a complicated product of the slavery issue threatening to tear the country apart. After 28 years of joint occupancy, the Oregon Country had been wrested from Great Britain by the sheer number of American pioneers who poured into the area after braving the hazards of the Oregon Trail in the 1840s. read more...
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For a member of the U.S. Armed Forces, there is no higher military decoration than the Medal of Honor, personally presented to the recipient (or family members, in the case of a posthumous award) by the President of the United States in the name of Congress. The Medal of Honor for Navy personnel was created in December 1861, and on July 12, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law a resolution designating the Medal of Honor for any member of the Armed Forces. read more...
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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the most established and effective civil rights organizations in the U.S., traditionally cites Feb. 12, 1909—the centennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln—as its founding date. The organization’s spark, however, was a gruesome race riot in Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield, Illinois, on Aug. 14-15, 1908. read more...
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February 1861 was a time of great stress and conflict in the United States. On February 1 Texas became the seventh state to secede from the Union. On February 4 the first six seceding states (in chronological order: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana) met in Montgomery, Alabama, for the Provisional Confederate Congress. Four days after the Congress opened, on February 8, they adopted a provisional constitution to formalize their new country: the Confederate States of America. 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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