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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The formalization of the Confederate States of America happened with the speed and resoluteness of men determined to accomplish the monumental task at hand: building a new country from scratch. Delegates from six seceding states (in chronological order: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana) convened as the Provisional Confederate Congress in Montgomery, Alabama, on Feb. 4, 1861. The delegates had to resolve complex issues of revenue, commerce, representation, and defense. read more...
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As with many such incidents in history, we will probably never know who fired that first shot. All we know is that on the night of Feb. 8, 1968, nine Highway Patrol officers—hearing a shot ring out—fired on a crowd of about 200 African American students gathered on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, South Carolina. The students were protesting a local bowling alley that was still segregated, while most other public facilities in Orangeburg had become integrated. read more...
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A dizzying series of events from late 1989 to 1991 marked the collapse of the Soviet Union as a unified power. In six months, from August 1989 to January 1990, six Warsaw Pact countries embraced a multi-party system of government, abandoning the monopolistic Communist one-party control: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. The Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989. read more...
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The history of the Civil Rights Movement in America is filled with stories of brave individuals who stood up for their rights in the face of hatred and racism. One such courageous fighter is Autherine Juanita Lucy, who in February 1956 became the first African American student to attend a white university or public school in Alabama. read more...
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Accompanied by the 32-gun warship USS Cyane, the Elizabeth sailed out of New York Harbor on Feb. 6, 1820, on a pioneering voyage with an unusual passenger list: 88 free African American emigrants supervised by three white agents from the American Colonization Society (ACS). Their destination: the coast of Africa, where the ACS hoped to found a colony to pursue its goal of deporting all of America’s black freedmen. The ACS colony became the independent nation of Liberia in 1847. read more...
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Confederate General Lloyd Tilghman faced an impossible task in February 1862. In charge of Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, he had the vital responsibility of preventing Union forces from coming up the river and penetrating Tennessee and Alabama. Inside the fort he had 17 pieces of artillery, some of large caliber, and about 3,400 soldiers camped outside. Coming against him was General Grant’s 15,000-man army and Flag Officer Foote’s flotilla of seven gunboats, four of them ironclads. 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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