President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the historic Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964, outlawing discrimination and protecting the civil rights of minorities. It did not take long for bigots to challenge the law. A restaurant owner in Alabama and a motel owner in Georgia fought their cases all the way to the highest court in the land, insisting they did not have to serve or accommodate African American customers. The Supreme Court heard the case (Heart of Atlanta Motel Inc. v. U.S.) on October 5. It issued its historic decision on Dec. read more...
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The five-day Battle of Fredericksburg climaxed on Dec. 13, 1862, when the Union Army of the Potomac made 14 heroic and futile charges uphill against General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, which was solidly entrenched on the heights just west of the Virginia city. This battle cost the Union 12,653 casualties as opposed to 5,377 for the Confederates, and proved that President Lincoln’s newly-appointed commander, General Ambrose E. Burnside, was no match for Lee. read more...
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Joseph Hayne Rainey was the first African American ever elected to Congress, winning the 1870 election to represent the First District of South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives. (Hiram Rhodes Revels has the honor of being the first African American to serve in Congress, having joined the U.S. Senate on Feb. 25, 1870—but he was appointed by the Mississippi State Senate to finish a term, not directly elected to his seat as Rainey was.) When Rainey was sworn in on Dec. 12, 1870, newspapers across the country had a range of reactions: some laudatory, some sarcastic and racist. read more...
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The Civil War spurred many innovations in military technology and several notable “firsts” were achieved—one of the most significant being history’s first clash of ironclad warships, when the U.S.S. Monitor and the C.S.S. Virginia (a.k.a. Merrimac) fought on March 9, 1862, in the Battle of Hampton Roads. Later that same year, an ironclad warship experienced another first in military history when the U.S.S. Cairo was sunk by an electronic mine in the Yazoo River on Dec. read more...
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Indiana became the 19th state when it was admitted into the Union on Dec. 11, 1816. The official resolution granting it statehood was published by the National Advocate (New York, New York) on Dec. 20, 1816: read more...
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After ten weeks of difficult negotiations, Spain and the United States finally signed the Treaty of Paris on Dec. 10, 1898, officially ending the Spanish-American War. This 14-week conflict, described as “a splendid little war” by American ambassador John Hay in a letter to his friend (and war hero) Theodore Roosevelt, is perhaps America’s least known war, and certainly one of its most controversial. read more...
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The United States of America gained its twentieth state when it admitted Mississippi into the Union on Dec. 10, 1817. Mississippi Territory was first organized on April 7, 1798, being comprised of land ceded by the states of Georgia and South Carolina.
The 1817 state constitution contained a clause that was revolutionary for its time: it abolished the laws against usury, as explained in this article the Hallowell Gazette (Hallowell, Maine) published on Dec. 10, 1817: read more...
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Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback achieved a political milestone when he became governor of Louisiana on Dec. 9, 1872: the first African American governor in the nation’s history. He came to office under difficult circumstances, however, and nothing about his 35-day term as governor was easy. Pinchback won election as a Louisiana state senator in 1868. When the lieutenant governor, Oscar Dunn, died in office in 1871, Pinchback—who was president of the state Senate at the time—succeeded him. read more...
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Jesse James is one of the most notorious outlaws in American history. He and several other former Confederate guerrillas (his brother Frank, and the four Younger brothers—Bob, Cole, Jim and John) kept up their violent ways long after the Civil War ended. The James-Younger Gang had a remarkably successful career until the disastrous Minnesota bank robbery in 1876 that broke up the gang. read more...
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Americans were shocked when the Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. military facility at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941. Our two nations were not at war, and the Japanese attack was unprovoked and came without warning. The crisis was a severe test of American resolve and the nation steeled itself for the struggle ahead, as urged by the following editorial. 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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