1875: Congress passes the first Civil Rights Act, which guarantees blacks equal access to public places and also prohibits their automatic exclusion from jury selection.
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1781: The United States Congress holds its first assembly. For some time following this event, the public will continue to call the body the Continental Congress.
1965: As North Vietnamese intransigence continues following bombing of their airbases, President Johnson orders the Air Force and Navy to intensify air operations over the Communist dictatorship. 160 or more strike aircraft conduct the heaviest air raid of the war so far--although studiously avoiding any targets that could make an immediate or significant difference in North Vietnam's war potential. Please see entry for 8 March 1965.
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1837: On his last day in office, President Andrew Jackson recognizes the Republic of Texas as a sovereign nation, according it full diplomatic status with the United States. Texas will later elect to join the United States, the only state in the Union that joined not through annexation but after abdicating its own sovereignty. In the 1980 Presidential election, Jimmy Carter will remark that "Texas was bought and paid for like any other state." Texas will vote overwhelmingly for Ronald Reagan.
1845: Florida becomes the twenty-seventh state of the United States.
1863: Congress passes a law establishing conscription for the Union Army, although a person conscripted may hire a proxy to serve for him by paying the proxy three hundred dollars.
1891: Congress votes to establish an Office of Superintendent of Immigration. A hundred years later, many will complain that United States immigration policies are utter failures, promoting the illegal entry of undocumented immigrants while preventing the immigration of qualified candidates.
1931: Congress votes to make "The Star-Spangled Banner" the national anthem.
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1813: James Madison is inaugurated as President. His wife, Dolly, serves a new confection at the reception following--ice cream.
1821: "Hail to the Chief" receives its first public performance at the inaugural of President James Monroe to his second term in office.
1862: Rebel troops seize Santa Fe in what is now New Mexico. Their commander, Henry Sibley, hopes to place all of the American Southwest under rebel control and thus either force California to secede or compel Washington to move significant troops west, easing the pressure on the mainstream Confederate states. U.S. Army officials mobilize their limited resources in the Southwest and inspire accelerated recruiting of local militias to form hastily a force to block Sibley's movements north and west. Please see entry for 27 March 1862.
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1933: President Franklin Roosevelt proclaims a nationwide bank holiday. He also prohibits the export of gold from the United States. Please see entry for 6 March 1933.
1933: In national elections in Germany, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist--Nazi) party receives almost half the votes cast. So begins two weeks in Germany that will change the modern world. Please see entry for 13 March 1933.
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1933: Congress passes the Emergency Banking Act, granting President Roosevelt near-draconian control over American banks. The act prohibits the hoarding of gold; for the first time in American history, it becomes illegal to retain or attempt to export gold American coinage. Roosevelt appoints federal bank examiners to investigate individual institutions and determine if they are solvent enough to reopen. Please see entry for 13 March 1933.
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1945: A combined arms task force of the U.S. 9th Armored Division, rolling like a juggernaut through the countrysie west of the Rhine River, pulls onto high bluffs overlooking the Rhine and sees the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen still standing intact. Quickly, the task force, commanded by Second Lieutenant Karl Timmerman, moves into the town and engages the mixed bag of German soldiers guarding the eastern end of the bridge. The Germans, who have delayed demolishing the bridge because of senseless and conflicting orders from higher headquarters (the Nazi high command does not want the Allies to seize a crossing over the last major barrier to the heart of Germany, but neither do they want to prevent recovery of the thousands of troops and vehicles that Hitler's silly "stand and defend" orders have paralyzed west of the river for months), finally ignite their detonation charges, but the bridge, while damaged, remains standing. Timmerman's men cross over it, subdue token resistance, and capture the bridge and its demoralized German garrison. This rapid assault, much of it improvised and utterly successful, precedes British Field Marshal Montgomery's exhaustively (and exhhaustingly) detailed set-piece crossing of the Rhine several days later. In the coming weeks, the Americans will enlarge this vital bridgehead into central Germany. The Germans, spurred by Hitler's vitriolic anger at this upset, will try everything, from piecemeal attacks by whatever troops are available to bombings, to the use of frogmen, to V-2 attacks, all to no avail. Please see entry for 10 March 1945.
1962: President John Kennedy reduces or eliminates United States tariffs on approximately a thousand items of commerce in an effort to stimulate foreign trade. The move draws mixed praise from American business interests, and rather more criticism from foreign commercial ventures.
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1862: The crew of the Union warship U.S.S. Cumberland encounters a strange-looking vessel flying the rebel flag. The slope-sided, metal-hulled ship, formerly the Virginia, bears the name Merrimac. The Cumberland's crew does not have long to observe the odd warship; the rebel ironclad sinks the Union ship in a short, sharp fight. Please see entry for 9 March 1862.
1965: 3,500 United States Marines land in South Vietnam, the first American combat troops to come ashore to fight as an integrated unit. Smaller detachments of troops serving in advisory roles to South Vietnamese forces have been in-country for some time. With these Marines begins the United States' commitment to its longest, most divisive, least popular war, a war in which too many of our own citizens still fail to understand the critical moral distinction between disagreeing with the war and honoring the warrior. President Johnson is determined to win a war without fighting a war, as well as to extend his crusade in Southeast Asia while at the same time pursuing the Great Society at home, all without raising taxes too highly. Congress is determined to control foreign policy. Diplomats confuse themselves with military leaders. The end result will be a commitment of more than half a million American fighting men, the deaths of more than fifty thousand of those soldiers, the horrible mistreatment of American prisoners by the North Vietnamese, and the still-unanswered question of the disappearance of more than a thousand American servicemen known at war's end to have been captured by the Communists but mysteriously and persistently listed as Missing In Action.
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1847: General Winfield Scott, commanding more than 13,000 American soldiers, lands at Veracruz on the eastern coast of Mexico. He quickly defeats Mexican contingents sent to cast his men into the sea and lays siege to the vital port. Please see entry for 29 March 1847.
1862: The rebel warship Merrimac steams once again into Hampton Roads, seeking to trouble the Union warships blockading the Virginia coastline there and even to break free into the open sea and raid Union lines of maritime commerce. Her hopes are dashed, however, when the ironclad (described accurately by contemporaries as looking like a floating log cabin) encounters an equally strange Union vessel steaming resolutely toward her. This new warship, the U.S.S. Monitor, is the brainchild of genius naval architect John Ericsson. She carries only 2 cannon, but they reside in an armored turret that can swivel nearly a full circle, enabling her to fire more rapidly and ultimately with greater effect than the rebel ship, whose cannon are fixed in unmoving gun ports. After an indecisive duel, the Merrimac withdraws; she will spend the rest of her short life sitting in harbor until the rebels burn her to prevent her capture. The Monitor will die at sea in a storm, but her progeny will go on in the succeeding months to dominate the naval war around America, and to change the course of strategic thinking throughout the world's navies.
1864: President Lincoln commissions Ulysses S. Grant at the rank of Lieutenant General. Doing so has required Lincoln to get Congress to pass a bill reinstating that military rank, which has long been deactivated. The motives for doing so are as convoluted as they would be today; everyone expects the new rank to go to Grant, fresh from his victories at Vicksburg and Chattanooga; Lincoln's political supporters want to award it to Grant to derail whom they see as the most serious threat in the upcoming Presidential campaign; and Lincoln wants Grant to have a rank higher than any other general officer to unsnarl the highly political system of seniority that has often crippled the Union war effort. Grant, who has no political aspirations in 1864, accepts the commission, saying, "I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me and know that if they are met it will be due to those armies, and above all to the favor of that Providence, which leads both Nations and men." Please see entry for 10 March 1864.
1916: Pancho Villa raids Columbus, New Mexico. His Mexican "freedom fighters," strangely confused as to their whereabouts and the fact that they are attacking American, rather than Mexican, property and citizens, kill seventeen of Columbus' residents. Please see entry for 15 March 1916.
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1864: President Lincoln assigns Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant to serve as commander of all United States Army forces. With this order, he places Grant in command of close to a million regular, militia, and volunteer troops and their assembled war-making power. In the coming months, Grant will forge an irresistable team in the persons of Generals George Meade, Philip Sheridan, and William Sherman, and will ride on campaign with Meade's Army of the Potomac in an inexorable, unending onslaught against the Confederacy that will for the first time focus on destroying its war-making potential--by annihilating its rail communications, its agricultural and industrial base, and its powerful Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by Robert E. Lee--instead of merely trying to capture Richmond, Virginia. Total war has arrived on the American continent, a new visage in the art of war that will be perfected in the century to follow. The Confederacy's days are numbered, although many rebels refuse to or cannot recognize it.
1945: U.S. Army engineers complete a treadway bridge and heavy truss bridge at the Remagen crossing site, giving the 9th Armored Division two reliable bridges over the Rhine River in addition to the damaged Ludendorff Bridge. Please see entry for 17 March 1945.
1945: While fighting continues to rage on the main island of Luzon, American troops land on Mindanao in the southern Philippines, sealing off Japanese forces in the Philippine Sea and preventing the enemy from reinforcing Luzon from other Philippine islands.
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1970: Senator William Fulbright criticizes President Richard Nixon for committing U.S. military personnel to fight the Communists in Laos and proposes a resolution severely limiting the President's necessary and constitutional war-making powers. His attack on the President conveniently ignores that it was John F. Kennedy who first committed American military and intelligence personnel to that troubled Asian country. For years, American soldiers who have fought in Laos, especially the Air Force pilots known as the Ravens, have complained that their war should not be kept secret, for the friendly faction in Laos has none of the unsavory baggage attritubed to the South Vietnamese regime, and the Ravens feel that the eventual revelation of the secret war will so anger Americans as to stifle effective help for these peaceful people whose only wish is to make the Communists leave them alone. Tragically, they are correct in their predictions.
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1925: United States Marines withdraw from Shanghai.
1933: President Franklin Roosevelt delivers his first "fireside chat" by radio to the American people.
1947: President Harry Truman, speaking to Congress, announces plans to send economic and military aid to Greece, Turkey, and any other nations facing the threat of Communist takeover. This first enunciation of what will be called the Truman Doctrine insightfully recognizes that the staggering poverty and industrial devastation still remaining from World War II dissolves hope and renders far too many people susceptible to Moscow's lies and desires for world domination. With this speech, Truman finally and openly recognizes Soviet Communism as a palpable threat to all freedom-loving peoples and commits the resources of the United States to its defeat. That defeat will come, but only after almost forty years of trial and error, when Ronald Reagan will recognize that the Soviet Union cannot compete military and economically with our nation and will use her resources to bring about Soviet Communism's inevitable downfall.
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1933: Banks, closed for more than a week by order of President Franklin Roosevelt, begin to reopen around the country pursuant to the Emergency Banking Act. More than three-quarters of the nation's banks reopen within days. Though the crisis that sparked the Great Depression is long over, federal control of financial institutions continues and intensifies today.
1933: Adolf Hitler proclaims the Third Reich in Germany. His "thousand-year Reich," he promises, will transform the world. Though it will survive a bare dozen of those intended thousand years, it will, indeed, transform the face of Europe. At a cost of thirty million or more corpses.
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1938: Following a series of international shenanigans that include the murder of Austrian political figures, the institutionalization of terrorist tactics by Austrian Nazis, and other acts of mayhem, Adolf Hitler decrees Austria annexed to Germany, making Österreich part of Greater Germany. This Anschluss is the second act in Hitler's attempt to assimilate Europe by bluff and bluster, the first having been his incorporation of the Rheinland into Germany two years earlier. The leaders of the major European democracies, still haunted by the bloody memories of World War I, continue their ill-considered policy of appeasing Germany. Eventually, in 1939, they will have no more ground to retreat upon, and England and France will have to confront Germany when it invades helpless Poland. World War II will begin.
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1916: Washington orders General John Pershing to form a punitive expedition and capture Pancho Villa. Pershing leads his troops on an eleven-month campaign into the wilds of northern Mexico, that seriously disrupts the bandits' operations but fails to apprehend Villa. The experience of leading men in hostile terrain will come in useful, however, when Pershing commands the American Expeditionary Force in France after our country's entry into World War I the following year.
1933: The German Nationalist Party, which received less than ten percent of the votes cast in the most recent election, throws its support to the Nazis, thus ensuring the safety and profit of the industrialists who were its core membership, and ensuring that Adolf Hitler's regime can receive dictatorial powers. The dogs of war begin to sniff the air, scenting a new disaster looming in Europe.
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1917: German U-Boats torpedo and sink the American merchant vessels City of Memphis and Illinois. This, coming less than a month after the revelation of the Zimmermann telegram, finally sends President Woodrow Wilson beyond the point of mere protest. The President calls for a joint session of Congress. Please see entry for 2 April 1917.
1926: Robert Goddard launches the world's first liquid-fueled rocket. The launch pad is a field on his aunt's farm in Massachusetts. This flight, man's first step beyond the reaches of his own home world, lasts two and a half seconds, in which the rocket traverses two hundred feet in distance and forty feet in height, at a speed of sixty miles per hour.
1945: American forces finally subdue all Japanese resistance on the island of Iwo Jima. Enemy action has claimed the lives of more than six thousand valiant Americans. Almost the entire Japanese garrison has died in the fighting, choosing death over surrender.
1968: U.S. Army troops, claiming they are acting on the orders of their commander, Lieutenant Calley, murder South Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai. When the liberal press learns of this atrocity nearly two years later, it will unanimously view the period of silence as a cover-up and from that will report the matter with a carefully selected slant. The Army's intensive investigations into the crime that occur during the period before disclosure will not be remarked upon; neither will the Army's punishment of the men involved. Calley will face a court-martial and will be imprisoned although the evidence establishing his guilt for ordering the murder is not clear. Worst of all, the press will wantonly ignore the fact that such atrocities, unquestionably outrageous and inexcusable, are the very rare exception for our military even in a war as frustrating as Vietnam; instead, the press will paint this event as "standard operating policy" and thus brand hundreds of thousands of honorable soldiers as "baby-killers." If the truth shall make you free, what does the absence of truth do--especially when it is the supposed bearers of truth that withhold it?
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1945: The Ludendorff Bridge, heavily damaged by the German efforts to demolish it and by the vibrations of American artillery and antiaircraft weapons firing nearby, collapses, plunging the combat engineers who are trying to repair it into the Rhine River. Twenty-eight of these brave men drown, but most are rescued. The loss of the bridge has negligible military consequences as two other bridges are now working at the crossing site.
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1963: The United States Supreme Court rules in Gideon v. Wainwright that those accused of a criminal offense must be provided with competent legal counsel, even if they cannot afford to pay for that representation.This vital interpretation of our Bill of Rights continues in force today. Sadly, the practices of certain criminal defense attorneys who view their role as ensuring a criminal's freedom rather than ensuring his fair trial will lead to such widespread dissatisfaction with what is perceived as "letting criminals off on technicalities" that the real principle being protected is often lost in social commentary and understanding.
1968: In an effort to control inflation, the United States and six other nations sign an agreement to stop supplying gold to private buyers.
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1687: The Sieur de La Salle, who landed an expedition on the Texas Gulf Coast nearly three years before, is murdered by his own men. It seems they are annoyed at his mishandling of what was to be a glorious expedition to add huge new lands from North America to France's empire. La Salle landed them at the wrong place, got lost, and led them aimlessly in a fever-infested semi-tropical area so hostile at that time that by now only twenty of his original force of more than four hundred men remain. Thus ends France's strongest effort to seize lands along the American coastline. French possessions in North America will largely be in what is now Canada.
1920: The United States Senate rejects American membership in the League of Nations, the body of international diplomacy formed after World War I in an effort to prevent similar mass slaughters in the future. Henry Cabot Lodge is the driving force behind the Senate's vote. After the horrors of World War II only twenty years later, many will come to say that it was America's isolationist decision here that "caused" the Second World War. This criticism is largely untrue, however, considering the almost glacial unwillingness of the major democracies in Europe, particularly England and France, to oppose Hitler's, Mussolini's, and Stalin's initial aggressions against other nations. The spectre of the Great War will loom so large that it will paralyze men's resolve, so that ultimately, the next war will be necessary.
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1933: Nazi Germany opens its first Konzentrationslager, a "concentration camp" located near the Germany city of Dachau. They use this facility to imprison Gypsies, Jews, political prisoners, and anyone else who belongs to an "undesirable" group. The concentration camp network will spread throughout Germany in the coming years as the Nazis increasingly institutionalize their monstrous policies. Before long, there will be dozens of such places where prisoners are confined in unsanitary, overcrowded barracks, surrounded by electrified barbed wire, guard towers, and vicious dogs. Many forms of unspeakable mistreatment will be visited upon the hapless people unfortunate enough to deserve such special treatment at the Nazis' hands. Worse still, with German conquest of Poland in 1939 another type of camp will appear: The death camp, a place even more barbarous, designed simply to exterminate huge numbers of innocent people. As awful as Dachau and its kind may be, Auschwitz and its companion camps will be infinitely worse. In 1945, incensed by claims by Germans living in Dachau that they knew nothing of the camp or its atrocities, General Eisenhower will order the entire population of that city to be marched through the now-liberated camp. Newsreel footage of the burial of its dead in mass graves will so sicken even the Nazi leadership at the Nuremberg Trials that many will be unable to watch the film.
1934: German naval expert Rudolf Kuhnold conducts the first practical tests of radar. His equipment generates radio waves that are beamed to targets and reflected back, enabling the equipment to detect the presence and location of the targets. Radar will be an important asset in the coming Second World War, but ironically it will be Germany's opponents, particularly the United States and Great Britain, that will take Kuhnold's pioneering work and develop it into a reliable detection system. German radar will never match Allied efforts in this area. Kuhnold may thus be described as the man who won the Battle of Britain for the English, as it will be the British radar network that will enable the hard-pressed Royal Air Force to muster its strength to beat back the vaunted German Luftwaffe.
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1918: German forces launch a vast, all-out offensive on the Western Front, seeking to consolidate territory under their control and bleed the nearly exhausted British and French forces to death. This is as much a desperation offensive as it is carefully planned (and it is carefully planned, making use of specially trained assault troops in an effort to break the stalemate of trench warfare that has endured for nearly four years); the Germans know they must take one or both of their European antagonists out of the war or the rising tide of American manpower will overwhelm them. What they do not know is that it is too late; American forces are already reaching France, and in the coming weeks and months the Germans will learn that the American fighting man is a breed apart.
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1794: Congress prohibits American citizens from engaging or participating in the slave trade. Although slavery will continue for another sixty-nine years, henceforth there will be no legal importation of slaves. This important first step in the abolition of slavery will go largely unnoticed by historians in the succeeding two centuries, particularly those of a politically correct bent who prefer to create an inaccurate aura of "wicked rich men of Eurocentric origin" who allegedly spend their whole lives engaged in "oppression."
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1980: Reza Pahlevi, former Shah of Iran, arrives in Egypt from Panama. Invited to Egypt by its president, Anwar Sadat, the Shah will undergo massive surgery in a futile attempt to save his life. Cancer will claim him in July.
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1976: The United States Supreme Court rules that blacks and other minorities are entitled to retroactive job security. This ruling, part of the Supreme Court's early repertoire of cases interpreting the legal parameters of affirmative action, is like many such decisions, well-intentioned but lacking in long-term vision. By the late 1990's, affirmative action will be one of the most hotly debated social policy issues in the United States. Virtually no one in the country will be happy with its present status: Minority activists will claim it has been stymied and must be carried even farther, while large segments of the population will feel, equally ardently, that it impairs the progress of the very people it supposedly exists to help and heightens racial tensions by emphasizing supposed differences.
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1946: The United Nations Security Council meets for the first time at Hunter College in New York. The Security Council, with its permanent members' power to veto proposed resolutions, is the real power in the United Nations relative to the General Assembly, which has no effective enforcement authorities. Sadly, use of the veto power will be yet another weapon as nations bicker, and the Soviet Union will be particularly quick to veto any United Nations action that might threaten the spread of Communist aggression in the world. The Soviets' refusal to participate in the discussions concerning the North Korean invasion of South Korea, however, will enable the United States to obtain a vote on U.N. involvement to save that country without the prospect of a Soviet veto.
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1979: Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin sign a peace treaty in Washington, D.C., ending the state of war that has existed between the two countries for thirty-one years. The treaty is known as the "Camp David Accords" after the initial summit meeting sponsored by President Jimmy Carter at Camp David the preceding September. Carter's pursuit of this treaty is a genuine accomplishment for him in an otherwise forgettable Presidential administration. While much of the world praises the treaty, extremists in both Israeli and Arab camps protest and vow to continue their ages-old fight.
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1862: At the Battle of Glorietta, the Union forces mobilized to head off Henry Sibley's marauding rebels inflict a sound defeat on the motley Confederate formation, stopping him dead in Apache Canyon. Surrounded by Union riflemen commanding the high ground of the canyon, the rebels suffer severe casualties. Rebel dreams of bringing California and its gold into their grasp dissolve, never to be realized.
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1845: After the United States Senate ratifies a treaty annexing the Republic of Texas to the United States Mexico, which still views Texas as a Mexican possession, severs diplomatic relations with this nation. The seeds are sown for the war two years later between the United States and Mexico--a war in which men such as Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee will learn their trade, which they will put to use so proficiently in the American Civil War.
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1847: The Mexican garrison at Veracruz surrenders. In the coming months, American soldiers will suffer more casualties from el vomito--yellow fever--than they will from the Mexican Army. Six months later, Scott's troops will defeat the last Mexican army in the field against them and capture Mexico City.
1951: With American troops stabilizing the situation in Korea following China's entry into the war, General Douglas MacArthur offers to discuss a truce. The Chinese Communists categorically reject his offer, and MacArthur begins militating, publicly, for massive air strikes on major Chinese cities. Please see entry for 11 April 1951.
1961: The United States ratify the Twenty-Third Amendment to the Constitution, providing representation in the House of Representatives for the District of Columbia. Washington, D.C. developed and intended by its creators simply to be the repository of the nation's government, is now a de facto fifty-first state.
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1868: The United States Senate begins its trial of President Andrew Johnson, impeached by the House of Representatives the preceding February for "high crimes and misdemeanors," in reality for having gone forward with a lenient post-Civil War reconstruction plan for the American South, as envisioned by his predecessor, Abraham Lincoln. Please see entry for 16 May 1868.
1965: A bomb explodes in the United States embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam. It is the first act of Communist terrorism directed against the United States in the Vietnam War.
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1854: American and Japanese officials sign the Treaty of Kanagawa, opening two Japanese ports to American trade and establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. This treaty, the result of Commodore Perry's efforts, opens Japan again to the outside world after more than two hundred years of staunch isolation.
1865: Confederate general John Gordon launches a surprise attack on the Union positions outside Petersburg. His assault on Fort Stedman initially has some success, but rapid and effective counterattacks nearly seal off and annihilate his forces, and Gordon withdraws with the loss of more than 5,000 troops the rebel cause can no longer afford to sacrifice. It is the last gasp of the once-proficient Army of Northern Virginia. Please see entry for 1 April 1865.
1968: Citing the statement by General William Westmoreland that the North Vietnamese have been "defeated at every turn," President Lyndon Johnson orders a halt to all bombing of North Vietnam. So continues the ridiculous decision to, as one sage has put it, "fight like hell but not hurt anyone" that has characterized Washington's view of how to win the war in Southeast Asia. The order does Johnson little good; on the same day, seeing the strong showing that Senator Eugent McCarthy, also a Democrat, has made in the vital New Hampshire electoral primary, and realizing it reflects the widespread disappointment with his administration, Johnson announces that he will not be a candidate for reelection at the end of the year.
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