Daily Archives: 04/12/2024

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April 8 1864 – The U.S. Senate passed the 13th Amendment (S.J. Res. 16) by a vote of 38 to 6. — remember


The 13th Amendment:

Image result for 13th amendment

· After the decisive battle of Antietam in September, 1862, when the Union beat the Confederate troops, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all slaves in the rebelling states were free as of January 1, 1863. Lincoln’s speech changed the tone of the Civil War from a battle about the rights of states versus the rights of the central government. The Civil War became about ending slavery once and for all. Lincoln realized that the Emancipation Proclamation was symbolic. He began lobbying Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution to end slavery.

· April 8, 1864 – The Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment

· June 15, 1864 – The House of Representatives initially defeated the 13th Amendment by a vote of 93 in favor, 65 opposed, and 23 not voting, which is less that two-thirds majority needed to pass a Constitutional Amendment.

· January 31, 1865 – The House of Representatives passed the 13th Amendment by a vote of 119 to 56.

· February 1. 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln signed a Joint Resolution submitting the proposed 13th Amendment to the states.

· December 18, 1865 – Secretary of State William Seward issued a statement verifying the ratification of the 13th Amendment.

· The first bill introducing the anti-slavery 13th Amendment was introduced into the House of Representatives by James Mitchell Ashley (Ohio), on December 14, 1864, nearly a year after President Lincoln issued the final executive order for the Emancipation Proclamation.

· The Senate Judiciary Committee drafted the final language for the 13th Amendment. The language of the amendment is simple. It is written in two sections.

· Section I of the 13th Amendment states; “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

· Section II of the 13th Amendment states; “Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

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1864 – Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest captured Fort Pillow, in Tennessee and slaughters the black Union troops there


See the source image
An account of the Fort Pillow Massacre in a Letter from Naval Officer Robert S. Critchell, published in the New York Times on 3 May 1864  —  The following letter has just been received by Mr. BLOW,  a member of Congress in Washington, D.C from Missouri, respecting the treatment of our soldiers after the surrender of Fort Pillow:
Wood engraving depicting the Fort Pillow Massacre.
Wood engraving depicting the Fort Pillow Massacre.
image: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-42018)

Fort Pillow Massacre, Confederate slaughter of African American Federal troops stationed at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on April 12, 1864, during the American Civil War. The action stemmed from Southern outrage at the North’s use of Black soldiers. From the beginning of hostilities, the Confederate leadership was faced with the question of whether to treat Black soldiers captured in battle as slaves in insurrection or, as the Union insisted, as prisoners of war.

For the complete article … go to

britannica.com

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on this day … 4/12 1864 – Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest captured Fort Pillow, in Tennessee and slaughters the black Union troops there.


1096 – Peter the Hermit gathered his army in Cologne.

1204 – The Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople.

1606 – England adopted the original Union Jack as its flag.

1770 – The British Parliament repealed the Townsend Acts.

1782 – The British navy won its only naval engagement against the colonists in the American Revolution at the Battle of Saints, off Dominica.

1799 – Phineas Pratt patented the comb cutting machine.

1811 – The first colonists arrived at Cape Disappointment, Washington.

1833 – Charles Gaylor patented the fireproof safe.

1861 – Fort Sumter was shelled by the Confederacy, starting America’s Civil War.

1864 – Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest captured Fort Pillow, in Tennessee and slaughters the black Union troops there.

1877 – A catcher’s mask was used in a baseball game for the first time by James Alexander Tyng.

1892 – Voters in Lockport, New York, became the first in the U.S. to use voting machines.

1905 – The Hippodrome opened in New York City.

1911 – Pierre Prier completed the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56 minutes.

1916 – American cavalrymen and Mexican bandit troops clashed at Parrel, Mexico.

1927 – The British Cabinet came out in favor of women voting rights.

1934 – F. Scott Fitzgerald novel “Tender Is the Night” was first published.

1938 – The first U.S. law requiring a medical test for a marriage license was enacted in New York.

1944 – The U.S. Twentieth Air Force was activated to begin the strategic bombing of Japan.

1945 – In New York, the organization of the first eye bank, the Eye Bank for Sight Restoration, was announced.

1945 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Spring, GA. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 63. Harry S Truman became president.

1955 – The University of Michigan Polio Vaccine Evaluation Center announced that the polio vaccine of Dr. Jonas Salk was “safe, effective and potent.”

1961 – Soviet Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin became first man to orbit the Earth.

1963 – Police used dogs and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, AL.

1969 – Lucy and Snoopy of the comic strip “Peanuts” made the cover of “Saturday Review.”

1981 – The space shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral, FL, on its first test flight.

1982 – The British Navy began enforcing a blockade around the Falkland Islands.

1982 – Three CBS employees were shot to death in a New York City parking lot.

1983 – Harold Washington was elected the first black mayor of Chicago.

1984 – Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Challenger made the first satellite repair in orbit by returning the Solar Max satellite to space.

1984 – Israeli troops stormed a bus that had been hijacked the previous evening by four Arab terrorists. All the passengers were rescued and 2 of the hijackers were killed.

1985 – U.S. Senator Jake Garn of Utah became the first senator to fly in space as the shuttle Discovery lifted off from Cape Canaveral, FL.

1985 – In Spain, an explosion in a restaurant near a U.S. base killed 17 people.

1985 – Federal inspectors declared that four animals of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were not unicorns. They were goats with horns that had been surgically implanted.

1987 – Texaco filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy after it failed to settle a legal dispute with Pennzoil Co.

1988 – Harvard University won a patent for a genetically altered mouse. It was the first patent for a life form.

1988 – The Chinese government named a new array of younger leaders to ensure economic reform.

1989 – In the U.S.S.R, ration cards were issued for the first time since World War II. The ration was prompted by a sugar shortage.

1992 – Disneyland Paris opened in Marne-La-Vallee, France.

1993 – NATO began enforcing a no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

2000 – More than 1,500 anti-drug agents raided four cities in Colombia and arrested 46 members of the “most powerful” heroin ring.

2000 – Robert Cleaves, 71, was convicted of second degree murder and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Cleaves had repeatedly run over Arnold Guerreiro on September 30, 1998 with his car after the two had an argument.

2000 – Israel’s High Court ordered the release of eight Lebanese detainees that had been held for years without a trial.

2002 – A first edition version of Beatrix Potter’s “Peter Rabbit” sold for $64,780 at Sotheby’s. A signed first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” sold for $66,630. A copy of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” signed by J.K. Rowling sold for $16,660. A 250-piece collection of rare works by Charles Dickens sold for $512,650.

2002 – It was announced that the South African version of “Sesame Street” would be introducing a character that was HIV-positive.

2002 – JCPenney Chairman Allen Questrom rang the opening bell to start the business day at the New York Stock Exchange as part of the company’s centennial celebrations. James Cash (J.C.) Penney opened his first retail store on April 14, 1902.

2012 – The game Candy Crush Saga was released on Facebook.

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1963 – Police used dogs and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, AL.


Firemen turn fire hoses on demonstrators, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963Photo by Charles Moore. Fair Use Image CONTRIBUTED BY: SAMUEL MOMODU

The Birmingham Campaign was a movement led in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) which sought to bring national attention of the efforts of local black leaders to desegregate public facilities in Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign was led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Reverends James Bevel and Fred Shuttlesworth, among others.

In April 1963, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined Birmingham’s local campaign organized by Rev. Shuttlesworth and his group, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR). The goal of the local campaign was to attack the city’s segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham’s merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year. When that campaign stalled, the ACMHR asked SCLC to help.

The campaign was originally scheduled to begin in early March 1963 but was postponed until April. On April 3, 1963, it was launched with mass meetings, lunch counter sit-ins, a march on city hall, and a boycott of downtown merchants. King spoke to Birmingham’s black citizens about nonviolence and its methods and appealed for volunteers. When Birmingham’s residents enthusiastically responded, the campaign’s actions expanded to kneel-ins at churches, sit-ins at the library, and a march on the county courthouse to register voters.

On April 10, 1963, the city government obtained a state court injunction against the protests. After debate, campaign leaders decided to disobey the court order. King contemplated whether he and Ralph Abernathy—SCLC’s second-in-command—should be arrested. King decided that he must risk jail. On Good Friday, April 12, 1963, King was arrested in Birmingham after violating the anti-protest injunction and was placed in solitary confinement. During this time, he wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on the margins of the Birmingham News, in reaction to a statement published by eight Birmingham clergymen condemning the protests.

blackpast.org

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Confederate History Month…or something else? things to remember


UNDER THE RADAR

From ThinkProgress

RADICAL RIGHT — MCDONNELL: SLAVERY WASN’T ‘SIGNIFICANT’ ENOUGH TO BE INCLUDED IN MY CONFEDERACY PROCLAMATION: TP

Last week, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) “quietly declared April 2010 Confederate History Month,” calling on Virginians to, among other things, “understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.” Notably absent from the proclamation, however, is any mention of slavery. McDonnell explained yesterday that he did not reference slavery because he focused on the issues that he “thought were most significant for Virginia.”

Neither of Virginia’s previous two governors, Democrats Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, declared a Confederate History Month. Republican governor Jim Gilmore, who served from 1998-2002, did issue such proclamations but acknowledged slavery as “one of the causes of the war” and a practice that “degraded the human spirit” and “is abhorred and condemned by Virginians.” For his final proclamation in 2001, Gilmore replaced Confederate History Month with “a tribute to both black and white Civil War combatants that expressly denounces slavery as the root cause of the four-year conflict.” Gilmore’s predecessor, Republican George Allen, started the practice of Confederate History Month. He didn’t include slavery in his proclamation and, under significant pressure from civil rights leaders, eventually apologized.

As the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on April 12, 1997, Allen said, “Surely, I don’t want to upset anyone.

For those who are sincerely offended…I apologize.”

The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer writes that McDonnell’s proclamation is “telling” because “it reveals which Virginians he feels are ‘significant.'”