Senator Timothy Pickering, a Federalist from Massachusetts, becomes the first senator to be censured when the Senate approves a censure motion against him by a vote of 20 to seven. Pickering was accused of violating congressional law by publicly revealing secret documents communicated by the president to the Senate.

During the Revolutionary War, Pickering served as General George Washington’s adjutant general and in 1791 was appointed postmaster general by President Washington. In 1795, he briefly served as Washington’s secretary of war before being appointed secretary of state in 1795. He retained his post under the administration of President John Adams but was dismissed in 1800, when Adams, a moderate Federalist, learned that he had been plotting with Alexander Hamilton to steer the United States into war with revolutionary France. Returning to Massachusetts, he was elected a U.S. senator, but resigned after he was censured for revealing to the public secret foreign policy documents sent by the president to Congress. An outspoken opponent of the War of 1812, Pickering was elected as a representative from Massachusetts in 1813 and served two terms before retiring from politics.

Citation Information

Article Title

First censuring of a U.S. senator

AuthorHistory.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-censuring-of-a-u-s-senator

Access Date

January 1, 2023

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

December 21, 2021

Original Published Date

July 21, 2010

by McKenna Mobley

Victorville Daily Press

The nearly 3,000-acre Vista Fire has closed various hiking trails in the area due to unsafe conditions, including Mount Baldy, most of the Deep Creek area, and Lytle Creek.

As of July 12, major closures in the Baldy area include Manker Flats, Mt. Baldy Rest Area, Ice House Canyon, Bear Canyon, Mt. Baldy Station, and Mt. Baldy Village. These are closed until Oct. 31, 2024 or until further notice.

Violators of the closure will be faced with a $5,000 fine, $10,000 for organizations, and imprisonment for up to six months, according to authorities.

Additionally, Deep Creek is closed between the confluence of Deep Creek and Hooks Creek, and the intersection of Deep Creek with Devil’s Hole Trailhead until June 8, 2025. This area does not include Deep Creek Hot Springs, which is still open according to Bowen Ranch Campground employees.

Lytle Creek Road is also closed at the I-15 and Sierra Avenue. While the Bonita Ranch Campground is still open to campers with a reservation, all day-use trails and creek access is closed.

Source: vvdailypress.com

Hikers in California are up in arms following the ‘unfair’ closure of a series of popular trails on Mount Baldy. The U.S. Forest Service shut the trails in the wake of the Bridge Fire that ravaged the local area, burning 20 homes and more than 50,000 acres of surrounding hillsides.

Source: Internet

On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. Attempting to stitch together a nation mired in a bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln made a last-ditch, but carefully calculated, decision regarding the institution of slavery in America.

By the end of 1862, things were not looking good for the Union. The Confederate Army had overcome Union troops in significant battles and Britain and France were set to officially recognize the Confederacy as a separate nation. In an August 1862 letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln confessed “my paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery.” Lincoln hoped that declaring a national policy of emancipation would stimulate a rush of the South’s enslaved people into the ranks of the Union army, thus depleting the Confederacy’s labor force, on which the southern states depended to wage war against the North.

Lincoln waited to unveil the proclamation until he could do so on the heels of a Union military success. On September 22, 1862, after the battle at Antietam, he issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation declaring all enslaved people free in the rebellious states as of January 1, 1863. Lincoln and his advisors limited the proclamation’s language to slavery in states outside of federal control as of 1862, failing to address the contentious issue of slavery within the nation’s border states. In his attempt to appease all parties, Lincoln left many loopholes open that civil rights advocates would be forced to tackle in the future.

Republican abolitionists in the North rejoiced that Lincoln had finally thrown his full weight behind the cause for which they had elected him. Though enslaved people in the south failed to rebel en masse with the signing of the proclamation, they slowly began to liberate themselves as Union armies marched into Confederate territory. Toward the end of the war, enslaved people left their former masters in droves. They fought and grew crops for the Union Army, performed other military jobs and worked in the North’s mills. Though the proclamation was not greeted with joy by all northerners, particularly northern white workers and troops fearful of job competition from an influx of formerly enslaved people, it had the distinct benefit of convincing Britain and France to steer clear of official diplomatic relations with the Confederacy.

Though the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation signified Lincoln’s growing resolve to preserve the Union at all costs, he still rejoiced in the ethical correctness of his decision. Lincoln admitted on that New Year’s Day in 1863 that he never “felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper.” Although he waffled on the subject of slavery in the early years of his presidency, he would thereafter be remembered as “The Great Emancipator.” To Confederate sympathizers, however, Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation reinforced their image of him as a hated despot and ultimately inspired his assassination by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865.

Source: history.com