Events early in the war quickly forced Northern authorities to address the issue of emancipation.

In May 1861, just a month into the war, three slaves (Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend) owned by Confederate Colonel Charles K. Mallory escaped from Hampton, Virginia, where they had been put to work on behalf of the Confederacy, and sought protection within Union-held Fortress Monroe before their owner sent them further south. When Col. Mallory demanded their return under the Fugitive Slave Law, Union General Benjamin F. Butler instead appropriated the fugitives and their valuable labor as “contraband of war.” The Lincoln administration approved Butler’s action, and soon other fugitive slaves (often referred to as “contrabands”) sought freedom behind Union lines.

The increasing number of fugitives and questions about their status eventually prompted action by the United States Congress.

On August 6, 1861, Congress passed the First Confiscation Act, which negated owners’ claims to escaped slaves whose labor had been used on behalf of the Confederacy.

 In 1862 Congress also acted against slavery in areas under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Congress abolished slavery in the federal District of Columbia on April 16 with a compensated emancipation program. This action must have been particularly satisfying to President Lincoln, who as Congressman Lincoln had in the late 1840s drafted a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Finding the measure lacking support, Lincoln never introduced it.

Congress further outlawed slavery in federal territories in June 1862.

On August 5, 1861, the United States Army officially abolished flogging as a form of corporal punishment. Until that point, it had routinely been used as punishment for soldiers who disobeyed orders.

Flogging, also known as flagellation, is the act of methodically beating or whipping the human body. Special tools were often used, including rods, switches, the cat o’ nine tails, and the sjambok, a heavy leather whip traditional in South Africa. Typically, flogging is imposed on an unwilling subject as a punishment. It was the preferred form of punishment for slaves at the time, and commonly used to discipline soldiers in the military.

Flogging was not just common in the United States. In the 1700s and 1800s, European armies administered floggings to common soldiers who committed breaches of military code. It was also used in France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, during which the maximum number of lashes allowed reached as high as 1,200! During the American Revolutionary War, Congress raised the legal limit on lashes from 39 to 100 for soldiers who were convicted by court-martial. Generally, officers were not flogged.

On August 5, 1861, the United States Army officially banned flogging as a form of punishment, thought it was still routinely used on slaves at that time.

Today, only Singapore still officially uses flogging as a form of military punishment, though there are many uncorroborated reports of use of corporal punishment in several other countries.

POSTED BY JAE JONES – MARCH 25, 2022 – BLACK HISTORY, HISTORY, LATEST POSTS, RACE RIOTS

The Lombard Street Riot was a three-day race riot that occurred in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1842. The riot started on Lombard Street, between Fifth and Eighth streets.

On August 1, 1842, more than 1,000 African Americans gathered to participate in a temperance parade to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. The group was attacked on Fourth Street by an Irish mob that beat many of the marchers and destroyed black homes in the area. The attack went on for three days.

The Irish rioters headed west toward the home of prominent and outspoken African American leader Robert Purvis at 9th and Lombard. Purvis sat on the steps of his home armed and ready.

Although his home was spared from the inferno by the intervention of a Catholic priest. Purvis eventually relocated permanently to his rural Bucks County home.

The Irish immigrants and African Americans lived in the vicinity and often competed for the same low paying jobs and places to live. Both groups felt their hard work and economic gains were being constantly threatened.

During this period of time, free African Americans were never truly safe because of fugitive slave laws, and in 1838 Pennsylvania stripped free blacks of their right to vote. The strength and vitality of Philadelphia’s fast-growing free-black community generated fear, frustration which ultimately led to violence on the part of the Irish immigrants.

Of those arrested by the militia, most were found not guilty or otherwise released. The three or four who were convicted received only light sentences.

source:

http://www.philaplace.org/story/62/

1735 – Freedom of the press was established with an acquittal of John Peter Zenger. The writer of the New York Weekly Journal  had been charged with seditious libel by the royal governor of New York. The jury said that “the truth is not libelous.” 

1753 – George Washington became a Master Mason.

1790 – The Revenue Cutter Service was formed. This U.S. naval task force was the beginning of the U.S. Coast Guard.

1821 – “The Saturday Evening Post” was published for the first time as a weekly.

1914 – Britain declared war on Germany. The U.S. proclaimed its neutrality.

1921 – The first radio broadcast of a tennis match occurred. It was in Pittsburgh, PA.

1922 – The death of Alexander Graham Bell, two days earlier, was recognized by AT&T and the Bell Systems by shutting down all of its switchboards and switching stations. The shutdown affected 13 million phones.

1934 – Mel Ott became the first major league baseball player to score six runs in a single game.

1944 – Nazi police raided a house in Amsterdam and arrested eight people. Anne Frank, a teenager at the time, was one of the people arrested. Her diary would be published after her death.

1954 – The uranium rush began in Saskatchewan, Canada.

1956 – William Herz became the first person to race a motorcycle over 200 miles per hour. He was clocked at 210 mph.

1957 – Florence Chadwick set a world record by swimming the English Channel in 6 hours and 7 minutes.

1957 – Juan Fangio won his final auto race and captured the world auto driving championship. It was his the fifth consecutive year to win.

1958 – The first potato flake plant was completed in Grand Forks, ND.

1958 – Billboard Magazine introduced its “Hot 100” chart, which was part popularity and a barometer of the movement of potential hits. The first number one song was Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool.”

1972 – Arthur Bremer was found guilty of shooting George Wallace, the governor of Alabama. Bremer was sentenced to 63 years in prison.

1977 – U.S. President Carter signed the measure that established the Department of Energy.

1983 – New York Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield threw a baseball during warm-ups and accidentally killed a seagull. After the game, Toronto police arrested him for “causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.”

1984 – Carl Lewis won a gold medal in the Los Angeles Olympics.

1984 – Upper Volta, an African republic, changed its name to Burkina Faso.

1985 – Tom Seaver of the Chicago White Sox achieved his 300th victory.

1985 – Rod Carew of the California angels got his 3,000th major league hit.

1986 – The United States Football League called off its 1986 season. This was after winning only token damages in its antitrust lawsuit against the National Football League.

1987 – The Fairness Doctrine was rescinded by the Federal Communications Commission. The doctrine had required that radio and TV stations present controversial issues in a balanced fashion. 

1987 – A new 22-cent U.S. stamp honoring noted author William Faulkner, went on sale in Oxford, MS. Faulkner had been fired as postmaster of that same post office in 1924.

1989 – Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani offered to assist end the hostage crisis in Lebanon.

1990 – The European Community imposed an embargo on oil from Iraq and Kuwait. This was done to protest the Iraqi invasion of the oil-rich Kuwait.

1991 – The Oceanos, a Greek luxury liner, sank off of South Africa’s southeast coast. All of the 402 passengers and 179 crewmembers survived.

1994 – Yugoslavia withdrew its support for Bosnian Serbs. The border between Yugoslavia and Serb-held Bosnia was sealed.

1996 – Josia Thugwane won a gold medal after finishing first in the marathon. He became the first black South African to win a gold medal.

1997 – Teamsters began a 15-day strike against UPS (United Parcel Service). The strikers eventually won an increase in full-time positions and defeated a proposed reorganization of the company’s pension plan.

2007 – NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft was launched on a space exploration mission of Mars. The Phoenix lander descended on Mars on May 25, 2008.

2009 – North Korean leader Kim Jong-il pardoned two American journalists, who had been arrested and imprisoned for illegal entry earlier in the year.