May 31, 1870- The First Reinforcement Act

A cartoon threatening that the KKK will lynch scalawags (left) and carpetbaggers (right) on March 4, 1869. Tuscaloosa, Alabama Independent Monitor, Sept. 1, 1868. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kkk-carpetbagger-cartoon.jpg

In the South after the Civil War, the Union’s victory was followed by terrorism.

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1865 in Tennessee by Confederate Veterans. It was only one of many secret terrorist groups that formed immediately after the end of the war. While many groups had chapters in different states, none of them exercised much central control. The groups formed and were directed by local members resisting Republican political domination and suppressing the political, social, and economic freedom of newly freed Black people in their towns and cities. The Klan became infamous as “midnight riders,” raiding homes, burning property, and often murdering Black and White people who challenged the old White Supremacist Democratic Party order.

The original klansmen wore hoods and disguises while conducting attacks, but they were not very uniform. The white hoods and burning crosses associated with the KKK were part of the revival movement in the 1910s and 20s.

Mississippi Ku-Klux members in the disguises in which they were captured. Artist Unknown. Harper's Weekly January 27, 1872. Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mississippi_ku_klux.jpg

This political violence surged throughout the 1860s, leading to the First and Second Enforcement Acts (1870, 1871), and the Ku Klux Klan Act (1871). These acts authorized the President and Congress to use military powers to enforce the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments (The Reconstruction Amendments) passed between 1865-70. These amendments codified the citizenship and political rights of Black Americans. In reality, US troops were needed to ensure Black voters could participate in elections or hold offices they’d been elected to. Where there was no military presence, vigilantes like the Klan were largely successful in suppressing the rights of Blacks and the authority of Republican politicians and their allies.

Even after the Klan was effectively suppressed in the 1870s, political violence against Black voters, office holders, and jurors was endemic to the Southern United States and much of the North. Groups such as the White League, the Red Shirts, and others used terrorism to intimidate voters and oust Black and Republican politicians and sheriffs.

Ultimately, most United States’ leaders were uncomfortable using their political and military power to defend Black people from White southerners and eventually withdrew from enforcing the Constitution in the South by the end of the 1870s. It would not be until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the US government, goaded by hundreds of thousand of activists risking their lives, would again attempt to use its power to secure Americans’ constitutional rights in the South, and to dismantle the systems of segregation throughout the North and the West.

Sources:

The Enforcement Act of 1870- Blackpast

The Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871- US Senate

Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871- National Constitution Center

Documenting Reconstruction Violence- Equal Justice Initiative

HST 116- The American Revolution

Dr. Joanne B. Freeman

The American Revolution and the Revolutionary War are difficult events to teach. First of all, most treatments fail to establish sufficient context for Europeans in the Americas, the various cultures of the different British colonies and how they related to each other, as well as their mother country. 

The French and Indian War (1754-1763), a part of the 7 Years War between Britain and France that set off conflicts between several European powers throughout the continent and numerous colonial sites around the globe, is too often glossed over. 

Finally, as with many historical subjects, there is so much myth and political rhetoric heaped upon the actual history of these events that it can be arduous to find information that has not been sensationalized and oversimplified.

Joanne B. Freeman’s course on the topic, available as a podcast by Open Yale Courses, begins by clarifying that the Revolutionary War and the American Revolution were related, but distinct things. The lectures that make up the course are detailed, but listenable. They do an excellent job of presenting the subject to a modern audience by delving into the contexts of place, people, and events. Freeman presents at a brisk pace, but repeats and emphasizes points that provide greater clarity. 

Figures of the Revolutionary Era that often suffer from dull, overly-reverent descriptions are examined with diligence, humor, and a critical eye. Historians often rely too heavily on dates, figures, and theoretical analysis without doing the historical-imaginative work of painting a portrait of the past that gives their audience a rich sense of time and place, allowing them to see historical figures as flesh and blood people, and events as chaotic contingencies, rather than rigid inevitabilities. 

Rather than teaching the American Revolution as a propaganda exercise meant to instill national pride, or countercultural antipathy, Freeman presents it as a phenomenon to be investigated culturally and politically, and related to earlier and later eras, including our own.

Sources:

The American Revolution- Open Yale Courses

Joanne B. Freeman

May 24, 1844- Morse and Vail's First Telegram

Morse Code alphabet

History is not always as informative as we claim. The nature of communicating about things involves deciding what information to omit. Hopefully this is only for the logistical consideration of limited space, time, and attention. 

For this reason we say things like Samuel Morse invented the telegraph. Even a brief web search will reveal that this is debatable, or at least, a major oversimplification. As with nearly all inventions, many people around the globe were working on similar devices, many with the same name. Technology, like war, religion, and art, is something humans have always been passionate about, leading to controversy and complexity regarding the history of developments in these realms. 

People began working on ways to send messages electronically long before electricity was widely available to common people. Governments, universities, and private firms all realized the vast potential in speeding up communications through electricity. There were many versions that were experimented with, but Morse’s patented device, and his alphabet of dots and dashes, Morse Code, eventually became the standards. 

Morse certainly deserves credit for his contributions to telegraph technology, but so does his less mentioned partner, Alfred Vail. On May 24, 1844 Morse sent Vail the first successful message on their telegraph device, from Washington DC to Baltimore, Maryland. It was:

“What hath God wrought?”

Sources:

A Forgotten History: Alfred Vail and Samuel Morse- Smithsonian Institute Archives

Morse- Library of Congress

The Surprising History of the Morse Telegraph- Electronics Notes

May 17, 1756- England declares War on France (7 Years War)

Colonial claims in North America, 1854.

Winston Churchill called the 7 Years War the “First World War.” While it was primarily a conflict between Great Britain and France, it also drew in the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian Empires. The war contained theaters in Europe, North America, Africa, India, and beyond, as Britain sought to hobble the French colonial empire using its navy. 

Most of the nations involved, whether allied or opposed to Britain, record their own part in the war under more descriptive names. In the US it is commonly referred to as the “French and Indian War.” This conflict featured traditional European-style battles between French and British armies in North America, as well as North American tribes on both sides. It was also distinguished by guerrilla-style fighting throughout the borderlands of the colonial rivals.

In the spring of 1753 the French sent a colonial officer into the Ohio Valley to secure French forts that had long been disputed by British colonists and some of the local Native tribes. In the fall of 1753 Virginia’s governor ordered his provincial militia, led by 21 year old Major George Washington, to deliver a written order for the French to leave their territory. Washington did so while dining with the French commander at Fort Le Boeuf. He was unmoved and told Washington that France’s claim to the region was older and that he was not obliged to obey the order.

Washington took the message back to Virginia, but was soon dispatched back into the Ohio Country. An ambush on a French force led to international outrage and Washington’s famous surrender at Fort Necessity. The conflict intensified faultlines between European states, which led to a major political realignment known as the Diplomatic Revolution. Britain allied itself with Portugal and former French allies Prussia and Saxony. France, in turn, allied itself with Austria, Russia, and eventually Spain. 

Britain ultimately won the war, reaped numerous French colonial territories, and established  the dominance of its Naval infrastructure. However the costs of the war had put the Empire in serious debt. Over the next decade, as Britain sought to balance its books by taxing its colonies, separatist  movements in North America gained steam and led to the American Revolution. 

The Seven Years War was not declared until May 17, 1756, but the conflict had its roots in the French and Indian war in North America. For this reason Washington is often said to have set the war in motion with his attack on French forces in the Ohio Country. However, events may have exploded the way they did due to Washington’s Mingo ally Tanaghrisson killing the French commander Ensign Joseph Jumonville. Tanaghrisson executed him with a tomahawk to the skull.

Sources:

French and Indian War/7 Years War- Office of the Historian

Seven Years War- American Revolution Institute

Seven Years War and the Great Awakening- Crash Course

Tanaghrrison, the Half King- National Parks Service

Dangerous Subjects

James D. Saules was one of the earliest Black residents of Oregon’s Willamette (Walamt) Valley and the first to be exiled by the use of racial legislation in the region. Saules arrived in 1841, when the Pacific Northwest was under “Joint Occupation” by the United States and Great Britain. 

At the time the region was sparsely populated by immigrants, mostly French-Canadian fur-traders working for or retired from the Hudson’s Bay Company headquartered at Fort Vancouver on the north side of the Columbia River. These men, as well as maritime traders of various outside nations, had already brought enough foreign diseases to drastically reduce the population of Chinook, Kalapuyan, and other indigenous peoples. 

Most Americans were Protestant missionaries in small communities along the main rivers, the largest being in the Willamette Valley, just south of the Columbia River. US immigrants outside the missionary system began arriving in larger numbers in the early 1840s, sparking the creation of the Provisional Government. Its main purpose was to formalize settler’s land claims and send representatives back to the US to argue for making the “Oregon Country” an official territory. 

After Saules was involved in a dispute with neighboring settlers and a Wasco man named Cockstock, the Provisional Government used the event as a pretext for passing a law excluding Black people from the region. Saules left no records or statements of his own, a common problem  historians face when trying to create narratives to explain past events. Author Kenneth Coleman does an excellent job of telling the story of Saules’ life in Oregon with the primary sources available. 

In so doing, he demonstrates a rigorous and readable approach to history that confronts the omissions and biases of the sources and provides necessary context that allows the reader to better understand the experiences and actions of individuals from the past that have been underrepresented in historical accounts. 

Sources:

Dangerous Subjects- OSU Press

Racial Exclusion in pre-statehood Oregon- Kenneth Coleman

May 10, 1775- The Green Mountain Boys take Fort Ticonderoga

The Flag of the Green Mountain Boys, predating the Vermont Republic.

The Republic of Vermont was born out of land disputes between the colonies of New York and New Hampshire. Both claimed the territory but New Hampshire’s governor started making land grants for colonists in 1749. New York started issuing land grants in 1765. Many of the grants were for the same land, leading to violence between rival claimants. The New Hampshire colonists organized a militia known as the Green Mountain Boys in 1770 to defend beneficiaries of the New Hampshire grants and run off colonists from New York. Sporadic conflicts continued until Vermont was established as an independent republic in 1777. It was not until 1791 that Vermont joined the United States as the 14th state. 

The Green Mountain Boys also played a role in some of the early battles of the American War of Independence. Underground organizations like the Sons of Liberty had long been agitating, often through mob violence, against British soldiers and other authorities and arguing for American Independence. These conflicts led to the appointment of General Thomas Gage as the Royal governor of Massachusetts. When he ordered British forces to seize the military stores of Lexington and Concord, they were repelled by a number of local militia. This marked a turning point in the agitation for American independence as more colonists in New England and beyond began to rally around the besieged colony of Massachusetts.

On May 10, 1775, the Green Mountain Boys, along with some other colonial militiamen led by Benedict Arnold, conducted a surprise attack and successfully seized Fort Ticonderoga. They went on to assist with the seizures of Crown Point and Fort George, all British forts located in New York. 

Sources:

Green Mountain Boys- Wikipedia 

The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga- Fort Ticonderoga

The Vermont Republic- The History Guy 

GMNF- The Original Vermonters- US Forest Service

May 3, 1979- Margaret Thatcher elected Britain's first Female Prime Minister

Margaret Thatcher. 1983.Rob Bogaerts for Anefo. Nationaal Archief, CC0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Margaret_Thatcher_(1983)_(cropped).jpg

Margaret Thatcher is remembered as one of Britain’s most iconic leaders and capitalism’s staunchest champions. She was a Conservative Party leader who held various offices throughout the 60s and 70s. She believed firmly in free trade and limited government, and proved to be a persuasive advocate for these policies, particularly as inflation rose to high levels in the late 70s. 

On May 3, 1979, she became Britain's first female Prime Minister and held the office until 1990, longer than any other British PM of the 20th century. Thatcher was most famous for her economic policies, and vocal opposition to communism. While never lacking for critics and enemies, she also retained strong supporters, even beyond hardline conservatives. However, by the end of the 80s, Labour politicians in Britain were gaining steam, largely by criticizing the effects of Thatcher’s economic policies on middle and lower-class communities. This, coupled with her opposition to bringing Britain into the European monetary union, sparked opposition within her party, leading to her resignation in 1990. 

Sources:

What is Thatcherism- BBC

The Margaret Thatcher I Knew- Guardian

Margaret Thatcher, First Female Prime Minister 1979- AP Archive