Stephen A Douglas-The Lion of the Senate

Stephen Arnold Douglass was born in Brandon, Vermont on April 23, 1813 to a Stephen Arnold Douglass and a Sarah Fisk. A number of years later he dropped the second “s” from his name.

In 1833, he moved to Illinois and settled in Jacksonville. There he taught and studied law.

Douglas decided to enter politics and his rise in the political scene in Illinois was meteoritic even by the standards of the day

In 1834, he was appointed as Morgan County State Attorney and he served in that capacity until 1836.

He was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives and he was appointed to be an associate justice of the Illinois Supreme Court in 1841 and the very young age of 27.

In 1842 and 1844, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and in his second term he served alongside future President Abraham Lincoln who at that time was a Whig and they developed an intense rivalry and friendship as well.

Douglas was a supporter of the Mexican War and he was a proponent of territorial expansion as well.

In 1846, he was elected by the legislature to serve in the U.S. Senate. He was re elected in 1852 and 1858.

In 1858, his main challenger was Abraham Lincoln. Their nationally recognized debates significantly boosted Lincoln’s name recognition and Douglas commented later that the Senate Election of 1858 was only a ruse by Lincoln. Douglas believed to his dying day that Lincoln’s ambitions were for the presidency all along and Douglas also felt that Lincoln was a very talented politician in spite of his popular mantra as a simple “rail splitter.”

While in the Senate, Douglas was Chairman of the Committee on Territories. In this capacity he was almost wholly responsible for The Compromise of 1850 as well as the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed the people of new territories determine whether they were to become free or slave. The term “popular sovereignty” was the term coined and it was this term which was the nail in the coffin so to speak for the Whig Party and it was also the phrase which started the Republican Party.

Douglas also supported the Dred Scott Decision of 1857 that stated that parts of the Missouri Compromise were unconstitutional and that slaves were not citizens and under the current Constitution they would never be and therefore had no right to sue in federal court.

Douglas was a strong advocate of democracy. He believed that the will of the people was paramount. When President James Buchannan attempted to pass a federal slave code, Douglas strongly opposed it and the measure failed. This let to a split in the Democratic Party into two wings, a pro-slavery Southern wing and an anti-slavery Northern wing. This split would affect the entire country in 1860-1861.

At the 1860 Democratic National Convention which was held in Charleston, South Carolina, the convention split because of the failure to include slave codes for the new territories in its platform. Consequently, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Texas and Arkansas withdrew their delegations.

The convention reconvened in Baltimore, Maryland and the states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Maryland withdrew as well.

At this convention, Stephen Douglas was nominated for President by the Northern Democrats. The Southern Democrats would eventually nominate their own candidate, John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky.

During the election Douglas fought hard to maintain the Union. The South was already stating that if Lincoln was elected President, they would secede.

In the final results, Douglas came in second in the popular vote (1,376,957) but in the Electoral College, he came in last with only 12 votes compared to Lincoln’s 180. Most of his support in the North came from the Irish Catholics and the poor farmers and in the South most of his support came from the Irish Catholics. It just simply wasn’t enough to defeat Lincoln and win the presidency.

After the election, Douglas fought long and hard to preserve the Union. He campaigned tirelessly to try to convince the South to recognize Abraham Lincoln’s election. Even as late as December of 1860, Douglas wrote a letter to Alexander Stephens, a senator from Georgia and future Confederate Vice-President, offering to annex Mexico and offer it to the South as a slave state. Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829. Exactly how Douglas was going to accomplishment this is unclear even though there was talk in the early stages of the Lincoln Administration by Secretary of State William H. Seward of doing just this, in a last ditch attempt to unify the country.

After the southern states started seceding, Douglas denounced these acts as criminal. He was a strong supported of preserving the Union at all costs.

When war finally did break out, Lincoln dispatched Douglas to the Border States and the Midwest urging everyone to support maintaining the Union. He spoke in Virginia, Ohio and Illinois.

Stephen Arnold Douglas was one of the greatest Senators to ever serve. His nickname was “Little Giant” in the Senate. Although he was small in stature he was considered one of the greatest Senators to ever serve, whether you disagree with his positions or not, his primary motivation was the preservation of the Union. He believed in the Union above everything else.

In 1861, Stephen Douglas contracted typhoid fever and he died in Chicago, Illinois on June 3, 1861 and he was buried in Chicago on the shore of Lake Michigan.

The Baltimore Riot of 1861

On April 19, 1861 in Baltimore, Maryland the Baltimore Riot of 1861 also known at the Pratt Street Riot or the Pratt Street Massacre occurred. The participants were Confederate sympathizers and members of the Massachusetts Militia who were en route to Washington, D.C. to report for federal service. This is considered by many historians as the first engagement of the Civil War which resulted in bloodshed.

The Civil War for all practical purposes had begun the week before on April 12th with the Confederate batteries firing on Ft. Sumter. At this point four southern states had yet to secede. They were: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas. There were other slave states that did not secede but at the time it wasn’t guaranteed that they would remain in the Union although eventually they would. They are: Delaware, Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky.

Many influential Marylanders were supportive of secession dating back to the days of John C. Calhoun and the Nullification Crisis thirty years prior.

The secession movement was very popular in Maryland and in Baltimore in particular especially after President Lincoln called up for troops from the states for 90 days to repel the insurrection. In fact, during the Election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln only received 1,100 votes out of over 30,000 votes cast in the city of Baltimore alone.

Needless to say Baltimore was a hotbed o secession activity and the only way to get to Washington, D.C. by train at the time was through Baltimore.

On April 18th, a unit of militiamen from Pennsylvania came through Baltimore and anti-Union forces were surprised and not ready but they vowed to be ready the next time this happened.

The next day, on April 19th, the anti-Union forces would get their chance. The Union’s Sixth Massachusetts Regiment was attempting to transfer between stations when a mob of secessionists attacked the train cars and blocked the route.

When it became apparent that they could not proceed the soldiers disembarked from the train and proceeded to march through Baltimore on foot.

The mob followed the soldiers. They threw rocks, bricks and even fired pistols at them. At this point the soldiers started firing into the crowd and a general melee occurred between the soldiers, the secessionists and even the Baltimore Police who were trying to put a buffer between the two groups.

The soldiers finally made it to Camden Station but they had to leave most of their equipment behind.

Four soldiers were killed in the attack; Corporal Sumner Needham, Privates Luther C. Ladd, Charles Taylor and Addison Whitney. Twelve civilians were also killed and the total wounded is unknown.

After the riot some small skirmishes occurred through Baltimore and the rest of Maryland for the next month. Both the Mayor of Baltimore and the Governor of Maryland begged President Lincoln to ovoid sending troops through Baltimore. Lincoln replied that there was no other way to Washington by rail except through Baltimore so their request was denied.

On April 20th, more Massachusetts troops under the command of General Benjamin Butler arrived in Annapolis via ship. Butler bullied the Governor to permit them to travel to Washington via the rail line leaving Annapolis.

There was a lot of support from residents for the legislature to declare secession in the wake of the riots. Since Annapolis was under control of Federal troops, the Governor had the legislature move to Fredrick, Maryland which was in the western part of the state and predominately unionist.

More Union troops began to arrive and on May 13th, Butler sent troops into Baltimore and declared martial law. He arrested the mayor, the city council and the police commissioner had had them incarcerated at Ft. McHenry because they were pro secession and were either unable or unwilling to maintain order.

The legislative session in Fredrick continued through all of this and several secession votes came up but were voted down because many legislators felt that they didn’t have the authority without approval of the citizens.

There was a plan to reconvene the legislature on September 17th; however on that day Federal troops arrested several pro secession members and the session was canceled due to a lack of a quorum.

As a result of these events, Delaware was occupied in the same manner as Maryland with the same results. Kentucky declared its neutrality even though later they decided to remain in the Union. Missouri remained in the Union camp but there were Confederate governments-in-exile established in Arkansas and Texas.

Even though this riot was small in nature to many of the battles of the Civil War, it was nonetheless extremely important.

In order for the Union to survive, its capital could not be surrounded by the Confederacy which was for all intents and purposes a hostile enemy.

There may have been some unconstitutional irregularities but considering the time it was quite necessary.

The Pullman Strike

The Pullman Strike was a nationwide conflict between labor unions and the railroad industry which began in Pullman, Illinois on May 11, 1894 when 3,000 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages as a result of the Panic of 1893.  This strike halted all railway traffic west of Chicago.

During the Panic of 1893, the Pullman Company had substationally decreased wages and implemented a mandatory sixteen hour work day because demand for luxury cars was much lower because of the panic.

When workers set up a delegation to meet with the owner, George Pullman, he refused to meet them to discuss their demands.  This was the precipitator of the strike.

The American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs actively supported the strike and led a boycott of all Pullman cars.  No railway worker would run trains containing Pullman cars and they also refused to hook or unhook Pullman cars on existing trains as well.  The union declared that if any of their members were disciplined for this that they would start a nationwide strike of all rail companies effectively shutting down the entire railway industry.

The boycott began on June 26, 1894 and by June 30th, over 125,000 workers on twenty-nine railroads had quit working rather than handle Pullman cars.  As a result, railway companies began to hire strikebreakers to replace the striking workers.  This just made the entire situation more dangerous.

On June 29, 1894 in Blue Island, Illinois, Eugene Debs led a peaceful gathering in order to gain support from fellow railway workers.  After the gathering, several impassioned participants became enraged and began to set fire to buildings and even derailed a locomotive.

Sympathy strikes began to occur nationwide and the strikers were getting into increased violent outbreaks against strikebreakers and the entire railway industry was virtually shut down.

In response to this the railway companies were successful in getting Richard Olney, who was the general council of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway appointed as a special federal attorney responsible for dealing with the strike.

Olney was able to get a federal injunction barring the union leaders from supporting the strike and ordering all railway workers back to work or they would face termination from their jobs.  Debs and the other union leaders ignored the injunction and federal troops were called into action to break the strike.

President Grover Cleveland sent in the U.S. Marshals and approximately 12,000 U.S. Army troops to break the strike on the premise that the strike was preventing the mail from being delivered and that the strike was also violating the Sherman Antitrust Act  and as well as threatening public safety.

The arrival of the military and the additional deaths of workers also helped to increase the violence.  During the course of the strike, thirteen workers were killed and fifty-seven were wounded.  Property damages totaled $340,000 ($8,818,000 in 2010 dollars).

Civil as well as criminal charges were filed against the union and Debs and the Supreme Court in it’s In re Debs decision, stated that President Cleveland had not exceeded his constitutional authority.

Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld was so angered at President Cleveland for utilizing federal troops instead of using Altgeld’s plan to use the Illinois State Militia to maintain order that he used his influence as the head of the Illinois Delegation at the Democratic National Convention in 1896 and was able to block Cleveland’s renomination as the Democratic Presidential candidate.  William Jennings Bryant was the nominee and he lost to Republican William McKinley later that fall.

Later, a national commission was formed to look into the causes of the strike and it was found that the main cause of the strike was Pullman’s “paternalism” and they also stated that the company town of Pullman, Illinois was in their words, “un-American.”  

Also, in 1898, the Illinois State Supreme Court forced the Pullman Company to divest itself from Pullman, Illinois and the city was annexed by the City of Chicago.

Thornton Wilder

Thornton Niven Wilder was born on April 17, 1897 in Madison, Wisconsin the son of an American diplomat, Amos Parker Wilder and Isabella Niven wilder.  As a result of his father’s occupation, Mr. Wilder spent a good part of his childhood in China.

Wilder began writing while he was a student at The Thatcher School in Ojai, California.  At this school he was tortured and teased constantly by his classmates for being overly intelligent.

Wilder found refuge in the library where books and writing became his refuge from the continued verbal assaults by his fellow classmates.

While living in China, he attended the English China Inland Mission Chefoo School in Yantai but was forced to leave in 1912 with his mother and siblings as the political situation in China became dangerous.

He also attended the Creekside Middle School in Berkeley, California and graduated from Berkeley High School in 1915.

Wilder attempted to study law at Purdue University but dropped out.

Wilder served in the Coast Guard during World War I and afterwards attended Oberlin College.  In 1920, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University in 1920.

While at Princeton Wilder joined the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity where he worked on improving his writing skills.

In 1926, Wilder earned his Masters of Art in French from Princeton University.

After graduation Wilder studied in Rome and he taught French at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.

In 1926 his first novel, The Cabala was published.  In 1927, The Bridge of San Luis Rey was published and brought him his first commercial success along with his first Pulitzer Prize in 1928.

From 1930 to 1937 he taught at the University of Chicago and in 1938 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with his play Our Town and again in 1942 for his play The Skin of Our Teeth.

During World War II, Wilder joined the U.S. Army Air Force intelligence where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.  He served in Africa and then in Italy until 1945.

After the war, Wilder served as a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii and he taught poetry at Harvard University as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor.

Even though Wilder considered teaching his main profession he continued to write all of his life and he won the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1957 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and in 1967 he won the National Book Award for Eighth Day.

Wilder translated plays by André Obey and Jean-Paul Sartre and Alfred Hitchcock who was a huge fan asked him to write the screenplay for his movie Shadow of a Doubt.

His last novel, Theophilus North was published in 1973 and was made into the film, Mr. North in 1988.

Thornton Wilder died on December 7, 1975 in Hamden, Connecticut where he had lived with his sister Isabel.  He was buried in Hamden’s Mount Carmel Cemetery

Battle of Ft Sumter

On April 12, 1861 began the Battle of Ft. Sumter.  This has been commonly referred to as the opening shots of the American Civil War. The battle resulted in a Confederate victory.

Before we even begin to go over the actual battle I think that a little bit of background information needs to be covered first.

The causes of the Civil War are quite lengthy and would take a lot of time.  I will just go over the background required to explain this battle.  Civil War causes are for another time.

On December 20, 1860 South Carolina seceded from the Union.  On December 26th, Major Robert Anderson abandoned the indefensible Ft. Moultrie and secretly redeployed Companies E and H (127 men) of the 1st U.S. Artillery to Ft. Sumter without orders from Washington on his own imitative.  Major Anderson felt that Ft. Sumter was easier to defend and its location would delay an attack by the South Carolina Militia.

Bear in mind that Ft. Sumter was still under construction and had only half of its cannons.  The fort wasn’t completed yet because President James Buchannan had been actively downsizing the military throughout his entire term in office.

Over the next few months the government of South Carolina and finally Brigadier General P.T.G. Beauregard were continually demanding that Union forces abandon the fort.  These demands were ignored by the Federal government.

The Federal government attempted to resupply and reinforce the garrison on January 9, 1861.  They were repulsed by forces compromised of cadets from the Citadel also known as the Military College of South Carolina.

They fired upon a steamer named Star of the West which was hired by the Union for this purpose.  Because of the attack on the ship the fort was not resupplied.

President Abraham Lincoln was informed after his inauguration on March 4, 1861 that the fort would run out of food by April 15th.  Something decisive had to be done and quickly.

President Lincoln ordered a fleet of ships under the command of Gustavus V. Fox to attempt to enter Charleston Harbor and resupply and reinforce Ft. Sumter.

The ships assigned to this task were the following:  sleep sloops of war USS Pawnee and USS Powhatan as well as armed screw steamers USS Pocahontas and USRC Harriet Lane, also the steamer Baltic carrying 200 troops from Companies C and D from the 2nd U.S. Artillery.  Three added tug boats also were deployed to provide additional protection from small arms fire.

The ships left on April 6, 1861 and the first to arrive at the rendezvous point was the Harriet Lane just before midnight of April 11, 1861.

On April 11, 1861 Gen Beauregard sent three aides, Colonel James A. Chesnut, Jr, Captain Stephen D. Lee and Lieutenant A.R. Chisolm to demand the surrender of the fort.  Major Anderson declined and they went back to Beauregard to report.

Beauregard then consulted with Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Walker.  He then sent the aides back to the fort and authorized Colonel Chesnut to decide whether or not the fort should be taken by force.

Major Anderson stalled the Confederate aides for several hours before he announced his decision.  At 3 A.M. he delivered his conditions to the Confederate aides.

Colonel Chesnut replied that Major Anderson’s terms were “manifestly futile and not within the scope of the instructions verbally given to us”.

At that point the aides left the presence of Major Anderson and proceeded to nearby Ft. Johnson where Colonel Chesnut gave the orders to fire upon Ft. Sumter.

On Friday, April 12, 1861 at 4:30 A.M. Confederate batteries began firing on Ft. Sumter.  They fired continuously for thirty-four straight hours.

No attempt to return fire was made for two hours because there were no fuses for their explosive shells and only solid balls could be used against the Rebel batteries.  To put it simply, they were just not up to the task.

Around 7A.M. Union Captain Abner Doubleday was given the “honor” of firing the first shot at Confederate forces.  His shot was ineffective because he did not use the upper tier of cannons which were more exposed to Confederate fire.

The firing continued all day but the Union batteries fired slowly in order to conserve ammunition.

By nightfall, the firing from the fort stopped and only an occasional lob from Confederate forces towards the fort was fired.

On Saturday, April 13, 1865, Ft. Sumter was surrendered and the fort was evacuated the following day.

During the entire battle there were no casualties on the Union side although there was one casualty after the battle during a salute permitted by the Confederates.  There was one Confederate casualty.  A soldier bled to death after being injured by a misfiring cannon.

After the fort was evacuated, the supply ship Star of the West took all evacuated soldiers to New York City where there was a parade on Broadway in their honor.

The ships deployed to reinforce and resupply Ft. Sumter were unable to do this task because of the bombardment.

The bombardment of Ft. Sumter was in essence the first military engagement of the Civil War.  After the battle, Northerners rallied behind President Lincoln’s call for the states to send troops to recapture the fort and preserve the Union.

With the scale of the rebellion so small at this point Lincoln requested 75,000 troops to be called up for ninety days.

This call for troops caused four more states to secede from the Union.  Notably Virginia who would give the Confederacy it’s most competent officers.

The Civil War would continue for another four long years culminating with the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of Robert E. Lee.

John Mercer Langston, A Civil Rights Pioneer

 John Mercer Langston was born on December 14, 1829 in Louisa County, Virginia.  He was the son of Ralph Quarles, a white plantation owner and Lucy Jane Langston a freedwoman of mixed African and Native American roots.

Langston was primarily noted for being the first African-American member of Congress.  He was elected in 1888 from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Mercer was also an attorney, educator, abolitionist and political activist.  He was also the great-uncle and namesake of Langston Hughes.

He was also the first Dean of the law school at Howard University and helped to create the Law Department there sand he was also the first president of the present day Virginia State University.

Langston began his career in Ohio where he began his life long work for freedom and equality for African-Americans.  He was one of the first African-Americans ever elected to public office anywhere in the United States when he was elected to a town clerk’s position in Ohio in 1855.

All his life he fought for equality and opportunity for African-Americans in the areas of freedom, suffrage and equal rights.

Langston was born free in 1829 in Louisa County, Virginia.  His mother was freed in 1809 after the birth of her eldest daughter.  Langston’s parents had maintained their relationship for over twenty-five years and his father wanted all of his children born free.

Langston’s parents died when he was four.  He was sent to Chillicothe, Ohio to live with a friend of his father’s, a William Gooch and his family.

While living with the Gooch family, Langston enrolled in the preparatory program at Oberlin College when he was fourteen.

While at Oberlin he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1849 and a master’s degree in theology in 1852.

Langston then applied to various law schools in Ohio and New York but was denied admission because of his race.  He studied law under attorney and Republican Congressman Philemon Bliss and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1854.

In 1854, Langston married a Caroline Matilda Wall who like Langston had a white father and African-American mother.  She was a freedwoman as well and an Oberlin College graduate.  Together they had five children.

Langston along with his older brothers Gideon and Charles became active in the abolitionist movement.  He and his brothers actively assisted runaway slaves escape to freedom as part of the Underground Railroad.

In 1858 he became president of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society and Langston travelled throughout the state recruiting and organizing local units while his brother Charles remained in Cleveland as executive secretary.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Langston lobbied hard to permit African-Americans to serve in the army.  Finally in 1863 the United States approved the formation of the United States Colored Troops, Langston was appointed to recruit African-Americans to fight for the Union Army.

Langston recruited hundreds of African-American men for the Fifty-Fourth and Fifty-fifth Regiments as well as over 800 African-Americans for a regiment from Ohio.

After the Civil War ended, Langston was appointed inspector-general for the freedman’s Bureau.  This organization assisted newly emancipated slaves adjust to their new freedoms and they also ran schools and a bank to further assist the African-American community.

Langston worked and fought hard for equal rights and suffrage rights for African-Americans.  He believed that because of how valiantly African Americans had fought for their freedom that the right to vote should be theirs as well.  The right to vote was paramount for African-Americans if they were ever going to gain equality in American society.

In 1864, Langston chaired a committee whose responsibility was to report to a black national convention on African-American rights.  Their agenda which was approved by this convention called for the abolition of slavery, the support of racial unity and self help and equality before the law.  To meet these goals, the convention founded The National Equal Rights League and appointed Langston its first president.  He served in that capacity until 1868.  This organization was the precursor to the National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The League was organized to have many state and local organizations.  Langston travelled throughout the U.S. organizing and recruiting.  By the end of the war there were chapters in every state in the Union.

In 1868, Langston moved to Washington, D.C. where he established the law department at Howard University and served as its first dean.

In 1872, he became the acting president of the university and a vice-president of the school as well.  Langston advocated establishing strong academic standards and he wanted to see the same type of open environment at Howard that he had enjoyed as a student at Oberlin.  He was passed over for selection as the first President of the Howard University College of Law.  No reason was ever publicly given.

In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Langston to be U.S. Minister to Haiti and he also served as chargé d’affaires to the Dominican Republic.

In 1885, Langston returned to the United States and settled in Virginia.  There he became the first president of the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (Virginia State University) in Petersburg.

In 1888, Langston was urged to run for Congress as a Republican by both white and black Republicans.  He ran in the election but was defeated by his Democratic opponent.  Langston contested the elections due to the fact there were many accusations of fraud and many reports of voter intimidation.

After eighteen months Langston was declared the winner of the election and took his seat in the U.S. Congress for the remaining six months of his term.  He lost re-election in 1890 but he was the first African-American to be elected to the Congress and in the Commonwealth of Virginia it would be over fifty years before another African-American would be elected.

Langston was also named as a member of the board of trustees of St. Paul Normal and Industrial School (St. Paul’s College, Virginia) in its organization papers passed by an act of the Virginia General Assembly in 1890.

Langston died on November 15, 1897 in Washington, D.C.

John Mercer Langston was one of the earliest pioneers for equal rights for African-Americans.  Along with Fredrick Douglass he paved the way for the civil rights movement that occurred as century later.  It’s unfortunate that his accolades are not well known but I believe that without the efforts of people like John Mercer Langston civil rights in the United States would be much further back than they currently are.