This+week+in+History

Notable events from or near the period we're studying that happened during this week in American History. These listed events are from the Library of Congress (a beautiful building) and their Today in History webpage [] unless other wise noted.

On **January 17**, 1871, San Franciscan Andrew Smith Allide patented an improved “Endless Wire Ropeway”, a key component in the construction of the first cable car system that ultimately spared many horses the excruciating work of moving people over San Francisco’s steep roadways. Hallidie devised a grip mechanism by which cars were drawn along an endless cable running in a slot between the rails.  History.com On January 8, 1867 Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson's veto of a bill granting black men the right to vote in the District of Columbia. It would be 3 years later (in 1870) before the 15th amendment was ratified granting black men the right to vote throughout the nation.

from History.com

John Brown is hanged for his attack on Brown's Ferry Arsenal - officially charged with treason, murder and insurrection - on December 2, 1859 in Virginia. Brown was a committed and violent abolitionist, having gotten his start in Kansas.

//Nov 11, 1852: // ==Louisa May Alcott publishes her first story == On this day, the // Saturday Evening Gazette // publishes "The Rival Painters: A Story of Rome," by Louisa May Alcott, who will later write the beloved children's book // Little Women // (1868). Alcott, the second of four daughters, was born in Pennsylvania but spent most of her life in Concord, Massachusetts. Her father, Bronson, was close friends with Transcendentalist thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, whose progressive attitudes toward education and social issues left a strong mark on Louisa. Her father started a school based on Transcendentalist teachings, but after six years it failed, and he was unable to support the family and, afterward, Louisa dedicated most of her life to supporting them. After the publication of her first story, she made a living off sentimental and melodramatic stories for more than two decades.



On **October 20**, 1803, the Senate ratified the Louisiana Territory Purchase by a vote of twenty-four to seven. The agreement, which provided for the purchase of the western half of the Mississippi River basin from France at a price of $15 million, or approximately four cents per acre, doubled the size of the country and paved the way for westward expansion beyond the Mississippi. Spain had controlled Louisiana and the strategic port of New Orleans with a relatively free hand since 1762. However, Spain signed the Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800 under pressure from Napoleon Bonaparte, a secret agreement retroceding the territory of Louisiana to France. News of the agreement eventually reached the U.S. government. President Thomas Jefferson feared that if Louisiana came under French control, American settlers living in the Mississippi River Valley would lose free access to the port of New Orleans. On April 18, 1802, Jefferson wrote a letter to Robert Livingston, the U.S. minister to France, warning that, "There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans…" Napoleon, faced with a shortage of cash, a recent military defeat in Santo Domingo(present-day Haiti), and the threat of a war with Britain, decided to cut his losses and abandon his plans for an empire in the New World. In 1803, he offered to sell the entire territory of Louisiana to the United States for $15 million. Robert Livingston and James Monroe whom Jefferson had sent to Paris earlier that year, had only been authorized to spend up to $10 million to purchase New Orleans and West Florida. Although the proposal for the entire territory exceeded their official instructions, they agreed to the deal. The Louisiana Purchase Treaty was dated April 30 and formally signed on May 2, 1803. The bounds of the territory, which were not clearly delineated in the treaty, were assumed to include all the land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, at that time known as the Stony Mountains. Just twelve days after the signing of the treaty, frontiersmen Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, younger brother of Revolutionary War officer George Rogers Clark, set out on an expedition to explore the newly acquired territory. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory and the Lewis and Clark expedition marked the beginning of a century of conquest. As explorers, speculators, adventurers, and settlers pushed the territorial boundaries of the United States westward toward the Pacific coast, the notion of America as a nation always pushing toward new frontiers took hold in art, literature, folklore, and the national psyche.

On **September 26**, 1777, British troops marched into Philadelphia and occupied the city forcing the Continental Congress, meeting in the Pennsylvania State House (later renamed Independence Hall), to flee to the interior of Pennsylvania. General Washington and his army had battled the British south of Philadelphia at Brandywine Creek on September 11. That evening, Washington sent a letter to the Continental Congress reporting the outcome: > Sir: I am sorry to inform you that in this day's engagement, we have been obliged to leave the enemy masters of the field. Unfortunately the intelligence received of the enemy's advancing up the Brandywine, and crossing at a Ford about six miles above us, was uncertain and contradictory, notwithstanding all my pains to get the best…our loss of men is not, I am persuaded, very considerable, I believe much less than the enemy's…. Notwithstanding the misfortune of the day, I am happy to find the troops in good spirits; and I hope another time we shall compensate for the losses now sustained. The Marquis La Fayette was wounded in the leg, and Genl. Woodford in the hand. Divers other Officers were wounded, and some Slain, but the number of either cannot now be ascertained… G. Washington. P. S. It has not been in my power to send you earlier intelligence; the present being the first leisure moment I have had since the action. > (Letter, George Washington to Continental Congress, September 11, 1777)

Burgoyne's Surrender at Saratoga, (detail) Percy Moran, artist After a series of discouraging military defeats, on **September 19**, 1777, continental soldiers fighting under American General Horatio Gates defeated the British at Saratoga, New York. Within weeks, Gates joined forces with American General Benedict Arnold to vanquish the redcoats again at the Second Battle of Saratoga. On October 17, British General John Burgoyne surrendered his troops under the Convention of Saratoga, which provided for the return of his men to Great Britain on condition that they would not serve again in North America during the war. American victory at the Battles of Saratoga turned the tide of the war in the colonists favor and helped persuade the French to recognize American independence and provide military assistance outright.

(historicalmarkers.com) Early on the morning of Sunday, **September 9**, 1739, twenty black Carolinians met near the Stono River, approximately twenty miles southwest of Charleston. At Stono's bridge, they took guns and powder from Hutcheson's store and killed the two storekeepers they found there. "With cries of 'Liberty' and beating of drums," historian Peter H. Wood writes in the //Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History,// "the rebels raised a standard and headed south toward Spanish St. Augustine…Along the road they gathered black recruits, burned houses, and killed white opponents, sparing one innkeeper who was 'kind to his slaves.'" Thus commenced the Stono Rebellion, the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies prior to the American Revolution. Late that afternoon, planters riding on horseback caught up with the band of sixty to one hundred slaves. More than twenty white Carolinians and nearly twice as many black Carolinians were killed before the rebellion was suppressed. As a consequence of the uprising, white lawmakers imposed a moratorium on slave imports and enacted a harsher slave code. Slaves frequently resorted to insurrection, first in the British colonies and later in the southern United States. At least 250 insurrections have been documented; between 1780 and 1864, ninety-one African Americans were convicted of insurrection in Virginia alone. The first revolt in what became the United States took place in 1526 at a Spanish settlement near the mouth of the Pee Dee River in South Carolina.



William Penn Acquires the Lower Counties
On **August 24**, 1682, the Duke of York awarded Englishman William Penn a deed to the "Three Lower Counties" that make up the present state of Delaware, recently transferred from Dutch to British jurisdiction. Penn acquired this tract of land just west of the Delaware Bay in order to ensure ocean access for his new colony of Pennsylvania. While Delaware established its own assembly in 1704, it was not until shortly after July 1776 that Delaware became a separate state. On December 7, 1787, Delaware was the "first state" to ratify the new U.S. Constitution, thereby earning its current proud nickname. The boundary separating Delaware from Pennsylvania and a portion of Maryland is an unusual one, featuring the arc of a circle defined by a twelve-mile radius centered on the courthouse at New Castle. An ongoing dispute between Penn and Maryland's Lord Baltimore about the extent of each's territory had led to this unique resolution. The same dispute spurred the creation of the famous Mason-Dixon Linein 1763, when British surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were selected to establish a definitive Maryland-Pennsylvania border—a task that took five years to complete. This line, moving west, came to symbolize the divisions of North from South in the years before the American Civil War. Before Penn, Delaware's fertile coastal plain attracted the Lenni-Lenape (later named Delaware Indians), who supported themselves by farming, hunting, and fishing. Swedes, the region's first permanent European settlers, arrived in the late 1630s, establishing themselves in what is now Wilmington. With its accessibility to other ports, especially the **Port of Philadelphia** twenty-five miles to the northeast, and its abundance of natural resources, the Wilmington area flourished as a center for saw, paper, and flour mills, aided by creation of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.



August 18th, 1587 - Virginia Dare, the first English person born in the New World. {Taken from []} The granddaughter of Governor John White, Virginia Dare was the first child born of English parents in the new world. The child's mother was White's daughter Eleanor. Her father, Ananias Dare, served as one of the Governor's assistants. Virginia was born on August 18, 1587, days after the colonists arrival on Roanoke Island. Her baptism on Sunday following her birth was the second recorded Christian sacrament administered in North America. The first baptism had been administered a few days earlier to Manteo, an Indian chief who was rewarded for his service by being christened and named Lord.

When Governor White was forced to return to England for supplies, Virginia Dare was less than a month old, and he left with heavy heart, never realizing that he would never see her or any of the other colonists who remained behind again. Leaving the new world and his family behind must have been difficult for White. A secret code had been worked out, that should they leave Roanoke Island, they were to carve their new location on a conspicuous tree or post. If the move had to be made because of an attack, either by Indians or Spaniards, they were to carve over the letters or name a distress signal in the form of a Maltese cross.

Three years to the month later, White returned to find the word //Croatoan// without any cross or other sign of distress. To this day, no one is certain were the lost colony went, or what happened to them.



On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus set out on his first voyage to what came to be known as the New World. With three ships and a crew of ninety, Columbus hoped to find a western route to the Far East. Instead, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria landed in the Bahamas Christopher Columbus set sail in an era of maritime advances, charting his route with the aid of a mariner's compass, an astrolabe, a cross-staff, and a quadrant. The most popular map for mariners at the time was Ptolemy's Geography or Cosmography, printed in 1482 but originally compiled by the Alexandrian geographer, astronomer, and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy in the second century A.D.