In 1720, on this day the Jacobite Pretender Charles Edward Stuart was born in the Palazzo Muti, Rome.
This article is a reversal of the Jackie Rose story Hard Man which focuses on Captain Francis O'Neill

Happy Endings Part 17
Hard Woman saves the Forty-Five RebellionAged twenty-five he launched a bold attempt to restore the House of Stuart. Because in 1745 a five thousand man Jacobite army landed at Moidart in the Outer Hebrides. But of course it took a woman to save the forty-five rebellion from abject failure - the incomparable Highland rebel Flora MacDonald.

Hopes had built up rather quickly; at the Battle of Prestonpans they had soundly defeated the only government army in Scotland. But their hapless commander General John Cope would soon be replaced by the murderous Duke of Cumberland and the mood in the camp would drastically change. In despair the Young Pretender had left the still undefeated Jacobite Army in the hands of his trusted companion, Captain Francis O'Neill. Planning to flee Scotland forever, the Prince sought the incomparable Highland rebel Flora MacDonald for her assistance only to discover that the MacDonalds were secretly sympathetic with the Jacobite cause. She convinced the Prince to rejoin the Jacobite Army by promising to organize reinforcements from her own Clan. With fresh resolve, he inspired the "forty-five" rebels with a fiery new leadership that turned the tables on the Hanoverians.
The full novel is available for download at the Extasy Books web site.

In 1880, on this day the sixteenth President of the Confederate States George Catlett Marshall, Jr. was born in Lexington, Virginia.

George Marshall
16^th Confederate President
March 4, 1952 - 1958He was a Confederate Army officer, former Secretary of State, under President Byrnes and the last Whig Party candidate to be elected president before the party broke up.

As President, Marshall kept up the pressure on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, made nuclear weapons a higher defense priority, began the Interstate Highway System and saw the start of the Confederate Civil Rights Movement.

At a time when the majority of the Whig party had grown more fiscally and socially conservative, Marshall was a Leeian Whig who gained support from moderates of both the Democrat and Whig party's. A new article from the "Two Americas" thread on Althistory WikiaHis push for an Interstate Highway System and his passing of the Confederate Civil Rights Act of 1955 were both popular with Liberals; however, these acts would eventually lead to a complete political realignment, with Conservatives from both the Whig and Democratic party's breaking away to form the Confederalist Party, while the remaining Democrats would eventually reshape themselves into the Liberal Party.
The whole alternate biography is available Althistory Wiki.

In 1980, Marxist leader Rob Mugabe published his controversial auto-biography The Great Betrayal. The central event in the memoirs was a decision taken at the dissolution of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Federation, in which Great Britain abrogated the principle of No Independence Before Majority African Rule. The Great Betrayal

Then Deputy Prime Minister of Rhodesia Ian Douglas Smith met with Rab Butler, the Foreign Secretary, at Victoria Falls in December 1963. Butler grandly declared that Britain was "very happy to agree" to independence for Southern Rhodesia, at least at the same time as Zambia and Malawi. Smith asked Butler for the undertaking in writing. Butler demurred with: "There is trust between members of the British Commonwealth". Smith wagged his finger at Butler, and said: "If you break that, you will live to regret it".

There was no cause for concern in London or Salisbury, and Smith was being characteristically belligerent. Smith, who became the Prime Minister shortly afterwards, was of Scottish ancestry, and a war hero that had fought bravely for Britain during World War 2.

Ian Douglas Smith was born in the village of Selukwe in central Rhodesia, of a Scottish father, Jock, and Rhodesian-born mother, Agnes. He was educated at Chaplin School nearby with moderate academic achievement, captaining the first XV and running the 100 yards in 10 seconds. He began a bachelor of commerce degree at Rhodes University in South Africa in 1938, establishing an impressive academic record and rowing for the university.

War broke out in 1939 and in 1941 he joined the RAF Empire Air Training Scheme at Guinea Fowl in central Rhodesia. He was posted to 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron in the Middle East, flying Hawker Hurricanes.

Taking off from Alexandria on a dawn patrol in 1943, his throttle malfunctioned, he lost height and clipped the barrel of a Bofors gun. He crashed and rammed his face against the Hurricane's gunsight. He suffered severe facial injuries, broke his jaw, a leg and a shoulder, and buckled his back. Surgeons at the 15th Scottish Hospital in Cairo reconstructed his face and, after only five months, he rejoined his squadron in Corsica. He realised his dream to fly Spitfire Mark IXs, carrying out strafing raids and escorting American bombers.

In mid-1944 Smith was leading a raid on a train of fuel tankers in the Po Valley when he made the mistake of going back for a second run.The Spitfire was hit by an anti-aircraft shell, caught fire and he baled out. He was soon picked up by the partisans. The five months he spent with them near Sasello, learning Italian, reading Shakespeare and working as a peasant, he regarded as one of the best times of his life.>Near the end of the war, he and three other Allied fugitives made their way through occupied Italy to the Maritime Alps. At one point the conspicuously tall, fair-haired Rhodesian strode unhindered through a German checkpoint. He led his tiny group over the mountains, walking barefoot on ice, until they reached an American patrol on the other side.

In 2012, on this day President George Weaver issues a cryptic order, in Latin: "Rex Mundi delenda est" - "The King of the World must be destroyed".

The King of the World must be destroyed by Eric LippsFollowing the order, a U.S. fighter-bomber armed with nuclear missiles is launched, flying across several U.S. states before heading out over the Atlantic Ocean.
Several hours later, horrifying reports come in that Rome has been destroyed by a nuclear explosion. Hundreds of thousands are feared dead, among them Pope Benedict XVI and many members of the College of Cardinals, which had been meeting to discuss improving relations with Egypt's Coptic Christian church.

Weaver had assumed the presidency following the death in July of 2009 of President John McCain from a heart attack. Weaver's ascendancy had come as a shock to many: an obscure member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Idaho, he had seemed an unlikely choice as McCain's running-mate in the 2008 election. Peculiar rumors had swirled around him, claiming he was associated with a shadowy survivalist group known as the Remnant of the Pure, which conspiracy theorists link to the medieval Cathar schismatics who had been nearly destroyed by Catholic crusaders. Nothing had been proven, however, and McCain and Weaver had gone on to win that November. In the wake of the Rome disaster, it will be charged that Weaver plotted the destruction of the Vatican in service to a modern-day Cathar movement dedicated to destroying the Catholic Church.

In 1499, on this day future Queen of England Mary Boleyn was born in Blickling Hall, the family seat in Norfolk. But she grew up at Hever Castle, Kent alongside her less famous siblings Thomas and Anne (the wife of Percy of Northumberland).
An installment from the Happy Endings thread

Happy Endings Part 15
Henry VIII's Second Wife: Mary BoleynBecause the Tudors was locked in conflict with elements the nobility, her origin amongst the "new men" of self-acquired wealth played well in the Royal court. Accordingly she was sent to the French court in the household of the queen, Henry VIII's younger sister Mary Tudor who was betrothed to King Louis XII.

A blond, blue-eyed, curvy beauty that was the era's belle idéale, she was greatly desired by the Valois monarch's son François I. However in 1515 Louis died, and the Tudor Household was recalled to England. And François's loss was King Henry VIII's gain. They remained happily married until her tragic death age just forty-three, having two children Henry and Catherine. Surely there was some irony in this choice of names, because of course the Pope refused to grant Henry a divorce for Catherine of Aragon, and their relationship caused a schism in the English Church that lasts until today. But then you can't have everything..

In 1942, on this day Subhas Chandra Bose raised the flag of Indian independence at Calcutta.

Quit India, Part #2
Return of the Leaping Tiger, by Ed & Scott PalterAn unstoppable Japanese drive through Burma had made the occupation of the former Imperial Capital possible, if not quite inevitable due to logistical constraints and rivalry in the Imperial Japanese Army. And even though the rebel Indian National Army (INA) never completed their "March to Delhi", the fatal blow to British prestige had been struck. Because the Axis partition of the Raj would forever change the destiny of the Indian subcontinent. One that even Bose himself could never have imagined.

Of course the Fall of Calcutta transformed the fates of all engaged parties. After the fatal heart attack of Winston Churchill on 26th December 1941, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden had wisely re-focused the Government on sustainable war objectives that would not bankcrupt the home nation. A younger, less sentimental man than Churchill, he had no interest in British punching above its weight for a few short years only to become as impoverished as a defeated nation. Whereas Churchill had sought to ensure that the British Empire be "preserved for a few more generations in all its splendour", a phrase that surely excluded the famine in Bengal. And so Eden now downgraded the Far Eastern Campaign to a lower priority (with a restated future-proof objective of the defence of Australia and New Zealand). He called for the Allies to concentrate resources in Western Europe and North Africa, bringing forward an amphibious invasion of Normandy to 1943. And this decision would usher in the Fall of Vichy France, which ironically was one of the two Axis Puppet Governments that promised to send ambassadors to Calcutta.

But of course the largest consequence would be for the India people themselves. The door to this dramatically altered future had been opened by the revocation of a single, faulty command decision: to bypass the heavily defended town of Kohima. This encirclement forced the British commander Field Marshal William Slim to abandon the strategic towns of Dimapur and Imphal. The British withdrawal to positions on the western bank of the river Brahmaputra abandoned a huge area of Eastern Indian that would eventually become the territory of the two Muslim successor states.

This altered reality forced the imprisoned leadership of the Indian National Congress to suspend the non-violence campaign. And because they never actually endorsed an armed rebellion, Nehru and Gandhi unwittingly placed more power in the hands of the iconic figure of Bose, and also strengthened the arm of the Muslim separatists led by Jinnah. In short, sub-contintental belligerence received a welcome shot in the arm, which despite the widespread perception otherwise, had always been present throughout two centuries of British occupation.

Of course the headquartering of the Azad Hind government in Calcutta was fleeting. As the Japanese War Effort started to collapse, Bose was forced to retreat to Burma and face a horrible moment of truth. However his willingness to peacefully disband the INA saved him from being hung from a British noose. By mutual agreement, he withdrew to Port Blair, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean.

But five years later, he was recalled by an Indian Government unable to resist an invasion from its northern Muslim neighbour. Ironically, the man who had done most to integrate the ethnicities in the INA was being asked to rescue the Hindu successor state from destruction. Finally, he would complete his March to Delhi.

In 1947, in the singular event that began the conflict that would become known as World War III, King Michael of Romania gave an international appeal to stop the Soviet takeover of his country.

King Michael Calls for AidThe closing days of World War II saw the Russian occupation of Eastern Europe swallowing up Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, and East Germany. While the West had agreed to occupy until stability and then withdraw, the Soviets looked to stay and expand their power. Beyond occupation, the Soviets pressed remaining countries to join them by preying on them politically. In 1947, Hungary, having already abolished its monarchy, conducted a plebiscite manipulated by Soviets to bring about the People's Republic of Hungary. The same year, it looked as if Romania would be the next to fall.

A new story by Jeff ProvineKing Michael was unnerved by Soviet clout, but he had seen enough suffering from his people and gradually gave way in March 1945 when he appointed a government dominated by Soviet sympathizers. In 1947, he traveled to London to attend the wedding of his cousins Princess Elizabeth and Philip. There, rumors circulated that he did not wish to return to Romania, though Michael refused any offers of asylum. Seeing his plight, Winston Churchill encouraged Michael with, "above all things, a King must be courageous".

Michael returned to Romania and immediately felt the pressures of Soviet take-over. But, he was the same Michael that, at a mere 26 years old, had rallied with the pro-Allied leaders of Romania and overthrown the Nazi camp's stranglehold. The coup had invited in the Soviets, and now it was time for Michael to rebel again. He found his capitalist supporters, locked down the palace, and, on December 30, sent out by radio and telegram an appeal to the United Nations and individual governments of the United States, Britain, France, and others for support against what he called an invasion from the roots.

The diplomatic gamble would pay off as Stalinists overreacted. Prime Minister Groza had threatened to murder 1,000 students who had been arrested for speaking out against the Soviet Union. The massacre began and rallied the Romanian people against Soviet supporters. Declaring a state of unrest, the Prime Minister called for Soviet military aid, and an invasion began that sparked action from Western nations in early 1948. Dwight Eisenhower, again Supreme Commander in Europe, led his generals in the heaviest fighting in eastern Germany, then joining up with the Polish Resistance and sparking revolutions in the rest of the Eastern Bloc. Romania itself would be filled with guerrilla warfare against a vastly superior force until Allied tanks led the liberation of Bucharest in 1949. Michael, who had been spirited out of the country just after the Soviet invasion, returned from his government-in-exile in London shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, Italy invaded the Julian March in 1948, which was ceded by Yugoslavia, and Tito sued for a separate peace. Mao Zedong in China was defeated by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Army, who made certain that Communism was stamped out in the East. Socialist upstarts in India had been put down by Britain's agreement of independence, though French Indochina would see much bloodshed before native Vietnamese were given self-rule.

The Allies pressed into Russia through liberating Ukraine. From experience, they knew Stalin would never give up, despite the use of atomic weapons on his bases. The Cold War portion continued as the stalemated Allies waited until Stalin was finally assassinated and Moscow fell into civil war. Russia was Balkanized, and the exhausted Allies fell into retirement, letting loose their colonies over the '50s and '60s and settling into a new era of capitalistic rule under the American superpower.

In 1808, on this day the sixteenth Vice President of the United States Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Andrew Johnson
16th Vice President of the United States
March 4th, 1865 - March 5, 1868When the Southern states seceded, Johnson was a U.S. Senator from Greeneville in East Tennessee. As a Unionist, he was the only Southern senator not to quit his post upon secession. He became the most prominent War Democrat from the South and supported Lincoln's military policies during the American Civil War of 1861-1865.

In 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of occupied Tennessee, where he was energetic and effective in fighting the rebellion and beginning the transition to Reconstruction.

A post from the Two Americas Timline on Alt WikiaJohnson was nominated as the vice presidential candidate in 1864 on the National Union Party ticket. He and Lincoln were elected in November 1864 and inaugurated on March 4, 1865. Johnson succeeded to the presidency upon Lincoln's assassination on April 15, 1865.

In an attempt to bring peace to the region the United Kingdom and France intervened in the civil war during early 1866. On August 8 the Union and the Confederacy agreed to a ceasefire. The states of Missouri and Kentucky retained U.S. troops, and are claimed by both sides. The Confederacy kept troops in parts of Maryland and New Jersey, though not claiming them.

Being from Tennessee, Johnson was a "foreigner" in the white house after the cease fire. Factions from both the CS and the US attempted to remove him from office. After an attempt on his life by a disgruntled Tennessan on November 21, 1867, Johnson remained out of sight for months.

His lack of activity, though, did not keep his enemies in the US Senate from accusing him of being soft on the CS. This was trumped up as treason, and articles of impeachment were drawn up. As Congress debated, but before the House was able to impeach him, Johnson resigned the office, leaving Washington on March 5, 1868 for retirement in Maine.

In 1170, on this day Bishop Thomas Becket was arrested in Canterbury Cathedral.

Bishop Thomas Becket Arrested After a career of working tightly together as Chancellor and King, upon Becket's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury by Henry II of England, the two discovered a rift that drove them to be bitter enemies. They had once been close; Henry even placed his son in Becket's household for his education. Henry sought control of his lands, both through Church and State. When Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury died, Henry took it as an opportunity to establish a trusted ally in one of the most powerful positions in the English Church.

A new story by Jeff ProvineThomas Becket had grown from a fortunate position and constant guest in lordly houses, learning to ride and joust and receiving an excellent legal and canonical education. Upon his installation as archbishop, however, Becket shed his glamorous secular life and became something of an ascetic, even reportedly wearing the penitent hair shirt under his priestly robes. He immediately worked to strengthen the position of the Church, retaking lost land, disallowing Henry from collecting offerings, and excommunicating a royal tenant-in-chief after he refused to acknowledge Becket's appointment of a clerk. The political rift split wide when Henry called a meeting with the Church heads to discuss canonical customs, and Becket led the bishops in refusing to attend.

Henry pulled his son from Becket's house and lifted Becket's many honors, and the diplomatic war erupted with Henry attempting to win favor of the bishops while Becket called on international support from Louis VII. Henry won as the bishops, even Becket, agreed to the customs of the Constitutions of Claredon, and then Becket broke favor by attempting to leave for France without permission. Becket fled into exile for six years. The Pope finally intervened, and Becket returned while many of his excommunications were absolved.

Only a few months later, Becket began a new round of excommunications as Henry's son had been crowned junior-king by the Bishop of York, which was the right of the Bishop of Canterbury. Upon hearing the news, Henry said from his sickbed, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" Four knights took his words as an order and hurried to Canterbury. Placing their weapons under a tree, they entered the cathedral and demanded Becket return with them to see the king. He refused, turned to run, and tripped over his vestments. The knights apprehended Becket and brought him back to Winchester.

Henry had Becket imprisoned and was found guilty of disobeying customs in trial in 1171. Becket was placed into a monastic cell, and, in 1173, Henry's sons Henry the Younger and Richard rebelled against him in hopes of achieving their inheritances early (as well as at the mentoring of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine). Becket escaped and worked his way into Henry the Younger's court. While the young brothers were strong in France with their mother's lands, they did not have the guile to manage England, and Becket gave them the advice and subterfuge they needed to undercut their father's support. The initial rebellion in 1173 had been met with failure, but 1174 won the rebellion for the brothers. They treated Becket literally as a godsend, and he was restored to Canterbury with great new powers.

Henry II went into forced retirement, and Henry the Younger (now III) went about repairing his father's strained relations with the other Catholic kingdoms, especially France. Richard (called "The Lionhearted") went on crusade to the Holy Land, liberating Cyprus and staying with his armies while Henry III ruled politically. Much of England's social power, however, went into the hands of Becket, who set up his nation as a new stronghold and even persuaded Prince John to become Bishop of Canterbury upon Becket's death in 1189.

The Church continued its firm ecclesiastical position in England as kings and bishops continued to vie for legal power, as did the many barons of the kingdom, though the former two kept the latter in place. One hundred years later, the two would grow even closer as Edward I would be sainted, much like the French St. Louis (King Louis IX). The Church would be instrumental sources of power for Richard III in the Rebellion of 1484. England remained a strong Catholic nation, acting against the Protestant armies of other northern Europe kings. In the 1700s, bids for religious freedom would deprive England of its colonies in North America as well as the Protestant lands of Scotland.

In 1937, on this day Eamon de Valera, the leader of the Fianna Fail Party of Ireland, sat in his empty offices awaiting a telephone call from Sir Oswald Mosley. That day, de Valera had publically announced the upcoming new Constitution of Ireland. That document had stated that all Irish counties (including those in the Ulster enclave of Northern Ireland) were part of the country run from Dublin.

The Fascist Flight to Falklands Part 3At 6 PM exactly, Dublin time, de Valera's telephone rang and he picked it up. "This is Oswald Mosley," the authoritative voice on the telephone said. "Notify the Prime Minister of Ireland that the Leader of Great Britain is on the telephone to speak with him".

"Thank you for your punctuality, Prime Minister Mosley," said Eamon da Valera. "I am here".

"Good, _Taoiseach_," Mosley said, saying the Celtic version of Prime Minister crisply. "I have heard that Ireland claims to be able to unilaterally alter its Governing Documents at will".

"We never wanted London to mistakingly assume that the British king and Parliament was in any way needed to shape Irish decisions," de Valera said. "That is why we have insisted from the beginning that we rule ourselves completely".

De Valera studied a photograph on the front page of the TIMES of London. Mosley, dressed in black from head to toe, wearing a tunic and pants, black boots and a wide black belt, the caption was tagged: "The Leader addresses an assembly in London". In de Valera's opinion, Mosley was dressed up as a student would in playing a role in ROMEO AND JULIET.

It was all so absurd, yet that man was in control of Great Britain. "_Taoseach_, you speak as if you have not heard of the popular revolution which has transpired as of November 1936. The _ancien regime_ of England is now as dead as the system of Louis Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette".

"I have heard that Stanley Baldwin is dead," de Valera said bluntly. "He has not been seen or photographed since the 11th of November when your stormtroopers invaded Ten Downing Street".

"Mr. Baldwin remains in protective custody," said Mosley smoothly. "Is your Government still allowing Neville Chamberlain a hundred thousand pounds yearly for the Dublin CLARION? That really is quite a waste for a rag such as that ".

"Here in Eire, we really do value free thought and association," de Valera said.

Mosley laughed. "You do everything the Pope suggest, outlawing divorce and conceding that Roman Catholicism will be the only view point that can be tolerated in Ireland.

"Your assertion that Rome Rule will be imposed on his Majesty's subjects in Ulster is a mistake that I did not expect you to repeat. Your pathetic gangs of druggists and ploughboys will be wiped out in a month by Fascist Britain, because we will do whatever police work is needed. Whatever is needed".

"If you make further threats against the Irish, there shall be complaints as far away as the Vatican, and I understand that neither Herr Hitler or Signor Mussolini will want to confront the Holy Father on your behalf, Mister Mosley".

Mosley said: "You are a silly fellow, Eamon da Valera. The fact that the old regime respected you shows only how weak they were".

Later that evening, de Valera was wakened for news that an assailant had walked behind Neville Chamberlain and had shot Chamberlain dead through the heart. The killer had put his gun away in a holster and ran off to a waiting car. De Valera took the lesson seriously and disbanded any political organizations from Ireland working for the ouster of Edward VIII and Wallis.

In cinema palaces such as the Odeans, Regals, Roxys, Queen Ws, and Granadas that are popping out all over Britain in 1938, typical features depict large studies of the King and Queen's face on cinema walls, and three reel long newreels always praising Wallis and her husband.

In 1694, on this day joint Sovereign of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Queen Mary II made a miraculous recovery from smallpox.
This post was written by Dirk Puehl the highly recommended author of #onthisday #history Google+ posts.

Queen Mary II survives the poxWhen King Billy fell victim to "the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat" [1] in July 1702, his wife Mary took over the responsibilities of governing the kingdom for good - a role she had actually filled since 1690, with dwindling success and support, both from parliament and the English population. Besides a strict adherence to Protestant morals unheard of since the days of Cromwell, she had estranged almost all of her subjects by inexplicable personnel decision - leaving England without capable leaders at the outbreak of the War of Spanish Succession.

After continuous military failures on the continent, Queen Mary II decided to leave her late husband's Grand Alliance and withdrew England from the war in 1702, spending the countries military resources to quell various rebellions and leaving the door open for the landing of James II's son James Francis in Torbay with no opposition from the Royal Navy but almost full support from the Tories. James was not willing to renounce his Catholic faith, but granted the largest possible religious freedom for England, Scotland and Ireland. Queen Mary II was forced to resign, establishing James III as the next Catholic Stuart monarch on the English throne, facing not only the coming Protestant uprisings but the united Bourbon France and Spain.

In 1856, on this day 28th President of the United States, Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia.

"Open Covenants, Openly Arrived At"
Co-written with Jeff ProvineA leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913. Running against Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, Socialist Party of America candidate Eugene V. Debs, and former President Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson was elected President as a Democrat in 1912.

During his second term a conspiracy to prevent the ratification of the Covenant of the League of Nations was foiled in the nick of time when First Lady Edith Wilson prevented the White House physician Dr. Cary Grayson from adminstering a stroke-inducing poison to her husband Woodrow Wilson.

A coast-to-coast public speaking tour in support of the League had over-exerted the President. He collapsed from exhaustion in Pueblo, Colorado on September 25th and was forced to return to the White House for medical attention.

Almost overwhelmed by the force of opposition, Wilson was fully aware that the list of Grayson's possible conspirators was endless including inter alia:

• Theodore Roosevelt who as President had negotiated secret treaties to open Pacific trade routes that had not only sold out Korea to Japan but abrogated the first of Wilson's fourteen points ("Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view").
  Radical differences of opinion over America's future had turned to personal acrimony when Wilson refused to authorise TR to lead his ageing Rough Riders to Flanders.
• William Jennings Bryan who as Secretary of State was humiliated by his career-ruining decision to resign in protest over Wilson's response to the sinking of the Lusitania, a position which left him politically isolated.
• Robert M. La Follette, Sr. a prominent Senator who was strongly opposed to American involvement in World War I and who promoted defense of freedom of speech during wartime. Teddy Roosevelt called him a "skunk who should be hanged" when he opposed the arming of American merchant ships; one of his colleagues in the Senate said he was "a better German than the head of the German parliament" when he opposed the Wilson Administration's request for a declaration of war in 1917.

In 1856, on this day the tenth President of the Confederate States, Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia.

Woodrow Wilson
10^th Confederate President
March 4, 1915 - March 4, 1921Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 - February 3, 1924) was the 10th President of the Confederate States. A leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, he served as President of the University of Virginia from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of Virginia from 1911 to 1913. In a surprisingly close race against Constitution Party candidate Oscar Wilder Underwood. Wilson was elected as a Democrat in 1914.

A new article from the "Two Americas" thread on Althistory WikiaWilson persuaded a Democratic Congress to pass the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Farm Loan Act and a progressive income tax in the Revenue Act of 1917, as he saw the inevitability of the Confederacy entering into the hostilities in Europe. Though much of his election campaign around the slogan "he will keep us out of the war," CS neutrality was challenged in early 1917 when the German government proposed to Mexico a military alliance in a war against the CS, and began unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking without warning every American merchant ship -- both Union and Confederate - its submarines could find. Wilson in April 1917 asked Congress to declare war.

He focused on diplomacy and financial considerations, leaving the waging of the war primarily in the hands of the Army. On the home front in 1917, he began the first draft since the war for Confederate independence, raised billions in war funding through Liberty Bonds, set up the War Industries Board, promoted labor union growth, supervised agriculture and food production through the Lever Act, took over control of the railroads, enacted the first federal drug prohibition, and suppressed anti-war movements. Though national women's suffrage was already achieved in the U.S., Wilson was unable to persuade Congress to consider a similar amendment to the C.S. constitution.

In the late stages of the war, Wilson took personal control of negotiations with Germany, including the armistice. He issued his Fourteen Points, his view of a post-war world that could avoid another terrible conflict. He went to Paris in 1919 to create the League of Nations and shape the Treaty of Versailles, with special attention on creating new nations out of defunct empires. Largely for his efforts to form the League, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1919, during the bitter fight with the Constitutionist-controlled Senate over the C.S. joining the League of Nations, Wilson collapsed with a debilitating stroke. He refused to compromise, effectively destroying any chance for ratification. The League of Nations was established anyway, but the Confederate States never joined. Wilson's idealistic internationalism, now referred to as "Wilsonianism", called for the Confederate States to enter the world arena to fight for democracy.

While "making Europe safe for democracy," back home Wilson's administration was occupying much of the Caribbean in attempts to put democratically minded leaders in unstable areas. Decisions made in Nicaragua, for instance, would lead to Communism - which arose as an indirect result of the "Great War" in Europe - getting a stronghold in the western hemisphere. The stress of the peace process worsened the president's health, and he spent several months out of the public eye after his stroke. He was assisted by his second wife through this tough time.

After leaving office, Wilson retired to his home in Richmond, where he died on February 3, 1924. In his six years he had lead the Confederate States onto the world scene as a powerhouse militarily and economically. Though the CSA had not become a member of the League of Nations, he died knowing that his nation had made a difference in the world.

In 1917, on this day Emperor Karl I abdicated the throne of the Habsburg Monarchy, heralding the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy.
Article continues from Part #2.

The Last Chance for Peace #3 By Steven FisherDomestic turmoil in Austria-Hungary had been steadily increasing ever since the signing of the Treaty of Berlin on August 2. The devastating Austrian defeat in the Third Balkan war, and the harsh terms given to it by the Russians, had greatly increased peoples dissatisfaction with the government. This, combined with a faltering Austro-Hungarian economy had turned people against the Habsburg Monarchy.

An unusually harsh winter, combined with the already existing economic deprivation, finally lit the tinderbox of revolution. On December 19, people took to the streets of Vienna, calling for an end to the Monarchy. The army and police were sent to stop them, but to the governments horror, some army units and policemen began siding with the rebels. The riots quickly spread from Vienna to the other parts of the Empire. Clashes began between protesters and army troops. But defecting troops managed to turn the tide in favor of the protestors, since many in the army blame the current government for getting them into a losing war, and having them fight for nothing. A loyalist Army group moving to attempt to rescue the King from his palace in Vienna is defeated in heavy street fighting.

Finally, the Republican forces break into the palace in Vienna, and force Karl I to abdicate the Habsburg throne. The Austro-Hungarian Empire is dissolved, with Austria and Hungary both breaking off and forming the Austrian Federation and the Republic of Hungary. Ethnic minorities in both nations attempt to break off and form their own nations, such as the Czechs in Austria, but their attempts fail. The Austrians are more compromising, and form a federation within which the Czechs have some autonomy.

The peace was not to last though. On January 2, 1918, the Italians announce the annexation of Trentino, and march troops into the region. International condemnation of the move does occur, but the Italians brush it off by saying that they are taking this action to protect the Italaians living in the region, who they claim are suffering oppression from the Austrian authorities. The Austrians vehemently oppose this act, but cannot do anyhting, as their people are unwilling to fight a war.

Their inability to prevent the annexation of Trentino would spell the end of the Austrian government. On May 19, the Austrian military coups the government, establishing a German backed military dicatorship under Conrad Von Hotzendorf. It heralds the beginning of the poalrization around the powers of Russia and Germany, a situation that will inflame tensions between the two nations, and be a cause of World War 1 in 1921.
The whole thread is available at the Alt History Wikia.

In 1530, on this day the Lost Expedition of Francisco Pizarro y Gonzalez left Panama.

Pizarro's Lost Expedition Leaves PanamaFor hundreds of years, no one was quite certain what happened to the hundreds of men under the command of Francisco Pizarro y Gonzalez. Pizarro (pictured) seemed an apt commander and loyal Spaniard, but many theories have arisen about failures in battle, overwhelming armies of Punians, or the Spanish going native and joining the Inca's court to deliver them with firearms and horses. After much contention, the truth has gradually been assembled by historians piecing together Spanish chronicles with legend recorded by the Incan Nation.

A new story by Jeff ProvineThe initial biographical information about Pizarro is clear beyond his questioned birth date. A somewhat distant relative of Cortes, conqueror of the Aztecs, Pizarro sailed to the New World along with Governor Nicolas de Ovando and some 2,500 colonists. He traveled with Balboa on the explorer's trek across Panama and was one of the first Europeans to see the Pacific Ocean. His loyalty to Spain was displayed as Pizarro later arrested Balboa for his trial and execution. In good position with the government and spurred by stories of Cort?s' success conquering the Aztecs, Pizarro made company with the priest Hernando de Luque and the soldier Diego de Almagro to explore south and conquer the great wealth of an empire rumored to be there.

Their first expedition went out in 1524, but it quickly returned due to harsh weather, failing supplies, and battles with natives. 1526 saw another attempt, this one twice the size of the first and sailing much farther south. While Pizarro explored jungles, a ship sailed on past the equator and captured a native raft loaded with trade goods of pots, textiles, and, most importantly, gold and jewels. They explored further, but they found new hostilities in a land recently conquered by the Inca and decided to turn back. Pizarro stayed with thirteen men and awaited more provisions. A ship arrived to evacuate them, but Pizarro and his comrades pushed on in exploration, eventually coming across friendly natives at Tumbes and continued south. Finding irrefutable proof of the wealth of the empire to the south (as well as discovering llamas), the explorers returned to Panama to prepare for a third expedition.

The governor refused to allow it, so Pizarro sailed for Spain and returned with the Queen's signature on the Capitulaci?n de Toledo approving conquest. Pizarro left that December of 1530 and sent back further treasure to Almagro, who was gathering more recruits. Almagro would leave to join him, as would conquistador Hernando de Soto, the only man to return from the expedition. De Soto came back to Panama three years later, sunburned and sporting numerous battle scars, and told vague stories of the Inca attacking and overwhelming the conquistadors without provocation. Others assumed he escaped from a military defeat before reaching the Inca or leaving the expedition once it had changed allegiance to Atahualpa. While his word was debated, de Soto encouraged Spain not to waste human life by sending explorers south again.

From Incan records, it is told that the emperor Atahualpa, newly secured to the throne by defeating his brother Huascar, feared what white-skinned interlopers might do. He gathered survivors of the Battle of Puna and anyone with knowledge about the Spanish while Pizarro was away. Studying their tactics and the tales of conquest in the north, he determined that they were hardly demigods, clearly mortal though greatly powerful. When they appeared at his city of Cajamarca, Atahualpa invited them to feast and then killed the Spaniards in a great ambush, calling out, "My lands shall be no man's tributary!" It is suspected that de Soto was sent back to Panama as a warning to the Spanish.

With conquest out of the question, the Spanish largely turned east and north, securing the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico as well as moving around Portuguese land in Brazil to Argentina. Trade with Europe would build with the Inca, first in secret as the smallpox plague swept through the empire and then marginally promoted by Atahualpa's descendant Tupac. It is with Tupac that Francis Drake would make a treaty during his circumnavigation of the Earth in 1578. Trade blossomed, exchanging gold and exotic flora for weapons and manufactured goods, eventually turning the west coast of South America into an economic dependency under English influence as had been seen in parts of India and East Asia.

In 1886, on this day 23rd President of the United States John Alexander "Blackjack" Logan (pictured) died aged sixty.

Death of President LoganHe served in the Mexican-American War and was a general in the Union Army in the American Civil War. He served the state of Illinois as a state senator, congressman and senator and was an successful candidate for Vice President of the United States with Solomon Foot in the election of 1884.

But he had served for only nine months since the demise of President Foot who as the President pro tempore of the Senate had closed-out the disgraced Chester A. Arthur's term with out a VP but had then chosen Logan at the 1864 Convention.

Logan's own brief tenure was the shaky conclusion to a series of truncated Presidencies from James A. Garfield (assassination after 200 days), Chester A. Arthur (resignation after three years), Solomon Foot (death after three years) and finally Logan (death after six months). The unsteadiness of the succession over six years demonstrated that a Constitutional Amendment was clearly needed to require a sitting President to nominate a VP following his own ascension to that post.

In 1893, on this day Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist and Marxist political philosopher Mao Zedong was born in Shaoshan in South-Central China.

Birth of Mao ZedongHis life-long struggle with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was a textbook example of how seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent, a binary concept that is deeply rooted in Taoist philosophy (pictured). Because as Chiang's nationalist forces expanded to possess the greater whole, they also triggered a counter-reaction inside a dynamic system. And the end result was inevitably bipolar in nature.

Having overcome the Warlords, the Kuomintang (KMT) launched a series of extermination campaigns that drove the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) out of the urban areas and into the countryside. Mao then rose to power by commanding a Long March to the Soviet border. But the Japanese invasion of Manchuria created a strategic pause putting the conflict into a state of suspension for a decade. And yet the CCP might even have won this Civil War if the KMT had not managed to hang on until the Korean War, a moment of truth that demonstrated that the West simply could not afford to lose China.

The perceived wisdom of Chiang in abandoning the territory north of the Great War might well have saved his regime, but the long-term consequence was the creation of two systems of government separated by a ready-made Iron Curtain. The People's Republic of China (PRC) was then ruled by Mao from the north-eastern city of Changchun right up until his mysterious death in 1966. The mixed results of his application of Marxist thought was then transformed by his successor, the "Great Helmsman" Deng Xiaoping. Over the next twenty-five years, his dynamic leadership would see the economy move in a great leap forward. He re-energized the Communist model at a decisive moment in history when the West appeared to be entering a period of ascendancy. Instead the KMT would stubbornly refuse to embrace democratic reform until it was forced upon them by the Tianenmen Square Student Protests of 1989.

In 1776, on this day General Washington's Continental Army suffered a disaster at Trenton in New Jersey.

Washington's Disaster at Trenton After successes in 1775 in Lexington, Massachusetts Colony, and the taking of Fort Ticonderoga in New York, 1776 was a bleary year for the American Revolutionists. Their Continental Congress struggled to find money and support while the Continental Army faced a string of defeats across New York and New Jersey. Knowing that the cause was nearly lost, Commander-in-Chief General George Washington made a last-ditch effort at attacking Hessian soldiers already in winter quarters across the Delaware River at Trenton.

A new story by Jeff ProvineColonel Johann Rall, a 56-year-old veteran with ample experience in battle as a mercenary, was to be placed in command at Trenton reluctantly by his superior Carl von Donop. Rall was loud, did not understand English, and, though he was known to fight well, did not thrive in the between-battle times of war. He avoided work and was lax on the discipline of his troops, inspiring little confidence. Donop, however, came down with a bitter cold and decided not to march with his soldiers rooting out New Jersey militia. He sent Rall instead, who fiercely pursued the rebels, scarcely stopping in Mount Holly as they pursued Samuel Griffin and his men.

In Trenton, despite his illness, Donop was vigorous in his orders for the men. He followed suggestions by his engineers at fortifying the town and ensured round-the-clock posts for guards despite the horrible weather. On the night of the 25th, rain turned to sleet, and guards were shocked to see initial American skirmishers on the morning of the 26th. Donop called out his men, and Washington was forced to attack the defended high ground. The Americans broke, and Donop took up pursuit, capturing Washington and many of his cannon. Few soldiers returned to ranks, the rest disappearing into the New Jersey wilderness.

With the harsh blow at Trenton, much of the fervor for independence died over the winter and into the spring. Horatio Gates succeeded Washington as Commander-in-Chief and led strong defenses against British General Burgoyne's campaign to separate New England from the rest of the colonies. On October 7, 1777, defeat at Saratoga sounded the death knell for the Revolutionary War. Gates claimed he could easily have won with more men, but the support for actual war was waning. It stood as the last major battle in the north, though backwoods rebels would string out the war for years with harrying attacks and withdraws laden with ambushes. The Southern Colonies would also cause continual frustration for the British Army, but the taking of Charleston on May 12, 1780, would end major battles there as well, but hardly the fighting. Nathanael Greene, Commander-in-Chief after Gates, carried his famous motto, "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again".

While the rebels continued to drag on the war, the question fell to Parliament of what to do with those they had captured. Washington had been shipped to London soon after Trenton and stripped of his land, though the government could not see fit to execute him and create a martyr like General Benedict Arnold, who had died leading his men in a charge at Saratoga. Offers were made to return him to status quo ante bellum, but the general refused. He, like his countrymen, simply refused to give up. Washington remained a prisoner for the duration of the war, though many others such as John Hancock, Thomas Paine, and Samuel Adams would be publicly hanged as treasonous instigators.

Gradually, the American leadership would destroy itself through infighting and abandonment. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin would attempt to create a government-in-exile in Paris, but they simply became novelties at the French Court. Their writings and arguments would contribute to the French Revolution that would happen some years later. The Americans, meanwhile, slipped farther and farther west, and, in 1785, the Colonies came back under firm control.

Worn out politically, diplomatically, and economically by what seemed to become a war of attrition, Britain came under its own revolutions in the 1790s. King George III was blamed for the long-lasting and, being deemed unfit for the throne by act of Parliament, was removed. Britain again became a parliamentary republic, and Washington was sent back to Virginia to live out the rest of his life as a poor, though admired, man.

In 1966, following a severe attack of malaria Nhamodzenyika Mugabe died in Ghana. He was just three years old, the first and only son of Robert Gabriel and Sally Francesca (Hayfron) Mugabe (they had lost a child in pregnancy in 1963). With her husband in prison, Sally was left to bear the emotional burden of the loss alone - confidential papers show that she later suffered a mental breakdown while living in London.The Love that made Robert Mugabe a democrat

A fateful moment now arrived in Zimbabwean politics, revealed in full for the first time in Mugabe - Birth of a Democrat: From desperate fugitive to Rainbow leader (© Economist, 2008)¹.

The author, Heidi Holland, a South African author and journalist was brought up in Zimbabwe. She first met Mr Mugabe in 1975, when a friend brought him to her house for a secret dinner as he was about to commence negotiations with the Rhodesian Government. Mr Mugabe had spent the previous decade in a Rhodesian jail for a subversive speech he made in 1963. The polite and considerate fugitive telephoned the next day to inquire about her toddler. During the meeting Mr Mugabe described two events that changed his life forever. With the perspective of hindsight, it is now possible to see how easily himself and the South African dictator Nelson Mandela could have switched the contrasting roles of demon and angel in southern african politics.

The two events occured in Salisbury and London three years apart. At issue was the expediency of British Foreign Policy. Relenting to pressure from the international community, Prime Minister Ian Smith reversed his decision and allowed Mugabe to travel to Ghana to attend his son's funeral.

There is no doubt that Sally Mugabe's support for her husband helped sustain him during his time as a prisoner in Salisbury. But, in 1970, while still locked up, Mugabe discovered his wife's immigration status was at risk and that the British government was planning to throw her out of the country because her visa had expired. A letter from Robert Mugabe to Prime Minister Harold Wilson was responded to in the positive. The letters showed that Mugabe was prepared to plead with the British authorities for his wife's citizenship.

In his letter, Mugabe had told Wilson of the effect the death of his son had had on his wife, explaining that: "My wife, whose health has never been satisfactory since the loss of our son in 1966, is at present suffering serious emotional upset as a result of the decision by the Home Office. Surely then, the fact of my detention is enough suffering for her already. As I stated in my letter to Mr Callaghan, the reason my wife decided to work for the year (September 1969-June 1970) was to enable her to earn a little money for herself until October when she should enter university to do a degree in Household Science. The Home Office decision wrecks even this wholesome plan".

Later he asked Wilson to reconsider the decision to refuse Sally permission to stay in Britain by politely explaining that his wife had a right to British citizenship because of their marriage, 'under Christian rites', in 1961. He added that it was 'sheer force of circumstance' that meant his wife had had to use a Ghanaian passport to enter Britain, proclaiming, 'She is first and foremost a Rhodesian citizen.'

Mr Mugabe explained that, "When I and other nationalist leaders decided in 1963 to return from our temporary exile in Tanganyika, I could not bring my wife, who had just given birth to our late son, back with me as she was liable for imprisonment for a political offence she is alleged to have committed... I therefore decided to take my wife to Ghana, where she was to remain with her parents until our son was about four... When our son died in December 1966 the whole purpose of her stay no longer existed so I arranged that she should go to Britain for her studies".

"Since the British government asserts that it has legally assumed administrative authority for Rhodesia,' he added, 'then it must place at the disposal of those who come under that authority, as my wife and I do, the procedures it considers valid for the acquisition of nationality as British Rhodesians... More than that, sir, I hold that the British government owes definite moral responsibility not only to persons in my circumstances but their wives and dependents as well... Am I to conclude that merely by virtue of the technicality of her possessing a Ghanaian passport, my wife's Rhodesian citizenship by virtue of her being married to me must cease? Has she ceased being my wife merely because she... cannot produce Rhodesian papers in support of her being Rhodesian?"

The British Government did take moral responsibility and the result was the 1975 agreement in the Governor's lodge at Salisbury. During his first month in office, Mr Mugabe summoned Smith to Government House and Smith was surprised to be greeted with a warm handshake and a broad smile. At that meeting, Mugabe told Smith he was acutely aware that he had inherited from his old adversaries, the whites, a jewel of a country, and he praised its superb infrastructure, its efficient modern economy, and promised to keep it that way. Smith, completely disarmed, rushed home in a state of excitement, and, over lunch, told his wife, Janet, that perhaps he had been wrong about a black government being incapable of running his beloved Rhodesia. As he told Graham Boynton years later: "Here's this chap, and he was speaking like a sophisticated, balanced, sensible man. I thought: if he practises what he preaches, then it will be fine. And it was fine. ²"

In 1915, on this day the Kaiser demanded an armistice after a second Christmas Truce took hold in the trenches. The words of Chief of Staff Hulmuth von Moltke from 1914 rang in the Kaiser's ears, "Your Majesty, this war cannot be won".

Second Christmas Truce Takes Hold Wilhelm II had initially rejected the view of Moltke and fired him, but as 1915 dragged on, it became possible that the German fate was sealed. There were new developments such as air warfare and poison gas, leading to whole new aspects of battle. A further innovation was mass-propaganda, and the Kaiser decided this may be the method to come out ahead in an unwinnable war.

In 1914, the soldiers in the field began what was to be known as the Christmas Truce. On Christmas Eve, the German troops decorated their trenches and sang carols. The English troops, who recognized many of the tunes from their own carols, joined in singing. The artillery bombardments on both sides ended for the night, allowing soldiers to collect their dead, and joint services were held honoring the fallen on both sides. Once-enemies approached each other across the "No Man's Land", exchanging gifts, sharing food, and engaging in games of football. Commanders on both ends reacted with disgust at the fraternization, but the unofficial truce lasted until after New Years' Eve in many places along the lines.

A new story by Jeff ProvineThe cases of fraternization had continued despite the horrors of war by attrition. A German unit attempted a truce over Easter, but were warned away by their British opponents. Later that November, units from Saxony and Liverpool successfully fraternized. The soldiers in the trenches obviously did not care for the war; the Kaiser merely had to convince them to take a stand against it. While the Allied command issued orders against fraternization that upcoming Christmas, German orders encouraged the possibility and handed out gifts to exchange (including reasons for the war to be ended). Despite the orders, the soldiers in the trenches met and joined again in their small feasts and games of football. The Allied commanders erupted at the news and began court martial proceedings for hundreds, possibly thousands. Rebellion broke out among the ranks. Wilhelm was urged to attack while the Allies were weak, but he intended to win the war rather than a few battles before the Allies had propaganda material to regroup.

Seizing the diplomatic initiative and ensuring that word of the Christmas Truce spread past censorship, Wilhelm capitalized on the friendly spirits among the common soldiers. He demanded an armistice in the West, which the Allies agreed only along with an armistice in the East. Talks began, and the politicians finally conceded under pressure from the soldiers and their families. Lists of demands were drawn up, and, for each point, games of football and other athletic events would decide the victor. While troops remained in station during an armistice, Germany hosted the 1916 Olympics in Berlin that summer as it had planned to do before the war. Fighting for honor as well as diplomatic success, athletes built value with gold, silver, and bronze medals to be used in agreements during what would be a precursor to the League of Nations.

The notion was considered ludicrous by many, but war weariness kept naysayers from the majority opinion. Germany did not fair as well as the Allied nations, and most of the world expected the Kaiser to turn against his own idea and restart the war. To their surprise, he did not and ordered the removal of troops from France and Belgium as part of the agreement, though he kept Alsace-Lorraine. Reparations were traded, and war was formally outlawed in 1918.

Europe celebrated the War to End All Wars, though the name was hardly apt. Wars went underground, constantly fed by international espionage, support for uprisings (such as the Russian Civil War that would eventually stomp out notions of communism), and sabotage of other nations' teams. Tempers flared over each scandal, but war did not come back to the world stage until Ireland's fight for independence in 1928 was found to be supported overtly by the Germans. The Irish Revolt exploded outside of British borders with a Royal Navy blockade of Germany to cease supplies. The Germans countered with an invasion of Belgium to secure new ports, and Europe was swallowed up in the Second World War.

In 1863, President Hannibal Hamlin confirmed the Declaration of Emancipation that General John C. Fremont had proclaimed in Tennessee when he had occupied that State earlier in the year.

Crucifixion Day Part 6 by Raymond SpeerFrom the start of the war, which Fremont spent stationed in Missouri, that general had realized that the institution of slavery was the motivation of secession and the engine that worked the economy of the South. Accordingly, Fremont had abolished slavery In Missouri.

Hannibal Hamlin, a convinced Abolitionist from childhood and the possessoor of a dark complexion that gossips attributed to some Negro ancestors, had been told by his Attorney General that Fremont's liberation policy would alienate the border states and drive them all into the Confederacy.

"If our loss of the capitol city has not doomed us," Hamlin told his advisor, "I doubt that adding Missouri to the free states will substantially worsen our condition". The Attorney General, an appointee of the dead Lincoln, resigned and Fremont's move was approved.

In the summer of 1863, Fremont lead the Army of Missouri east and conquered Kentucky and Tennessee that season. In keeping with his program in Missouri, Fremont refused to let slavery continue in areas controlled by the Union, and Fremont's action roused discontent at Montauk Point, Long Island, New York, where the US Congress met by right in December 1863. A resolution that criticized Fremont was voted down in each House, and a counterdraft (praising the move) was passed through the support of President Hamlin.

The buildings at Montauk Point were raw and crude owing to their hurried construction. With no attendents from the Cotton South or Border States among the members of that Congress, a bill to relocate the capitol from Washington DC to Montauk was passed by both Houses, and money was appropriated for more buildings.

Thaddeus Stevens, the Speaker of the House, met with the President on a yacht offshore Nantucket Island when Hamlin signed the decree that approved Fremont's second emanicipation program. "Mr. Speaker, when Congress is as far sighted as General Fremont, it will pass laws that will tear the guts out of the Confederacy".

In 1991, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was executed in front of a Soviet Army firing squad in Red Square this morning, according to the USSR's Interior Ministry. Gorbachev had been arrested on August 18th of this year for crimes against the Soviet Union, including undermining the Soviet economy and giving military secrets to the West. Soviet President Gennady Yanayev used the occasion to reassure the Soviet people that the Communist Party (CPSU) remained firmly in control, and the damage caused by Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika programs would be swiftly rectified.

Gorbachev Executed in Red Square on Christmas Day A story by Andrew Beane This ended a series of high-profile executions, starting on August 21st with the assassination of Boris Yeltsin, then the newly elected President of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Yeltsin had been arrested on August 17th after his return from a trip to Kazakhstan, though he had yet to be charged with a specific crime. Yeltsin's assassin was an unidentified man that shot himself before he could be subdued.

Efforts to remove Gorbachev from power and restore the nation to its once-mighty status began in December of 1990, when members of Gorbachev's government quietly conspired to create the need for the declaration of a state of emergency in the USSR. The State Committee of the State of Emergency, headed by Yanayev and seven other former members of Gorbachev's administration, seized upon the instability caused by the slow break-up of the union and ordered the arrest of Gorbachev and other "western conspirators". At the height of the crisis, the Soviet Army invaded and recaptured the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).

American President George Bush condemned the execution, saying that Gorbachev had been the greatest hope for peace between the USSR and the West, and that the dead leader would live on "the hearts and minds of the people who so long had to strive for their God-given rights". Deng Xiaoping, leader of the Peoples' Republic of China, applauded the "halt of the USSR's capitulation to the West," and expressed hope that Moscow would follow China's example of "market socialism".

In 1943, Chief of Staff George C. Marshall (pictured) became the Supreme Allied Commander (SAC) three weeks after the tragic death of General Dwight David Eisenhower. Because "Ike" had been killed in a jeep accident while being transported from headquarters just one day after being unceremoniously appointed Supreme Commander in the coming Operation Overlord in a handwritten note from FDR to Stalin.

one day after being unceremoniously appointed Supreme Commander in the coming Operation Overlord in a handwritten note from FDR to Stalin, General Dwight David Eisenhower died in a jeep accident while being transported from headquarters.

Eisenhower Dies in Jeep Accident IIWhile some speculate that the accident was in fact Nazi assassination or perhaps political intrigue, the majority of historians agree that it was simply the fault of a dog crossing the road. Funeral services were conducted in Europe and again in the United States with the war hero's body being interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Having lost a great leader, FDR woefully appointed Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, whom he had earlier told, "I didn't feel I could sleep at ease if you were out of Washington" when explaining his choice.

A new story by Jeff ProvineMany considered the appointment a demotion for Marshall, as he was in key position in Washington to organize and manage the resources of the Allies. Churchill himself would call Marshall the "organizer of victory", and now it was Marshall's duty to exact that victory in Europe. With the landing at Normandy in June 1944, victory in Europe gradually became a reality. When the war ended, Marshall continued to his duties to America by his appointment to China by President Truman to broker peace between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists. No peace could be made (and Marshall argued against the Pentagon that the United States simply shouldn't become involved), and Marshall returned to the US, soon appointed Secretary of State. Here he would win a Nobel Peace Prize for his "Marshall Plan" for the organization and rebuilding of post-war Europe, also being named Time Magazine's Man of the Year for the second time.

After retiring on grounds of ill health, Marshall was again brought to duty on the call of President Truman to be Secretary of Defense. The Korean War had shown how poorly the post-war American armed forces had been organized, and no one organized better than Marshall. Marshall effectively prepared the military for demobilization in less than a year and retired again. Meanwhile, fellow Five Star General Omar Bradley would be instrumental in Truman's decision to relieve MacArthur of command before he sparked a war with China.

In 1952, Marshall would be called up again, this time by the Democratic Party. General Bradley was running on the Republican ticket for president, and the Democrats sought a president that could surpass his military clout. Marshall declined, saying, "I'll stick with retirement. When men like Joe McCarthy are running around, Washington is no place for me.

While the Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson would lose out against President Bradley, Marshall's famous statement would cause a surge of unpopularity for McCarthy, costing him his reelection to the Senate. Bradley's two terms would be famed for their time of prosperity, forward development with projects such as the Bradley Continental Highway, and his liberal leanings, continuing New Deal programs and combating segregation, as well as his openness in international policy with Communism. The Bradley Doctrine would prevent America from becoming something of a policeman, instead working to ensure that proper popular elections were held, preventing another Korea and MacArthur.

Through the course of the latter half of the twentieth century, Communism would grow throughout the world, taking over many nations in Southeast Asia, North Africa, and Central and South America. By the 1980s, however, the Stalinist nations would begin to fall apart after defeat in Iran and Afghanistan, leading to Germany reunifying and the Soviet bloc disappearing. The other "communist" nations of the world turned either into militaristic dictators or revolutionized themselves as seen in Red China, conflict with which Bradley had said would be "The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy".

In 1979, on this day USSR Premier Leonid Brezhnev ordered a stand down of Soviet Forces operating in Afghanistan.

Brezhnev Orders Stand Down in Afghanistan After enjoying a dominant position in international diplomacy over the United States, the latter 1970s carried a decline for the Soviet Union. Nixon had opened US relations with Communist China and ended American involvement in the Vietnam War that had nearly torn the country apart. In 1979, Egypt and Israel had reached a peace agreement hosted by the US. Iraq, too, had fallen away from Soviet dependence when it began purchasing Italian and French weapons. Farther east, however, things were looking up for the Soviet Union: Iran had overthrown its US-backed Shah and American-Afghani relations had all but ended after their ambassador was killed during an assault against the militants who had kidnapped him.

A new story by Jeff ProvineWith waning influence in the western Middle East, the Soviets looked to a goal dating back over a century in the Great Game, political one-uppings with the British Empire in an attempt to hold all of Central Asia under a sphere of influence. Always looking for warm-water ports, the Russians had long desired to add Iran to their empire. Even if possible, it would be a long-term goal, and more immediate were the goings-on in Afghanistan.

In 1973, former Prime Minister Mohammad Daoud Khan overthrew the king in the coup known as the Saur Revolution and would be overthrown himself five years later by the army and the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Forced modernization and violent purges of factionalism caused a great deal of turmoil, but the government was Soviet-supported, even signing a treaty that outlined rights for calling upon the Soviet Union for military support. As the unrest broke into full-fledged civil war and half of Afghanistan's army deserted or joined the opposing Mujahideen, President Amin and the PDPA asked for Soviet help, first with helicopter support in June, then rifle divisions in July, and increasingly through December when Brezhnev gave orders prepping for deployment of Russian troops.

His plans changed immediately, however, after a leaked, and possibly false, note from US President Carter's national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski read, "We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War". Brezhnev did not make the note public, but it did alter his opinion on Afghanistan's significance. President Amin had already been straying from Soviet loyalty, and his purges had killed numerous supporters of Russia. Brezhnev decided that the Afghanis would lie in the graves they dug for themselves rather than support them.

The diplomatic shift was handled carefully. The PDPA cried out as abandoned, but Brezhnev remained firm and offered advisers and the use of training facilities. Amin and his government attempted to appeal to China and Pakistan, that latter of which did send troops to defend Pakistani nationals, but it was too little and too late. His government collapsed in 1980, the same year as the successful Olympics in Moscow. Sending food and medical supplies to the new nation, Brezhnev managed to gain a foothold in diplomacy there, opening up relations that would later lead to heavy Russian economic influence.

With the 1980s, international significance returned to the USSR. Using Afghanistan as leverage, the Russians were able to convince Carter and the US Senate to ratify the SALT II nuclear weapons manufacture treaty. The Iran-Iraq War saw another leap forward as the American-supported Saddam Hussein began a long stalemate as the two nations brutalized one another beginning in 1980. The USSR secretly afforded the Iranians weapons, keeping the war going and ultimately drawing in beleaguered American action to contain the altercation.

By the time the war ended, the Americans were war-weary in the Middle East. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait prompted action from the UN Security Council, and the USSR led action by securing northern Iraq. Citing defense of the Kurdish people, the Soviets refused to pull out much as they had done in Eastern Europe after World War II, and the US saw a new wave of the Cold War begin in the Middle East. Using Afghanistan as a model, the USSR would also later see Iran become an economic satellite, cutting the Middle East in half.

CIA actions in Pakistan and beyond the Sandy Curtain encouraged insurgence, finding a new balance between the world's two superpowers. USSR influence continues to push eastward with increased Socialist activity in India, where many political commentators speculate we may see another Korea in coming decades of the Cold War.

In 1933, the six-month power struggle that had grid-locked the executive branch of the federal government ended with the widely anticipated dismissal of the Attorney General, Huey Pierce Long on Christmas Eve. Less than three years later, "the Kingfish"would die a tragic and mysterious death at the age of just forty-two.Payback for the Straight-shooters

In July the Justice Department issued federal warrants ordering the arrest of the former governor of New York Al Smith and also Irenee du Pont, a chemical industrialist.

Charged with un-American Activities, zealous departmental officials alleged that Smith and du Pont were the financial and organizational backbone of the so-called business plot. The central piece of evidence for such a conspiracy was a sworn deposition presented to Long by the retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler. "Old Gimlet Eye" claimied to have been offered the all-powerful Cabinet position of Secretary of General Affairs. Such an appointment of super-secretary would of course have reduced the role of President to a figure head, placing the control of the administration firmly in the hands of the military-industrial complex.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had little cause to doubt either Smedley or Long. Both men were principled lone-wolf individuals of long standing profession who had built untarnished reputations for honesty.

A decade before, it was the case of Cumberland Tel & Tel Co. v. Louisiana Public Service Commission, 260 U.S. 212 that had delivered Long to the national stage. Chief Justice William Howard Taft described Long as one of the best legal minds he had ever encountered after he successfully argued the case on appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1922.

Yet Long's desire for justice had a strong social dimension, declaring proudly that he never took a case against a poor man. Following in the foot-steps of his Revolutionary ancestor Richard Vince, Long was expelled aged just fifteen for petitioning to fire the school principal. Despite winning a debating scholarship, he was too poor to finance textbooks and forced to turn down his place at Louisiana State University. Finally after taking the bar after just one year at the University of Oklahoma School of Law, Long spent a decade in private practice representing small plaintiffs against large businesses, including workers' compensation cases.

Intimately involved with workers' compensation cases himself, Smedley Darlington Butler shared two common traits with Long. A high achiever, Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. History by the time of his death (in his book My First Days in the White House, Long stated that, if elected to the presidency, he would name Butler as his Secretary of War). Also a man of the people, Butler addressed the Bonus Army in 1932, backing their demands for the immediate payment of bonuses due them according to the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. Days later, their tent camps would be destroyed by US Army cavalry troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur.

In the 1932 election both Butler and Long had supported Roosevelt, yet FDR was right to sense that both men had moved away from him. President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not want to pay the bonus, instead issuing an executive order allowing the enrollment of 25,000 veterans in the Civilian Conservation Corps for work in forests. Realising that both Long and Butler were disimpressed with this watered-down compromise measure, the President feared that the pair would mount their own business counter-coup, going much further than FDR's own plans for a New Deal. An an ardent critic of the Federal Reserve System, Long was privately advocating a new wealth redistribution measures in the form of a net asset tax on large corporations and individuals of great wealth to curb the poverty and crime resulting from the Great Depression.

Yet Long would not live to implement these plans. Running on the "Every Man a King" platform in the 1936 election with Butler as his running mate, Long was shot dead at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge; he died two days later.

His last words were reportedly, "God, don't let me die. I have so much left to do". Until his own death in 1940, Butler would allege that fellow serviceman Douglas MacArthur organised the assassination, a central charge in his explosive post-election book, War Is a Racket.

In 1864, the Confederate House followed the CS Senate and two-thirds the Confederate States in passage of the Emancipation Amendment, which repealed every endorsement of slavery in the Confederate Constitution and established a prohibition against slavery or any sort of involuntary bondage.

Gettysburg Prayer Part Two by Raymond SpeerThe celebration of the Greatest Christmas Present continued in every Confederate State well into the new year of 1865, (Winston S. Churchill's Commentary, 1933.)

When the Confederate Congress returned to session, there were eight different bills of impeachment on file at the House Judiciary Committee to the effect that President Davis ought to be removed from office. It was pointed out that the president had disparaged the guarantees of slavery written into the CSA Constitution, and one complaint went to the core of the issue and declared Davis had gone insane for love of the Negro.

News of the Gettysburg Prayer were passed off as inconsequential by radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens, who grumbled that Southerners could admit that they were defeated and be rid of slavery without arguing the issue among themselves. The Lincolns held a reception for General Grant, who was cheered on the assumption that he would soon take the battle to Lee. But every federal general was either dead (like Hancock) or in a Richmond jail like George Meade (whose nerves were shattered), so it was no easy matter to get a new federal Army ready to try to defeat Lee.

Around Washington DC went higher walls, deeper trenches, new artillery batteries and even telegraph lines to the new entrenchments. Though Lee have famously replenished his artillery by seizure of the heavy guns of the Army of the Potomac, Lee was hardly disposed to strike the fortress that was Washington and so quiet returned to the East theatre of the War.

At the next big battle between the Union and the Confederacy, Chickamauga on September 20, 1863, the South had reinforced its Western Army with Longstreet's Corps which featured Hood's Texas division and Pickett's Virginians. The men of Hood and Pickett co-operated and broke the position of Union General Thomas, putting out of commission the Army that Grant had great plans for.

The British Cabinet voted to offer the two sides in America the services of the British Foreign Officer as mediators to end the ongoing War. Made in the first week of October 1863, the British offer to act as a mediator was rejected by Abraham Lincoln two weeks later even as Davis accepted the proposal. The "People's Militia of New York, the ruffians and hooligans who had dominated the streets in most parts of the metropolis since the Gettysburg-caused shortage of Union regular troops, took up arms again when Lincoln spurned a peace conference and were reduced in urban combat by Yankee arms which encircled the city.

Adroit maneuvers by General Jackson's infantry and General Stuart's horse soldiers permitted the Confederacy to exploit eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey from their base in central Pennsylvania. While Grant used his talents and men to suppress rioters block by bloody block, Lee waited on the strategic periphery of New York, certain that his foe could not take any substantive maneuver against the Army of Northern Virginia.

The great successes of the winter of '63 and '64 were Stuart's rescue of 4,000 prisoners of war from a camp in the far north, and Jackson's candy raid, when Jackson's men had brought to the South so much in the way of supplies that many of the wagons were hauling candy!

Given time illuminated by victories, support grew for implementation of emancipation. Foes of Davis forced votes in Congress on the issue. The Senate gave an emancipation amendment majority support and the House was ten votes shy of a majority, but no one could argue that there was no reasonable support for the deal.

Negroes in gray uniforms were usually in garrisons in Confederate territory and public opinion was galvanized around Christmas when black Confederates near Trenton, New Jersey, atacked and ran off an equal number of federal white troops, who began reciting the Gettysburg Prayer on the field of battle.

In spite of everything, given the size of the Union's edge over the Confederacy in population and in productive capabity, the South still stared defeat in the face at the beginning of 1864.

In 1849, on this day the political martyr Fyodor Dostoyevsky (pictured) was shot by a firing squad in St. Petersburg.

Political Martyr Dostoyevsky Shot Fyodor Dostoyevsky's childhood led his great mind into the only option for its escape: revolution. His father, a raging alcoholic, was a retired military surgeon who moved his family into a small apartment on the grounds of Moscow's Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, where he practiced. The hospital was surrounded by bitter poverty such as an orphanage for the abandoned and an asylum for the insane. Such conditions would be forever impressed upon the young Fyodor. Suffering from epilepsy himself, Fyodor would defy his parents' wishes and explore the hospital gardens, visiting with patients and building a sense of hope out of such bitterness.

A new story by Jeff ProvineAt age 16, after the death of his mother, Dostoyevsky was sent to military engineering school, and his father died soon after. He fell in love with literature and suffered through mathematics enough to manage a commission, eventually becoming a lieutenant. Dostoyevsky left the military in 1843 and turned fulltime to literature, translating Balzac and creating his own fiction. His first published work came in 1846 as a novella entitled Poor Folk, and Dostoyevsky was thrown into literary fame. Fame was fleeting; his next work, The Double, met with frowns of disappointment.

His explorations of schizophrenia and literary experimentation were given up after The Double, and Dostoyevsky pushed himself toward the trials of poverty that he had known so well. He joined the Petrashevsky Circle, a reading and discussion group of progressives in St. Petersburg. While they made some movement, there was no great organization for change beyond theory.

Across Europe in 1848, however, there was much action for change. The Revolutions of 1848 spread across the continent, and Czar Nicholas feared an uprising in Russia. He had easily quashed the 1825 Decembrist Revolt and ended Peter the Great's ideals of Westernization, instead turning back toward orthodoxy. With challenges to autocracy rising in many other empires, Nicholas decided to end the revolution before it could take place by rounding up any progressively minded intellectual. The Petrashevsky Circle was among the groups arrested and put through public mock execution rituals, displays in which the populace could see the might of the Czar's will but also his grace at giving reprieves.

Dostoyevsky himself was arrested April 23, 1849, and, on November 16, sentenced to death by firing squad. After the mock execution, he assumed this would be another of the Czar's displays, and it was generally agreed that he would receive a reprieve. However, due to bureaucratic bungling in the delivery of the reprieve, Dostoyevsky was shot by order of a zealous commander.

Shock settled over St. Petersburg, and Dostoyevsky's writings spread through the city and, then, the country. Many historians suggest that not all of the writings were his, but his depictions of the lives of serfs and the poor are recognized as genuine. Propaganda or not, the works ignited the Russian people as they discussed around fires and over glasses of vodka. Nicholas, refusing to appear weak, repressed those calling for government apology on what was increasingly viewed as a terrorist assassination.

That spring, Russian Mikhail Bakunin escaped from imprisonment while being handed over to Austrian authorities for his organization of the Dresden Uprising the year before. Aided by Russian revolutionist leaders, the 1850 Rising began as Bakunin arrived and announced the liberation of the serfs. Pandering to Slavophile ideals and collectivism, the bureaucracy was overthrown, aristocracy and Jewish farmers alike around the country were slaughtered, and Nicholas was violently ushered off the throne in favor of a much weakened Alexander II constitutionally bound by a council of advisers, Bakunin among them.

Monarchs in Europe debated sending military aid to the Czar, but renewed troubles with revolts in their own empires kept them from assembling a campaign. New stability would be founded in nationalism, citing the best for one's people and country. Strong, central leadership struck both the West and Russia, but the return to the mir, or collective village, style of living would create a sharp ideological division between the two. As the West modernized, Russians settled into orthodoxy, ultimately preparing for swift military defeat by Imperial Germany after the turn of the century.

In 1989, as part of the growing War on Drugs that had been declared by President Richard Nixon in 1971 and redoubled by President George Bush, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega (pictured) was indicted on drug-trafficking charges and endangering American nationals in addition to his more obvious crime of suppressing democracy.

Canal Sabotage as Panama Invasion CommencesSparked by the shooting death of a US Marine at a roadblock on December 16, nine thousand US troops entered Panama in Operation Just Cause, joining the some 12,000 others that were already there as part of the defense of the jointly owned Panama Canal (set to revert to Panamanian control in the year 2000 under the Torrijos?Carter Treaties). Noriega's pet army of the Panamanian Defense Forces was easily defeated with minimal resistance, except for a devious counterattack with an unassuming small freighter that rested in the Canal near the Gatun Locks.

Rigged with explosives on a timer, the freighter exploded while unoccupied, killing several sailors on nearby boats and one canal worker. While the damage to the Canal was not catastrophic, it would take months to repair back to full capacity, frustrating international shipping and making a noticeable dent on the world economy with the Dow Jones dropping briefly below 1,000 points. News of the strike shocked military commanders and President Bush, who had been largely in control of the situation. Although only twenty-three US soldiers and three American civilians were killed (opposed to 150 PDF and some 500 Panamanian civilians), the invasion would have a black smear in the public view.

A new story by Jeff ProvineWhile the fighting ended shortly after it had begun, Noriega found asylum in the Vatican anuncio and did not surrender until arrested by US Drug Enforcement agents on January 3. During this time, the US scrambled to polish its image. Polls sponsored by CBS and articles by the New York Times showed that Panamanians were pleased that the dictator had been overthrown and the properly elected Guillermo Endara sworn into office; even those who had suffered property damage or the loss of loved ones supported the US invasion by as much as 80 percent. Other news sources were not as friendly, giving accounts such as those from Paul Eisner of Newsday describing blacklists and ".sapo". informers upon neighbors as well as the Miami Herald's report of ".Neighbors saw six U.S. truck loads bringing dozens of bodies to a mass grave" and a mother's "voice rose over the crowd's silence: 'Damn the Americans'".

International disapproval arose, made all the louder by the economic fallout of the damaged Canal. The Organization of American States and the European Parliament made formal protests, calling the move a violation of international law. As public criticism grew, more stories began to come out about Noriega's past. Most recognized him as a money-launderer and drug-trafficker, but the story of his origins by CIA support became widespread. Noriega had been picked by the CIA as a potential block to fears of Central American communism in 1970, but was dropped from the payroll in 1977 after he had become mixed in drugs. Two years later, the Sandinista National Liberation Front came to power in Nicaragua, and Noriega was tapped again to keep communism from spreading and became dictator in 1983. Throughout the Reagan Administration, which came into its own problems with illegal activity in the Iran-Contra Affair, Noriega enjoyed American support as he rigged elections and was condemned by US Senate committee reviews of drug traffic. Upon word that Noriega may have been connected with Cuba and the Sandanistas, he was cut off by the US government. After his arrest in 1989, he would be sentenced in 1992 to federal prison for forty years.

President Bush raced to salvage his administration, citing his own experience with the CIA and admitting that certain intelligence activities were necessary to stop the spread of communism. With the Berlin Wall falling in August and the Soviet departure from Afghanistan earlier in February, he noted that American fears of international instability had been satiated and now was the time to ".clean up the mess".. With new policies on cutting international aid from dictators and new CIA transparency, a wave of revolution watched over by UN and largely American forces came in several countries such as Nigeria with free elections. Most famous would be the removal of Saddam Hussein at the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 after his invasion of Kuwait. The actions would give Bush a narrow election victory for a second term after successfully winning support in Maine and Colorado from Ross Perot's dropping out of his campaign in July of 1992. The fall of the Soviet Union that December would be a further feather in Bush's hat.

In 1917, after nearly a century of social and political clamoring, the Temperance Movement made its greatest victory in the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment, also known as the Temperance Amendment.

US Temperance Amendment Passed While the original draft for the wording called for the prohibition of "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors", a rewrite in committee changed the goal of the proposal to make intoxication itself a federal crime.

The question of the constitutionality of banning traded goods was suddenly removed, and the new question of personal liberty came into effect. However, after some eighty years of presence, the Temperance Movement had the clout to shout down the naysayers. Beginning in the 1830s out of the same spiritual and social revolutions that would conjure ideas of the abolition of slavery and women's rights, the Temperance Movement would make great initial strides, such as the Maine Law of 1851 banning the sale of alcohol except for "medicinal, mechanical or manufacturing purposes". Thirteen states would have this legal prohibition until riots in 1855 caused the law's repeal. The Civil War and other social reforms took precedence in America for the next few decades, but the Temperance Movement continued to smolder.

A new story by Jeff ProvineAfter the Civil War, temperance began anew with the Women's Christian Temperance Movement and the Prohibition Party. The total removal of alcohol became the goal, as was seen in the state constitution of Kansas and WCTU leader Carrie Nation vandalizing saloons, shaming customers, and breaking bottles with her notorious hatchet. Education became a useful tool for the spread of the idea of abolition in forms such as the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction, begun in 1880. True clout began to grow, and by the time World War I began, all necessary pieces fell to complete the puzzle with the argument of saving grain for the war effort, the silencing of German-American naysayers, and the Anti-Saloon League carrying numerous votes.

The 1916 election gave ample seats in Congress to the "dries" arguing for prohibition with 140 to 64 in the Democratic Party and 138 to 62 Republicans. Using their majority, an amendment for prohibition seemed inevitable, but reminder of the Maine riots and the need for public support brought on the question that prohibition may be a legal step too far, though public control would be perfectly acceptable along the lines of maintaining peace and the public welfare.

Upon the ratification of the Temperance Amendment in 1919, the Volstead Act was introduced to Congress establishing definitions of "intoxication" and clarification of punishments, ultimately leading back to the Temperance Movement's ideals of education. Many leaders such as Billy Sunday cried that the amendment did not go far enough by outright prohibition, but they were quickly settled onto tasks of how to reform those arrested and sent to federal rehabilitation communities. While their methods were morally questionable as berating the prisoners, forcing scientifically derived "purging" diets, psychological shock, and ruthless work hours to keep the devil away from idle hands, they managed enough of a success rate to continue. Police were given local methods of rooting out intoxication through various tests and, using the research of Dr. Francis E. Anstie, detection of alcohol on the breath or in the urine. Public intoxication cases dropped rapidly at the beginning of the 1920s, and quiet intoxication at home escaped notice without a warrant.

However, the crackdown on intoxication led the practice deep underground. Prostitution parlors combined with opium houses gained a whole new business in allowing drunks a place to hide out. Following the new revenue, gangster crime rose in some of the larger cities, most notoriously Chicago. A new push from the Temperance Movement arose in the 1920s to ban alcohol altogether, but public opinion had shifted toward indulgence on material things, and numbers among the temperance clubs dwindled.

To this day, though definitions have been adapted due to other intoxicants such as marijuana in 1937 and to the broad Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 after the "Free Your Mind" campaigns of the late 1960s, it remains illegal to be inebriated in the United States. Critics cite overcrowded rehab centers and high crime rates as outcomes of this crackdown, but healthy economic productivity seems to outweigh any negatives since suspicion of not appearing timely at work will bring G-men armed with breath-sensors and comprehension exams to one's door.

In 1637, on this day the Shimabara Rebellion sparked the opening of Nippon.

Shimabara Rebellion Sparks Opening of Nippon In the 1630s, a climate of heavy taxation and famine would ignite a rebellion that would change the island nation of Nippon forever. In the Shimabara Domain under Matsukura Katsuie (as well as the Karatsu Domain under Terasawa Katataka), peasants were driven into bitter poverty by construction projects by the Matsukura clan attempting to climb the hierarchy of the lords by building up his defenses and preparing for an invasion. Many peasants were Christian, as the previous lord family Arima had been. When the Arima had left, the peasants had stayed, and now the Matsukura enacted persecution to keep the believers of foreign things under its thumb.A new story by Jeff ProvineRebellion broke out in 1637 with the assassination of a local tax collector, Hayashi Hyozaemon. Amakusa Shiro, a charismatic teenager, led them, claiming to be the "Fourth Son of Heaven" prophesied to be the one to begin the Christianization of Nippon. Masterless samurai, many of whom had been involved in the plotting that autumn, joined the peasants, and their ranks swelled by impressing the conquered neighbors into joining their cause. While besieging neighboring castles, armies from nearby Kyushu arrived, and the rebels made a series of advances and retreats, eventually taking refuge in Hara Castle.

Though outnumbering the defenders four-to-one, the shogunate forces were only able to take up a siege of the castle. After several potential strategies, the commanders called for aid from the Dutch, white-faced demons that arrived from far in the west on wooden ships not long after the Portuguese. The Dutch gave the army gunpowder and cannon as well as advisers on how to use them most effectively. Having gone through generations of warfare with Spain during what would become known as the Eighty Years' War, the Dutch had learned many of the subtleties of artillery. The tradeship de Ryp took up a position along with the battery-mounted cannons on land, and the barrage of the castle began.

After some fifteen days, the rebels broke and called for truce. Incendiaries and heavy shot had devastated the castle and ruined much of their supplies. With the dead piling up, the peasants began to surrender en masse. The castle ruins were burned, and more than 30,000 sympathizers were executed. Amakusa Shiro had died in the barrage, and his battered severed head was returned to Nagasaki.

The shogunate learned valuable lessons from the rebellion. Foremost, the Shimabara peninsula had to be repopulated (even its lords, as Matsukura Katsuie had committed suicide and Terasawa Katataka died childless), and the reshuffling established a new and prosperous hierarchy rewarding those who had worked for the good of Nippon. Another lesson was the dangers of foreign religion, and Christianity was driven underground as the Kakure Kirishitan. The third, and perhaps most important, lesson was the effectiveness of Western technology and technique. Industrial spies were shipped back to Europe, learning all they could of Western weaponry, architecture, metallurgy, textiles, and, key to the future of Nippon, manufacture.

Initially relying on the Dutch, the Nipponese would later turn to the English and even cleverly pit Western countries against one another to gain greater advantages in trade. In the eighteenth century, the Nipponese would emulate the steam engine of James Watt to great success. When Europe became embroiled in the affairs of the French Revolution (ideals refused in Nippon as they found interest only in technology, not social philosophy) and Napoleonic Wars, Nippon seized the opportunity to colonize and create its own empire. Invading Korea and using it as a launching ground for the conquest of Manchuria, Nippon secured the coal and iron mines it needed to lead the world in industrial power.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, Nippon would become the major figure in the Pacific, conquering many of the unclaimed Polynesian islands and using the Hawaiian Royals as a buffer to keep the expansive Americans at bay. The Nipponese purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire after beating out the United States in a bidding war served as the West's wakeup call to the political clout of Nippon. Later defeating the Russians in war, the West would realize Nippon's clout was more than mere wealth and trade.

Europeans would clamor to bring Nippon into lasting treaties and even their short-lived League of Nations, but the policy of avoiding Western culture stood. Minor trades could be made for technology (they gained many scientists from Fascism in exchange for resources), but there would be no military pacts. Each time as the West has torn itself apart several times over the centuries, the Nipponese have sat out, gaining a little more wealth, industrial productivity, and power.

In 1861, after a terrible year involving a carriage crash, scandal with the Prince of Wales cavorting with the Irish actress Nellie Clifden, shouldering many of the Queen's duties during her mourning of the death of her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and intervening in harsh diplomatic response to the United States of America blocking Confederate envoys in a raid upon a British ship, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Consort of the United Kingdom, finally had some luck. His chronic illness with what his physician William Jenner had diagnosed as typhoid fever finally began to clear up. It would remain a cold, solemn Christmas, but, by spring, Albert would be well among the living.

Prince Albert Recovers Despite his brush with death, Albert continued with his lifelong dedication and energy to his many causes. Up to that time, he had transcended the typically quiet position as consort, where he revolutionized and expanded his and the Queen's many estates with advanced technology and practices. Albert additionally took up causes such as the abolition of slavery and reforms of nearly every policy. He served as Chancellor at the University of Oxford, modernizing the curriculum, as well as president for the society for Advancement of Science. During the turbulent times of the 1840s, Albert supported the government in enacting progressive policies without need for violence. His work to open the international scope of London ultimately succeeded in the Great Exhibition of 1851, made greater by its lowering of entrance prices to a single shilling, making the exhibition accessible to the lower classes and opening the eyes of thousands to the greater world. While Albert attempted to obtain a peaceful diplomatic agreement between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean War would break out, causing his popularity to plummet.

A new story by Jeff ProvineRenewed with life in 1862, Albert shifted his attentions to a diplomatic solution in the ongoing American Civil War. A weaker United States would be politically advantageous to the world-leader Britain, though it did not want it as an enemy. Albert told the political envoys that Her Majesty's Government admired the CSA's sense of independence and were willing to contribute, but they simply could not back the institution of slavery on moral grounds. In 1863, the South began a policy of voluntarily freeing slaves with government compensation, and the abolitionist support in the North began to wane. The war would come to an end with separate but equal nations in 1865 after the loss of Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1864.

In 1870, Albert would again try his hand at steadying international conflicts by trying to cool the head of Emperor Louis Napoleon of France, but the Franco-Prussian War would go on, nonetheless. As it ended with the Treaty of Frankfurt, Albert admired his native Germany in its unification and used his rights as Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to address Kaiser Wilhelm on the goods of liberal, paternal governance. He often visited his daughter Victoria and son-in-law Frederick, encouraging them to discipline their son Friedrich Wilhelm and once caning the boy himself for not minding his elders. Biographers record incidents between Albert and the lad who would become Kaiser Wilhelm II as greatly instrumental into shaping him into the mindful, studious man he was.

Building diplomacy with Germany and developing industrial policy would dominate the latter years of Albert's life. Suffering from what modern historians believe to be cancer, but about which his medical documents were politely vague, Albert died in 1879, two days short of matching his father's lifespan. His legacy stands throughout Europe to this day, creating monarchy that is an example of morality to its people, aimed at mutually advantageous diplomatic agreements, and tied tightly to education, industry, and technological development. While many Marxist and radicals call Albert "paternalist" and "deceptively authoritarian", most credit him with enabling a twentieth century where the majority of wars have been colonial or internal affairs dealing with anti-imperial, anarchical threats.

In 1939, on this day the Battle of Tolvajarvi became a Finnish Rout. Throughout its history, Finland had struggled to free itself from the imperialistic influence of her neighbors. In the Medieval period, Sweden settlers dominated the natives and achieved rule with the Finnish people being commoners.

Battle of Tolvajarvi Becomes Finnish Rout During the wars of the eighteenth century known as the Greater Wrath and Lesser Wrath, Russia, revolutionized after the time of Peter the Great, occupied Finland. Ultimately, the Finnish War of 1808-9 would wrest control from Sweden and turn Finland into an autonomous grand duchy within the rule of the Russian Empire.

Finland would stay under Russian influence for another century until the Russian Civil War would give way to Finland's independence on December 6, 1917. Relations between the Finnish Republic and the eventual Soviet Union remained strained. While non-aggression treaties were signed in the 1930s, Soviet invasion would spark the Winter War on November 30, 1939, as a side-event to the growing Second World War.

A new story by Jeff ProvineThe nations were scarcely matched: Finland's army was 30 percent that of Russia, its air force 3 percent, and its armored vehicles 1 percent. While the numbers were overwhelming, the Red Army was still recovering from Stalin's Great Purge of more than 30,000 officers imprisoned or executed in 1937. Meanwhile, the Finns held high morale and unbreakable commitment to resistance. While the Russians had air superiority and powerful advances with tanks, the Finnish troops had minor victories, holding the Russians moving northward from Leningrad across the isthmus between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga. While the Mannerheim Line held there, more Russian troops crossed from north of the lakes. The Finns planned to meet them at Tolvajarvi.

The Finnish battle plan was to use the frozen lakes as points to cross and attack the oncoming Soviets in a pincer movement. The Finns engaged with Soviets, who outnumbered them five-to-one. Rather than attempt to press ahead along the road, the Soviets withdrew. Thinking that he had caught the Russians unawares, Finnish Colonel Talvela took up pursuit. Despite taking losses during the retreat, the Russians came under artillery protection and counterattacked, wiping out the Finnish defenders.

With the harsh victory at Tolvajarvi, the Russians picked up momentum that would bring them around the lake and encircle the Finnish defenders along the Mannerheim Line. Helsinki would fall March 13, 1940, and Finland would be declared part of the Soviet Union. While the quick conquest had been a military victory, the Finnish people had not yet given up the fight. Secretly supplied by Hitler's Germany, the Finn resistance would be an enormous strain on Stalin's manpower and resources. By the time the German invasion of Russia began with Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the Soviets would be ill prepared to fight since so many were already working to maintain occupation.

The Eastern European Theater would be a bloodbath with Stalin desperately fighting to keep Hitler from taking Moscow, Stalingrad, and, especially, Leningrad, whose siege began September 8, 1941. In 1943, Stalin would proclaim an end to rule over Finland and recall troops to bolster his defenses. Rising up as a fascist power, the Finns would counterattack, leading to the fall of Leningrad. In June 1944, Moscow fell, but Stalin continued fight on, eventually reversing the tide of war back to near the 1941 border.

The Western Front, however, eventually pushed into Germany, and Hitler's regime fell with the taking of Berlin by General George S. Patton on May 2, 1945. Armistice fell across Central Europe, and Finland's fascist government collapsed under Soviet pressure. While the Russians did not occupy much of Eastern Europe, they did take hold of their old Russian imperial possessions, including Finland. It would not be until after the end of the Cold War that Finland, then a bleak, backwater economy, would regain its independence.

In 1945, while on his way to a hunting trip in the German countryside, the Cadillac belonging to General George S. Patton collided with a left-turning 2.5 ton truck. Patton's driver, Private First Class Horace Woodring, rather than braking and hitting the truck at lower speed, briskly turned to dodge, and the two vehicles slammed into one another's sides.

Patton Escapes Car Crash Unharmed Woodring and Patton's chief of staff Major General "Hap" Gay both suffered bruises, but Patton seemed totally unhurt after tumbling sideways.

The accident seemed to follow the course of luck that could be traced through the old soldier's life. Patton had attended the Virginia Military Institute and United States Military Academy, competed in the modern pentathlon at the 1912 Summer Olympics, finishing fifth overall and the only non-Swede in the top seven. He studied swordsmanship in Europe the next year, going on to become the youngest Master of the Sword in Army history. From there, Patton became an instructor, wrote pamphlets, and helped design the Army's final saber in 1913, later nicknamed the "Patton saber".

A new story by Jeff ProvinePeace soon gave way to war, and Patton's real career began. He served as Pershing's aide in the Mexican expedition in 1916 and then became a captain among the US Tank Corps in WWI. Campaigning for years to acquire funding for armored divisions for the US Army, but with little success, Patton spent the between-war years stationed in Hawaii (where, in 1931, he wrote a defensive plan for a potential air raid) and in Washington, D.C., (where he led tanks against the Bonus Army on the orders of General Douglas MacArthur). When WWII began, Patton's arguments for armored divisions gained clout, and he was promoted to major general to head the 2nd Armored Division.

Patton's leadership would give the Allies massive advantage in the African and European Theaters of the war. The "Desert Fox" Irwin Rommel was notoriously concerned of Patton, and the German military would routinely place their best troops against him, often to no great avail. Patton pressed his troops through North Africa, Sicily, and France.

While a master on the battlefield, Patton met with great controversy when bullets did not fly. Hoping to motivate his men, he maintained a powerful visage and carried nickel-plated revolvers with ivory handles. He swore constantly, even in public addresses. Patton's belief in the honor of the military contradicted Eisenhower's easy-going nature and cartoonist Bill Mauldin's ridicule, both of whom chafed Patton's temper. Most shocking was the "slapping incident" in Sicily where Patton had hit a soldier suffering from shellshock and ordered him back to the front. Patton would be stripped of command for a time, but he would use his time to confound German intelligence on where the European landing would begin. After Normandy, Patton would be back in command with the Third Army and helped in the liberation of Europe.

As the war came to an end, Patton began to give warnings about not being able to trust the Soviets. Some 25,000 American POWs had been liberated but not returned in Eastern Europe, where the communists were seemingly settling in. Patton suggested that the American Army be ready for war again to keep Russia in its place while they were low on supplies. Instead, the Army began dismantling itself for peacetime, and Patton was reassigned to the Fifteenth Army, which was mainly handling occupation and historical collection.

After the accident, the Fifteenth Army headquarters was inactivated on January 31, 1946, and Patton sent his request for retirement to the War Department, which was approved. According to Hap Gay, Patton would have resigned if retirement had been refused. The weight of peace seemed too much for the old soldier to bear. When Patton returned to his native California, he began a lecture circuit, which provided a great deal of scandal, and primarily wrote, commenting on his past as well as the present and future of America. He consistently warned of Soviet expansion, which gained the attention of political movements.

Patton was invited to the 1948 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. He was surprised to be seen in politics and even more to hear that he had been placed on the ballot. While he campaigned rigorously after the invite, it was apparent that he had no real hope of taking the presidency as Dewey had cinched the vote and Patton's infamy preceded him, not to mention that his military clout was blocked by votes going toward MacArthur. Instead, Patton returned to retirement, writing to several friends with the exclamation, "God, give me a war to fight!"

As if an answer to prayer, Patton was called up by Vice President Richard Nixon to be an adviser in the situation in French Indochina, which was quickly becoming known as Vietnam. Having watched the turmoil that was the Korean War from the sidelines in agony, Patton was eager to sort out the situation himself. Though he agreed with MacArthur's suggestion to use atomic weapons, Patton was disgusted by his former commander's disrespect of President Truman. Patton arrived in Saigon and met with CIA advisers, many of whom had connections back to the old Army OS. Upon his assessment, Patton shook his head over the situation and said of Ngo Dinh Diem, "I wouldn't fight for him, even if it were against Stalin himself". It was clear the people preferred Ho Chi Minh, who was a cunning warrior working to limit trouble upon the peasants.

Patton wrote an extensive description of the corruption in South Vietnam and suggested winning over the resistance-fighters of the Viet Minh rather than trying to fight the Viet Cong and their pro-populace support. The CIA worked to follow his plan, infiltrating North Vietnam and gaining leverage as the Sino-Soviet split began to appear in the late '50s and became clear by the '60s. With the American-backed regime change in South Vietnam in 1958, the short-lived Vietnam War of 1959-60 established firmly the division between the Communist North and the increasingly western South, as had been seen in Korea. Containment continued to be the policy of the United States as it subtly transformed itself over the twentieth century while Communism would self-destruct by the 1990s.

However, Patton would not live to see his influence on modern events. He died at age 72 in December of 1957 while touring Vietnam and suggesting military placements for defense along the northern border despite rainy weather. His body was returned to the US, where it was buried in Arlington Cemetery.

In 1943, one day after being unceremoniously appointed Supreme Commander in the coming Operation Overlord in a handwritten note from FDR to Stalin, General Dwight David Eisenhower died in a jeep accident while being transported from headquarters.

Eisenhower Dies in Jeep Accident While some speculate that the accident was in fact Nazi assassination or perhaps political intrigue, the majority of historians agree that it was simply the fault of a dog crossing the road. Funeral services were conducted in Europe and again in the United States with the war hero's body being interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Having lost a great leader, FDR woefully appointed Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, whom he had earlier told, "I didn't feel I could sleep at ease if you were out of Washington" when explaining his choice.

A new story by Jeff ProvineMany considered the appointment a demotion for Marshall, as he was in key position in Washington to organize and manage the resources of the Allies. Churchill himself would call Marshall the "organizer of victory", and now it was Marshall's duty to exact that victory in Europe. With the landing at Normandy in June 1944, victory in Europe gradually became a reality. When the war ended, Marshall continued to his duties to America by his appointment to China by President Truman to broker peace between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists. No peace could be made (and Marshall argued against the Pentagon that the United States simply shouldn't become involved), and Marshall returned to the US, soon appointed Secretary of State. Here he would win a Nobel Peace Prize for his "Marshall Plan" for the organization and rebuilding of post-war Europe, also being named Time Magazine's Man of the Year for the second time.

After retiring on grounds of ill health, Marshall was again brought to duty on the call of President Truman to be Secretary of Defense. The Korean War had shown how poorly the post-war American armed forces had been organized, and no one organized better than Marshall. Marshall effectively prepared the military for demobilization in less than a year and retired again. Meanwhile, fellow Five Star General Omar Bradley would be instrumental in Truman's decision to relieve MacArthur of command before he sparked a war with China.

In 1952, Marshall would be called up again, this time by the Democratic Party. General Bradley was running on the Republican ticket for president, and the Democrats sought a president that could surpass his military clout. Marshall declined, saying, "I'll stick with retirement. When men like Joe McCarthy are running around, Washington is no place for me.

While the Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson would lose out against President Bradley, Marshall's famous statement would cause a surge of unpopularity for McCarthy, costing him his reelection to the Senate. Bradley's two terms would be famed for their time of prosperity, forward development with projects such as the Bradley Continental Highway, and his liberal leanings, continuing New Deal programs and combating segregation, as well as his openness in international policy with Communism. The Bradley Doctrine would prevent America from becoming something of a policeman, instead working to ensure that proper popular elections were held, preventing another Korea and MacArthur.

Through the course of the latter half of the twentieth century, Communism would grow throughout the world, taking over many nations in Southeast Asia, North Africa, and Central and South America. By the 1980s, however, the Stalinist nations would begin to fall apart after defeat in Iran and Afghanistan, leading to Germany reunifying and the Soviet bloc disappearing. The other "communist" nations of the world turned either into militaristic dictators or revolutionized themselves as seen in Red China, conflict with which Bradley had said would be "The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy".

In 1745, on this day Prince Charlie crossed the Swarkestone Bridge. In England's Revolution of 1688, often termed the "Glorious Revolution", the Stuart dynasty was removed from the English and Scottish thrones once more, this time deposed by William of Orange at the invitation of Parliament.

Prince Charlie Crosses Swarkestone Bridge The Catholic kings of a Protestant nation had been a struggle through the seventeenth century, but many in Britain felt that the Stuarts would be best upon the throne, especially as non-English-speaking Germans from Hanover began to rule. The Stuart Cause would continue, even after "The Fifteen", a bungled invasion by James III & VII after which the Old Pretender was no longer welcome in France as an embarrassment.

A new story by Jeff ProvinePrince Charles Edward Stuart (fondly known as "Bonnie Prince Charlie") had been trained for war since his birth. He witnessed sieges, studied with commanders, and took up pursuit of the generalship that would win him back his throne. While his father was the exiled king, James III & VII still had enough influence to persuade France into sending an invasion fleet in 1744. In preparation, Prince Regent Charles went to Scotland and began to raise his army of supporters. While the French invasion never materialized, Charlie decided to carry out the reconquest of Britain himself in 1745.

With two ships and an army of eight men, Charlie landed at Eriskay on July 23. Finding great support among the Highlanders, Charlie raised his father's standard and formed up an army large enough to subdue Edinburgh. At Prestonpans on September 21, Charlie met with the only government army to stand against him in Scotland, which he soundly defeated, inflicting ten times the causalities his force took. From there, he pressed south, moving practically unopposed with 6,000 men through Cumbria and Derbyshire to Swarkestone Bridge. There, word said that few supported him in the south and, worse, the government was building a mass of force to counterattack. Charlie's commanders advised him to turn back and raise more of his own support.

Charlie decided to ignore them and pressed southward while momentum was with him. It was found that few did support him in the south, but few supported the Hannovers as well. As winter settled, Charlie made for London, hoping to besiege the city during its hungriest time. His only obstacle was a force comparable in size to his own, though hastily assembled, led by King George II's son, the Duke of Cumberland. They met at Hatfield on December 18, where Charlie's Highlanders made use of the ancient woods to minimize the effect of the government cannon. When the battle was won, Charlie seized the cannon and turned it on London for the winter siege.

By spring, the city was in an uproar against Parliament. Without hope of fresh food coming that spring, the winter starvation would grow even worse. Charlie welcomed anyone who would desert the city and join his cause, strengthening his ranks with generous Christmas and New Years' feasts. Finally, on April 16, Parliament conceded and voted to reinstate the House of Stuart and oust George II. Charlie's father James would be crowned later that year and rule until his death in 1766. The aged James was feared as being a Catholic tyrant, but he proved largely ineffectual, his most vivacious act being to keep Britain out of the Prussian War, where Frederick the Great established himself as a power on the Continent.

Charlie, meanwhile, traveled the British Colonies in hopes of expansion. He toured the Americas, also helping to establish the legitimacy of the Stuarts, and joined Robert Clive on his second journey in India. During his time in England, he converted to Anglicanism, which enraged his father but set many British minds at ease. Upon being crowned in 1766, Charles III began ambitious projects to expand British trade and endorsed exploration for new routes and potential settlements, especially in North America and in the Pacific with Admiral Cook's five voyages. His rigorous expansion inevitably led to further wars with the Dutch and French, expensive naval campaigns that drained the treasury of all.

When Parliament attempted to levy heavier taxes, uproar rose among the American colonists in the early 1780s with calls for representation, perhaps even independence. It is said that Charlie was fearful of losing his crown after fighting to win it, and he went quickly to work adding American seats to Parliament to guarantee his support. His "weakness" would be severely criticized by many Tories, but the heavy hand of the French king Louis XVI would lead to the brutal revolution in 1791.

Charlie stayed quiet through the remainder of his reign, depending more upon prime ministers such as William Pitt. His son Charles IV succeeded the throne upon his death in 1798, the same year the Egyptian War sparked as Republican France attempted to strike at India through the Suez. Upon the sound defeat of France and the seizure of many of its colonial claims, the nineteenth century would stand as the next golden age of Britain, continuing Charlie's legacy of progressive economics and social liberality.

In 1839, in another critical moment of failure of famed States Rights advocate Abraham Lincoln, his application to practice law at the federal level was dismissed, possibly due to finagling from Democratic opponents.

Abraham Lincoln Fails his Admission to the US Circuit Court The grounds for refusal were based in his fiery rhetoric and several challenges of his character, giving examples from his history of scatological humor and rough story telling. Lincoln could not deny these remarks and attempted a defense on First Amendment Free Speech, but he would soon give up as he fell into one of his "melancholies" (believed to be what modern psychologists would call clinical depression).

Lincoln's life had been fraught with hardships. Born in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky in 1809, young Lincoln was the son of Thomas Lincoln, who had become a wealthy and respectable man in the real estate business until he was wiped out in 1816 due to court cases over a faulty title. They moved to Indiana, a state where slavery was banned, and tragedy struck again as milk sickness (tremetol poisoning) took Lincoln's mother. Frontier life was hard, and the Lincolns moved westward again to Illinois to a new homestead. Lincoln left home and worked on a river barge before returning and starting a store that would ultimately fail. After losing a political campaign in 1832 and serving as a captain in the Black Hawk War, Lincoln finally found his path as an orator and lawyer.

A new story by Jeff ProvineHe was famously self-educated, stating, "I studied with nobody". Instead, Lincoln read Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, the Revised Statutes of Indiana, the Declaration of Independence, and the United States Constitution while working as a secretary and surveyor in New Salem, Illinois. In 1834, along with his legal firm, he successfully began his career with the Illinois General Assembly as a Whig, following his hero Henry Clay, whose American System ideals he had begun to follow passionately. As a Whig, he would be firmly for investment in infrastructure to improve the nation, voting for projects such as the Illinois and Michigan Canal to connect Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River, roads, and railroads. With the Panic of 1837, however, the projects became bankrupt and Illinois was "littered with unfinished roads and partially dug canals" while its bonds tumbled in value. Lincoln suggested making up the money by Illinois purchasing federal land and selling it for a profit to private citizens, which the federal government refused. These disappointments by federalism would later impact his philosophy of state self-dependence.

Just as his career seemed to be on the proper path, Lincoln's subtly failing strength as a Whig became a stumbling block blamed for costing him the ability to argue cases in the US Circuit Court. His world collapsed as he settled into depression, even skipping offers by John Todd Stuart, a war buddy and benefactor who had inspired Lincoln to take up law, to meet his cousin Mary Todd. Eventually the two would meet and even marry, though they once broke their engagement due to second thoughts. During this time, Lincoln determined his ideas on independence and voluntary mass-agreements, like marriage, and he focused on local items for his legal practice and political career supporting federalism as less important.

In 1847, Lincoln advanced to the federal level as a representative in the US House. He argued bitterly against the Mexican-American War (disgusted with calls for the glories of war, which he called an "attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood") and reaffirmed his "free soil" stance on slavery saying, "the Congress of the United States has the power, under the constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; but that power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of said District" while still denouncing the evils of slave-holding. He was rewarded with his support during the election of Zachary Taylor with an offering to be governor of the new Oregon Territory, but Lincoln declined, wanting to stay close to his home of Illinois.

Lincoln spent the next decade working to support his home state, running unsuccessfully in the 1858 Senate campaign but becoming famous after his publication of speeches in the Douglas-Lincoln Debates, including "I believe this government can endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will be divided". He was proven wrong with the secession of the South after the narrow 1860 election of William H. Seward. During the Civil War, Lincoln argued for the rights of Southerners but agreed that a violation of the agreement of Union had taken place. He begrudgingly supported military action and rose significantly to the Illinois Senate, where his aid bills laid groundwork for military planning in decades to come.

After the war and the assassination of Seward, Lincoln became a powerful voice on Reconstruction and the necessity to return the South to normalcy, including the return of many rights. Gathering support from other wings of the Republicans and even former supporters of Douglas as well as revealing much of the corruption of victory-profiteers, Lincoln challenged and would eventually overthrow the Radical Republicans even though he had agreed with them on many anti-slavery issues before. Eventually, Lincoln's fair-mindedness and disgust of corruption would get him elected President of the United States in 1868. Due to his deteriorating health and the increasing mental illness of his wife, Lincoln would retire from politics at the end of his term, though he had already set a new precedent for the United States with regional interest and a successful plurality of political parties. Many scholars would say this disjointedness did much to limit federal power that could have alleviated social woes in the next century's Great Depression.

In 1980, on this day Soviet Premier and world Communist leader Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria passed away at the age of eight-one. The Soviet Union lost in Beria one of its strongest and most controversial leaders.

Secretary Beria passes awayBeria was born on March 29, 1899 in Merkheuli, in the present-day Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, gaining fame for leading the repression of Georgian nationalists that was said to have cost the lives of 10,000 people. It is said that he met his predecessor, Josef Stalin, while saving the then-Soviet dictator from a man playing a gunman during a staged assassination attempt. Whether or not the story is accurate, Beria quickly became one of Stalin's top lieutenants. Moving swiftly up the ranks as a proven leader of security forces, Beria replaced Nikolai Yezhov as head of the NKVD during the Great Purge, which Yezhov had administered until even he was swallowed-up in it.

During the Second World War, Beria oversaw a vast expansion of the security forces, as well as of the Gulag Archipelago system for political prisoners. The NKVD took on a life of its own under his tutelage, forming fighting divisions with sophisticated weaponry that was the envy of the regular military. Beria enforced Stalin's strict military disciplinary rules with impunity, ordering army units to fire on troops that retreated during battle. Even troops that fought heroically until their ammunition was spent before they fled a battle were shipped-off to hard labor camps in Siberia. Beria later became First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers.

In later years, despite enjoying his status at the high table of Soviet Power, Beria grew to loath his boss. Stalin was an impulsive leader, ordering the deaths of anyone who crossed him in the slightest way or that he suspected of being a threat. Perhaps the only thing that saved Beria from a purge was the he was so dependable at carrying them out. He grew worried in 1952, however, upon learning that Stalin was planning to have trusted Party comrade Vyachislav Molotov purged in the following year.

In the early days of March, 1953, Josef Stalin suffered a massive stroke. Beria was the first person to arrive at Stalin's private dacha outside of Moscow. As other party leaders arrived to find out why they had not heard from their General Secretary, Beria forbade them from entering the house. "No one is to disturb Comrade Stalin!" said Beria, and none of the others were of a mind to disagree. Later, as they finally decided as a group to go in, they discovered Stalin lying on the floor, paralyzed. The doctor that arrived soon after said the condition was caused by age and poor health, though Beria was overheard saying that he had "done him in" perhaps meaning that he had initiated the stroke. As the men surrounded the dying Stalin's bed, Beria began cursing the leader he had so fervently served. When Stalin's eyes opened in a glare at his head of security, Beria pitifully fell to his knees and kissed Stalin's hands. once Stalin's eyes closed again, Beria rose to his feet and spat on the floor before returning to the cursing of his boss.

Stalin died on March 5, 1953, surrounded by his ministers in the Soviet government. A jubilant Beria immediately ran outside, calling for his driver. Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan leaned to Nikita Khrushchev and said: "There goes Beria, off to seize power". He had little idea how correct he was. The next day, four divisions of troops from Beria's NKVD had surrounded the city, armed with tanks and multiple rocket launch trucks. Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich and Mikoyan were arrested and relieved of their positions. They were executed in the cellars of the NKVD headquarters in Moscow.

Beria instituted a power-sharing deal with Molotov and Malenkov, forming what was known as the "Jewish Triumvirate" because of the partial Jewish heritage that each of the men shared. Despite this arrangement, Beria assumed the top leadership role of General Secretary, as announced on July 11, 1953, while retaining control over security. Malenkov was made Prime Minister and Molotov, famed for his role as Foreign Minister, became the President of the Politburo. This new leadership ushered the Soviet Union into an age known as the "Beria Thaw," which saw a institutional relaxation of Stalin's stringent economic and foreign affairs policies.

Beria promised to end the Cold War peacefully, while making certain that the Soviet Union was prepared militarily if things heated up. While the Army was strengthened and the Navy increased, Beria decided not to institute a massive buildup of nuclear weapons. They money for the development of both the warheads and their delivery systems, he argued, would be better spent on conventional forces and the rebuilding of Soviet Eastern Europe to its pre-war industrial strength. He said that it was no use trying to "out-nuke" the West if the result was the total annihilation of the world? Beria divided the military into division-sized military districts, which were scattered throughout the Soviet Bloc. The logic behind this was that in the even of a massive nuclear strike, at least some part of the military would survive to defend the USSR and perhaps take Western Europe as a consolation prize.

While the military was being revamped, Beria made surprising peace overtures to the West. East Germany was allowed to reunify with the rest of Germany. Beria and American President Dwight Eisenhower agreed that the US and the USSR should become the "parents" of a new, peaceful Germany. Both sides contributed to the rebuilding of the country, while agreeing that it would become a demilitarized zone.

Moreover, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia became independent, though they remained under the control of their respective Communist parties and were no more free than say Poland or Czechoslovakia. Beria justified this surprising move by saying that the Baltic states had not been part of "the revolutionary experiment of Bolshevism". When Ukrainian protestors took to the street of Kiev and Odessa to demand their own autonomy, the Red Army reacted swiftly and brutally to suppress them. It was clear that no other nationalities would be allowed to escape from under Moscow's thumb.

Beria denounced the harshness of Stalin's rule, while doing little to change the relationship between the Soviet government and the people. The political prisoners were not released, and hard labor was used to "tame Siberia". The failure of his "Managed Partial-Privatization" program, coupled with high defense spending and the enormous amounts of money spent on strengthening China and Cuba, led to economic stagnation in the Soviet Union that lasted throughout the 1960s and into the '70s. The decision not to invade Afghanistan in 1979 to support the Communist government there is seen as one of the reasons that the USSR remained intact into the Twenty-first Century, as Beria said that "it would become our own 'Vietnam,' and perhaps destroy our great nation".

Lavrenti Beria died of a heart attack on November 26, 1980 at the age of 77. The last decade of his rule was marked by seclusion and the slow relaxation of his grip on power. He was replaced by his head of security, and the only man he trusted both for that post and to be his successor, Yuri Andropov. Beria's body has been preserved and put on permanent display next to the body of Lenin in Red Square in Moscow.

In 1863, on this day Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Union President Abraham Lincoln met at Mount Vernon, south of Alexandria, Virginia. The former home of George Washington, although dilapidated and still years away from a full restoration, was one of the few places between Richmond and Washington that could be considered neutral ground.

The Trent AffairThe two men exchanged formalities and then signed a truce agreed to five days earlier by representatives of both governments. Orders were immediately sent to the military forces of both sides specifying how and where they were to be disposed for border defense. Although a state of war still existed, the killing was over.

After the signing, Lincoln walked out to the great lawn in front of the house with his Secretary of State, William Seward. "Seward, I have failed the nation. I do not believe we can long survive as a people now". Seward said nothing, for there was no consoling the President when he was in one of his dark moods. But he knew, as did Lincoln, that continuing the war would have certainly destroyed the nation. It was bitter consolation.

A new story by Matt DattiloIn December, 1861, when Abraham Lincoln announced that the Union would not release James Mason and John Slidell, public response in the north was resoundingly positive. Seven months after the beginning of the War Between the States, it was obvious that the conflict would be a long and bloody one. Armchair strategists on both sides had predicted a short, heroic conflagration, but it was not to be. By the end of 1861, thousands lay dead on both sides and although Union forces had experienced some success in the West, the Confederate army seemed to be unstoppable in the East despite having all the material disadvantages on its side. The northern public needed a solid victory and the continued imprisonment of the two Confederate diplomats filled the bill for a time.

As one can imagine, the response to the imprisonment was somewhat sharper in Richmond and London. Jefferson Davis was outraged that two of his hand-picked diplomats had been taken off a neutral ship in international waters with the thin legal argument that the two men were "contraband". Demands for their immediate release were met with stony silence from Washington.

When word of the capture reached London at the end of November, the outcry from both the British public and government was deafening. Prime Minister Lord Palmerston had steered a course of neutrality with the regard to the American Civil War and even though Confederate ships had been granted access to British ports for refit and replenishment, the war was officially considered an internal matter in which the British Empire would not interfere. In private, though, those knowledgeable of the situation on the other side of the Atlantic considered Confederate victory simply a matter of time. In addition, Britain had strong economic ties to the southern states because of the empire's unquenchable thirst for cotton. In 1860, almost 80% of the southern US cotton crop had been bought by dealers from England. While other sources of raw cotton were available, America was the closest source and the widespread use of slavery on cotton plantations kept prices competitive. With those advantages in mind, many cotton purchasers in England could look the other way when the morality of slavery was discussed.

It was Christmas Eve, 1861 when word of Lincoln's statement concerning Mason and Slidell reached London. In an emergency cabinet meeting the next day, Palmerston called for the reinforcement of Canada with British regulars and the bolstering of the North America and West Indies stations of the Royal Navy with ships culled from the Home Fleet and Mediterranean Squadron. The meeting ended with discussion of a final question: should Britain formally recognize the Confederate States of America and, if so, should military and financial aid be considered? It was a bold proposition and one sure to put the United States on a war footing with England, but as Palmerston put it, "Are we going to let what has been considered an internal issue change how the world recognizes the rights of sovereign nations?"

In the end, it was Washington's lack of response which brought the matter to a head. In February, 1862, the same month in which Lincoln's son Willie died at the age of 11, the British minister to the US, Lord Lyons, asked for a meeting with the President. Lincoln was in mourning, and while Lyons was aware of this he thought the issue of enough importance that he should be granted a meeting without delay. However, Lyons had the unfortunate luck of meeting face-to-face with Secretary of State William Seward, who promptly dismissed Lyons' request as inappropriate. Feeling that he had been treated in a manner not conducive to good diplomacy, he returned to London for consultation, leaving his subordinate in Washington.

For Lord Palmerston and, subsequently, Queen Victoria, this was the last straw. On April 11th, 1862, Britain formally recognized the Confederate States of America and extended the new nation an essentially limitless line of credit. London also declared the blockade of southern ports illegal and stated that any interference with British merchant vessels or warships by ships of the U.S. Navy would be considered an act of war. By the time this declaration reached Washington, the first ships full of rifles and cannons were already crossing the Atlantic.

Although 19th century strategists would not have used the term, Lincoln faced a no-win situation. In 1861, the U.S. Navy consisted of fewer than 80 warships, almost none of them of modern design. A year into the war, most of the ships on blockade duty were lightly-armed converted merchant ships. The British Royal Navy, however, had the largest battle fleet in the world and while it was not the incredible force which had fought Napoleon 50 years earlier, it was more than a match for anything that could be sent to challenge it. If Lincoln ordered the blockade to be enforced against British shipping, a shooting war would quickly develop between the US and British navies, a war that would soon spread to the North American continent.

However, failure to block the British merchant ships and their escorts approaching the ports of the Confederacy would essentially end the blockade and ensure that the South's army was well provided for. The Union had an advantage in manpower, but the rebels had shown, at least so far, that they had the advantage in military leadership. And so Lincoln's option were thin: start a war with the British that his nation could not hope to win under the present circumstances, or allow the Confederacy to be supplied from Europe, a situation that would change the nature of the war.

The truce signed at Mount Vernon in March, 1863 and the treaty signed later that year in London divided the United States into two separate nations. The border states (Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland) were allowed to decide by popular vote which nation they wished to join. All three joined the Confederacy. One important concession won by the Union was the creation of West Virginia, an area of Virginia that was strongly pro-Union. As of January 1st, 1864, the new nation consisted of 14 states. Texas, by far the largest, stretched from the southwest corner of Missouri to the eastern border of southern California. The agricultural heart of the nation remained in Union hands.

The intervention of the British into the Civil War was a mixed blessing for the Confederacy. British arms and financial support helped bring about the truce that ended the war in the South's favor, but that support came with a heavy toll. In helping to ensure the creation of the CSA, the British Empire gained what it had lost 80 years before: a largely agrarian society dependent on British imports of finished goods, some of them made with the raw materials purchased from Southern farmers. While the Union continued to grow what would become the world's largest industrial base by 1900, the Confederacy remained mired in rural stagnation.

Slavery continued in the CSA until 1880. The trans-Atlantic slave trade ended in 1807 and never resumed. Since the United States was under no obligation to return escaped slaves who made it across the Ohio River and other border crossings, a lively escape business developed in which abolitionist groups paid Confederate residents to help slaves escape to the US. While the British officially complained to the US government about this, in practice they paid the controversy nothing but lip service. Most Southerners did not own slaves and many disliked the institution. 16 years after the Treaty of London, the last slaves were freed by a vote of the Confederate Congress.

In 2004, on this day Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts defeated incumbent President George W. Bush. Foreign policy was the dominant theme throughout the election campaign, particularly Bush's conduct of the War on Terrorism and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

John Kerry
44^th President of the United States
January 20, 2005 - 2013The United States presidential election of 2004 was the United States' 55th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 2004. Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts defeated incumbent President George W. Bush.

Foreign policy was the dominant theme throughout the election campaign, particularly Bush's conduct of the War on Terrorism and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As in the 2000 presidential election, voting controversies and concerns of irregularities emerged during and after the vote. Though the winner was decided on election night, recounts persisted until Bush accepted Kerry's victory in Ohio. The state held enough electoral votes to determine the winner of the presidency.

Background

George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 after the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore remanded the case to the Florida Supreme Court, which declared there was not sufficient time to hold a recount without violating the U.S. Constitution.

Just eight months into his presidency, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 suddenly transformed Bush into a wartime president. Bush's approval ratings surged to near 90%. Within a month, the forces of a coalition led by the United States invaded Afghanistan, which had been sheltering Osama bin Laden, suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks. By December, the Taliban had been removed as rulers of Kabul, although a long and ongoing occupation would follow.

A new article from Althistory WikiaThe Bush administration then turned its attention to Iraq, and argued the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq had become urgent. Among the stated reasons were that Saddam's regime had tried to acquire nuclear material and had not properly accounted for biological and chemical material it was known to have previously possessed. Both the possession of these weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the failure to account for them, violated the U.N. sanctions. The assertions about WMD were hotly debated from the beginning, and their basis in U.S.military intelligence undermined by the subsequent failure to find any WMD in Iraq. This situation escalated to the point that a coalition of about forty nations, including the United States, invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003. Within about three weeks, the invasion caused the collapse of both the Iraqi government and its armed forces. On May 1, George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in a Lockheed S-3 Viking, where he gave a speech announcing the end of major combat operations in the Iraq war. Bush's approval rating in May was at 66%, according to a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll. However, Bush's high approval ratings did not last. First, while the war itself was popular in the U.S., the occupation lost support as months passed and casualty figures increased, with no decrease in violence nor progress toward stability or reconstruction in Iraq. Second, as investigators combed through the country, they failed to find the predicted WMD stockpiles, which led to debate over the rationale for the war.

Nomination of President George W. Bush

Bush's popularity as a wartime president helped consolidate his base, and ward off any serious challenge to the nomination. Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island considered challenging Bush on an anti-war platform in New Hampshire, but decided not to run after the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003.

On March 10, 2004, Bush officially clinched the number of delegates needed to be nominated at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. Bush accepted the nomination on September 2, 2004, and selected Vice President Dick Cheney as his running mate. (In New York, the ticket was also on the ballot as candidates of the Conservative Party of New York State). During the convention and throughout the campaign, Bush focused on two themes: defending America against terrorism and building an ownership society. The ownership society included allowing people to invest some of their Social Security in the stock market, increasing home and stock ownership, and encouraging more people to buy their own health insurance.

Before The Primaries

By summer of 2003, Howard Dean had become the apparent front runner for the Democratic nomination, performing strongly in most polls and leading the pack with the largest campaign war chest. Dean's strength as a fund raiser was attributed mainly to his embrace of the Internet for campaigning. The majority of his donations came from individual supporters, who became known as Deanites, or, more commonly, Deaniacs. Generally regarded as a pragmatic centrist during his time as governor, Dean emerged during his presidential campaign as a left-wing populist, denouncing the policies of the Bush administration (especially the 2003 invasion of Iraq) as well as fellow Democrats, who, in his view, failed to strongly oppose them. Senator Lieberman, a liberal on domestic issues but a hawk on the War on Terror, failed to gain traction with liberal Democratic primary voters.

In September 2003, retired four-star general Wesley Clark announced his intention to run in the presidential primary election for the Democratic Party nomination. His campaign focused on themes of leadership and patriotism; early campaign ads relied heavily on biography. His late start left him with relatively few detailed policy proposals. This weakness was apparent in his first few debates, although he soon presented a range of position papers, including a major tax-relief plan. Nevertheless, many Democrats did not flock to his campaign.

In sheer numbers, Kerry had fewer endorsements than Howard Dean, who was far ahead in the superdelegate race going into the Iowa caucuses in January 2004, although Kerry led the endorsement race in Iowa, New Hampshire, Arizona, South Carolina, New Mexico and Nevada. Kerry's main perceived weakness was in his neighboring state of New Hampshire and nearly all national polls. Most other states did not have updated polling numbers to give an accurate placing for the Kerry campaign before Iowa. Heading into the primaries, Kerry's campaign was largely seen as in trouble, particularly after he fired campaign manager Jim Jordan. The key factors enabling it to survive was when fellow Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy assigned Mary Beth Cahill to be the campaign manager, as well as Kerry's mortgaging his own home to lend the money to his campaign (while his wife was a billionaire, campaign finance rules prohibited using one's personal fortune). He also brought on the "magical" Michael Whouley who would be credited with helping bring home the Iowa victory the same as he did in New Hampshire for Al Gore in 2000 against Bill Bradley.

Iowa Caucus

By the January 2004 Iowa caucuses, the field had dwindled down to nine candidates, as Bob Graham dropped out of the race and Howard Dean was a strong front-runner. However, the Iowa caucuses yielded unexpectedly strong results for Democratic candidates John Kerry, who earned 38% of the state's delegates and John Edwards, who took 32%. Former front-runner Howard Dean slipped to 18% and third place, and Richard Gephardt finished fourth (11%). In the days leading up to the Iowa vote, there was much negative campaigning between the Dean and Gephardt camps.

The dismal results caused Gephardt to drop out and later endorse Kerry. What further hurt Dean was a speech he gave at a post-caucus rally. Dean was shouting over the cheers of his enthusiastic audience, but the crowd noise was being filtered out by his unidirectional microphone, leaving only his full-throated exhortations audible to the television viewers. To those at home, he seemed to raise his voice out of sheer emotion. The incessant replaying of the "Dean Scream" by the press became a debate on the topic of whether Dean was the victim of media bias. The scream scene was shown approximately 633 times by cable and broadcast news networks in just four days following the incident, a number that does not include talk shows and local news broadcasts. However, those who were in the actual audience that day insist that they were not aware of the infamous "scream" until they returned to their hotel rooms and saw it on TV.

Kerry, on the other hand, had revived his campaign and began using the slogan "Comeback Kerry".

New Hampshire Primary

On January 27, Kerry triumphed again, winning the New Hampshire primary. Dean finished second, Clark was third, and Edwards placed fourth. The largest of the debates was held at Saint Anselm College where both Kerry and Dean had strong performances.

South Carolina

The following week, John Edwards won the South Carolina primary and finished a strong second in Oklahoma. After Howard Dean's withdrawal from the contest, Edwards became the only major challenger to Kerry for the Democratic nomination. However, Kerry continued to dominate and his support quickly snowballed as he won caucuses and primaries, taking in a string of wins in Michigan, Washington, Maine, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., Nevada, Wisconsin, Utah, Hawaii, and Idaho. Clark and Lieberman dropped out during this time, leaving only Sharpton, Kucinich, and Edwards in the running against Kerry.

Super TuesdayIn March's Super Tuesday, Kerry won decisive victories in the California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island primaries and the Minnesota caucuses. Dean, despite having withdrawn from the race two weeks earlier, won his home state of Vermont. Edwards finished only slightly behind Kerry in Georgia, but, failing to win a single state other than South Carolina, chose to withdraw from the presidential race.

Democratic National Convention

On July 6, John Kerry selected John Edwards as his running mate, shortly before the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, held later that month. Days before Kerry announced Edwards as his running mate, Kerry gave a short list of three candidates: Sen John Edwards, Rep Dick Gephardt, and Gov Tom Vilsack. Heading into the convention, the Kerry/Edwards ticket unveiled their new slogan-a promise to make America "stronger at home and more respected in the world". Kerry made his Vietnam War experience the prominent theme of the convention. In accepting the nomination, he began his speech with, "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty". He later delivered what may have been the speech's most memorable line when he said, "the future doesn't belong to fear, it belongs to freedom," a quote that later appeared in a Kerry/Edwards television advertisement.

General Election Campaign

Campaign Issues

Bush focused his campaign on national security, presenting himself as a decisive leader and contrasted Kerry as a "flip-flopper". Bush's point was that Americans could trust him to be tough on terrorism while Kerry would be "uncertain in the face of danger". Bush also sought to portray Kerry as a "Massachusetts liberal" who was out of touch with mainstream Americans. One of Kerry's slogans was "Stronger at home, respected in the world". This advanced the suggestion that Kerry would pay more attention to domestic concerns; it also encapsulated Kerry's contention that Bush had alienated American allies by his foreign policy.

According to one exit poll, people who voted for Bush cited the issues of terrorism and moral values as the most important factors in their decision. Kerry supporters cited the war in Iraq, the economy and jobs, and health care.

Over the course of Bush's first term in office, his extremely high approval ratings immediately following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks steadily dwindled, peaking only during combat operations in Iraq in the spring of 2003, and again following the capture of Saddam Hussein in December the same year. Kerry supporters attempted to capitalize on the dwindling popularity to rally anti-war sentiment.

In March 2004, the Bush/Cheney campaign was criticized by 2004 Racism Watch. The organization took offense to a campaign ad, which showed a man who was possibly Middle Eastern in a negative light. 2004 Racism Watch issued a press release calling on the campaign to pull the ad, calling it disturbing and offensive.

During August and September 2004, there was an intense focus on events that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Bush was accused of failing to fulfill his required service in the Texas Air National Guard. However, the focus quickly shifted to the conduct of CBS News after they aired a segment on 60 Minutes Wednesday introducing what became known as the Killian documents. Serious doubts about the documents' authenticity quickly emerged, leading CBS to appoint a review panel that eventually resulted in the firing of the news producer and other significant staffing changes.

Meanwhile, Kerry was accused by the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, who averred that "phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compels us to step forward". The group challenged the legitimacy of each of the combat medals awarded to Kerry by the U.S. Navy, and the disposition of his discharge.

In the beginning of September, the successful Republican National Convention along with the allegations by Kerry's former mates gave Bush his first comfortable margin since Kerry had won the nomination. A post-convention Gallup poll showed the President leading the Senator by 14 points.

Debates

Three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate were organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, and held in the autumn of 2004. As expected, these debates set the agenda for the final leg of the political contest. Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik and Green Party candidate David Cobb were arrested while trying to access the debates. Badnarik was attempting to serve papers to the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The first debate was held on September 30 at the University of Miami, moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS. During the debate, slated to focus on foreign policy, Kerry accused Bush of having failed to gain international support for the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, saying the only countries assisting the USA during the invasion were the United Kingdom and Australia. Bush replied to this by saying, "Well, actually, he forgot Poland" (in an ironic turn of events, Poland announced plans to withdraw its troops from Iraq shortly after the debate). Later, a consensus formed among mainstream pollsters and pundits that Kerry won the debate decisively, strengthening what had come to be seen as a weak and troubled campaign. In the days after, coverage focused on Bush's apparent annoyance with Kerry and numerous scowls and negative facial expressions. On October 5, the Vice Presidential debate was held between Dick Cheney and John Edwards at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and was moderated by Gwen Ifill of PBS. An initial poll by ABC indicated a victory for Cheney, while polls by CNN and MSNBC gave it to Edwards

The second presidential debate was held at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 8, moderated by Charles Gibson of ABC. Conducted in a "town meeting" format, less formal than the first Presidential debate, this debate saw Bush and Kerry taking questions on a variety of subjects from a local audience. Bush attempted to deflect criticism of what was described as his scowling demeanor during the first debate, joking at one point about one of Kerry's remarks, "That answer made me want to scowl". Bush and Kerry met for the third and final debate at Arizona State University on October 13. 51 million viewers watched the debate which was moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS News. However, at the time of the ASU debate there were 15.2 million viewers tuned in to watch the Major League Baseball playoffs broadcast simultaneously.

Election Results EditWith the exceptions of Florida and North Carolina, Bush carried the Southern states by comfortable margins and also secured wins in Indiana, most of the rural Midwestern farming states, most of the Rocky Mountain states, and Alaska. Kerry balanced Bush by sweeping the Northeastern United States, most of the Upper Midwest, and all of the Pacific Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California, and carried Hawaii, as well.

As the night wore on, the returns in a handful of small-to-medium sized states, including Wisconsin and Iowa, were extremely close; however it was the state of Ohio that would make clear the winner of the election. As the final national results were tallied Bush had clearly won a total of 266 electoral votes, while Kerry had won 252 votes. 270 votes were needed to win. It was Ohio (20 electoral votes), however, that the news media focused their attention on. Mathematically, Ohio's 20 electoral votes became the key to an election win for either candidate.

At 1:37 PM EST all major networks except Fox called the state of Ohio and the election for Kerry.

Recounts

Following projected defeat in Ohio the Bush/Cheney campaign refused to concede, instead requesting a recount throughout Ohio and much of the close states.

Over the course of the following week hand recounts were put into effect across Ohio,Iowa and New Hampshire on order to validate the final result. On November 10 the recount had been completed, thus confirming Kerry's victory in the election. Bush's concession speech soon followed.

The year 1957, is not chosen at random. That is the year contemplated by "Dropshot", the U.S. plan for a third world war, which governed strategic thinking for the 1950s. [continues from Part 1] In actuality, or course, even if the Soviets got to Antwerp, they would be most unlikely to have arrived in Amarillo three years later. Rather than the immediate loss of Western Europe, we must imagine Central Europe becoming a debatable region.
Continues from Part 1

Part Two of "Dropshot", World War III in 1957After absorbing the initial offensive, Dropshot calls for NATO to hold the line while the resources of the United States were mobilized. Realistically, this could have taken at least a year. During that time, it would have been extremely difficult to keep NATO together. One of the points which "Not This August" emphasizes as a factor in the defeat of the United States is the role of the Communist underground. The state of the evidence suggests that such a concern may be more than simple McCarthyite paranoia. The part played by Communists and communist sympathizers in the politics and culture of the U.S. in the 1930s and 1940s is still insufficiently appreciated. If I had to name a single book to support this point, I would suggest the last of Upton Sinclair's "Lanny Budd" novels, entitled "A World to Win". Published in 1946, it describes sympathetically the adventures of a wealthy American Communist as he moves about the world during and just before the war, helping to organize the fight against Fascism. The author, who made no secret of his own leftist sympathies, describes the pro-Soviet cells which exist everywhere in the U.S., in Hollywood and Washington and the arts. This, of course, was all edifying progressive fiction, but it seems to have been fictionalized rather than fantastic.

A new article by John Reilly The pro-Soviet streak in America politics did real harm during the Molotov-Ribbentrop pack, when it actively impeded U.S. attempts to prepare for World War II. It continued to do harm throughout the Cold War era, up to and including the "Nuclear Freeze" movement of the 1980s, which nearly succeeded in depriving American negotiators of the bargaining power they needed to get the Soviets to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. While this force in American politics would have been as active as possible during a U.S.-Soviet war, they might not have counted for that much, considering the high degree of national unity there would have been. In any event, they would have worked through front groups as much as possible. This would not have been the case in Europe. The powerful Communist Parties in France and Italy were openly and proudly pro-Soviet, indeed pro-Stalin. They could and would have organized work stoppages and mutinies. The peace movements they would have supported would have been particularly persuasive with hostile and at least temporarily triumphant armies only a few hundred miles away. Even if they could not have forced their countries to surrender, they could have made all but the most perfunctory participation in the war impossible.

Still, these political difficulties would have been no more insurmountable than those that had to be overcome to win the Second World War. Assuming, therefore, that NATO holds together while it rearms and regroups, the second phase of the war could begin. Dropshot contemplated an offense that would ultimately result in the occupation of the Soviet Union. Again, however, it did nothing to suggest that anyone would enjoy trying this in real life. The plan considered the various ways that the Soviet Union might have been invaded, and finds all but one of them either impractical, like a drive north from the Middle East, or useless, like an invasion of the Soviet Far East. The only way to do it is the hard way, back eastward across the north German plain and into Poland. Securing the Balkans would be necessary simply to secure this endeavor.

Having defeated the Soviet armies in Eastern Europe, the rest of the war would have resembled the German campaign of 1941, but without Hitler's mental problems. I can summarize the final stage of the war no better than by quoting Dropshot itself:

"22. In the event of war with the USSR, we should endeavor by successful military and other operations to create conditions which would permit satisfactory accomplishment of U.S. objectives without a predetermined requirement for unconditional surrender. War aims supplemental to our peacetime aims should include:

"a. Eliminating Soviet Russian domination in areas outside the borders of any Russian state allowed to exist after the war.

"b. Destroying the structure of relationships by which the leaders of the All-Union Communist Party have been able to exert moral and disciplinary authority over individual citizens, or groups of citizens, in countries not under Communist control.

"c. Assuring that any regime or regimes which may exist on traditional Russian territory in the aftermath of a war:

(1) Do not have sufficient military power to wage a war.

(2) Impose nothing resembling the present Iron Curtain over contacts with the outside world.

"d. In addition, if any Bolshevik Regime is left in any part of the Soviet Union, ensuring that it does not control enough of the military-industrial potential of the Soviet Union to enable it to wage war on comparable terms with any other regime or regimes which may exist on traditional Russian territory.

"e. Seeking to create postwar conditions which will:

(1) Prevent the development of power relationships dangerous to the security of the United States and international peace.

(2) Be conducive to the development of an effective world organization based on the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

(3) Permit the earliest practicable discontinuance within the United States of wartime controls".

This passage is not without relevance to the state of the world in 1995. Let us imagine, however, that all this has been achieved, but the year is only 1960. (3) What would postwar history have been like?

The burden of Arnold Toynbee's great multivolumed work, "A Study of History," is that our civilization has broken down and that it is now (during the 20th century) in a "time of troubles," like the Hellenistic period in the ancient West and the Era of Contending States in China. Such periods are characterized by "world wars". In the course of them, one great power delivers a "knockout blow" to its main rival, and sooner or later goes on to establish a universal state, like the Roman Empire. The war Dropshot envisioned would have been such a blow. Actually, Toynbee thought that a third world war would probably be started by the United States and won by the Russians, "because they have a more serious attitude toward life". Be that as it may, since we are working with the U.S. war plan, let us consider what the result of a Western victory would have been.

The world of 1960 after Dropshot would have been poorer than the real world of that time. Africa and the great arc of Eurasia around Russia would have collapsed into ethnic squabbling as the reach and attention of the great powers were withdrawn. On the whole, the non-communist countries of East Asia might have been invigorated, as they were by the Korean and Vietnam Wars. However, there would have been no comparable world demand for consumer goods for these countries to exploit. They could well have experienced a war boom, followed by prolonged depressions, as their home markets slowly recovered.

China, we assume, would have been part of the losing alliance. Dropshot did not devote a great deal of attention to it. If the plan had actually been implemented, it is unlikely that country would have been the scene of major U.S. operations. However, with China's attention diverted toward supporting the Soviet war effort, it is conceivable that the U.S. might have backed a Nationalist reinvasion of southern China. It is debatable whether this would have found wide support. The Communist regime did not begin to mismanage the country significantly until the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s, a program which presumably would have been postponed in the event of a war. However, what with the stresses of a lost war and such resentment against the regime as had already been generated, it is possible that China would have fallen apart, much as it had during the warlord era of the 1920s, and as it may again in the later 1990s when Deng Xiao Peng dies.

The biggest differences between a post-Dropshot world and the actual world of 1960 would have been in Russia, Europe and the United States. Russia and Eastern Europe in the late 1950s were still recovering from the effects of World War II, and the last thing they needed was another war. In some ways, perhaps, the Dropshot war would been less damaging than the Second World War, since it was supposed to be faster and would not have been directed against civilians. The plan called for a war of tanks, fought for the most part on the plains of northern Europe. It would still have been a catastrophe, but one that would not have returned the region to 1945 levels.

Russia in 1960 might have been better able to make the transition to a market economy than it was in the 1990s, for the simple reason there was a substantial portion of the population who were already adults during the last period when free enterprise had been allowed to operate, during Lenin's "New Economic Policy" of the 1920s. It might, for instance, have been fairly simple to recreate peasant agriculture. On the other hand, Russian industry in the 1950s was even more strictly military than it was in the final stages of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Since the military occupation of Russia in 1960 would have been largely concerned with closing down the country's military potential, this would have meant closing down all but a small fraction of the country's industry. The country would have become, at least for a while, a country of peasants and priests. This prospect might warm the heart of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but the reality might not have been sustainable.

In Western Europe, the 1950s boom would gave been cancelled. Even assuming the Dropshot war did less damage than the Second World War, still it would have been the third major war in the region in fifty years. Maybe that would have been too much. People can only be expected to rebuild so many times before they begin to despair about the future. It is hard to imagine the normal market mechanisms of savings and investment operating at all in such environment. What fool would invest money in a society that seemed to explode every 20 years? Who would even want to keep money? People would try to turn their savings into tangible assets as quickly as possible. The cloud of despondency would ultimately lift, of course, but would be greatly impeded by the factor we will consider below.

Even in America, collectivism would have triumphed. As several historians have pointed out, what we call socialism is simply the institutionalization in peacetime of the command economy measures devised by Britain and Germany to fight the First World War. These institutions would have been greatly strengthened throughout the West, but especially in the United States, by the experience of two world wars so close in occurrence. We should remember that enlightened opinion in the U.S. of the 1950s was that command economies really were superior in most was to market economies. It was universally assumed that pro-market policies could never cure underdevelopment in the Third World. Certainly the literature of the era is filled with ominous observations that the Soviet Economy was growing much faster than the U.S. economy during the same period. If the highly regimented American economy envisioned by Dropshot had actually succeeded in winning the Third World War, this attitude might have become a fixed assumption of American culture, as it did in so many other countries during the same period. Private enterprise would doubtless have continued to constitute a major share of economic activity, but it would have been so tightly regimented as to be virtually a creature of the state. And there would have been no example, anywhere on Earth, of an important country that did things differently.

The '60s, as we knew them, would also have been cancelled. Partly, of course, this would have been because the country would have been broke. Everyone would have had a job with a fixed salary, of course, but there would have been little money for cars or highways or private houses. America would have remained a country of immense, densely populated cities, most of which would have consisted of public housing. The biggest difference would have been the psychology of the younger generation. The young adults of the 1950s, who had been children during the Second World War, could not have conceived of allowing themselves the indiscipline and disrespect shown by the young adults of the actual 1960s. The "Silent Generation" of the 1950s knew from their earliest experiences that the world was a dangerous place and the only way to get through it was by cooperation and conformity. If Dropshot had occurred, their children, the babyboom children, would have been even more constrained in childhood and correspondingly more well-behaved in young adulthood. Doubtless there would still have been something of an increase in the percentage of the young in higher education in the 1960s, but the campuses would have been a sea of crewcuts and neat bobs, white shirts and sensible shoes. The popular music would not have been memorable.

The world after Dropshot would have had certain advantages, of course. Total world expenditures on the military would probably have been much smaller than was actually the case. The nuclear arms race would never have occurred. Indeed, the more alarming types of nuclear missile, those with multiple warheads, would never have been invented. It would have been a world much less cynical than the one which actually occurred. The three world wars would have provided a sense of closure which modern history has not yet achieved. This time, finally, all the great evils of the century would have been defeated. It would be unlikely to have resulted in Toynbee's universal state, at least not during the 20th century. The American people would probably have been as sick of the Adlai Stevenson Democrats after the Third World War as they were of the Roosevelt Democrats after the Second World War. The country would have kicked the victors out of office and sought to turn inward. America would not have been enthusiastic about further adventures for a long time to come.

The exhausted world I have described would doubtless have revived in a few decades. Nations would have broken out of the cultural constraints that the experience of universal conscription tend to impose on a generation. People would slowly realize that their highly regulated economies were not really keeping them safe but were really keeping them poor. There would be an episode of restructuring as technologies developed for the military were finally converted to consumer use, and old subsidized industries were allowed to die. All in all, the world of 1995 after Dropshot might have been similar to the one we see today. Still, it would have been reached at immensely greater cost, both economic and spiritual. We are not living in the best of all possible worlds, but it could easily have been worse.

In 1861, in the first large battle of the Civil War, Confederate Armies under recently promoted Major General Ulysses S. Grant split the Union Armies under the command of Major General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg.

Grant wins at Gettysburg
By Timothy McFaddenIn this, the first major clash of organized armies, Lee had appeared to be on the verge of victory after the second day, smashing the Confederate Army of the East under Lieutenant General Dan Sickles. It was Grant's last minute appearance with the Confederate Army of the West, striking Lee's rear early on the third day, that reversed the battle, capturing or killing more than half of the Union Army and their French Allies. Only a last minute stand by General "Stonewall" Jackson's Virginia Division gave the remains of the routed Union Army the chance to escape to the south.

Confederate President John C. Fremont declared the victory "proof of our iron determination to defend human freedom". US President Jefferson Davis declared "Our sacred union shall not be sundered by northern money men determined to infringe on our rights of property. States rights do not now, nor have they ever, included the right to separate from the Union".

BACKGROUND

The 1856 attack by pro-slavery vigilantes on Lawrence, Kansas, and the subsequent beating of Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the senate, while other senators were held at bay by gunpoint, had already brought the First Republic close to Civil War. In an attempt to stop a wave of pro-slavery terror in Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri, Senator Stephen Douglas and his peacekeeper faction joined with southern senators to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: the Respect for Property amendment. Patterned on laws passed by the pro-slavery Kansas Legislature and in states such as Virginia, the amendment forbade agitating against slavery in speech or print as encouraging Servile Insurrection.

Reaction in New England, the East and the Midwest was loud and violent, with anti-slave catcher militias formed in several states while the new Republican Party under General John C. Fremont had as it's central plank the repeal of the 13th Amendment. The expedited admission of Kansas, Missouri, California and Nebraska as slave states alienated even the peacekeeper faction of Douglas, who repudiated his support. Matters finally came to a head in 1860 when the Republican presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was shot and killed during a campaign speech in Maryland.

A new story by Timothy McFaddenAt his inauguration, President Jefferson Davis called for unity and peace between the states but also threatened harsh retaliation against anyone who tried to divide the Union. The threats were ignored as Committees of Secession in Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and Delaware convened in Boston. On February 22,1861, these states joined by Pennsylvania, the New England states, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana declared the formation of the Confederate States of America, with it's capitol in New York City and it's first president, John C. Fremont.

Reaction by President Davis was swift, nationalizing the militia of all loyal states and calling for a million man army for a duration of two years. He also authorized the arrest of thousands of those deemed "Copperheads" for suspicion of being disloyal or anti-slavery. Such arrests included leaders of the "Neutralist" factions in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Confused fighting in Maryland and Kentucky kept those states in the Union, while the northern tip of Virginia split off to become the Confederate State of Mohawk.

In the Winter Mountain War, Union forces under General George B. McClellan were stopped in a bloody defeat at the new state capitol of Charlotte by Ohio Militia General U.S. Grant commanding a mixed force of volunteers from various states. After that, in the east, both sides pulled back to recruit and organize their armies. In the west, confused fighting continued as Union raiders struck deep into Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.

Deprived of it's industrial heart, the cash-strapped United States secured massive loans from France, England and Spain, as well as several regiments of troops from France. Claims that such loans would keep the US in debt to Europe in perpetuity were derided as treasonous. The perpetual manpower shortage that would dog the Union throughout the war was immediately felt, as slave-holding loyalist states insisted on keeping much of their militia at home to guard against slave insurrection. Nonetheless, the first rush of volunteers enabled the Union to form an army of 100,000 men west of Washington.

Union overall strategy was the "Anaconda" plan, formed by General Winfield Scott, shortly before his death from a stroke. Initial mutinies and desertion by most US Navy ships to the Confederate side made a naval blockade impossible at first, while President Davis continually pushed for a drive through Pennsylvania to split the Confederacy. Major General Robert E. Lee, the new commander of the Army, repeatedly stalled, telling Davis that his army lacked organization, uniforms, training and everything else needful to form an army.

The Confederate Armies had initially been hampered by the lack of professional Army officers, who mostly stayed loyal to the Union. The initial confederate armies were forced to rely on political appointees, disgraced and retired army officers or amateur soldiers like Dan Sickles, Don Carlos Buell, Joshua Chamberlain and Ulysses S. Grant.

This process began to reverse as President Davis, despite protests from Lee, Johnson and other senior officers, blacklisted northern officers who had remained loyal. Shut out of higher command, senior officers like Reynolds, Sedgewick, Burnsides and Hooker returned to their home states. As latecomers, Fremont appointed them to subordinate positions, causing Burnsides and others to resign their commissions and leave military service entirely or to take command of state militias.

By June, Davis had exhausted his patience and informed Lee that if he would not take the army north, Davis would find a commander who would. Initially, Lee encountered great success with the two wings of his army commanded by Jackson and Johnson. A shattering victory by Lee in two days of fighting north of Gettysburg routed the Union Army of the East, capturing General Dan Sickles and killing General Joseph Hooker. However, in the process, Lee's army was scattered among the hills of Pennsylvania.

It was at this point that Grant, leading 20,000 men detached from the Union Army of the West, struck Lee's army from the rear after a forced march. As Grant said afterwards "Both our armies were green as grass. Green troops have, in my experience, been fierce as lions in the attack, while in retreat they almost always panic and rout. I therefore concluded that my only option was to attack, attack and attack again". Although outnumbered, his attack split the Union forces and captured most of the Union Army's dear-bought artillery.

His pursuit of the fleeing southern army was stopped by the stand of Stonewall Jackson, although Grant said afterwards that he had no intention of pursuing past that point.

Subsequent trends of the war only came in after Gettysburg- the increasing technological focus of the Confederate Armies, the freeing and arming of escaped slaves and the "War for Freedom" concept, and the growing "Second Republic" movement that the Confederacy should not simply secede from the Union, but supplant it.

In 1877, on this day the Confederate Battle Flag used by the Army of Northern Virginia was raised at the Annual Gettysburg Conference, and from that time onwards was the official symbol of the Confederate States of America. That flag, later referred as the "Southern Cross", was fashioned along an oblong pattern rather than the square style of most of the combat originals

Gettysburg Prayer Part Six by Raymond SpeerThe long serving Virginia state government was run by the Citizens Party and ran the Bank of Virginia, an institution which made deals with the other State Governments to provide them with a stable currency, some notes backed by silver and others by gold. The notes bore the inscription: "Confederate Legal Tender authorized by the Confederate Gov't per its Constitution, and issued and distributed by the Bank of Virginia". The gold bills featured pictures from Robert E. Lee from his youth to successful general, and the silver bills showed the images of John C. Calhoun, TJ Jackson and Johnston the Martyr at Shiloh.

Over time, the exchange stabilized at six Confederate gold dollars for one United States dollar, or 24 Confederate silver dollar notes for a single dollar.

Shortly after the currency was reformed , Florida and Texas both declared that they were not going to allow Negroes to vote in their precincts by the decision of their legislatures. That was in defiance of a law that had passed the central government back towards the close of Davis' Administration, a law which had long been cited as anti-thetical to the values of the CSA.

In October 1878, the Supreme Court of the Confederate States, presided over by Chief Justice Judah Benjamin (appointed by President Davis) ruled 7-0 that the central government did not have the authority to authorize voting registries anywhere in the South. "The Emancipation Amendment did many things for the Negro," wrote the Court per curiam, "but it did not transfer suffrage determination from the States to the central government".

President Longstreet's election had been made possible by the exercise of Negro suffrage, and the outcome of the BADGER ex rel. Florida decision appeared to have ruined the prospects for Readjuster re-election.

Lead by its very popular Governor, John Reagan, who had established the CS Post Office while in Jefferson Davis' Cabinet, Texas had passed a law disfranchising Negro voters. Florida and South Carolina had also passed that law and the only place such a proposal was likely to fail was in Arizona which had a Negro / Hispanic majority.

President James Longstreet worked hard to maintain Negro suffrage in the Confederacy. "The Gettysburg Prayer was the divine guidance we needed in our darkest hour," said Longstreet, "and I ask how can we forget it now?" To the contrary, asserted Governor John Reagan: the Citizen Party wanted the vote limited to the mentally sound and politically independent. "Possibly in another generation, the lawmakers of some State may rule that the Negroes are ready to vote. Possibly in another two or three generations, they may let ladies vote! [much laughter]. But till then, let us use good sense as Citizens, and not Readjuster zeal".

In Missouri, a State that had remained in the USA, the great controversy of 1878 were allegations that the rural families of James and Younger had careers as bank and train robbers in addition to farming. Four of the gang had been apprehended in Missouri but Jesse and Frank James had fled to Arkansas, and US President Rutherford Hayes had requested their return to Missouri.

Confederate Senator Louis Wigfall of Texas praised the James Brothers as Southern patriots heartlessly forced from their homes by the Yankee rape of Missouri. Though he had frequently criticized Davis and Ruffin when they had been presidents, Wigfall as he had grown older sharpened his loud opposition to Readjustment, and even voiced the opinion that "the Gettysburg Prayer has been immensely over rated".

On a public street, after leaving a tavern, Senator Wigfall spotted United States Minister Phillip Sheridan walking home from a quiet meal and fired a curious gun that was inside of his walking stick. Sheridan had been missed by the blast, but had heard Wigfall;s threats, and hopped on the back of the streetcar and blackened both of the Senator's eyes within seconds.

President Longstreet was grateful that Wigfall had finally shown the limits to which Citizens would go in extremes. Minister Sheridan did go back to the USA, but so did the James brothers and their mother, who werre also iplicated in their crimes.

Fortune smiled on the Readjusters when North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky all voted down Citizen efforts to disenfranchise Negroes. The Readjusters swiftly rallied around another Confederate General, Pierre GT Beauregard, who had served well as the Secretary of War. Beauregard chose as his Vice President John Hunt Morgan, a cavalry man he had favored since their days in the war.

There was a sprited contest for the Citizens presidential nomination, contested from the start between Jubal Early of Virginia and John H. Reagan of Texas, which was not concluded till the very eve of the convention. Reagan bypassed his rival for the Vice Presidency and chose Robert Toombs of Georgia instead.

Negroes throughout the South backed the Readjuster ticket, resisting the casual contempt by which the Citizens Party assumed they were not capable of voting intelligently. From far off New York, Frederick Douglass moved all the way to Arizona and took a oath of citizenship in that place. "From correspondence with Abraham Lincoln, I made myself the campaign director for the ReUnion Party in that area, which was nearing entry into the Confederacy. As a ReUnion man, I could freely and in good faith participate in the elections of either part of the country, knowing that our goal of consolidation would sooner or later bring us all together again".

Texas, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina all went for John H. Reagan- Robert Toombs but Louisiana's reliability for Catholic Beauregard and unsuspected popularity of Morgan in the Border States enabled the Readjusters to win the presidential race. Counting only the top three votegetters, Beauregard had 48.5 per cent of the popular vote, Reagan took 46.4 per cent of the popular vote and Abraham Lincoln and John Singleton Mosby took 5.1 per cent for the ReUnion Party.

Lincoln-Mosby gathered not a single Confederate electoral vote in the 1879 contest, but confidently wrote to his separated nation that he thought he had planted a seed whereby a new framework would grow for a Combined America.

Also noticeable was the United States' revelation of its "batwing" project in November 1879's last days. The Yankees had waited until both President Longstreet and Beauregard had voiced disbelief in the rumors and sightings that Yankees had invented flying machines === for that matter,Governor John H.Reagan had likewise expressed doubts that the USA had such amazing machines in the air.

President Rutherford Hayes had shown the triumph of Yankee ingenuity and industry with the dozen bald-winged mechanical bats that were flown in patrol from Washington to Richmond and then back to Washington DC. More than a few people assumed that an earlier disclosure of the existance of Yankee flight machines would have scared people and elected John Reagan president.

In 1881, on this day the sixteenth Union President Abraham Lincoln died of consumption in New York City. He was seventy-two years old and had suffered health issues dating back to his two-terms of office at the Washington White House.

Abraham Lincoln
16^th Union President
March 4, 1861 - 1869Abraham Lincoln was the last president of the united nation founded by Virginians and New England patriots. Events leading to his election as president had caused political descent in the states which resulted in an official secession of several southern states. Reacting to this as an act of rebellion, Lincoln had asked for and got a declaration of war. Failing to secure the loyalty of Virginia, the remaining United States were locked in a war that lasted for most of his two terms. After a propaganda campaign to defeat a popular General in the 1864, he was to live in seclusion for fear of Confederate assassins rumored to be in the Washington. In 1865, he saw the CSA hold its boundaries secure and sue for armistice after his failed attempt to "slash and burn" the farmland of the deep south.

After the ceasefire, Lincoln worked with the generals in his army to secure border cities to assure a peaceful transition and rebuilding of his beloved Union. He worked to assure that the Republican Party would hold office in what were certain to be tumultuous years ahead. A new article from the "Two Americas" thread on Althistory WikiaHaving successfully abolished slavery within the United States, Lincoln began a campaign to abolish what he saw as another great evil -- the manufacture and distribution of alcoholic beverage. The hero of the western campaign, and one time head of the whole Union Army, General U.S. Grant, was opposed to this campaign, painting it as an attack on free enterprise and civil liberties.

In March of 1869, Lincoln left office, turning over the reins of a much smaller nation to Ulysses Grant. He was a broken man, in failing health, and with very few friends. The New York Temperance League, with whom he had worked for the later part of his presidency, promised him and his family a place to stay in New York City, where he died in June 19, 1881, of what was called "consumption" (a form of cancer, according to forensic experts of today) at the age of 72.

In 1940, Italy declared war on the Western powers and entered WW2. On paper it was an act of idiocy. Their military was unready. Their colonies were not properly provisioned. The bulk of their merchant marine was at sea and thus immediately lost to the British. The sole intelligent reason for this act was a cool calculation that France was about to fall. Reasoning that the British Empire would not fight on without its continental sword (the French Army), Italy expected there to be a peace conference. Their few weeks of combat would buy them a seat at the conference, which in turn would probably result in Italy picking up some new colonial territory, and, perhaps, some border adjustments with France or Yugoslavia.

From Tiny Acorns Grow an Oak by Scott PalterNeedless to say, the calculation was completely in error. The war would cost Italy all of her colonies and the destruction of the body of the country when it became a war zone for the final two years of the European struggle. All of this would occur because of a miscalculation in British intentions. Let us presume that Churchill took time out from the chaos of France's collapse to make VERY clear to the Italians that this was the end of a phase of the war, rather than an end of the war. Let us presume that the French made some minor territorial concessions to Italy (the Azzou strip in northern Chad and some Saharan sand on the Libyan - Algerian border). Italy stays neutral.

The early changes in the war are subtle. The later are far grander.

There are no changes in the Battle of Britain or Battle of the Atlantic. Italy made little contribution to either. Britain would have needed large naval forces to watch a neutral Italy whose government was capable of intervention at any moment. However, there are no campaigns in North Africa, Greece, Syria, Iraq or East Africa. The British Army does not suffer these losses or gain this combat experience. Except for commando raids, Britain is not engaged in a ground war between the Fall of France and Pearl Harbor. The RAF does not have to build a Desert Air Force. The troops and planes not so used are available to garrison Burma and Malaya. We will return to the results of this shortly.Rommel's three divisions are a minor addition to the invasion of Russia. The addition of the air elements sent to the Mediterranean is more noticeable. The biggest difference is the absence of a Balkan campaign. In OTL, Italy invades Greece in 1940. They fail miserably at it. This forces Germany to take a Balkan detour that winds up including Yugoslavia and Crete. In this TL none of this occurs. Yugoslavia and Bulgaria are forced into the Tripartite Pact over the winter of 1940-41 on very mild terms. No German garrisons are needed in either. Greece is allowed its neutrality as long as trade with Germany is continued (same as Turkey and Sweden in OTL).

In OTL the Balkan adventure postponed Barbarossa by two weeks and added much wear and tear on the trucks and men making the long roundtrip. It bled off a German army (12th) left behind in garrisons from Belgrade to Athens. It also destroyed the German airborne forces on Crete.

A two week earlier start does not take Moscow or win the war in 1941. Neither the ten extra divisions (DAK plus 12th Army) nor the fewer vehicle breakdowns make Moscow any nearer to Warsaw and Konigsburg. A German win in 1941 requires a very different set of changes than Italian neutrality. However, the extra two weeks do see a German Army less burned out when it is repulsed before (or perhaps in the streets of) Moscow in early December of 1941. At each of the three German advances, the rear has been better swept (fewer Red Army remnants to form partisans), the supply forces have had a little more time to do their work, and the giant number of abandoned weapons have been better collected.

To do we will add an Italian Expeditionary Force ( say six divisions of Blackshirts and Young Fascists, which is what was sent to Spain in the 1930's). Italy does not declare war on Russia. These are ?volunteers' like the Spanish Blue Division (party to party as opposed to state to state to use the usual Communist terminology). To this will be added a Corps of White Russian volunteers from Yugoslavia, also under Italian command. These men are neither trained nor armed for frontline service. However, they are quite capable of policing up the vast hordes of Russian prisoners captured in the great encirclement battles of 1941. The Italians will drive this herd to the railheads, where they are shipped to Italy as war booty (slaves). A good bit of Russian equipment will follow, bringing the Italian military to a less unready state. The Italians also lack the German racial hatred of the Easterners. They will extensively recruit among the prisoners and locals. The net effect is that the eight Italo-Yugoslav divisions will be almost to corps strength each by the end of 1941.

So the retreat from Moscow never develops into the semicollapse of OTL. This results in fewer German losses, higher Russian ones and an earlier burnout of the Russian offensive. Part of this is the large Italian force garrisoning the towns to the rear of Army Group Center. Part of this is the better state of the German lines of communication and depots. The largest single change is that Kesselring's Second Air Fleet does not have to be pulled out of Belarus to bail out the Desert War.

So the spring - summer of 1942 finds a marginally stronger German Army in the East and a marginally weaker Russian one. We will return to the effects of this after our Asiatic detour promised above.

In OTL an overstretched British Empire made the decision to give priority to absolutely everything over the defense of Burma, Malaya, the East Indies and the South Seas (Australia, New Zealand, etc.). Without a North African war, the best of the Indian Army and the bulk of the Anzac forces are not in the Mediterranean. As is, Malaya and Burma were near run things. In this TL, the initial assaults on Malaya and Burma are repulsed.

The East Indies will still fall, but more slowly. It will take until the end of 1942 to finish them and Malaya off. Burma will stay in Allied hands. Now the results of this will seem perverse. A better British general in Singapore, a larger British Fleet, and a much larger RAF contingent will mean that in the end the British Empire will lose many more ships, men and planes. Essentially, the British simply couldn't stand up to the Japanese Navy or Air Force in this period. A Cunningham or Auchinlek in Singapore in place of Wavell and Percival could blunt the Japanese Army and bleed them badly. He could not change the air-naval equation. That equation determined the ultimate logistical result of the campaign.

However, with the Japanese carrier fleet tied up taking the East Indies and Malaya, Japan never gets "victory disease". In OTL they were wildly successful at first. This caused them to get overconfident and change their strategy. Instead of fortifying their conquests and waiting to attrit the American counterattack, they attacked in all directions. The result was a series of campaigns (Coral Sea, Midway, Solomons, Papua - New Guinea) that basically destroyed the elite prewar naval and air units.

Instead here the much slower initial advance keeps them in their proper hedgehog. This will make the Pacific War much longer and bloodier. It will also means that Bataan lasts somewhat longer as the Japanese concentrate on finishing off the East Indies first. This gets more US ground and air units sent to Australia. However, it also means that after securing Australia, Port Mosby, Guadalcanal and the South Sea string of bases, the Pacific War essentially grinds to a halt in early 1943. Until America's new carrier fleet becomes available in 1944, the Allies lack the power to go further. So 1943 is a sea - air sparring contest in which neither side takes major risks.

Back to Russia: the primary problem with the German summer offensive is again geography plus the higher command's insanity in conducting a street fight in Stalingrad. This will not change. However, the equipment seized in 1941 will make the Italian 8th and Hungarian 2nd Armies marginally stronger. It will also provide marginally more reserves behind the Rumanians. Stalingrad will still be encircled. The retreat from the Caucasus will still be necessary.

What will be different then is that there will not be a companion disaster in North Africa. The Allied occupation of French Northwest Africa will open the Mediterranean more easily to Allied shipping. It will not require a Panzer Army to be sent to Tunis or 60% of Germany's long-range aircraft. Instead those units will be available to the Don Front. There will be no breakout from Stalingrad (Hitler wouldn't have permitted it). There will be less of a Russian advance and a bigger backhand blow by Manstein. On the margin the Germans will be stronger, the Russians weaker.

Without a Mediterranean front in 1942-43, the Allies will not be able to withstand Russian pressure to do something besides air raids. In OTL the Allies fought major 1943 campaigns in Burma, New Guinea, the Solomons, Tunis, Sicily and southern Italy. None of those happen here. Instead there is a May 1943 invasion of France.

There is no Atlantic Wall. The defenses of the beaches between the major ports was Rommel's doing in late 1943-44. So the invasion force gets ashore more easily. There is a smaller German garrison in France so the lodgment goes more easily and Cherbourg falls faster. The good luck ends there. Germany has more reserves and is less heavily attrited is this TL. The American and British armies are much greener. There is no Normandy breakout.

Instead there is a slow attritional grind forward, with the Combined Bomber Force being repeatedly used in a ground support role to blow holes in the German lines (of the type from the Cobra attack in OTL). This in turn destroys the German Air Force faster as the attritional fighter battles take place nearer to England. Instead of the Lw fighter arm collapsing in the first months of 1944, it is bled to death here in the summer and fall of 1943 over France.

Normandy does appear to help the Russians. The Kursk offensive is never made. This actually hurts. Without Kursk and without an Italian front soaking up two German armies (and the defection of Italian forces in Yugoslavia soaking up two more), the Germans have sufficient reserves to make the reconquest of Ukraine slower and more expensive. The disparity of forces and the ongoing drain of Normandy means they lose, but in takes all of 1944 to clear Ukraine and retake Smolensk (one year behind OTL).

In the meantime, by the end of 1943 the Western Allies have cut off Brittany and enlarged their bridgehead to the Lower Seine but are nowhere near Paris. The bomber attacks on the western German cities are much less than OTL but still enough to cause pain. Speer hits on the idea of relocating some plants to Italy to take advantage of its neutral status. Italy has no air raids, a friendly government and those millions of Russian POW's as force laborers. It has also taken in millions of other refugees from the Nazis so it has the potential for major industrial production given German help with machine tools, technicians, etc. Italy begins force draft industrialization. The Allies are angry but do not need another front.

The Allies spend 1944 clearing France to the Somme and Meuse, aided by secondary invasions in Calais and Provence. In the Pacific, the Japanese get their predicted climatic naval battles in the Marianas. Essentially both fleets destroy each other while the American ground forces take the islands at extremely high cost. This is what happened in OTL in the Solomons. Then, as here, the US can build more ships and Japan cannot. So we have no major offensive in the southwest Pacific or Burma, but rather bloodbaths at Wake, the Marianas and Iwo, followed by a submarine blockade of Japan. Japan will still make its 1944-45 offensive in China that drives Chiang effectively out of the war. The difference here is that with the Burma Road open, a substantial part of the Chinese Army retreats in northern Burma, where the Allies rebuild and retrain it (Chiang will have many times as many top notch divisions in the Chinese Civil War).

1945 sees the Allies slog forward to and across the Rhine. Stalin's forces take Rumania, Belarus and the Baltic States but come up short at the Vistula and East Prussian border. The Combined Bomber force keeps hammering the German transport net and synthetic petrol facilities. Starting in August they have nukes to add - 3 the first month and two a month thereafter. By the end of 1945, Germany still has two coherent fronts, but is bleeding to death internally. Jets, V-2's and other wonder weapons cannot make up for a collapsed industrial and transport base, no food and no fuel for the weapons. The German resistance starts to fragment in early 1946. Stalin still wins the race to Berlin (May 1946) but the West beats him to Prague and Vienna. The war in Europe ends in June of 1946 without a formal surrender. Millions of Germans and Hungarians seek sanctuary in Italy. WW2 in Europe ends with an extra ten million dead, far more damage and a much stronger Italy with a correspondingly weaker Britain, France and Russia.

In the Pacific, 1945 has seen the Americans take Okinowa and Pusan to tighten the blockade of Japan. American fire bombers have leveled the cities. Millions of Japanese have starved. However, the major ground offensives we had in the Pacific have been diverted to meet the needs of a longer and far more expensive European campaign. By early 1946 the Japanese Court and most of the Army Higher command have relocated to the Asian mainland to escape the famine in the Home Islands. The social structure of the abandoned Japanese homeland disintegrates. The Emperor dies in an air raid on Munkden. The Army fights on. We and the Russians redeploy from Europe. When the Russian invasion of Manchuria destroys the main Japanese armies (August 1946), the Home Islands surrender to us. Japan does not end the war so much as disintegrate. By now the death toll from starvation and disease is over ten million. Russia overruns North China and most of Korea. They set up friendly regimes (Mao and Kim) keeping the lands they have taken. Chiang essentially gets the Yangtse Valley and the South. He spends the balance of the decade suppressing Maoists in his zone. China is effectively partitioned.

In 1864, to counter Little Mac and secure more of the soldier vote, Abraham Lincoln might have turned to a War Democrat from the Midwest, one of several of the Fighting McCooks.

Vice Presidential Candidate Selected, 1864
Written by Timothy AbbottA McCook presidency has too many variables to project with any confidence what the course of Reconstruction might have been. Assuming any of the "Tribe of Dan" or "Tribe of John" agreed to run on the national Union Party ticket, they would have faced tremendous challenges from the Radical Republicans. Even if this split ticket won the election, Lincoln?s assassination might have lead to a very weak McCook presidency with a hostile congress and pressure from northern Democrats to go easy on Reconstruction and light on the rights of freedmen.

Perhaps a President McCook would become even more of a hardliner (in for a penny, in for a pound). Or perhaps he would have reshuffled the cabinet, pushing some of the radicals out. There might have been no Seward's Folly: no Alaska. Although several of the McCooks when to to political careers after the war, as a successor to Lincoln they would certainly be no better than Johnson.

In 1892, a black railroad passenger, Homer Plessy, was arrested when he refused to vacate a "whites only" seat and move to one of the train's "black" cars.

Plessy v. FergusonPlessy's arrest led to a legal challenge to a Louisiana statute mandating "separate but equal" accommodations which reached the Supreme Court as Plessy v. Ferguson. The Court's ruling in that case struck down the Louisiana statute, citing the earlier decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) which declared that the framers of the Constitution had never contemplated treating blacks as the legal equals of whites.

The decision in the Plessy case angered not only blacks but also the railroad companies, which had supported Plessy's suit because they were unhappy with the expense of maintaining separate cars for blacks. Southern whites, however, were pleased: they had threatened secession in 1860 when it appeared that Abraham Lincoln of the Republican Party, a successor to the moribund Whigs associated with opposition to Negro slavery, would be elected president; only the electoral compromise of that year which instead placed Democrat Stephen A. Douglas in the White House persuaded secession advocates to back down. A new story by Eric LippsAs the years had passed, though, the pressure to end slavery had continued while an increasing number of states had passed laws similar to Louisiana's which, at least in theory, allowed blacks access to "separate, but equal" facilities aboard trains and in such public facilities as theaters, schools and libraries.

In practice, such facilities usually proved more separate than equal. But the very idea of blacks, even free blacks, of whom Louisiana in particular possessed a significant number, being entitled to privileges similar to those of whites infuriated many of the latter, and not only in the South. While by the time of Plessy's arrest and lawsuit tensions had not risen to the same point as in 1860, there was a growing so-called "Real America" movement dedicated to overturning such laws and kicking out of office legislators who had voted for them and judges who had ruled in their favor. The decision in Plessy took some of the steam out of the "Real Americans", who turned their attention primarily to opposing immigration, particularly from Asia and Eastern Europe.

Plessy did not lay to rest forever the issue of Negro equality. By 1910, every state but Mississippi had individually abolished slavery (Mississippi would finally do so in 1933, by which time there would be fewer than a thousand slaves in that state anyway), and a nationwide organization the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had emerged to call for constitutional amendments formally granting blacks full legal equality with whites, including voting rights. White resistance to greater rights for blacks continued, however, fueling the rise of such groups as the Cyclops Legion, which favored costumes consisting of pure-white robes and hoods bearing a stylized eye on the forehead. The Legion and its many imitators called themselves patriots and protectors of "the American way of life", but carried out that mission by terrorizing and sometimes brutally killing "uppity" blacks and troublesome white "radicals". In 1915, silent-film mogul D. W. Griffith would deliver a tremendous boost to such groups with his movie Defending a Nation, which depicted them as heroes; the Cyclops Legion would grow to an estimated membership of two million nationwide by the early 1920s before collapsing under the weight of a series of financial scandals involving its leaders, who had grown rich marketing Legion costumes and paraphernalia¹.

In 1861, Stephen A. Douglas (pictured), 16th president of the United States, died.

The Death of President Douglas by Eric LippsIn the divisive four-way 1860 election, in which h his opponents were the Republican Abraham Lincoln, Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge and John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party, Douglas had been seen as a unifying figure who could head off the threat of Southern secession. And indeed it seemed as though he might succeed.

When South Carolina demanded that the U.S. government turn over its outpost fort Sumter to the state, Douglas managed to pacify Charleston by assuring the state legislature that the Sumter garrison would not be used against its people. "The United States are united because they stand together of their own free will," he declared in his inaugural address on March 4, 1861. "The moment the government of this Union must use force to hold the country together, the bonds which hold the states together shall have dissolved. Such differences as we have must be resolved by peaceful means".

Douglas's words angered many in the North, as did his announced refusal to send reinforcements to Fort Sumter when its commander requested them in early April.

"The United States are united because they stand together of their own free will. The moment the government of this Union must use force to hold the country together, the bonds which hold the states together shall have dissolved. Such differences as we have must be resolved by peaceful means" ~ President DouglasDouglas's death brought Vice-President Herschel V. Johnson to the White House. A native Georgian, he was if anything more sympathetic to the South than his predecessor had been. He became an outspoken opponent of abolitionist "radicalism," declaring that the states must decide the issue of slavery individually. "I am confident," he declared in a speech at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1863, "that good faith and good judgement shall prevail in this vexing matter if allowed to do so under law and the Constitution".

President Johnson's pro-Southernism would lead to an unsuccessful attempt at his impeachment in early 1864, spearheaded by former Attorney General Edwin M. Stanton, who after Johnson's acquittal in the Senate would declare his own candidacy for the presidency. Capitalizing on Northern resentment of Johnson's "softness" toward the south, Stanton would defeat the Georgian that November.

Stanton's election would burst the dam which had been holding back secession, and in March of 1864, just after his inauguration, the War of the States would begin. By the time it ended, five bloody years later, it would have taken over 700,000 lives.

In 1835, on this day P. T. Barnum Begins Political Career. Phineas Taylor Barnum was born July 5, 1810, in Bethel, Connecticut. From an early age, he showed skill in bookkeeping and thinking of ways to avoid hard labor. He was son of Philo Barnum, who ran an inn and store, and grandson of Phineas Taylor, who taught him a lesson about reputation when he gave his namesake a five-acre piece of land known as "Ivy Islandquot;.

P. T. Barnum Begins Political CareerThe young Barnum was proud to be "the richest child in town," and his grandfather told everyone he met about the great fortune the boy held, even though P. T. had never seen it. Finally, at age 12, he ventured with his father's hired man to see his great landholding, which turned out to be a barren, almost inaccessible lowland bog. His grandfather's decade-long practical joke paid off with years of laughter, and Barnum had learned that titles must match the subject matter.

Barnum grew and opened his own store, book auction, and real estate brokerage, but he profited mainly from state lottery sales as people vied for tickets to win a great prize, often cash. He became skillful in haggling and making great promises, and he worked to follow through on his promises out of his moral code and understanding of repeat business. In 1829, Barnum began his own weekly newspaper known as The Herald of Freedom and wrote against Connecticut's blue laws, which he felt instituted too much control over the population (in addition to biting into his profits as his shop could not be open on Sundays and sales on lotteries were limited). A feud with staunch Calvinists led to Barnum being convicted of libel through his paper, and he spent two months in jail. When he was released, he had become locally famous as a great liberal leader.

In 1834, Connecticut's state legislature banned new lotteries, establishing a punishment of 90-day imprisonment and $300 fine merely for advertising. Barnum's shop, which had often profited up to $2000 a day from lottery sales, became reduced, and he considered selling it and going to New York City to start a fresh business. However, he ultimately decided to give up business and rather work to overthrow what he felt was legalized tyranny of the few. While most politicians were either lawyers or famous citizens who entered politics after established themselves as war heroes or leading businessmen, young Barnum started with only his personal savings and his knowledge of spinning a deal. He struggled initially but was able to find minor city government positions and a standing in the Democratic Party, coming into connection with his third cousin William Barnum, whose family controlled the growing industrial power in the Barnum Richardson Company. P. T. made a name for himself campaigning for approval of the Mexican War on grounds of expansion and national security, but he went beyond approved party speech by adding that he wished it had not come to war, even though it was a boon for Connecticut's arms manufacturers.

Increasingly, Barnum became fed up with party politics and prejudices of the day. He quit the Democrats over the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and joined the Republican Party that formed that year. While the Republicans were a minority in Connecticut as the Democratic and American ("Know Nothing") parties held power through much of the 1850s, by the 1859, the Republicans gained great standing, and Barnum was on top. He had used his skills in showmanship to win over the thoughts of locals and affirm them with skill in debate. Most notably, Barnum helped stage satirical blackface shows displaying the humanity of slaves as well as productions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, rewritten to the happy ending of all slaves being freed. He later spoke out in support of the Thirteenth Amendment, "A human soul, 'that God has created and Christ died for,' is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot ? it is still an immortal spirit".

After supporting former Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln in his presidential bid in 1860, Barnum hoped for a cabinet position as a former Democratic New Englander like Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, but positions were granted to men such as Simon Cameron, who served only one year before resigning amid corruption scandals. Barnum, who had issue enough with politicians making promises they did not keep, was outraged by Cameron, who once said, "An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought". Using his position in Connecticut, which had become a valuable munitions-producing region for the Union, Barnum began to root out any sign of corruption, opposing the spread of Cameron's "Pennsylvania idea" of political dominance through bribery and threats of industrial regulation.

After the war in 1867, he ran opposed to his cousin William Barnum for the Fourth Congressional District. William refused P. T.'s invitation to an open debate in which he wrote, "It is due to the voters of the Fourth Congressional District that they have an early and full opportunity to examine their candidates in regard to these important problems", and instead used his industrial connections to secure the election. When Barnum read in the newspaper about allegations of bribery and fraud in the election, he wrote, "I was never, at any time before or afterwards, consulted upon the subject. The movement proved to have originated with neighbors and townsmen of the successful candidate, who claimed to be able to prove that he had paid large sums of money to purchase votes. They also claimed that they had proof that men were brought from an adjoining State to vote, and that in the office of the successful candidate naturalization papers were forged to enable foreigners to vote upon them. But, I repeat, I took no part nor lot in the matter, but concluded that if I had been defeated by fraud, mine was the real success". He demanded an investigation into the matter, some of the first precursors of the coming Progressive Movement calling for an end to political corruption. Using his own resources in investigation and provoking near-riots from the people of Connecticut (akin to those seen in New York City over Tammany Hall a few years later), Barnum had his cousin dismissed from Congress.

Taking his seat as representative in Washington, Barnum was disgusted at the corruption among the Radical Republicans who had overtaken Congress, even working to impeach President Andrew Johnson. He began a campaign of "debunking" corrupt politicians, speaking at trials, and revealing "the tricks of the trade". Although all of his attempts at bills were destroyed by party politics, his term made him wildly popular among American citizens, who pressed President U.S. Grant to clean up the corruption of Reconstruction. Campaign reform laws were passed, numerous leaders taken out of office, and Barnum gained control of the Republican Party and continued as a representative. Many suggested he run for president himself, but Barnum found he preferred working behind the scene to find good men for the job and even said, "politics were always distasteful to me".

Barnum continued as the "Watchman of Washington" until a stroke during a speech disabled him in 1890. He died one year later, leaving behind a legacy of reform through the Barnum Act of 1878 and being the foremost to fight against what Mark Twain called "The Gilded Age". While never a wealthy man himself, Barnum led others in creating endowments for "profitable philanthropy", summarizing a philosophy that "if by improving and beautifying our nation and adding to the pleasure and prosperity of our neighbors, we can do so at a profit, the incentive to 'good works' will be twice as strong as if it were otherwise".

In 1868, on this day President Andrew Johnson was removed from Office. The American Civil War was coming to a close with Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, but a new crisis gripped the government as Tennessee Democrat Andrew Johnson came into the highest office in the US following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

President Andrew Johnson Removed from OfficeWhile the Radical Republicans dominated Congress, Lincoln had filled his cabinet with men he hoped would heal the nation: his own rivals among the Republicans, Democrat-turned-Republican Edwin Stanton, and, as his new vice-president in 1864, National Unionist Andrew Johnson. Johnson had been the only Southern senator to refuse to leave his position, being a strong believer in the Union despite his political stances favoring slavery and limited government.

After Lincoln's death, Johnson became Commander-in-Chief and effective ruler of the conquered South. The Radical Congress called for stiff punishments for the former rebels and support for the Freedman's Bureau, enabling the African Americans who had gained their liberty to live better independent lives. Johnson was an adamant War Democrat and had served as Military Governor of Tennessee from 1862, instituting some of the first Reconstruction policies and setting groundwork for a post-emancipation government, although he himself was a believer in white supremacy. As president, however, he saw the war as over and determined to continue Lincoln's lenient Reconstruction in which Southern states would be quickly reintegrated. The Radical Republicans balked and passed bills toward protecting freedmen's rights. State governments under Johnson's Reconstruction, however, had instituted Black Codes to keep white legal supremacy, which Johnson protected with presidential veto.

The Executive and Legislative branches in Washington thus began a struggle for power. Congress passed the original Civil Rights Act and the Freedmen's Bureau Act, both of which Johnson vetoed, citing them too vengeful toward Southern whites. The Republicans maneuvered around him by making much of the Civil Rights Act into the Fourteenth Amendment, which would be ratified by the states and thus never cross the president's desk. Johnson fought against the Republicans, launching a speaking tour of the North before the 1866 elections that turned disastrous as he painted himself as the savior of the white race and became a figure Democrat Representative Samuel S. Cox described " .. as ugly as the devil. He was regularly mad and couldn't talk like a reasonable being". The Republicans made great gains with 37 new seats in the House and 18 in the Senate.

Johnson worked against the Republicans, who could easily override his veto with a two-thirds vote, by any means necessary, such as using bureaucratic legal issues to stop implementation of voting regulations put forth in Congress's Reconstruction Acts. Tensions grew until Johnson was at last impeached for removing Secretary of War Stanton, a violation of the Tenure of Office Act passed shortly before. The impeachment trial before the Senate lasted for months with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding and nearly all of Washington involved. It became something of a circus with bets being placed in gambling houses, Representative Thaddeus Stevens demanding to be carried to the trial in a chair despite being deathly ill, a para-political acquittal committee established with $150,000 of "influence" money, and Johnson meeting with several decisive senators with offers of political favors. After the political dust settled, Johnson was removed from office with just one vote over the two-thirds required.

Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, President pro tempore of the Senate Benjamin Wade came into the White House. Wade was radical even by measure of the Republicans, calling not only for racial equality but also women's suffrage and political support for trade unions against rampant capitalism. Rallying his allies in Congress, Wade put forth aggressive policies with Reconstruction, seizing and parceling up plantations, reinforcing the Freedmen's Bureau at the expense of former slave-owners, and maintaining military governments to ensure control while the Southern economy readjusted. States would only be allowed back into the Union after a majority of its citizens had taken loyalty oaths, which had been a bill created by Wade in 1864 that Lincoln nullified by pocket veto. His actions were widely unpopular in the South and enough to cause a "white flight" as crowds headed north or west and settled under the Homestead Act (interestingly, one of Andrew Johnson's main works as a senator). Other Southerners stayed and resumed fighting incognito through organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, which was deemed illegal and seditious by Wade, who hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to aid Union soldiers in rooting out the movement.

Many Republicans found Wade too extreme for the presidency, such as James Garfield, who referred to him as "a man of violent passions, extreme opinions and narrow views who was surrounded by the worst and most violent elements in the Republican Party". He was replaced by General Ulysses S. Grant with the 1868 election under the promise of women's suffrage (1870, with the Fifteenth Amendment), but many of Wade's policies continued, if in a lighter fashion. Reconstruction would forever change the shape of the South, destroying the aristocracy and contributing to the establishment of African American rights there. Few African Americans moved to settle in the North and Midwest, which maintained racial notions for generations to come. One hundred years after the Civil War, a new movement began in the South calling for nationalized civil rights, and many in South Carolina with its Black majority suggesting secession if segregation was not ended.

In 2000, ending their search for adult supervision of the fledgling search giant Google, co-founders Larry Page and Serge Brin appointed Steve Jobs as CEO. Other candidates such as Intel's Andry Grove and Amazon's Jeff Bezos had been rejected by Venture capitalist John Doerr.

Apple Buys Be Inc. Part 2Only four years before, the former Macintosh Guru had almost re-joined Apple. But the acquisition of his company NeXSTEP fell through and the Board decided to purchase Be Inc from another former Apple executive, Jean-Louis Gassée.

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