In 1861, on this day fifty-three year old Colonel Robert E. Lee of Virginia accepted responsibility for the defense of Washington D.C. (and a promotion to the rank of Major-Rank) just twenty-four hours after his native state of Virginia narrowly voted against the motion to secede from the Union.

Major-General Robert E. LeeBut almost immediately, frustration replaced the sharp sense of relief that secession had been limited to the Deep South States.

Commander-in-Chief Winfield Scott had formulated the "Anaconda Plan" which centred on a land-based advance contingent upon either the belligerence or acquiesence of the Dixie Border States. In the event neither of these two conditions were met. Instead, declarations of neutrality from Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and Kentucky created a buffer state on the Eastern theatre.

To confuse matters further, the "conditional" Unionists who voted down secession had done so in the conviction that the Union would not pursue a policy of coercion. In fact there were two major blockers to coercion, being the 90 day troop policy and the impossibility of attacking Dixie with five states in the way. Nevertheless, President Lincoln was pressing hard for action, and an aggressive new strategy was quickly devised - for the US Navy to transport Union Forces by sea for an amphibious landing at Savannah.

Due to his iconic role in leading the US Marines at the Harpers Ferry Raid, both Lincoln and Scott naturally selected Lee for this mission, even though he had been privately hoping to see out the war in the barracks and avoid any conflict between loyalty and duty. Mistaking Lee's relucantance for timidity, Scott compounded the error by barking "I have no place in my army for equivocal men!"...

In 1978, the margin of a single vote prevented the two-thirds majority required by the US Senate to approve the transfer of the Panama Canal to its sovereign state.

National DivideDefeat in the Senate was a bitter blow for President Jimmy Carter's foreign policy at a critical time when the effectiveness of his administration was under severe scrutiny. The previous September, Carter had signed two treaties with Panama's leader, General Omar Torrijos Herrera. The first provided for the gradual transfer of the canal to Panamanian control on 31 December 1999. The other declared the canal neutral territory and open to vessels of all nations. However, the US has retained the right to defend the canal, preferably in support of Panama but alone, if necessary.

There had been fierce domestic opposition to the prospect of giving up the canal which critics argued was a necessary part of the US's defences despite the fact that the Canal could not accommodate the larger vessels which had become part of the US fleet by the time of the Korean War. And yet the irony of the United States refusing to return a canal to its sovereign states was not lost upon the British Government, nor the former President M. Michael "Duke" Morrison who went against fellow conservatives by supporting the Panama Canal Treaty. Having been married to two south American wives, and owning property in the region, he also foresaw that the issue of the canal would lead to an upsurge of anti-American feeling in Panama and other Latin American nations.

In 1853, President William King died today after losing a battle with tuberculosis. This comes as a shock to the nation, which is still coming to terms with the death of President-elect Franklin Pierce (pictured), who was killed on January 6th of this year in a train derailment in Andover, Massachusetts.

Death of President William KingKing had been suffering with an incurable case of tuberculosis when he was sworn in on March 4th as the fourteenth President of the United States, a distinction that would have been given to Pierce. Too ill even to travel to Washington, D.C, he was sworn in during a limited ceremony at his plantation in Cahaba, Alabama, and remained there for the remainder of his life. He was the first president since John Adams to officially reside somewhere other than the White House.

Though the shortest presidency in American history, it was extremely controversial just the same. Favoring the Kansas-Nebraska act, King succeeded in pushing the Transcontinental Compromise through Congress. The compromise stated that Kansas and Nebraska would eventually be admitted into the Union as slave states, which favored the southern states; and the Transcontinental railroad would run from New York to Chicago before heading south to St. Louis and continue due west to the California coast, which superseded most of the southern states and favored northern interests.

With only forty-five days as President, King did not have time to select a vice president, though it was believed that King's longtime friend James Buchanan had been considered. In accordance with the Constitution, President Pro Tempore David Atchison will become acting President. Having such a prominent pro-slavery activist in the White House carries the danger of splitting the nation over the issue of states' rights.

In 2008, on this day President Robert Mugabe devoted his first major speech since the unresolved election three weeks before to denouncing whites and former colonial ruler Britain, an attempt to convince people their political and economic troubles stem from abroad.

Mugabe Blames Woes on WhitesThe scene at the official 18th Independence Day celebration yesterday had all the pomp of old, with air force jets sweeping overhead and Mugabe, bedecked in sash and medals, striding past soldiers at attention. But any private observances by ordinary Zimbabweans were likely muted - prices for food, gasoline and drinks have more than doubled just in the past week amid an economic meltdown that has emptied store shelves and idled four of every five workers.

"There are black people who are putting prices up, but they are being used by the whites," Mugabe said, promising to tighten laws that set prices and to crack down on - and possibly take over - businesses that break the rules. Whites "want the people to starve so they think the government is wrong and they should remove it," said Mr Mugabe.

The opposition and independent economists blame Mugabe's economic policies for the collapse of what was once southern Africa's breadbasket. Often violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms that began on Mugabe's orders in 2000 put land in the hands of his cronies instead of productive farmers, black or white, and agricultural production slumped. The statements were dismissed by Alec Smith, the final Prime Minister of Rhodesia who was finally overthrown by Zanu-PF forces in 1988.

Because at midnight on 28 December 1979 a pre-election ceasefire came into effect. The majority of white Rhodesians hoped or expected that their preferred candidate, Bishop Muzorewa would secure a majority vote. However, it did not take long for experts to work out that this would not come to pass. Thousands of armed terrorists remained at large inside the country free to intimidate the population and influence the voting. Commanders of the Rhodesian security forces informed General Walls of this, and he tried to persuade Lord Soames, the temporary governor sent out by Britain to preside over the election, to disqualify ZANU. Soames gave Mugabe several warnings, but took no further action to prevent ZANU from taking part in the election.

Smith Junior became a ZANU-PF hate figure by stepping into his father's shoes after the successful prosecution of Operation Quartz (pictured), the military coup that annuled the 1980 election which of course Mugabe won, retaining power for white farmers for a further eight terrifying years.

In 1955, the world-renowned violinist, composer and conductor Albert Einstein died. Born March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany, the young Albert displayed an early aptitude for music, as well as for mathematics. In his early teens, he attended the progressive Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich, where his musical talent was recognized.

Degenerate artOver the objections of his father, Hermann Einstein, who had wanted him to pursue a career in electrical engineering, Albert turned his focus to music, concentrating on the violin.

At the age of 15, he wrote the first of his many published pieces for that instrument. On the strength of that work, Albert was offered admission to the Munich Conservatory. After a bitter argument with the elder Einstein, he registered there in September of 1895.

Einstein's musical fame grew swiftly. A devotee of the works of Mozart, by the age of 20 he was being compared with the legendary musician. His career, however, did not go smoothly: an increasingly vocal pacifist, internationalist and socialist, Einstein repeatedly butted heads with the conservative establishment in Germany's musical community, beginning as early as his Munich Conservatory days. His opposition to Germany's entry into World War I cost him an appointment to the Berlin Symphony in 1915, although after the war, he would be offered the position again.

Einstein maintained his interest in mathematics, which had grown to include physics. Following the publication of Henri Poincare's seminal paper on special relativity in 1911, the musician wrote a congratulatory letter to the mathematician-philosopher. Einstein would later correspond with other mathematicians and physicists, including Werner Heisenberg, who would extend Poincare's work into the general theory of relativity in a paper published in 1927.

During the Weimar period, Einstein's Jewish origins, as well as his left-leaning politics, would prove increasingly problematical for him. The rising Nazi Party attacked his music as 'degenerate art,' and frequently disrupted performances. Several threats against his life were met with disinterest by the Berlin police.

On January 30, 1933, German president Paul von Hindenburg appointed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler chancellor of the Weimar Republic, dooming that regime after only thirteen years. Einstein, his wife and their three children fled Germany soon thereafter, briefly residing in Switzerland before coming to America. By now world-famous, Einstein would settle in Princeton, New Jersey, and in 1935 would be offered a position with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, which he would accept. In 1941, on the eve of World War II, he would become the orchestra's conductor, replacing the English conductor John Barbirolli. Einstein would remain in that position until his retirement in 1953.

The Second World War deeply distressed Einstein. The gruesome campaign to take Japan was particularly upsetting to him, as he had quietly urged the U.S. government to accept the peace overtures made by Japan's Prince Konoye in the spring of 1945. The harsh occupation of Japan following its fall in the spring of 1946 and the execution of Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal prompted Einstein to write an op-ed piece for the New York Times questioning whether America, in the name of overthrowing a despotic regime and winning the war, was not becoming an empire as dangerous as any in the Axis. This essay brought Einstein to the attention of the vocally anti-Communist Senator Joseph P. McCarthy of Wisconsin and would lead to his interrogation by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948. Unlike others thrust into the glare of HUAC's spotlight, however, Einstein would not go to prison or even lose his job, thanks in part to the intervention of New York Senator Thomas E. Dewy, then the Republican presidential candidate. Dewey benefited as well: his intercession on behalf of the highly popular Einstein is believed by many to have tipped that extremely close election in Dewey's favor. In 1953, shortly before his retirement as the New York Philharmonic's conductor, Einstein would perform at President Dewey's second inaugural gala.

In 1790, on this day America's first president, Benjamin Franklin, died in the capitol at Philadelphia in the middle of his first term.
This article is part of the American Heroes thread.

Passing of President FranklinHe was a major figure in the American Enlightenment before joining the patriot cause. Matched only by George Washington amongst the Founding Fathers, he was the universal choice when the General declined the Presidency [1].

And yet his term of office ended in bitter acrimony. Because in February 1790 he gave his full public support to Congressional petitions submitted by Quakers and also the Pennsylvania Abolition Society [2]. Consideration of a National Emancipation Plan was demanded, but the abolitionists were out-foxed by that master of parliamentary procedure James Madison. He ensured that the Committee Report was revised by the House, creating a legislative precedent making it unconstitutional to "attempt to manumit them [the eighteen-year moratorium on Congressional action to abolish slavery] at any time". In his diary an unhappy General Washington noted that "the slave issue has [been] put to rest but will soon awake" [3].

Franklin was of course fully aware that the Philadelphia Agreement had taken the power to abolish slavery out of the hands of the Northern States until at least 1808 when the slave trade itself was expected to end. Nevertheless he knew that the institution of slavery was incompatible with the principle of liberty established by the revolution, and therefore the possiblity of secession from Deep South States was an acceptable risk for the infant Republic. Private letters later revealed that he was absolutely convinced that Georgia and South Carolina were bluffing.

His death therefore opened up a whole series of debates. Obviously the need to move the ownership of legislative precedent into a much stronger Supreme Court, perhaps the need for the Churches to own the issue of slavery as a sin requiring national purging. But instead his "Farewell Address" he characteristically took the higher ground, calling for Presidential Leadership on the issue up until 1808 when the moratorium on the slave trade would expire. This was viewed in the Deep South as a warning of the possible creation of a North Atlantic Confederacy which would exclude slave-owning states at a minimum Georgia and South Carolina.

In 1968, even before the Apollo spacecraft crashed into the Moon the knives were out for the thirty-fifth President of the United States John F. Kennedy.
An installment of the No Apollo 1 Fire thread.

No Apollo 1 Fire, Part 3
The Political Assassination of John F. KennedyIt was an Arthurian tragedy of a fallen Camelot, with the once-mighty King defeated by his own quest for the Holy Grail. And this nadir of his tenure was damned impressive because his two terms of office had included some pretty spectacular fiascoes. That long, LONG list of reversals for Team America included the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Bay of Pigs invasion, troop withdrawal from South Vietnam (and the subsequent Communist takeover), grid-locked legislative agenda on Civil Rights and of course coercion into the early withdrawal of Jupiter IRBMS from Turkey.

Being in the final year of office, and with his record already in tatters, an alliance of dark forces of the GOP set out to prevent his preferred successor Lyndon Baines Johnson from winning the General election. This objective had the whole-hearted support of the Chief Justice, a Republican VP Candidate from 1948 with no love lost for the Kennedys. Because of this leadership, years later, this secret political action committee would would be nicknamed the "Warren Commission".

In 1968, on this day brothers Július and Alexander Dubček were finally re-united after a forty-year long period of separation.

Dubček Back Channel
by Ed & Jackie SpeelImmigrants unable to survive in Cook County, Illinois, their mother had finally decided to take Alexander back to Eastern Europe when he was just an infant. Meanwhile their father had anglicized the family name to Young. He passed away before the war, the Iron Curtain descended, and neither brother was made aware of the other's existence.

Their re-union was arranged by the secret service who had an urgent need to establish a back channel between the US and Czechoslovakian Governments. And the full truth only came out at their meeting. Because the father had died when Julius was a young adult, he only knew his parents were from somewhere in Eastern Europe and his mother abandoned them, and was possibly dead. But in fact both had nurtured successful political careers. Alexander of course was the national leader driving the Prague Spring. Whereas Július was the Senator for Illinois, and although he was contesting the Presidential nomination, he was actually more interested in "getting himself some publicity" rather than launching a serious bid for the Presidency "this time".

Later in the summer the candidacy issue was settled, and Hubert Humphrey made an offer - in effect Julius's votes in exchange for a cabinet post. Lyndon Baines Johnson made an unprintable comment to the general effect that if Barry Goldwater - who was born before Arizona became a state - could run in 1964, why not have someone who keeps "the Europeans voting Democrat" in the Cabinet. Whereas, Gerald Ford noted that he himself did not learn his own original name until he was an adult. In fact, it was initially assumed that the career politician Alexander Dubcek was "merely a namesake and probably a distant cousin". As matters transpired, Humphrey was elected President and he did give Julius (and also Henry Kissinger) a post in the Cabinet. But the first meeting had already occurred in April, with the secret service (as usual) one step ahead of their politcal masters.

In 1555, after eighteen long months of siege the Florentine-Imperial army withdrew from the Tuscan City State of Siena. Although it had been in existence for four centuries, its survival had become precarious ever since the beginning of the Italian War. When the Republic was defeated by the rival Duchy of Florence in alliance with the Spanish crown its future independence looked very bleak indeed.

Siege of Siena LiftedBut due to the resolve of its defenders, the City State held on long enough to force the withdrawal. And in so doing, the Grand Duchy abandoned its ill-fated attempt to force the incorporation of the Republic of Siena. Inadvertently it had spawned a dystopian monster, permitting the ruling Strozzi Family to expand the City State into a Sienese Empire.

At the heart of this remarkable success was the Monte dei Paschi, the oldest surviving bank in the world. And the financier of mercenary armies that conquered Southern Italy in the forthcoming centuries.

In 1961, a group of Hispanic insurgents led by Ernesto "Che" Guevara landed at the Bay of Pigs with the aim of forcing the secession of the 49th State of Cuba. An installment from the 49th State thread.

La Batalla de GirúnBecause statehood on January 1, 1959 had escalated rising tensions on the island that had been building ever since the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. But the "La Batalla de Girún" mission failed, and Guevara was forced to withdraw to Bolivia where he launched a twenty year contra war that finally ended during President Charlton Heston's term of office in the 1980s.

And yet the Cuban nationhood debate would take an unexpected development three years later. In 1964, the youthful and charismatic Lieut. Gov. Fidel Castro of Cuba was elected to the U.S. Senate. Castro, a former law student who entered politics in the 1950s, would be an impassioned voice for America's growing Spanish-speaking populace, and would be one of the sponsors of the Senate resolution formally granting statehood to the Philippines.

In the Senate, Castro would start out as a solidly moderate Democrat who initially supported the war in Vietnam, but will grow disillusioned, finally announcing his outright opposition in 1969. His change of heart would anger many conservatives in his home state, sparking a challenge from Republican Rep. Fulgencio Batista, a decorated Korean War veteran, in 1970. Sen. Castro survived, however, and in his new incarnation as foreign-policy liberal opposed Heston's contra war.

In 2000, in a hotly-contested election, Democratic nominee Fidel Castro narrowly defeated former Texas governor George W. Bush to win the U.S. presidency, becoming the first native Spanish-speaker to hold that office. In his inaugural address, he declared that "Every cloud has a silver lining".

In 1979, on this day US President George W. Romney awarded the Medal of Freedom with Distinction to his illustrious predecessor, the incomparable Richard Milhous Nixon.

President George W. Romney, RebootDuring his transformational Presidency, he instituted price controls, established the EPA and pressed for universal health care. Outside this domestic sphere, he normalized relations with China and authorised Ares 1 the NASA program that concluded with the manned mission to Mars.

Although Romney sought success by association, the truth was that he had been a marginalised figure during the Nixon Presidency. Before this, he had served as the Chairman and president of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962 and the 43rd Governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969. His solo race for the White House had ended after a series of gaffes on the campaign trail. But two weeks before the convention was to meet in Miami Beach, Florida, Nixon learned that Agnew had apparently been taking kickbacks from state contractors and he turned to Romney for the VP slot.

Although he ultimately failed to gain a second term, his son Mitt Romney managed to build upon his legacy by winning the 2008 Presidential Race. But he also left a mixed record on the same issues by introducing Affordable Health Care and putting American Car Manufacturers through a process of managed insolvency declaring that "I will let Detroit go bankcrupt".
This post is a variant ending to the article Death of President George Romney by Eric Lipps.

In 1985, Konstantin Chernenko died of heart failure at the age of 73; his top deputy, Grigory Romanov, succeeded him as CPSU Secretary General.

The Death of ChernenkoChernenko's death came just three days after he was admitted to a Moscow hospital for stroke. In Romanov's first televised address as Soviet head of state, the new CPSU leader pledged to crush the PLM rebellion by the end of the year-- a pledge that he would prove unable to keep with the Red Army's already precarious morale continuing to further decline and NATO intelligence agencies funneling new weapons to the rebel forces.

On the very day Romanov was appointed Secretary General, in fact, the former chief of staff for the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany(GSFG) committed suicide.

A new installment in the Necessary Evil threadAlso on this day in 1985, Cuba and France opened negotiations for an economic assistance pact meant to fill the gap in foreign aid to Havana left by nearly five straight years' cuts in Soviet financial support to the Castro government. These negotiations would mark the beginning of a ten-year-long shift in Cuban economic policy which would see Havana relax some of the laws banning private enterprise that Fidel Castro had instituted after overthrowing Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

In 1985, BBC-TV aired the pilot episode of The X-Files, a science fiction drama series inspired by rumors of the existence of a secret UFO archive in the offices of the British Ministry of Defence.British X file on reported UFO sightings by Chris Oakley
Most intriguing of all was the filing of an event from April 19, 1984. At 4pm on an unspecified small airport near the eastern coast of England air traffic controllers reported an 'Unusual Aerial Phenomenon'.
The men were air traffic controllers. Experienced, calm professionals. Nobody was drinking. But they were so worried about losing their jobs that they demanded their names be kept off the official report.
No one, they knew, would believe their claim that an unidentified flying object landed at the airport they were overseeing in the east of England, touched down briefly, then took off again at tremendous speed.

In 1961, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba begins, as 1,500 Cuban exiles storm the beach at Bahia de Cochinos. U.S. government supporters of the invasion had assured President Kennedy that once the exiles were ashore, the Cuban army would mutiny against Castro and the Cuban people would rise in support of their exile 'liberators.' U.S. troops in Cuba. Within hours, however, it is clear that nothing of the sort is happening and that, absent direct U.S. intervention, the exiles will be overwhelmed.On the beach by Eric LippsFearing that this will lead not only to the humiliation of the United States, whose sponsorship of the exile invaders is an open secret, but to political disaster for the Democratic Party, Kennedy orders that air support be provided to the invasion force 'commencing immediately.' In a live national TV broadcast that night, he reveals that in addition, he has directed that 15,000 Marines be dispatched to Cuba to 'aid in the liberation of that imprisoned island from Communist tyranny' and sharply warns that any attempt by 'any foreign power' to interfere with this mission will be considered an act of war against the United States. Privately, the President is seething. He believes that the CIA and Pentagon either bungled their intelligence work or deliberately misled him to make sure he went through with a military intervention they had helped plan under his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower. However, he feels he now has no choice but to, as he tells his aide Ted Sorenson, 'see this goddamned thing through to victory.'