Description
Ward Lamon, Lincoln’s Bodyguard
At 6’4” tall, 260 pounds and armed with brass knuckles, a blackjack and a Bowie knife, the man known as Hill Lamon (pronounced “Lemon””) is every inch a credible bodyguard for Abraham Lincoln. His devotion to the job finds him side by side with the President during the day and, at night, patrolling the grounds […]
June 27, 1844. The Founder Of The Mormon Religion, Joseph Smith, Is Murdered In Carthage, Illinois.
You are there: Joseph Smith’s quest to lead his followers in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to their “New Jerusalem” destination ends suddenly in a flurry of gunshots fired by an angry mob in Carthage, Illionis. Born in 1805, Joseph Smith, Jr., grows up in a family of Christian mystics in […]
June 18, 1815: The Napoleonic Wars End With The French Defeat At Waterloo.
You are there: Nearly twenty years after Napoleon’s France uses its military might to achieve global dominance, its days of glory come to an end in Belgium at the Battle of Waterloo. A Corsican by birth, Napoleon’s meteoric rise in his adopted country begins in 1793, four years after King Louis XVI is guillotined, when […]
June 5, 1851: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin Builds Empathy For The Plight Of The Enslaved In The North.
You are there: After the first installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published in the weekly abolitionist newspaper The National Era, the public response is so enthusiastic that Harriet Beecher Stowe converts her original short story into a full length novel. Within the next year it becomes the top selling book in the 19th century […]
June 2, 1864: President Lincoln Meets The Reverend Dr. Wilson Of Georgia At The White House And Endorses A Good-Will Mission.
You are there: In accord with the protocol of the day a visitor wishing to see the U.S. President in person can appear at the White House and be ushered in when his name is called. On June 2, 1864, one such guest is the Reverend Dr. Joseph Ruggles Wilson of Augusta, Georgia. Wilson is […]
The Senate “Committee of Thirteen” Try To Save the Union
One month after the election of Abraham Lincoln, political leaders across Washington search frantically for a compromise to his promised ban on slavery in the west which threatens to drive the South out of the Union. In the Senate, where Democrats still control 38 of the 66 seats, Kentucky’s Lazarus Powell calls for a “Committee […]
The origins of rice in America, the Gullah people and William Aiken Jr.
Before William Aiken Jr. enters the picture it’s necessary to tell how the Gullah people introduced rice to America. When captive west coast Africans land in Charleston around 1650 they arrive with a host of different local traditions and speaking a variety of different tongues. Then, in order to survive their enslavement, they gradually form […]
Prince Hall Black Masonic Lodges
Prince Hall’s founding of a Freemason Lodge for Africans in the city of Boston is an early milestone in the uphill battle of Blacks to achieve social respect and acceptance. Facts about the early life of Prince Hall are sketchy, but he is thought to have been born in Barbados in 1748 and to have […]
Reverend James Henley Thornwell Slavery A Positive Good
With slavery established in all 13 colonies by 1700, debates about its morality begin to surface, especially among the clergy. At the time, the fundamentalist ministers who dominate America’s early churches preach that the literal words of the Bible are both correct and unerring. They cite the Old Testament book of Genesis and the “curse […]
John Sutter and the Gold Rush
January 24, 1848: Gold Is Discovered At Sutter’s Mill In California You are there: on this day a carpenter named James Marshall discovers gold nuggets in a run-off stream at Johan Sutter’s sawmill northeast of Sacramento. A debt-ridden Johan Sutter flees Germany in 1834 to start a new life in America. He learns the fur […]