What Happened Today

By the summer of 1865, almost every single Confederate general had surrendered to a Union Army. The one exception was a truly unique general, as Stand Watie was the only Native American General on either side and the self proclaimed Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Watie was opposed in his stance by most Cherokees, particularly by the long ruling Principal Chief, John Ross. The enmity between Stand Watie and John Ross dated to the 1830s and the Indian Removal Act, when Stand Watie and his brothers argued for agreeing to a treaty and self removal. Ross and most Cherokees wanted to remain firm, so Watie led the "Treaty Party" and signed The Treaty of New Echota behind Ross' back. This would lead to the Trail of Tears and a forced removal to Indian Territory. When the Civil War broke out, unsurprisingly, Watie and Ross were on opposite sides. Watie's 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles fought throughout the war, but with declining numbers as more Cherokees opposed the Confederacy. Watie was so attached he would be the last general to surrender to Union forces.

The Empire Windrush was mostly an unexceptional transport ship, but on one voyage in 1948 it managed to take a group of 492 Jamaican immigrants from Kingston to Britain. This would be the establishment of a real Afro-Caribbean community in Britain, and the earliest group of Caribbean immigrants to Britain would become known as "the Windrush generation." The larger history of the ship itself was not a great portent for such a groundbreaking moment. The ship was launched as the Monte Rosa for a German line in 1930. The Monte Rosa was a cheap cruise liner of a type extremely popular in the 1920s. With the rise of the Nazis, the leisure cruises became propaganda tools, and then in World War II the Monte Rosa became a Nazi transport ship, carrying troops and, once, deported Norwegian Jews. By the end of World War II, it became a British ship and was rechristened Empire Windrush, taking its name from the River Windrush. The Windrush was a minor troop transport until it arrived in Kingston with a large amount of berths available for its return to Britian. So the Empire Windrush would become a landmark ship by taking on nearly 500 immigrants.

On June 21, 1964, three Civil Rights workers, James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were killed by a group of Klansman who were also associated with the Sheriff's office outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Mickey Schwerner in particular had been targeted, and Chaney and Goodman happened to be with him. The entire plan was the work of the most violent Klan group, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and it was all arranged by Edgar Ray Killen. Shortly after the murders, evidence came out that implicated the Sheriff's Office, which led to certain members of the killing posse to flip. Remarkably, despite official resistance in Mississippi to the charges, seven men were sent to prison for the crimes. Edgar Ray Killen got off because one juror had been unwilling to convict a preacher for murder. So for over four decades, Killen was a free man. Then in 2004, the State of Mississippi reopened the investigation into the event and in 2005, Killen was brought on trial once again. In the end, due to being the mastermind of the plot but not being present at the murders, Killen was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to prison.

The SS Savannah was going to inaugurate a new era in ocean going vessels, as it was the first steam powered ship to make a transatlantic crossing. On the other hand, the Savannah was also a sailing ship that had a steam engine and paddle wheel added on in construction, and it only used steam power for a small fraction of its voyage. Steam powered paddle ships had been used on rivers for a decade, but no one had attempted a transatlantic trip. The Savannah's captain, Moses Rogers, convinced the firm of Scarborough & Isaacs in Savannah, Georgia to pay for a steam engine on his ship to make such a voyage. After moving from its shipyard in New York to its home port in Savannah, the ship was so popular that President James Monroe wanted to come aboard and see it. Once it began its historic voyage in May 1819, the ship had a smooth trip. The steam engine was not used much, but it did leave Savannah and enter Liverpool on steam. Once it hit Liverpool, the excitement around the ship was immense, and the intrigue continued as it went to St. Petersburg. Six months after it left home, the Savannah returned to Savannah, but no other steam powered ships would make a voyage for nearly two decades.

The case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was not great when it was argued in 1951. Based on the testimony of Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, both Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage for passing on scientific secrets to Soviet agents. The judge in the case, Irving Kaufman, then sentenced the Rosenbergs to death for treason. They would be the only spies given such a sentence in the Cold War, despite the fact the trail that led to the Rosenbergs included a number of other atomic spies, including David Greenglass. Committees sprung up to exonerate Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, or at least get their sentences commuted. Despite this, they were executed at the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York. In the years after that, various people kept the fight to clear their names. Then, after the fall of Communism, decoded Soviet messages were released, and the evidence all said that Julius Rosenberg was, in fact, a well-developed Soviet agent. His former KGB handler would even admit in the 21st century that he got the information from Julius Rosenberg. That doesn't change the fact that the prosecution of the case against the Rosenbergs was highly problematic.

When James Madison signed off on Congress' Declaration of War against Great Britain, he had the United States of America officially take on the world's largest superpower. To be fair, Britain had been impressing American sailors into British service, limiting American trade, and encouraging Native American raids on American territories. Also, Britain was fairly well occupied with the Napoleonic Wars and could not devote full resources to War in North America. Madison also believed that the War would see American armies overwhelm the Canadian provinces. Instead, the War of 1812 began with a series of embarassments for the American armies, and it would only get worse. By 1814, the entire city of Washington would be burned, including the Capitol and the White House. Yet the course of the Napoleonic War turned in favor of the British, which meant that many of the causes for war disappeared as they were war measures against Napoleonic France. By late 1814, Britain agreed to terms with America at the Treaty of Ghent which saw no real change from before the war. Still, Madison had led America in a successful war against the British Empire, fulfilling a wish of the war's declaration.

The Watergate burglary was the event that directly led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, but for such a momentous event, it was a fairly bumbling crime. Discovered because a security guard noticed tape on a door's lock, James McCord, Virgilo Gonzalez, Bernard Baker, Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis were caught in the act of breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. They were arrested and soon charged with burglary alongside G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. Liddy and Hunt worked for the Nixon administration, and all seven men were sent to jail between Nixon's reelection and inauguration. Then it became clear Nixon was hell bent on covering up any connection between his administration and the burglary. This only made people look more seriously into Nixon's actions and Liddy and Hunt's roles with the Committee to Re-Elect the President. So Nixon began firing people who seemed to stand in his way, including the Special Prosecutor investigating the case, Archibald Cox, as well as the men refusing to fire Cox. Finally, a tape was released with Nixon describing his attempted cover up of the Watergate burglary with his Chief of Staff, which forced him to resign.

Marshal Philippe Petain was one of the great national heroes of France due to his performance as a general in World War I against the Germans. When a different German Army invaded France in 1940, however, it was Petain who became the closest collaborator with the Nazis as the head of the "State of France," better known as the Vichy Regime. Petain was not a Fascist, or even a close Nazi sympathizer before taking power. Yet he had become Deputy Prime Minister after the invasion began, and when Paul Reynaud could no longer remain as Prime Minister by June, it was Petain's turn to lead France. He was the head of the faction in the Cabinet who wanted an Armistice, ostensibly to save French lives. Instead, he dismissed the French Republic and made the French Government Authoritarian within a month. Petain's real power was relatively limited in reality, as he was the head of a Nazi puppet state that only controlled Southern France. At the end of the war, it would be his former junior officer and leader of the Free French Forces General Charles de Gaulle who would lead France, while Petain was found guilty of treason.

Almost all of the Barons of England hated King John, and with good reason. John had been fighting in France, only succeeding in losing most of his continental holdings and spending money at a remarkable rate. To pay for this, he asked his barons for more money in increasingly unspecified ways. So the Barons rose up and took over London, then forced King John to affix his seal to a document known as Magna Carta Libertatum (The Great Charter of Liberties.) Guaranteeing a process for taxation, the raising of armies, and redress of grievances, Magna Carta also provided for a council of 25 barons to oversee the King. King John basically ignored it and a civil war, the First Barons' War, broke out between John and his barons. Within a year, John would die of dysentery while campaigning. His nine year old son, Henry III, became King, and his regent William Marshal helped swing barons back to the Royalist side by agreeing to enforce Magna Carta. Since that point, Magna Carta has been one of the foundational documents in the British Constitutional tradition, checking the power of the monarch.

The English Civil War pitted Royalists loyal to King Charles I against Parliamentarians and their supporters. Although the two sides had clear divisions, from its outbreak in 1642 until the spring of 1645, the two sides were largely even. Both would have significant victories, and both would produce particularly gifted military leaders. For the Royalists, it was Charles' nephew Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who was trained in the most modern military tactics and had views on carrying warfare that were seen as extreme in England. For the Parliamentarians, it was Oliver Cromwell, who was a Member of Parliament and Puritan who became one of the best generals in English history. The intractable war largely turned ultimately towards the Parliamentary side with the creation of the New Model Army, a professionalized, disciplined Army made in the image of Oliver Cromwell and his Commander Sir Thomas Fairfax. At the Battle of Naseby in 1645, the New Model Army routed a Royalist force half its size, ending most of what would be the real conflict in the first stage of the English Civil War.