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In 1095, Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade, calling forth knights and peasants from across Western Europe to march against Muslim Turks in the Byzantine Empire and ultimately "re-conquer" the holy city of Jerusalem. In this lesson, students compare Christian and Muslim perspectives of the First Crusade by analyzing different accounts of the siege of Jerusalem.
[Teacher Materials and PowerPoint updated on 06/08/2020.]

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First Crusade | Stanford History Education Group

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In 1095, Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade, calling forth knights and peasants from across Western Europe to march against Muslim Turks in the Byzantine Empire and ultimately "re-conquer" the holy city of Jerusalem. In this lesson, students compare Christian and Muslim perspectives of the First Crusade by analyzing different accounts of the siege of Jerusalem.

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How many Crusades were there, and when did they take place?

What was the purpose of the Crusades?

Who were the leaders of the Crusades?

Were the Crusades successful?

Were there lasting results from the Crusades?

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Crusades, military expeditions, beginning in the late 11th century, that were organized by western European Christians in response to centuries of Muslim wars of expansion. Their objectives were to check the spread of Islam, to retake control of the Holy Land in the eastern Mediterranean, to conquer pagan areas, and to recapture formerly Christian territories; they were seen by many of their participants as a means of redemption and expiation for sins. Between 1095, when the First Crusade was launched, and 1291, when the Latin Christians were finally expelled from their kingdom in Syria, there were numerous expeditions to the Holy Land, to Spain, and even to the Baltic; the Crusades continued for several centuries after 1291. Crusading declined rapidly during the 16th century with the advent of the Protestant Reformation and the decline of papal authority.

Approximately two-thirds of the ancient Christian world had been conquered by Muslims by the end of the 11th century, including the important regions of Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Anatolia. The Crusades, attempting to check this advance, initially enjoyed success, founding a Christian state in Palestine and Syria, but the continued growth of Islamic states ultimately reversed those gains. By the 14th century the Ottoman Turks had established themselves in the Balkans and would penetrate deeper into Europe despite repeated efforts to repulse them.

The Crusades constitute a controversial chapter in the history of Christianity, and their excesses have been the subject of centuries of historiography. The Crusades also played an integral role in the expansion of medieval Europe.

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Crusades | Definition, History, Map, Significance, & Legacy

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Crusades, military expeditions, beginning in the late 11th century, that were organized by western European Christians in response to centuries of Muslim wars of expansion. The Crusades took place from 1095 until the 16th century, when the advent of Protestantism led to the decline of papal authority.

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Timeline | Articles and Essays | Branch Rickey Papers | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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A chronology of key events in the life of Branch Rickey (1881-1965), Major League Baseball player, manager, and executive.

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Jackie Robinson | Biography, Statistics, Number, Facts, & Legacy

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Jackie Robinson, the first Black baseball player to play in the American major leagues during the 20th century. He famously broke the color line of Major League Baseball (MLB) when he appeared on the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. A baseball icon, his number was retired across MLB in 1997.

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Jackie Robinson is perhaps the most historically significant baseball player ever, ranking with Babe Ruth in terms of his impact on the national pastime. Ruth changed the way baseball was played; Jackie Robinson changed the way Americans thought. When Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, more than 60 years of racial segregation in major-league baseball came to an end. He was the first acknowledged black player to perform in the major leagues in the twentieth century and went on to be the first to win a batting title, the first to win the Most Valuable Player award, and the first to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He won major-league baseball's first official Rookie of the Year award and was the first baseball player, black or white, to be featured on a United States postage stamp.

The raw statistics only scratch the surface in evaluating Jackie Robinson as a ballplayer. Because of institutionalized racism and World War II, he did not play his first big-league game until he was 28 years old, and therefore his major-league career spanned only 10 seasons. His lifetime batting average was a solid .311, but because of the brevity of his career, his cumulative statistics are relatively unimpressive by Hall of Fame standards.

But in what would be considered his prime years, ages 28 to 34, Robinson hit .319 and averaged more than 110 runs scored per season. He drove in an average of 85 runs, and his average of nearly 15 home runs per season was outstanding for a middle infielder of that era. And he averaged 24 stolen bases a season for a power-laden team that didn't need him to run very often.

Colorfully described as a tiger in the field and a lion at bat, the right-handed-hitting Robinson crowded the plate and dared opposing hurlers to dust him off - a challenge they frequently accepted. He was an excellent bunter, good at the sacrifice and always a threat to lay one down for a hit. Not known as a home-run hitter, he displayed line-drive power to all fields, had a good eye for the strike zone, and rarely struck out. For his entire big-league career, he drew 740 walks and struck out only 291 times - an extremely impressive ratio.

Second base was Robinson's best position. In a 1987 "Player's Choice" survey, he was voted the greatest second baseman of his era despite having played there regularly for only five seasons. Though not a smooth glove man in the classic sense, he was sure-handed and possessed good range and instincts. He made up for an average arm by standing his ground on double plays and getting rid of the ball quickly. Robinson also displayed his versatility by playing regularly at first base, at third base, and in left field when the needs of the team dictated it.

It was running the bases, however, where Robinson's star shined brightest. He was a dynamo on the basepaths - fast, clever, daring, and rough. He was the most dangerous base runner since Ty Cobb, embarrassing and intimidating the opposition into beating themselves with mental and physical errors. Former teammate and big-league manager Bobby Bragan, who initially objected to Jackie's presence on the Dodgers, called him the best he ever saw at getting called safe after being caught in rundown situations. He created havoc by taking impossibly long leads, jockeying back and forth, and threatening to steal on every pitch. His mere presence on base was enough to upset the most steely-nerved veteran hurlers.

Robinson revived the art of stealing home, successfully making it 19 times in his career - tied with Frankie Frisch for the most since World War I. At the age of 35 in 1954, he became the first National Leaguer to steal his way around the bases in 26 years, and a year later he became one of only 12 men to steal home in the World Series.

Throughout his career, Jackie Robinson was a fearless competitor. As Leo Durocher, first his manager and later an archrival, so elegantly phrased it, "You want a guy that comes to play. But (Robinson) didn't just come to play. He came to beat you. He came to stuff the damn bat right up your ass." 1

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, a sleepy Southern town near the Florida border. Jackie was the youngest of five children, four boys and a girl, born to impoverished sharecroppers Jerry and Mallie Robinson. Jerry Robinson deserted the family six months after Jackie was born. Mallie Robinson, a strong, devoutly religious woman, moved the struggling family across the country by rail to Pasadena, California, in 1920 when Jackie was 14 months old. She worked as a domestic to support her family; leftovers from the kitchens of families she worked for often constituted their daily diet.

With the help of a welfare agency, the Robinson family purchased a home in a predominantly white Pasadena neighborhood, where neighbors immediately petitioned to get rid of the newcomers and even offered to buy them out. When those ploys failed the family was harassed for several years. The Robinson boys often had to fight to defend themselves, and young Jackie was involved in his share of scrapes with white youths and had some run-ins with authorities.

Jackie's athletic talent became evident at an early age. But he wasn't the only gifted athlete in the family. His older brother Mack became a world-class track star, finishing second in the 200-yard dash to Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics. But after Olympic stardom and college, the only job Mack Robinson could find was janitorial work for the City of Pasadena. It was a position he soon lost. As in most of the country at that time, Jim Crow rules prevailed in Pasadena. Black citizens were permitted to use the city's public swimming pool only one day a week. When a judge ordered full access to the pool for black citizens, the city fathers responded by firing black employees, including Mack Robinson.

After starring in baseball, football, basketball, and track at Muir Technical High School and Pasadena Junior College, Jackie declined many other offers to enroll at the University of California at Los Angeles, near his Pasadena home. Robinson gained national fame at UCLA in 1940 and 1941. He became the school's first four-letter man and was called the "Jim Thorpe of his race" for his multisport skills. 2 Sharing rushing duties with Kenny Washington, who later became one of the first black men to play in the National Football League, Jackie averaged 11-plus yards per carry as a junior. Sports Weekly called him "the greatest ball carrier on the gridiron today." 3 On the basketball court Jackie led the Pacific Coast Conference in scoring as a junior and as a senior.

Although he wasn't named to the first, second, or third all-conference teams, one coach called him "the best basketball player in the United States." 4 Already the holder of the national junior college long-jump record, he captured the NCAA long-jump title and probably would have gone to the 1940 Olympics had they not been canceled by the war in Europe. In addition, he won swimming championships, reached the semifinals of the national Negro tennis tournament, and was the UCLA Bruins' regular shortstop. Baseball was probably Robinson's weakest sport at the university, although he'd been voted the most valuable player in Southern California junior college baseball.

Financial problems at home forced Robinson to drop out of college in his senior year a few credits short of graduation. He took a job as an athletic coach for the National Youth Administration and played semipro football for the Los Angeles Bulldogs. In the fall of 1941, he signed on to play professional football with the Honolulu Bears. Already a gate attraction and a hero in the black community, he got top billing as "the sensational all-American halfback."

Upon returning home from Hawaii shortly after Pearl Harbor, Robinson was drafted into the Army in 1942. Stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, he was originally denied entry into Officer Candidate School despite his college background. Intervention by a fellow soldier, boxing great Joe Louis, who was also stationed at the base, managed to get the decision reversed. Yet, Jackie was not allowed to play on the segregated camp baseball team, which infuriated him so much that he refused to play on the football team even when superior officers pressured him to do so. After OCS, Robinson was appointed morale officer for the black troops at Fort Riley and won concessions for them that predictably angered a few higher-ups in command.

Reassigned to Ford Hood, Texas, Jackie continued to be controversial. On July 6, 1944 he defied a white bus driver's orders to move to the back of the bus "where the coloreds belonged." When the base provost marshal and military police supported the driver, Robinson objected vehemently and was subject to court-martial. Facing a dishonorable discharge, Jackie prevailed at the hearing. But the Army had had enough of the controversial young black lieutenant and quickly mustered him out with an honorable discharge.

It's ironic that Jackie Robinson's difficulties with white authority in the military led directly to his rise to the top of Branch Rickey's list of candidates to break baseball's color barrier. Rickey, the orchestrator of Organized Baseball's desegregation, was the president, general manager, and a part-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Rickey's scouts had been surreptitiously scouring the Negro Leagues for major-league talent for some time before tapping Robinson to break the unwritten, and diligently enforced, gentlemen's agreement that banned blacks from participating in Organized Baseball.

Rickey was looking for a black pioneer who - in addition to possessing the requisite talent - was educated, sober, and accustomed to competing with and against white athletes. Robinson met those conditions. He grew up in a racially mixed environment, attended school with white classmates, and matriculated at UCLA. He'd been an officer in the military. He was well-spoken, personable, and comfortable in front of crowds. He had experienced the glare of the spotlight and reveled in it. Also extremely important to the pious Rickey was the fact that Robinson was a nonsmoker and nondrinker. Nor was he a womanizer; he was planning to marry his college sweetheart, Rachel Annetta Isum. In addition, Jackie was a Methodist, as was Rickey, and he coincidentally shared a birthday with Branch Rickey Jr. Jackie and Rachel were married in Los Angeles on February 10, 1946.

Certainly there were other black ballplayers who possessed the qualifications Rickey sought. Monte Irvin and Larry Doby were two obvious candidates. But when Rickey sent his scouts to scour the nation for the best black player, Irvin and Doby were overseas, still in the armed forces. Robinson, though he was far from being considered the best player in Negro baseball, was available due to the early termination of his own military obligation.

After his discharge, Robinson had joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League for the 1945 season. The Monarchs, one of the most successful franchises in the Negro Leagues, had been ravaged by the manpower demands of the war, but their roster still included veteran stars Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe, Hilton Smith, and Satchel Paige. Flashy-fielding veteran Jesse Williams moved over to second base to make room for Jackie at shortstop. Though Robinson hit well over .300 and showed speed and power as a rookie, he disliked the nomadic and often boisterous barnstorming life and was incensed by the Jim Crow laws that the Monarchs often encountered on the road.

On October 23, 1945, it was announced to the world that Robinson had signed a contract to play baseball for the Montreal Royals of the International League, the top minor-league team in the Dodgers organization. Robinson had actually signed a few months earlier. In that now-legendary meeting, Rickey extracted a promise that Jackie would hold his sharp tongue and quick fists in exchange for the opportunity to break Organized Baseball's color barrier.

The integration movement in general had picked up steam during World War II as black American soldiers fought and died beside whites. In fact, the decade leading up to Robinson's signing had been marked by significant progress in efforts to gain equal rights for minorities in all facets of life. Yet the moguls running major-league baseball stubbornly resisted efforts to integrate the sport, refusing to consider black players even as the talent pool was depleted by the war and one-armed and one-legged players could be found among the old-timers, teenagers, and 4-Fs gracing big-league rosters.

But in November 1944, longtime Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was generally thought to be against integration, died of a heart attack. Landis's passing was the break Branch Rickey needed to begin implementing his plan to integrate the Dodgers.

When Robinson's signing was announced, the news was heralded in black newspapers and generally received positive reviews in national publications despite objections and attacks from predictable quarters. But Rickey and the Dodgers faced near-unanimous disapproval from the Organized Baseball establishment. After the initial furor died down, a campaign to downplay Robinson's talent and the import of the event began. The New York Daily News rated Robinson's chances of making the grade as 1,000 to 1. An editorial in The Sporting News deemed Robinson a player of Class C ability and predicted, "The waters of competition in the International League will flood far over his head." 5 Star pitcher Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians said that Robinson had "football shoulders and couldn't hit an inside pitch to save his neck." 6

Muscularly built with a thick neck and wide shoulders, Robinson did look more like a halfback than an infielder. He suffered from rickets as a child and walked with a pigeon-toed gait, but on the diamond he moved with amazing quickness. He stood 5-feet-11 and weighed 190 to 195 pounds in his prime, although he thickened noticeably in the latter stages of his career. In the decades prior to Robinson's entry into Organized Baseball, there were several major leaguers whose skin tone caused doubts about their racial background. There could be no doubt about ebony-skinned Jackie Robinson. Columnist John Crosby called him "the blackest black man, as well as one of the handsomest, I ever saw." 7

Plagued by a sore arm during the Royals' 1946 spring training camp, Jackie performed poorly, generating numerous "I told you so" claims. But when Montreal opened the season on April 18, 1946, against the Jersey City Giants at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, Robinson was playing second base and hitting second in the batting order.

The first twentieth-century appearance by an acknowledged black player in Organized Baseball was a preview of things to come. In front of a packed house, Jackie lashed out four hits and scored four times to lead Montreal to a 14-1 victory. After grounding out in his first at-bat, he blasted a three-run homer over the left-field wall in the third inning. In the fifth inning he bunted for a hit, stole second, and made a daring play to take third on a grounder to the third baseman. From third base he danced far off the bag, darting back and forth and bluffing a steal until the harried pitcher balked him home. Two innings later, he singled sharply to right field and stole second base again before scoring on a triple. In the eighth Jackie again bunted safely. He once again took an extra base, advancing from first to third on an infield single, and again scored by provoking a balk by the Jersey City hurler.

The next day, the headline in the Pittsburgh Courier read: "Jackie Stole the Show." 8 According to Joe Bostic of New York City's Amsterdam News, "He did everything but help the ushers seat the crowd." 9

Baseball's defense for keeping the game segregated hinged primarily on two points. The first was the contention that there just weren't any black players good enough to merit a shot at the majors at the time. The second centered on financial concerns - the fear that white fans wouldn't pay to watch Negro players and didn't want to sit in the stands beside black fans. There was also much feigned concern about the financial impact on the established Negro Leagues.

But Jackie Robinson's first year in Organized Baseball emphatically dispelled those tired excuses. He was a sensation on the field, the Royals dominated the International League, and the turnstiles hummed. Thanks to Jackie, the Royals established a new attendance record in Montreal, and his impact on the road was even greater, as attendance at Royals games in other International League cities almost tripled over the previous year. More than a million people came to watch Robinson and the Royals perform that year, an amazing figure for the minor leagues at the time.

For the season Robinson led the International League with a .349 batting average and scored 113 runs in 124 games to pace the circuit in that department as well. His 40 stolen bases were the second highest total in the league and he led the league's second basemen in fielding. Jackie led the Royals to the International League pennant, by a 19 1/2-game margin, and to victory in the Little World Series. After the Series, ecstatic fans wanted to hoist Jackie on their shoulders in celebration, but Jackie had a plane to catch. They chased him for three blocks, prompting a journalist to observe, "It was probably the only day in history that a black man ran from a white mob with love instead of hate on its mind." 10

In preparation for the 1947 campaign the Brooklyn Dodgers and their top farm clubs set up spring training camp in Havana, Cuba. Based on his performance at Montreal it seemed a foregone conclusion that Robinson would get a chance with the parent team, but he was still listed on the Royals' roster when the workouts started. Rickey chose Havana to avoid the racial attitudes of the spring training sites in the South. His plan was to allow the Dodgers' veterans to gradually get used to having Jackie around and to see for themselves what an asset he would be to their pennant prospects. Three other black players, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, and Roy Partlow, were also on hand. Rickey scheduled a seven-game exhibition series between the Dodgers and the Royals to showcase Robinson's skills, and Jackie dominated the contests with a .625 batting average.

One problem that Rickey and Robinson had to overcome was that the Dodgers had Eddie Stanky playing second base. Therefore it was determined that Robinson would make his major-league debut at first base, a strange position for a man who had always been involved in the action in the middle of the diamond.

During training camp, a crisis arose when a core of Southerners on the team began to circulate a petition against Robinson. The dissenters were reportedly led by outfielder Dixie Walker, who initially dismissed the news of Robinson's signing with the comment, "As long as he isn't with the Dodgers, I'm not worried." 11 Rickey and manager Leo Durocher promptly quashed the mini-rebellion. Shortly thereafter, Durocher, an avid Robinson supporter, received a one-year suspension from the commissioner's office for associating with gamblers and other "unsavory" characters. Rickey deftly took advantage of the cover provided by the resulting clamor to quietly transfer Robinson to the Brooklyn roster.

Contrary to dire predictions, Robinson's first season in the major leagues went fairly smoothly as the rookie steadfastly stuck by his promise to Rickey to turn the other cheek. Tension surrounding his first game was defused by a series of preseason exhibition contests against the Yankees in New York, and Jackie's Opening Day debut against the Braves was actually somewhat anticlimactic.

He received death threats when the club visited Cincinnati, but, in an oft-told but undocumented story, Dodgers shortstop Pee Wee Reese, a native son of Kentucky, draped an arm over the shoulders of the nervous rookie infielder in a courageous public show of support. Later, a threatened strike by the St. Louis Cardinals was short-circuited by a show of force by league president Ford Frick.

Jackie's worst experience came at the hands of the Philadelphia Phillies. Led by manager Ben Chapman, the Phils baited Robinson so cruelly that he later admitted, "It brought me nearer to cracking up than I had ever been." 12 But the Chapman episode actually served to strengthen support for Robinson and even converted some of his detractors. Stanky, who originally had opposed playing with Robinson, challenged the Phillies to pick on someone who could fight back. Public reaction against Chapman was so severe that he had to ask Robinson to pose for a photo with him to save his job. Jackie graciously complied.

For his rookie campaign, Robinson hit .297, led the league with 29 stolen bases, and finished second in the National League with 125 runs scored. In 151 games he lashed out 175 hits, including 12 home runs. Usually hitting second in the batting order, he walked 74 times and led the league in sacrifice hits. On defense, his 16 errors at first base were the second-highest total in the league, but his fielding was generally considered adequate.

With Robinson the biggest addition to the lineup, the Dodgers captured the National League pennant. In the World Series, Jackie and his teammates lost to the powerful Yankees in a thrilling seven-game classic. The 1947 season was the first in which the full membership of the Baseball Writers Association of America selected a Rookie of the Year, and Robinson beat out 21-game winner Larry Jansen of the New York Giants for the award. In the National League Most Valuable Player voting, he finished fifth. At season's end, Dixie Walker admitted that "(Robinson) is everything Branch Rickey said he was when he came up from Montreal." 13

The integration of major-league baseball proceeded without critical incident. Though Robinson was scorned by some of his teammates, was harassed by enemy bench jockeys, and received a steady diet of fastballs close to his head; he faithfully abided by his promise to Rickey to turn the other cheek. Even when veteran outfielder Enos "Country" Slaughter of the Cardinals appeared to deliberately try to maim him with his spikes in an August 20 game at Ebbets Field, Jackie didn't retaliate.

In fact, baseball's "Great Experiment" was a huge success. Despite the concerns of the owners, integration proved to be a financial windfall for major-league baseball. Robinson and the Dodgers eclipsed the home attendance record they had set the previous year. They also broke single-game attendance records in every National League ballpark they played in during the 1947 season, with the exception of Cincinnati's Crosley Field, where the attendance record for the first major-league night game held up. Near the end of the season, Jackie was feted by fans with a day in his honor. At year's end, he finished runner-up to crooner Bing Crosby in a national popularity poll.

Before the 1948 season, Eddie Stanky was swapped to the Boston Braves to open up the Dodgers' second-base slot for Robinson. Jackie reported to camp out of shape and got off to a poor start. He was shifted back to first base for 30 games while utilityman Eddie Miksis manned second for the Dodgers. Eventually, Gil Hodges emerged as the club's regular first baseman, and Robinson returned to second. He finished strong at the plate, ending the year with a .296 batting mark and leading the league's regular second basemen in fielding percentage. Spending more time in the power spots in the batting order, he drove in 85 runs, tops on the disappointing third-place squad.

In 1949, Robinson enjoyed the best season of his career, establishing career highs in games played, hits, batting average, slugging, runs batted in, and stolen bases as the Dodgers captured the National League pennant by a single game. He won the batting title with a .342 mark and his major-league-leading 37 steals were the highest total in the National League in 19 years. He finished second in the league in runs batted in (124), hits (203), and on-base percentage (.432), and third in slugging average (.528), runs scored (122), doubles (38), and triples (12). His efforts were rewarded with his selection as the National League Most Valuable Player.

Robinson enjoyed two more superb seasons in 1950 and 1951, batting .328 and .338 and finishing second and third respectively in the batting race. Both years the Dodgers lost the pennant on the last day of the season, although Jackie's heroics kept them in the hunt until the bitter end. In 1951, his spectacular play forced the playoff with the Giants that would be decided by Bobby Thomson's momentous home run. In the final regular-season contest against the Phillies, Robinson prevented the winning run from scoring in the ninth inning with a sensational diving catch, and blasted a game-winning homer in the 14th inning.

The Dodgers returned to the top of the National League standings in 1952 as Robinson hit .308, scored 104 runs, stole 24 bases, and belted 19 homers. During the 1953 season, Jackie Robinson may have had his finest moment. He had worked hard to develop into a fine defensive second baseman. In 1951 he led National League second sackers in fielding and double plays, and had repeated as the double-play leader in 1952. But the Dodgers had a young black second baseman in their system, Jim Gilliam, who was ready for the big time.

Jackie graciously agreed to move to another position to make room for the rookie. The 34 -year-old veteran played 76 games in the outfield, and appeared 44 times at third base, nine times at second, and six times at first base during the 1953 campaign. He even filled in at shortstop in one game, the only time he played his original position as a major leaguer. He hit .329, drove in 95 runs, and scored 109 times. Gilliam expertly filled the Dodgers' leadoff spot and was selected the National League Rookie of the Year.

The 1954 campaign was Robinson's last good season. Again shuttling between left field and third base, he batted .311, but age and accumulated injuries were starting to catch up with him. He stole only seven bases and missed 30 games.

In 1955, the year the Brooklyn Dodgers captured their first world championship, Robinson had the worst season statistically of his outstanding career. Sharing third base with light-hitting Don Hoak, he appeared in the field in fewer than 100 games and batted only .256. In the Dodgers' epic World Series victory, Robinson was at third base for six of the seven contests and though he hit poorly, he scored five times, including his shocking Game One steal of home.

Jackie rallied to hit .275 in 1956, his final season, while sharing third base with newly acquired Randy Jackson and occasionally filling in at second. Though a mere shadow of his former self, the 37-year-old veteran was still a force at the plate and on the basepaths. In the Dodgers' seven-game World Series loss to the Yankees, Jackie drew five walks, scored five times, and blasted a home run. He struck out in his last professional at-bat, but fittingly he went down fighting. Yankees catcher Yogi Berra had to throw him out at first base after dropping the third strike.

Jackie's last years with the Dodgers had not been harmonious. He disliked both manager Walt Alston and owner Walter O'Malley, whose power play forced Branch Rickey out of the Brooklyn front office in 1950. Though the Dodgers had captured the 1956 pennant, the once dominating nucleus was growing old. Robinson himself was no longer a top performer on the field and had become increasingly outspoken on racial issues both inside and outside of baseball. The Dodgers brass was hoping he'd step down gracefully, but Jackie refused to announce his retirement. Finally the club forced his hand by swapping him to the New York Giants on December 13, 1956, for journeyman hurler Dick Littlefield and $30,000 in cash.

On January 22, 1957 Robinson's retirement from baseball was announced in an exclusive article in Look magazine, in which he took a few parting shots at the remaining segregated teams in the majors. Jackie had actually decided to retire before he was dealt to the Giants, but couldn't say anything earlier because of his deal with Look. The Giants reportedly offered him $60,000 to stay, and the prospect of playing alongside Willie Mays definitely had some appeal. But when Brooklyn general manager Buzzy Bavasi publicly implied that Robinson was just trying to use the magazine article to get a better contract, he decided to prove the Dodgers wrong and declined the Giants' offer.

Though Robinson's career as a major-league baseball player was over, he wasn't about to retire from the spotlight. He joined the Chock Full o'Nuts coffee company as a vice president and served as the chairman of the Board of Freedom National Bank, founded to provide loans and banking services for minority members who were largely being ignored by establishment banks. He authored several autobiographical works, wrote a weekly newspaper column, and hosted a radio show. Earlier he even tried his hand at acting, starring in the movie The Jackie Robinson Story.

Robinson remained an unofficial spokesman for African Americans and a relentless crusader for civil rights. He became embroiled in politics. Though a strong supporter of Martin Luther King and the NAACP, he endorsed Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy for president in 1960 because he felt Kennedy had not made it "his business to know colored people." Reportedly it was an action that he later came to regret.

In 1962 Robinson was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He was inducted along with former Cleveland pitching great Bob Feller, who had once predicted that Jackie's "football shoulders" would keep him from hitting big-league pitching. A few years after his retirement from baseball, Robinson acknowledged that he suffered from diabetes. His health declined under the ravages of the disease and at the age of 53 he suffered a fatal heart attack at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. He died on October 24, 1972, only months after his number 42 was officially retired by the Dodgers.

Although he always denied it, there's evidence that Robinson may have been the first insulin-dependent diabetic to play major-league baseball, despite his claim that it hadn't been diagnosed while he was an active player. But former tennis great Bill Talbert, a close friend of Robinson's and the first famous athlete known to perform with diabetes, believed that Jackie became insulin-dependent in midcareer. "I think Jackie felt it was a weakness. With all the publicity about blacks in baseball, he didn't want another thing to talk about," Talbert said after Robinson's death. 14

More than two thousand people packed Riverside Church on Manhattan's Upper West Side to hear the young Rev. Jesse Jackson deliver Jackie Robinson's eulogy. Tens of thousands lined the streets of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant to watch the passage of his mile-long funeral procession. Robinson is buried in Cyprus Hill Cemetery in Brooklyn, along with his mother-in-law Zellee Isum and his son Jack Roosevelt, Jr. He was survived by his wife Rachel, son David and daughter Sharon.

Shortly after his death Robinson's ordeals and accomplishments were the subject of a Broadway musical, The First. In 1987, on the 40th anniversary of his breaking of color barrier, the Rookie of the Year Award was redesignated as the Jackie Robinson Award in honor of its first recipient. On the 50th anniversary of his debut, his number 42 was permanently retired by all major-league teams, although current major leaguers already wearing the number were allowed to keep it for the remainder of their careers.

Among the adjectives often used to describe Robinson's personal makeup are fearless, courageous, dynamic, defiant, and proud. But the most frequently used descriptor is probably aggressive. It's a word that defines his public life as a tireless campaigner against discrimination as well as his history making athletic career. Jackie, who was not known for self-deprecation, made the greatest understatement of his life in 1945 at the announcement of his signing. "Maybe I'm doing something for my race," he ventured. 15

Former teammate Joe Black, speaking for generations of black ballplayers, later said, "When I look at my house. I say 'Thank God for Jackie Robinson.'" 16
This biography is an adaptation from "The Black Stars Who Made Baseball Whole: The Jackie Robinson Generation in the Major Leagues" by Rick Swaine (McFarland, 2006). It also appears in SABR's Sources "The Team That Forever Changed Baseball and America: The 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers" (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), edited by Lyle Spatz.
In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

Frommer, Harvey. Rickey & Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Barrier (New York: Macmillan, 1982).

Marshall, William. Baseball's Pivotal Era 1945-51 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999).

Moffi, Larry, and Jonathan Kronstadt. Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers 1947-1959 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1994).

Polner, Murray. Branch Rickey: A Biography (New York: Atheneum, 1982).

Rosenthal, Harold. The 10 Best Years of Baseball: An Informal History of the Fifties (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1979).

Shatzkin, Mike, and Jim Charlton. The Ballplayers: Baseball's Ultimate Biographical Reference (New York: Arbor House, William Morrow, 1990).

Tygiel, Jules. Extra Bases: Reflections on Jackie Robinson, Race, & Baseball History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

_____. The Jackie Robinson Reader: Perspectives of an American Hero (New York: Penguin Books, 1997).

Wilber, Cynthia J. For the Love of the Game: Baseball Memories From the Men Who Were There (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1992).

Ardolino, Frank, "Jackie Robinson and the 1941 Honolulu Bears," The National Pastime, SABR, 1995.
Notes
Jacobs, Bruce, Baseball Stars of 1953 (New York: Timely Comics, 1953).

Kirk, Al and Robert Bradley. "Jackie Robinson and the L.A. Red Devils." http://www.apbr.org/reddevils.html

1 Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer, p. 358.

2 Vincent X. Flaherty - Jackie Robinson Scrapbooks per Jules Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 60.

3 Jackie Robinson Scrapbooks, 60

4 Unattributed - Jackie Robinson Scrapbooks, 60.

5 The Sporting News, November 1, 1945.

6 Pittsburgh Courier, November 3, 1945.

7 John Crosby, Syracuse Herald, November 12, 1972.

8 Pittsburgh Courier, April 27, 1946.

9 Joe Bostic, Amsterdam News, April 27, 1946.

10 Sam Maltin, Pittsburgh Courier, October 12, 1946.

11 Brooklyn Eagle, October 24, 1945.

12 Jackie Robinson and Alfred Duckett. I Never Had It Made (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1972), 64.

13 Peter Golenbock, Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1984), 165.

14 Arnold Schechter, Sports Illustrated, April 22, 1985.

15 The Sporting News, November 1, 1945.

16 New York Daily News, July 20, 1972.

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Jackie Robinson is perhaps the most historically significant baseball player ever, ranking with Babe Ruth in terms of his impact on the national pastime. Ruth changed the way baseball was played; Jackie Robinson changed the way Americans thought.

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Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of former slaves. Young Jackie grew up in Pasadena, California, raised by a single working mother of five. After graduating from Pasadena Junior College, Jackie attended the University of California Los Angeles. A star athlete, Jackie became the university's first four-sport letter winner, excelling in football, basketball, track and field, and baseball. After leaving UCLA, he served in the U.S. Army during World War II, but was court marshalled and honorably discharged for standing up for his rights and refusing to move to the back of a segregated military bus.

In 1944, upon returning home from the military, Jackie Robinson set his sights on joining baseball's Negro Leagues and began playing shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs. In 1945, opportunity beckoned when Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, invited Robinson to become the first African American to play with the all-white Dodgers' farm team, the Montreal Royals. Anticipating the great adversity that Robinson would face as he integrated modern baseball, Rickey professed he needed a player who could bear the torment, famously telling Robinson he was "looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back."

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Jackie Robinson - Jackie Robinson Foundation

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On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson stepped onto Ebbets Field for his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was the beginning of an unparalleled career in baseball. At the end of his explosive nine years as a Dodger

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Frederick Douglass on Reconstruction

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Reconstruction (1865-1877) | National Geographic Society

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After the United States Civil War (1861-1865) devastated the country, President Abraham Lincoln aimed to reunite the nation as quickly as possible. Before the war even ended he had created a plan referred to as Reconstruction. However, a week after the war ended, Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson was sworn in as President.

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U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln uses the pocket veto to stall the Wade-Davis Bill, which calls for the appointment of provisional military governors in the former Confederate states and requires that a majority of a state's white citizens swear allegiance to the Union as prerequisite for the state's readmission to the Union. By April 1865, however, Lincoln is said to be moving toward the position of the Radical Republicans who had championed the bill.

Freedmen's Bureau established by Congress to provide practical aid to four million newly freed African Americans in their transition from slavery to freedom.

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman issues Field Order 15 setting aside land in South Carolina and Georgia for Black families, establishing the promise of "40 acres and a mule" for the emancipated.

Lincoln dies, the victim of assassination, and Vice Pres. Andrew Johnson becomes the 17th U.S. president.

Johnson pursues a lenient version of Presidential Reconstruction.

The states of the former Confederacy enact numerous Black Codes, laws designed to replace the social controls of slavery and to assure the continuance of white supremacy.

Congress passes the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 over Johnson's veto-the first time a presidential veto had ever been overridden.

Forty-six African Americans (most of them Union veterans) are murdered, and 12 churches and 4 schools are burned in the Memphis Race Riot.

The Fourteenth Amendment, prohibiting the states from depriving any person of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" and from denying anyone within a state's jurisdiction equal protection under the law, is submitted for ratification (ratified July 1868).

The House of Representatives impeaches Johnson for violating the Tenure of Office Act by dismissing from office Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Johnson later falls one vote short of conviction in his trial by the Senate.

John Willis Menard wins election to the U.S. House of Representatives and becomes the first African American to be elected to Congress. (He never takes office, however, because his losing opponent challenged the election's outcome.)

Congress passes the first of four Force Acts that authorize federal authorities to enforce penalties (including summary arrests) upon anyone interfering with the registration, voting, office holding, or jury service of African Americans.

Fueled by a financial crisis in New York City in September, the Panic of 1873 marked the end of the long-term expansion in the world economy that had begun in the late 1840s and initiated an economic depression in the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Slaughterhouse Cases limits the scope of Reconstruction laws and the protection of the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

An estimated 60 to 150 African Americans die in Colfax, Louisiana, when the Black militiamen defending a courthouse are massacred by members of the Ku Klux Klan and a white supremacist paramilitary group called the White League.

Only the governments of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana remain under Republican control. The presidential election of 1876 is deadlocked when Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tilden falls one electoral vote short of victory with 184 votes. The Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, has 165 electoral votes, and 20 electoral votes are disputed.

The disputed electoral votes are awarded to Hayes, who is declared the winner after a bargain is reached under which the Republicans agree to end military administration in the South, effectively ending Reconstruction.

In upholding a Louisiana law that required the segregation of passengers on railroad cars, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Plessy Ferguson establishes the doctrine of "separate but equal," providing a legal justification for the Jim Crow laws that were established throughout the South segregating Blacks and whites in almost all public places.

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This timeline lists significant events connected to Reconstruction, the period in U.S. history from 1865 to 1877. Attempts were made during this era to redress the inequities of slavery and its legacy and to solve the problems of readmitting 11 states to the Union after the Civil War.

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As you will see below, historians agree that the first twenty Africans landed in Virginia in 1619. What is in dispute is their exact status. Were they enslaved people from the beginning of their arrival or did they have some other status? Historian Malik Simba explores that question here and in the process introduces the legal concept of "customary" slavery.
John Rolfe, Secretary and Recorder of history for the colony of Virginia, wrote that in 1619, "... about the last of August, there came to Virginia Dutchman of warr that sold us twenty Negroes." This is the first indication of the presence of people of African descent on a mainland British North American colony. Their landing marked the continuous presence of people of African ancestry in what would become the thirteen colonies and ultimately the first thirteen states of the United States.

The exact status of these men and women has been fodder for historical disagreement for decades. Did these individuals enter into an already unfree laboring system of indentured servitude or into a slave system already established with the conquered Algonquin Indian group? As for slavery, the Virginia colonists were very knowledgeable about how to treat Africans/Blacks as slaves because of their intensive trade and cultural exchanges they had with the already established slave plantation colony of Barbados. Therefore, the Virginia colonists likely treated these "twenty negroes," sold that day in Jamestown as "other" than free men and therefore assigned these Africans into an unfree labor force either as indentured servants or slaves. Importantly, the colonial record reveals that the all-white planter class in Virginia and elsewhere in British North America interchangeably described these people as servants and slaves as if they were the same throughout the 1619-1660 period.

Given this, even though we do not see the first statutory slave codification until 1660, we see its immediate antecedents in several runaway slave/servant cases decades before the law of slavery appears. These cases reveal how the idea of race, pertaining to skin color and social status, had already penetrated the cultural mindset of the colonists and how race and slavery became inextricably intertwined.

The earliest case in 1630 involved Hugh Davis who was "... soundly whipt before an assembly of negroes and others for abusing himself to the dishonor of God and the shame of Christianity by defiling his body in lying with a negro...." The case is a clear indication the Virginia colonists had already interconnected skin color with faith and social control. The racial lines of hierarchy were already being laid.

Prohibition against cross cultural sexual contact can also be seen in the 1640 case of the White man, Robert Sweat, who impregnated "a negro woman" who belonged to a planter whose name survived in the historical record only as Lieutenant Sheppard. The unnamed Black woman was publicly whipped, and Sweat was required to perform public penance. The fact that the Black woman was not named in the legal history of the case already suggests a different standard for people of African ancestry.

Soon after in 1641, in the case of John Grawere, a "negro" servant, petitioned the court for permission to purchase the freedom of his young child from Lieutenant Sheppard. Sheppard, it appeared, was the owner of the child's mother. It is obvious that this case raises serious questions concerning the origins of slavery in the colony. The word "purchase" and "owned" reveals that a system of de facto or customary slavery existed long before the first slave statue of 1661 appeared in the laws of the Virginia colony.

De facto slavery is also seen increasingly in case law and in legal contracts. In 1641 Francis Potts sold a Black woman and her girl-child to Stephen Carlton. The contract included the wording "to use ... forever" which indicated that neither the woman or her child were considered indentured servants with the typical term of seven years indenture. Another deed recorded that year showed that owner William Whittington sold a ten-year-old girl and her future issue for "... lifetime and their successors forever." Again, this was a recognition of customary slavery even before the institution was officially recognized in Virginia's laws.

Because the colony's laboring force throughout the 1619 to 1660 period was composed of unfree labor which included indentured servants who were both Black and white, and slaves who could be either Indian or Black, resistance often took the form of these "unfree" laboring groups running away together from their oppressive condition. In 1640, the Emmanuel case saw six servants flee their plantations for what they knew as an unknown but certain type of freedom. Once all were captured, the white indentured servants were given additional years to their indentured contracts. Emmanuel, the lone Black runaway, however was branded with the letter "R" but was not given any additional years to serve the colony. The consensus among historians is that Emmanuel did not receive extra years on his contract because he was already a slave "durante vita" (for life).

Interracial and class resistance was clearly seen in the 1640 case of John Punch, a Black man who took flight with a Dutchman named Victor and a Scot named James Gregory. Once captured, the two "whites" were required to serve additional years on their indentured time contracts, whereas Punch was punished to serve his "entire natural life for his master." Moreover his "assigns" (descendants) were also deemed slaves for life. This case is significant because it indicates not only lifetime enslavement for Punch but the status also extended to his children and their children. Chattel slavery that would become so evident in the decades between 1700 and 1860, was already evolving in the early years of colonial Virginia and other British North American colonies.

The emergence of slavery can also be found in the differing treatment of Black and white men in the possession and use of firearms. In fact, the first legal reference to Black restrictions of any sort came with a firearms law enacted in 1639. In that year the Virginia the colonial legislature passed a statute (Act X) which stated, "All persons except Negroes are to be provided with arms...." Given that much of Virginia was still a frontier society faced with constant white-Native American conflict, the decision to ban firearms to Black slaves simultaneously recognized the differing treatment of enslaved people because of their skin color and possibly the belief that they as a group might join with native people and use their weapons against their masters. Ironically the prohibition on weapons and on interracial sex quickly spread to other British North American colonies and became the cornerstones of discriminatory policies against Black people well into the 20th Century.

Yes, the first slave law (de jure) appeared in Virginia in 1661 but a cursory examination of caselaw decades prior to that year clearly reveal that Black slavery existed and was enforced by customary law. The implications are clear, given the numerous cases of Black runaway resisters with white resisters and reflected in a 1660 Virginia law that said while English servants fleeing their masters would have additional time added to their indenture but Black runaways were "incapable" of serving additional time because they were already enslaved for life. Thus even though the first slave law appeared on the Virginia statute books in 1661, "customary" slavery had already been established in the Virginia political economy decades earlier.

Once the official enslavement law appeared in 1661, other slave laws quickly followed: 1662-Law of the Womb (children follow status of mother), 1667- Christian baptism does not change slave status, 1669-The killing of a slave is not a crime, 1680-anti-slave insurrection law. As these laws appeared, in 1672 the Royal African Company charted by King William III and given a monopoly over the English Trans-Atlantic slave trade, begin the massive importation of slaves into the colony of Virginia. The black population in the colony increased from approximately 950 in 1660 to 16,000 in 1700, and to 210,000 or 40% of the colony's population in 1775, on the eve of the American Revolution. Slavery was now fixed on Virginia and every other colony in British North America.

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The Evolution of Slavery in Virginia, 1619 to 1661 *

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As you will see below, historians agree that the first twenty Africans landed in Virginia in 1619. What is in dispute is their exact status. Were they enslaved people from the beginning of their arrival or did they have some other status? Historian Malik Simba ...

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Indentured Servants in Colonial Virginia

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Servitude had a long history in England, dating back to medieval serfdom. The Ordinance of Labourers, passed in June 1349, declared that all men and women under the age of sixty who did not practice a craft must serve anyone requiring their labor.

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This page discusses the building and destruction of railroads within the confederacy.

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The Civil War

Christopher Gabel talked about the importance of railroads and steam-powered locomotives to the the Union and Confederate armies during the U.S.... read more

Christopher Gabel talked about the importance of railroads and steam-powered locomotives to the the Union and Confederate armies during the U.S. Civil War. Professor Gabel explained how railroads made the scale of the Civil War possible and described how and why the Confederacy's powerful railroad system broke down as the war progressed. The Kansas City Public Library hosted this event. close

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Discussion on Railroads and the Civil War

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Christopher Gabel talked about the importance of railroads and steam-powered locomotives to the the Union and Confederate armies during the U.S. Civil War. Professor Gabel explained how railroads made the scale of the Civil War possible and described how and why the Confederacy's powerful railroad system broke down as the war progressed.

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Most of us take transportation for granted. America on the Move - by means of its exhibition in Washington (the largest at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History), its education kits circulated to school districts throughout the U.S., and its extensive website - counters that attitude. Society has always depended on its systems of transport.

The timeline of America on the Move begins in 1876, the nation's Centennial. By that time, railroads had already spanned the continent and united the country in an unprecedented transportation network.

The results were soon profound: economically, culturally, and politically. Personal mobility radically expanded; one could travel across the country in a week in the 1870s instead of taking several months just a decade before.

The economy began a huge expansion, growing almost ten-fold in the last quarter of the 19th Century. Physical mobility became essential for social mobility. And the old sectionalism of our pre-Civil War politics eroded. As historian John Hankey has noted, citizens spoke more often of a singular, "this United States" instead of a plural, "these United States."

Railroads in the 20th century continued to develop. By 1970, rail freight began setting all-time yearly records. Between 1970 and 2000, rail freight doubled. There were, however, many big adjustments along the way.

Whereas in 1900 the train carried almost all long-distance travelers, in 2000 such travelers almost all went by car or airplane. America on the Move highlights this complex history, with a preamble from the late 19th century.

To the right is the famous photograph by Andrew J. Russell of the ceremony that celebrated the final joining of the rails of the world's first transcontinental rail line. On May 10, 1869, a golden spike was driven, a telegrapher signaled, "Done!" and bells rang in cities from coast to coast, in one of the first news bulletins shared nationwide in real-time.

Santa Cruz, California, was typical of hundreds of small towns throughout the American Midwest, South, and Far West: citizens dreamed of a railroad connection, knowing full well that their town could not prosper economically without one.

Santa Cruzans built their own railroad, since the biggest railroad in California at the time would not build the necessary spur line to the little coastal town. The Santa Cruz Railroad opened for business in 1876, and its locomotives "Neptune" and "Jupiter" pulled trains of passengers and freight the 13 miles between Santa Cruz and Watsonville - where there was a junction with the Southern Pacific Railroad and connections to all the rest of the nationwide rail network.

Santa Cruz and Watsonville both prospered - but in ways unexpected by the Santa Cruz Railroad's managers and investors.

Industry grew in Santa Cruz. By 1900, though, tourism was the thing, as more and more vacationers from San Francisco and elsewhere in central California enjoyed the town's beaches and nearby redwoods. And between 1876 and 1900, Watsonville became part of an agricultural revolution that eventually spread throughout California's coastal regions and vast central valley.

The key for both towns was the rail network, which not only brought more industry and tourists to Santa Cruz, but allowed the agricultural produce of the surrounding area to reach new markets.

What was grown and what was transported then changed in response. Watsonville growers (in the Pajaro Valley, a dozen miles inland from Santa Cruz) found that sugar beets grew well there. The expanding market for sugar led to the building of a big Spreckles Mill in Watsonville, which processed beets into raw sugar. This output was sent for refining to San Francisco - on the Southern Pacific Railroad, which had connected to Watsonville several years before the little Santa Cruz Railroad was born in 1876.

As marketing opportunities were opened up by the rail network, various crops expanded: apple production grew rapidly, since apples could go safely by rail throughout the West and across the country. Then farmers changed successfully to perishables, such as strawberries. Railroad cars refrigerated with ice could carry strawberries as far as Chicago and, later, occasionally as far as New York and Washington, DC. Thus American diets changed.

In Santa Cruz, industries that were there grew further: lumber, fishing, tanning, lime production. Tourism, too, began to grow, since people from San Francisco and the region could more easily enjoy Santa Cruz's beaches.

Demographics, too, changed. In Santa Cruz and Watsonville, the same Chinese who had built many of the railroads in California shifted to agricultural work. Ultimately, California's population of today was shaped by the agriculture and industry that grew there in the 20th century. Hence the population was shaped by the many immigrants pursuing economic opportunity - Japanese, Filipino, Latino, other European, African American - who followed Spanish, whites, Chinese, and others in pursuit of better lives.

For the little Santa Cruz Railroad itself - as for many smaller railroads built in the late 19th century - its story was briefer. The line could not generate sufficient levels of passengers and freight to survive by itself. By the early 1880s the line was insolvent and it was sold to the much larger Southern Pacific.

When the new owners converted the Santa Cruz-Watsonville line to standard gauge (the same gauge - width between the rails - as most of the rest of the nationwide rail network), the convenience of using the line was improved: passengers and freight no longer had to change cars at Watsonville.

Elsewhere in California, however, many farmers objected to rising shipping charges, and controversy arose about the role of big railroads and other big industries in American life.

But compared to earlier forms of transport by wagon road and canal before the Civil War, railroad transport was about ten times cheaper and ten times faster. In 1860, railroads carried 3.2 billion ton-miles of freight. By 1900, that figure was 141 billion ton-miles - a stunning 44-fold increase.

Table: Tonnage of Freight on U. S. Railroads

1860

3.2

1870

9.0

1880

32.3

1890

79.1

1900

141.1

Source: J. H. White, The American Railroad Freight Car, Table 1.2. 1860 figure from A. Fishlow, American Railroads and the Transformation of the Ante-Bellum Economy. 1870 figure: author White's estimate is 8.0-10.0 billion ton-miles. 1880: from U.S. Census. 1890 and 1900: from Poor's Manual of Railroads for years cited.

Researching the life and times of a historic object reveals many engaging stories. A small, toy-like locomotive such as this one can lead you to stories about work, industry, or personal experience.

The Olomana was purchased for the sugarcane industry that developed in the Kingdom of Hawaii in the 19th century. It served in the fields for 62 years pulling cars of sugarcane from the fields to the mill for processing. During this time few mechanical changes were made; however, the boiler was replaced twice and the fuel was changed from coal to oil in 1928.

The Olomana was built in 1883 by Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Baldwin, a prosperous locomotive builder, shipped the little locomotive around Cape Horn to the Waimanolo Sugar Company in the Kingdom of Hawaii.

The Olomana is a small industrial locomotive designed to be used for mining, logging, and on plantations. They burned wood, coal coke, or dry refuse such as dry sugarcane for fuel. Such locomotives were operated on a narrow-gauge track (gauge refers to the distance between rails) and used to pull or push loads of sugarcane for short distances.

Although sugarcane had been grown in Hawaii since the early 1800s, the first export of sugar did not occur until 1837. Through the 1840s, sugar grew more important to the local economy as it became one of Hawaii's chief exports. With the expansion of sugarcane fields came the need for more labor. Workers were brought into the islands under contract as cheap labor. Most came from Asia, notably China and Japan, and after 1900 the Philippines. Smaller numbers also came from Korea, Europe, and North America.

The Olomana was purchased to get the sugarcane from the field to the mill. Working the plantation was a sunup to sundown job. Skilled and unskilled laborers were needed in the fields, the mill, the plantation store, and the clerk's office. A worker's life centered around the plantation.

The seeds were planted and tended during the year. Water needed to be brought in from artesian wells. When the stalks reached about 12 feet, it was time to harvest. Both men and women labored in the fields. Men would cut the cane, and women stripped the dry sharp leaves from the stalks. The stalks were bundled and carried to waiting wagons or small railcars.

To move the harvested crop to the mill, workers laid temporary track in the area where the sugarcane had been cut. Men bundled the stalks and loaded them high on small, four-wheel railroad cars in the field.

After loading, one man would operate the locomotive, while others watched closely as the train moved along the temporary track. Maintaining traction was very important. Sand often was thrown on rails which were covered by juice from the sugarcane. The temporary track could be taken up and put down in another part of the field.

To move the harvested crop to the mill, workers laid more track in the area where the sugarcane had been cut. The sugar was processed at the mill. The cane was crushed and the juices boiled into sugar. (Note the mill in the foothill of the mountain.)

For more on Hawaiian sugar plantation life, see the A More Perfect Union website link below, or read:

Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii 1835-1920, Ronald Takaki. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983.

(Currently, the locomotive can be seen at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, Strasburg, Pennsylvania.)

America On The Move illustrates the place of railroads in America's mobility and commerce in the late 1920s, using the example of Salisbury, North Carolina. In the late 1920s, railroads carried almost 800 million travelers and commuters annually, which was about 70 percent of all intercity travel. From 1926 to 1930, railroads handled 75 percent of intercity commercial freight, amounting to an annual average of 427 billion ton-miles of cargo (lakes, rivers, and canals carried about 17 percent of intercity freight). Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1927 - like all cities and towns in the country - was dependent on railroad transportation for most of its economy.

This graph shows how tonnage was carried by the different forms of freight transportation.

Railroads experienced a low point in freight traffic around 1960 - less than 600 billion ton-miles. Up to that time, the record for rail cargo carried was 746 billion ton-miles, set in 1944 at the height of World War II. In that year, 69 percent of all intercity freight ton-miles were by rail. Railroads did a massive job during that war, carrying nearly all military cargo from factories to both east- and west-coast ports, and handling the bulk of intercity domestic freight at the same time. Almost all soldiers and sailors reached their ports of embarcation by train. Railroads in 1944 handled 76 percent of all intercity passenger-miles carried by commercial carriers (rail, bus, air, waterways). But in that year, automobiles were already surpassing railroads in intercity travel - by almost twice as much. Railroad freight rebounded after 1960. Rail freight surpassed World War II's peak in 1970, when 771 billion ton-miles went by rail. After partial de-regulation (the Staggers Act of 1980), annual rail freight exceeded one trillion ton-miles in 1990. Railroads' portion each year of intercity commercial freight - compared to highway, waterway, pipeline, and air - never fell below 37 percent. In 2000, it was 41 percent. (Sources: Eno Foundation and U.S. Department of Transportation)

This is an image of modern railroading at the end of the 20th century. Two freshly painted diesel locomotive "units" pull a train carrying freight "containers" from the Port of Los Angeles, heading eastbound. Trains like this often go on coast-to-coast runs and can arrive at a container terminal on the opposite coast in as little as four days. Other container-loaded trains go to domestic destinations. A common use of containers - called intermodal containers because they are transported equally well by ship, truck, and rail - is in "land bridge" operations, which began in the 1980s. Products of east Asia go via the Pacific Ocean to a west-coast container terminal in the U.S. or Canada, then go by rail to an east-coast port, and then travel by sea to Europe. Such a routing is often faster than going through the Panama Canal. Trains with other types of freight cars carry (in approximate order of importance by volume) coal, industrial chemicals, new motor vehicles, grain, other farm products, minerals, lumber, paper, heavy machinery, and many other commodities, including scrap steel and paper for recycling.

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American Railroads in the 20th CenturyIntroduction - Rails Accelerate an Economy and a CultureMost of us take transportation for granted. America on the Move - by means of its exhibition in Washington (the largest at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History), its education kits circulated to school districts throughout the U.S., and its extensive website - counters that attitude.

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Tensions in the American colonies were rising. For one, the British Parliament's 1765 Stamp Act required colonists to pay an extra fee for every piece of printed paper. And the 1767 Townshend Act imposed taxes on imported goods such as china, glass, lead, paint, paper and tea. Resentful toward their lack of representation in Parliament and desirous of the same rights as their fellow British subjects, the colonists agitated for relief from the burdensome levies.

In response, George III dispatched roughly 1,000 troops to the Massachusetts town of Boston to curb the colony's ongoing unrest. The soldiers had been stationed in Ireland for years, some close to a decade, establishing roots and families there. Concerned that this deployment to the American colonies would result in an overflow of needy children draining the resources in Dublin, the British government allowed for hundreds of wives and kids to accompany their husbands and fathers on the 1768 journey.

And for the next two years, British and Irish families lived alongside colonists in Boston. They assisted each other when in need and established neighborly relationships, only for those relationships to be irreparably damaged when British troops fired upon Bostonians, killing five, in what became known as the Boston Massacre. In her new book, The Boston Massacre: A Family History, Serena Zabin, a professor of history at Carleton College, explores these lesser-known stories, examining the lives of this community during a tumultuous time in American history.

Among the stories Zabin tells is that of Jane Chambers, wife of soldier Mathew Chambers, who while caring for her ailing baby needed a place to perform an emergency baptism. Her husband, a strong opponent of the Stamp Act, pleaded with the minister of the West Church to approve the hurried naming. In the midst of this fraught political battle, the minister and father found common ground. In other instances, British soldiers who didn't have families found wives in Boston.

The soldiers and Bostonians didn't always get along, however. The men who served as the official neighborhood lookout often complained that inebriated ("in Licker") British officers verbally harassed the watchmen. And Bostonian John Rowe found his usual social club flooded with British officers.

What exactly happened on March 5, 1770, when British soldiers fired their rifles and killed five colonists on Boston's King Street, is a matter of historical debate. The next day, British Captain Thomas Preston turned himself in to the justices of the peace. Throughout the month, in a trial with John Adams as the soldier's defense attorney, public depositions were held at Faneuil Hall as Bostonians attempted to piece together a coherent story of the events.*

As the case continued, Preston's reputation shifted from a "benevolent, humane man" in the eyes of Bostonians to "a military criminal," reflecting how these now severed connections between soldiers and colonists-and Preston's long-standing relationship with his civilian colleagues-became a rallying cry for the revolutionary Sons of Liberty.

The Boston Massacre uncovers the inevitable human bonds between these two groups, presenting a new angle to an often-told narrative of the American Revolution. On the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, Smithsonian spoke with Zabin about her new book and showing the personal side of a political event.
What role does now-ubiquitous sketch of the Massacre by Henry Pelham play in how people remember the event? Your opening anecdote of the book has Paul Revere crafting his engraving based on his own personal interpretation of the massacre - that of the British as the aggressors. What does that tell us about recounting history?
The Paul Revere engraving is probably the only thing that people really know about the Boston Massacre. Party because it's fabulous, partly because it is one of the very few images from 18th-century America we have that is not a portrait. It's reproduced in every single textbook; we all know it, we've all seen it. But I wanted to show the way in which this picture itself really constitutes its own sleight of hand.
Why does the Boston Massacre matter? Why are we still talking about it today?
We've made it part of our history. There are many incidents that we do and don't remember about the 1770s that are part of the road to revolution. And this is a pretty early one. It's a moment when no one's thinking yet about a revolution. But what's really interesting about the Boston Massacre is that even though no one's thinking about a revolution in 1770, it's really only a couple of years before people take this incident and remake it so that it becomes part of the story. So [the story] itself is able to create part of the revolution, although in the moment, wasn't that at all.
What inspired you to write this very different examination of what happened that day?
It came from happening on just one little piece of evidence from the short narratives that are published the week after the shooting. We have an original copy here at Carleton, and I've been taking my class to see them. But after a few years, I really read the first one for the first time. Someone repeats that he had been hanging out in a Boston house with a [British] soldier's wife and is making threats against Bostonians. And I thought, soldier's wives? I thought, oh, I don't know anything about soldier's wives; I've never thought about them. I started pulling on the thread, and then I went to Boston. And my very first day in, I was looking in the church records, and I found the record of a marriage between a [British] soldier and a local woman. I thought, I have a story. Here's a story. So stuff was hidden right there in plain sight, things we all should have been looking at but weren't really paying attention to.
What does this book teach us that's different than other historical accounts of the Boston Massacre?
That politics are human, and the things that divide us are maybe up to us to choose. Whether or not we still continue to live in a world that is divided, in the ways that Revere might have pointed out in that [engraving]. Or, whether we can actually think about and remember the messiness of what it means to be connected to other people and remember that [this bond] is part of our politics.

We think of the American founding as such a guy story, and we spent so much time trying to figure out how all the rest of us who are not John Adams fit into the making of our past. Once I saw the story, I thought I owed it to some of these people whose names we'd forgotten, especially some of the soldier's wives, to try to tell their story and realize that they're also part of our past.
You write about "the range of people and the complexity of the forces that led to the dramatic moment." I'm curious, how does our understanding of the Boston Massacre change when we learn about it from this perspective of individual families?
When we talk in these political terms about revolution, about the end of the colonial relationship, or anything that we don't really know how to express in a meaningful way, [individual perspectives] help us understand that when an empire breaks up, there are implications for people and families do get torn apart. And this particular way of thinking about the Boston Massacre as a family story helps us see is that we don't always know the political and larger world in which we live. Looking back at this moment through the lens of a family history helps us see these individual stories, but also the larger structures in which they lived that they couldn't recognize themselves.
What has your research revealed to you about history today-the state of history and the way we understand history? How is the past connected with the present?
People love stories. They love to both see themselves and to see the ways in which they are different from people in the past. There's a tension over these 250 years between the past and the present that we're trying to work out as we write about it. There are of course parts of 2020 that are in this book where we wonder, "What is this big world in which I live? What control do I have over the politics that seem to be shaping my world that I can't do anything about?" And I think in that way, many of us feel like these soldiers and their families that are being re-deployed without any ability to say anything about the world that they live in were also making history. And that's the piece that I think is good for us to appreciate-our own lives are part of the past.
What surprised you most when writing?
One is how much of the story was just lying around, waiting for someone to pick up. I felt like every time I turned around, there was more evidence to prove the presence of all of these families, their relationships and the ways in which they were neighbors. I couldn't believe how easy it was to tell this story. I was also really surprised by the enormous numbers of men who deserted the army, more than in other places and other times, and how clear it was that they left to be with locals. They didn't just leave because they hated the army, I thought that was piece of it. But I was really surprised that their connections with locals had this impact on the larger army itself.
What do you hope readers take away from reading the book?
I hope people read it and think sometimes all you have to do is re-adjust your vision a little bit. What happens when we look differently, when we pay attention to things that we don't know. And instead of saying to ourselves, well that's something I don't know and I must be ignorant, to say, "That's something I don't know and it makes me wonder." So really just keeping our eyes open, whether we're professional historians are not, to be anomalies in the world and thinking how I can make sense of that.
*Editor's Note, March 5, 2020: In an earlier version of this piece, we incorrectly referred to John Adams as Capt. Preston's defendant. He was his defense attorney.

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A Fresh Look at the Boston Massacre, 250 Years After the Event That Jumpstarted the Revolution

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The five deaths may have shook the colonies, but a new book examines the personal relationships forever changed by them too

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On the night of March 5, 1770, a man and a British sentry exchanged heated words in Boston, Massachusetts. Within minutes, three people lay dead in the snow and several others were injured, two fatally.

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What was the Boston Massacre?

Why did the Boston Massacre happen?

Why was the Boston Massacre important?

Boston Massacre, (March 5, 1770), skirmish between British troops and a crowd in Boston, Massachusetts. Widely publicized, it contributed to the unpopularity of the British regime in much of colonial North America in the years before the American Revolution.

Prelude

In 1767, in an attempt to recoup the considerable treasure expended in the defense of its North American colonies during the French and Indian War (1754-63), the British Parliament enacted strict provisions for the collection of revenue duties in the colonies. Those duties were part of a series of four acts that became known as the Townshend Acts, which also were intended to assert Parliament's authority over the colonies, in marked contrast to the policy of salutary neglect that had been practiced by the British government during the early to mid-18th century. The imposition of those duties-on lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea upon their arrival in colonial ports-met with angry opposition from many colonists in Massachusetts. In addition to organized boycotts of those goods, the colonial response took the form of harassment of British officials and vandalism. Parliament answered British colonial authorities' request for protection by dispatching the 14th and 29th regiments of the British army to Boston, where they arrived in October 1768. The presence of those troops, however, heightened the tension in an already anxious environment.

The killing of Christopher Seider and the end of the rope

Early in 1770, with the effectiveness of the boycott uneven, colonial radicals, many of them members of the Sons of Liberty, began directing their ire against those businesses that had ignored the boycott. The radicals posted signs (large hands emblazoned with the word importer) on the establishments of boycott-violating merchants and berated their customers. On February 22, when Ebenezer Richardson, who was known to the radicals as an informer, tried to take down one of those signs from the shop of his neighbour Theophilus Lillie, he was set upon by a group of boys. The boys drove Richardson back into his own nearby home, from which he emerged to castigate his tormentors, drawing a hail of stones that broke Richardson's door and front window. Richardson and George Wilmont, who had come to his defense, armed themselves with muskets and accosted the boys who had entered Richardson's backyard. Richardson fired, hitting 11-year-old Christopher Seider (or Snyder or Snider; sources differ on his last name), who died later that night. Seemingly, only the belief that Richardson would be brought to justice in court prevented the crowd from taking immediate vengeance upon him.

With tensions running high in the wake of Seider's funeral, brawls broke out between soldiers and rope makers in Boston's South End on March 2 and 3. On March 4 British troops searched the rope works owned by John Gray for a sergeant who was believed to have been murdered. Gray, having heard that British troops were going to attack his workers on Monday, March 5, consulted with Col. William Dalrymple, the commander of the 14th Regiment. Both men agreed to restrain those in their charge, but rumours of an imminent encounter flew.

From mob to "massacre"

On the morning of March 5 someone posted a handbill ostensibly from the British soldiers promising that they were determined to defend themselves. That night a crowd of Bostonians roamed the streets, their anger fueled by rumours that soldiers were preparing to cut down the so-called Liberty Tree (an elm tree in what was then South Boston from which effigies of men who had favoured the Stamp Act had been hung and on the trunk of which was a copper-plated sign that read "The Tree of Liberty") and that a soldier had attacked an oysterman. One element of the crowd stormed the barracks of the 29th Regiment but was repulsed. Bells rang out an alarm and the crowd swelled, but the soldiers remained in their barracks, though the crowd pelted the barracks with snowballs. Meanwhile, the single sentry posted outside the Customs House became the focus of the rage for a crowd of 50-60 people. Informed of the sentry's situation by a British sympathizer, Capt. Thomas Preston marched seven soldiers with fixed bayonets through the crowd in an attempt to rescue the sentry. Emboldened by the knowledge that the Riot Act had not been read-and that the soldiers could not fire their weapons until it had been read and then only if the crowd failed to disperse within an hour-the crowd taunted the soldiers and dared them to shoot ("provoking them to it by the most opprobrious language," according to Thomas Gage, commander in chief of the British army in America). Meanwhile, they pelted the troops with snow, ice, and oyster shells.

In the confusion, one of the soldiers, who were then trapped by the patriot mob near the Customs House, was jostled and, in fear, discharged his musket. Other soldiers, thinking they had heard the command to fire, followed suit. Three crowd members-including Crispus Attucks, a Black sailor who likely was formerly enslaved-were shot and died almost immediately. Two of the eight others who were wounded died later. Hoping to prevent further violence, Lieut. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, who had been summoned to the scene and arrived shortly after the shooting had taken place, ordered Preston and his contingent back to their barracks, where other troops had their guns trained on the crowd. Hutchinson then made his way to the balcony of the Old State House, from which he ordered the other troops back into the barracks and promised the crowd that justice would be done, calming the growing mob and bringing an uneasy peace to the city.

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Boston Massacre | History, Facts, Site, Deaths, & Trial

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Boston Massacre, the famous skirmish between British troops and a crowd in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 5, 1770. Widely publicized, the violent event contributed to the unpopularity of the British regime in much of colonial North America in the years before the outbreak of the American Revolution.

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A letter to John Hancock from Horatio Gates concerning the victory at Freeman's Farm during the Saratoga campaign.

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American General Horatio Gates wrote this four-page handwritten letter, dated October 12, 1777, to John Hancock, who was then serving as President of the Continental Congress. Gates speaks to the condition of his men as well as the whereabouts of General Burgoyne.

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Franco-American Alliance, (Feb. 6, 1778), agreement by France to furnish critically needed military aid and loans to the 13 insurgent American colonies, often considered the turning point of the U.S. War of Independence. Resentful over the loss of its North American empire after the French and Indian War, France welcomed the opportunity to undermine Britain's position in the New World.

Though maintaining a position of neutrality from 1775 to 1777, France was already secretly furnishing the American colonists with munitions and loans. As early as 1776, the Continental Congress had established a joint diplomatic commission-composed of Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee-to seek recognition and financial aid from the Bourbon monarchy. The colonists' victory at the Battle of Saratoga (Oct. 17, 1777) was the show of strength needed to convince France that the revolutionaries would pursue the war to final victory. Hastening to act before the British peace overtures of the Carlisle Commission could tempt the colonists, the French foreign minister, the comte de Vergennes, succeeded in concluding the alliance the following February.

Two treaties were signed. The first, a treaty of amity and commerce, officially recognized the new country and encouraged Franco-American trade. The second provided for a military alliance against Great Britain and also required recognition of absolute independence for the United States as a condition of peace. In addition, peace could be arrived at only by mutual French and U.S. consent. Finally, France renounced all territorial claims in North America east of the Mississippi River and in Bermuda, and it agreed to guarantee whatever U.S. boundaries existed at the war's end in exchange for U.S. guarantees of French possessions in the West Indies.

The alliance greatly facilitated U.S. independence. The French fleet proceeded to challenge British control of North American waters and, together with troops and arms, proved an indispensable asset in the revolutionaries' victory at the Siege of Yorktown (1781), which ended the war. Later, however, the treaties proved embarrassing to the United States, threatening to involve the country in the French Revolutionary wars. After several years of strained relations, France and the United States agreed to the Treaty of Morfontaine (Sept. 30, 1800) to abrogate both 1778 treaties.

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Franco-American Alliance | French-United States history [1778]

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Franco-American Alliance, (Feb. 6, 1778), agreement by France to furnish critically needed military aid and loans to the 13 insurgent American colonies, often considered the turning point of the U.S. War of Independence. Resentful over the loss of its North American empire after the French and

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George Washington. Without the victory at Saratoga, American forces would likely not have received critical assistance from the French, and faith in the war effort would have been weakened. But the victory of General Horatio Gates at Saratoga also led to a serious but ultimately unsuccessful effort to replace Washington with Gates as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.

The battle of Saratoga took place on the fields of upstate New York, nine miles south of the town of Saratoga. In accordance with British plans, General John Burgoyne was attempting to invade New England from Canada with the goal of isolating New England from the rest of the United States. Burgoyne had under his command an army of 7,200 troops with which he hoped to establish British dominance throughout the state of New York. Opposing Burgoyne was General Horatio Gates with a force of 9,000 soldiers, later joined by 2,000 additional troops. The ensuing battle was divided into two encounters, the first on September 19 and the second on October 7.

The first on September 19, 1777, also known as the Battle of Freeman's Farm, took place when the British attacked the Benedict Arnold anticipated the British maneuver, however, a significant contingent of American forces had been placed between the British and the main body of the American army. While the British managed in the end to overrun the Americans, their losses were significant. Almost 600 British soldiers were killed or wounded, which was roughly twice the American losses.1

2

Following the American victory, morale among American troops was high. With Burgoyne's surrender of his entire army to Gates, the Americans scored a decisive victory that finally persuaded the French to sign a treaty allying with the United States against Britain, France's traditional enemy. The entrance of France into the war, along with its financial and military support, in particular its navy, was in the end crucial to Washington's victory at the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781, which effectively ended the war. But the French were not alone in supporting the Americans following the Battle of Saratoga. The Spanish and later the Dutch provided support as well, eager to seize the opportunity to weaken their British rival.

In the aftermath of his victory at Saratoga, General Gates enjoyed widespread popular support and some campaigned behind the scenes to have him replace Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. In an episode that became known as the " Conway Cabal," Gates's supporters began to conspire against Washington, but their plot was discovered when a drunken officer, Colonel James Wilkinson, stated publicly that General Thomas Conway had praised Gates as the savior of the Revolution while at the same time disparaging Washington. Specifically, Conway had said that "Heaven has been determined to save your Country; or a weak General and bad Counsellors would have ruined it."

It was only through the premature discovery of this plot and the strong backing of key figures in both the army and Congress that Washington was able to maintain his command. The Conway Cabal had taken Washington by surprise, but in the aftermath of its failure it was Gates who found himself in the weaker position. He apologized to Washington, who retained his command for the remainder of the war and, supported by French forces on land and sea, received the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781.

Troy Smith
George Mason University
Notes:
1. Douglas R. Cubbison, Burgoyne and the Saratoga Campaign: His Papers (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), 109-115; Jim Lacey and Williamson Murray, Moment of Battle: The Twenty Clashes That Changed the World. (New York: Bantam Books, 2013), 216-22.

2. Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 391, 427.

3. Lacey and Murray, Moment of Battle,224.

4. John E. Ferling, The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon (New York. Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 137.

5. Ibid., 149.

6. "From George Washington to Horatio Gates, 4 January 1778," Founders Online, National Archives, Source: this is an Early Access document from The Papers of George Washington.

7. Ferling. Ascent of George Washington, 160. See also "To George Washington from Major General Horatio Gates, 8 December 1777," Founders Online, National Archives (http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-12-02-0525, ver. 2014-02-12). Source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 12, 26 October 1777?-?25 December 1777, ed. Frank E. Grizzard, Jr. and David R. Hoth. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002, pp. 576-577.

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The Battle of Saratoga, fought in two stages on September 19 and October 7, 1777, proved to be a turning point in the American struggle for independence.

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Battles of Saratoga, in the American Revolution, closely related engagements in the autumn of 1777. The Battles of Saratoga are often considered together as a turning point of the war in favour of the Americans.

The British campaign of 1777

The failure of the American invasion of Canada in 1775-76 had left a large surplus of British troops along the St. Lawrence River. In 1777 these troops were to move south for an attack on Albany, New York. Gen. John Burgoyne, coming down from Canada via Lake Champlain and Lake George, was to meet at Albany a much smaller British force under Col. Barry St. Leger, who was to advance from Oswego along the Mohawk Valley. Coming up the Hudson from the south, Gen. Sir William Howe's army was to serve as the third prong of this complex offensive campaign. With Albany and the Hudson Valley in British hands, the patriot hotbed of New England would be effectively severed from the mid-Atlantic colonies.

American Revolution Events

Burgoyne, with some 9,000 men, including seven regiments of British regulars and 3,000 Germans, reached Fort Ticonderoga (July 1), which was evacuated by its weak garrison (July 5). He then marched his army through the woods and swamps to Fort Edward on the upper Hudson. The fort was evacuated by the American commander, Gen. Philip Schuyler, on July 31. Schuyler retreated across the Hudson to Stillwater, 20 miles (32 km) north of Albany; on August 19, Schuyler was relieved of command and replaced by Gen. Horatio Gates.

Burgoyne's laborious march involved the construction of 40 bridges and required a long halt at Fort Edward. A German detachment was sent to Bennington, Vermont, to seize horses and supplies, but on August 16 it was surrounded and almost completely annihilated by a force under Gen. John Stark and Col. Seth Warner. Burgoyne now became uneasy. He had left nearly 1,000 men to garrison Ticonderoga, and St. Leger was held up before Fort Schuyler (unbeknownst to Burgoyne, St. Leger had retreated on August 22). Most troubling of all, Howe had notified Burgoyne of his intention to abandon the New York campaign entirely and invade Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, Burgoyne considered himself bound by his orders to press on to Albany. Having collected 30 days' rations, he crossed the Hudson on September 13 and camped near Saratoga, New York. Gates, one of the more experienced and trusted officers in the colonial ranks, was encamped 4 miles (about 6 km) away, on Bemis Heights, with 12,000 men. Gates, unlike Burgoyne, was receiving daily reinforcements.

Battle of Freeman's Farm

On September 19 Burgoyne moved south and engaged the Continental forces at the Battle of Freeman's Farm, also called the First Battle of Saratoga. Early in the battle, many British officers were killed in the open fields by Col. Daniel Morgan 's sharpshooters, who were concealed in the thick woods. As the disheartened British advance guard began to break, the main British force arrived, followed soon after by German reinforcements that struck the American troops forcefully. The Continentals stood fast, however, and heavy fighting lasted for several hours, but at dusk they withdrew. Despite losing the field, the Americans had suffered just 90 killed and 240 wounded, compared with 440 killed and nearly 700 wounded for the British.

On September 21 Burgoyne received notice from Gen. Sir Henry Clinton, who had been left in command of British forces at New York, that Clinton was about to launch an attack up the Hudson Valley. Burgoyne sent a dispatch to Clinton, asking for orders, on September 27. The answer was never received. In the meantime, Howe had captured the colonial capital of Philadelphia, but this victory proved almost meaningless in the larger context of the war. On October 3 Clinton headed north with a force of some 4,000 men and quickly captured two forts on the west bank of the Hudson, but he never had any intention of pressing on to Albany. Burgoyne was now awaiting reinforcements from Clinton that would never come. Gates took this time to strengthen his positions as more American units arrived.

Second Battle of Saratoga

Burgoyne's army had dwindled to perhaps 5,000 combat-ready troops, and he estimated that he had two weeks of supplies left. On October 7 he decided that he could wait no longer and launched an attack without the reinforcements. This engagement was called the Battle of Bemis Heights, also known as the Second Battle of Freeman's Farm or the Second Battle of Saratoga. Burgoyne first sent in a reconnaissance force, using 1,500 troops in three columns, while leaving the main body of his troops closer to the heights. Brig. Gen. Simon Fraser, tasked with probing the American left, was met by a body of Continental infantry, including Morgan 's riflemen. They opened fire on the exposed British, fatally wounding Fraser as he attempted to cover a British withdrawal.

Just as the American attack began to falter, Brig. Gen. Benedict Arnold appeared on horseback with a fresh brigade behind him. This drove the British troops back to their redoubts at Freeman's Farm. The Germans in their redoubt stubbornly resisted American assaults, but they were finally overwhelmed. On October 8 Burgoyne began to retreat, but Gates, who now had 20,000 men, surrounded him at Saratoga. On October 17 Burgoyne surrendered his troops under the Convention of Saratoga, which provided for the return of his men to Great Britain on condition that they would not serve again in North America during the war.

Aftermath

The American victory in the Battles of Saratoga helped persuade the French to recognize American independence and to openly provide military assistance. It also increased Gates's popularity-so much so that he was being considered to replace George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. That notion was squelched, however, and Washington retained his position until he received the British surrender in 1781.
Kate Lohnes The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Battles of Saratoga | Facts, Casualties, & Significance

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Battles of Saratoga, in the American Revolution, closely related engagements in autumn 1777. The American victories led the French to recognize the colonies' independence and to provide them with military assistance. This marked the turning point of the war, virtually ensuring ultimate victory for the colonies.

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Sources

The basic source work for this booklet is the first volume in the series History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, written by LtCol Frank O. Hough, Maj Verle E. Ludwig, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr. (Washington: Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1958). Other books used in writing this narrative were: BGen Samuel B. Griffith II, The Battle for Guadalcanal (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1963); Gen Alexander A. Vandegrift as told to Robert B. Asprey, Once a Marine: The Memoirs of General A. A. Vandegrift, USMC (New York: W.W. Norton, 1964); Col Mitchell Paige, A Marine Named Mitch (New York: Vantage Press, 1975); Burke Davis, Marine: The Life of Chesty Puller (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962); George McMillan, The Old Breed: A History of the 1st Marine Division in World War II (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1949); and Richard W. Johnston, Follow Me! The Story of the Second Marine Division in World War II (New York: Random House, 1948).

The correspondence of General Vandegrift with General Holcomb and other senior Marines, held at the Marine Corps Historical Center, was helpful. Equally of value were conversations that the author had had with General Vandegrift after his retirement. In the course of his career as a Marine historian, the author has talked with other Guadalcanal veterans of all ranks; hopefully, this has resulted in a "feel" for the campaign, essential in writing such an overview.

The literature on the Guadalcanal operation is extensive. In addition to the books cited above, there are several which are personally recommended to the interested reader: Robert Leckie, Helmet for My Pillow (New York: Random House, 1957); Herbert Merillat, Guadalcanal Remembered (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1982); John Miller, Jr., The United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific; Guadalcanal, The First Offensive (Washington: Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1949); T. Grady Gallant, On Valor's Side (New York: Doubleday, 1963); Robert Sherrod, History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II (Washington: Combat Forces Press, 1952); Maj John L. Zimmerman, The Guadalcanal Campaign (Washington: Historical Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1949); RAdm Samuel E. Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal: History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol V (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950); and a recent, comprehensive account, Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal (New York: Random House, 1990).

About the Author
Acknowledgments
Henry I. Shaw, Jr., former chief historian of the History and Museums Division, was a Marine Corps historian from 1951-1990. He attended The Citadel, 1943-1944, and was graduated with a bachelor of arts cum laude in history from Hope College, Holland, Michigan. He received a master of arts degree from Columbia University. Mr. Shaw served as a Marine in both World War II and the Korean War. He is the co-author of four of the five volumes of the official history of Marine Corps operations in World War II and was the senior editor of most of the official histories of Marines in Vietnam. In addition, he has written a number of brief Marine Corps histories. He has written many articles on military history and has had more than 50 signed book reviews.

The author gratefully acknowledges the permission granted by the Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America to use the maps from BGen Samuel B. Griffith II's The Battle for Guadalcanal and by Doubleday Books and Jack Coggins for use of the sketches from his The Campaign for Guadalcanal. The author also wishes to thank Richard J. Frank and Herbert C. Merillat for permission to reproduce their photographs.

THIS PAMPHLET HISTORY, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines in the World War II era, is published for the education and training of Marines by the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C., as a part of the U.S. Department of Defense observance of the 50th anniversary of victory in that war.

Editorial costs of preparing this pamphlet have been defrayed in part by a bequest from the estate of Emilie H. Watts, in memory of her late husband, Thomas M. Watts, who served as a Marine and was the recipient of a Purple Heart.

WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES

DIRECTOR OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS
Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret)

GENERAL EDITOR,
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
Benis M. Frank

CARTOGRAPHIC CONSULTANT
George C. MacGillivray

EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION
Robert E. Struder, Senior Editor; W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information Specialist;
Catherine A. Kerns, Composition Services Technician, R.D. Payne, Volunteer—Web Edition, and Patrick Clancey, HyperWar Foundation —Web Edition.

Marine Corps Historical Center
Building 58, Washington Navy Yard
Washington, D.C. 20374-5040

1992

PCN 190 003117 00

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First Offensive: The Marine Campaign for Guadalcanal (Sources/About the Author/Acknowledgments)

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Sources The basic source work for this booklet is the first volume in the series History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, written by LtCol Frank O. Hough, Maj Verle E. Ludwig, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr. (Washington: Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S.

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On August 7, 1942, America mounted its first major amphibious landing of World War II at Guadalcanal, using innovative landing craft built by Higgins Industries in New Orleans. By seizing a strategic airfield site on the island, the United States halted Japanese efforts to disrupt supply routes to Australia and New Zealand. The invasion ignited a ferocious struggle marked by seven major naval battles, numerous clashes ashore, and almost continuous air combat.
Learn more about the battle by exploring these digital assets:
An overview of the complete Solomon Islands campaign-including the initial invasion, naval battles, and ultimate Allied victory-from the From Collection to the Classroom: Teaching History with The National WWII Museum curriculum guide.

A Summer Teacher Institute lecture by Richard B. Frank provides an overview of the Pacific war, both in-theater and on the Home Front.

A three-part student webinar exploring the strategies by the Japanese occupiers and American invaders during the Battle of Guadalcanal:

* Part one is led by Richard B. Frank, author of Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle.

* Part two examines the ferocious sea battles surrounding the Solomon Islands during the Guadalcanal campaign, and features James Hornfischer, author of Neptune's Inferno: The US Navy at Guadalcanal.

* In part three, Robert M. Citino, PhD, Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy and the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian, examines the concluding weeks of the pivotal battle.

Watch a daylong symposium devoted to the Battle of Guadalcanal, featuring presentations by Richard B. Frank, Trent Hone, James Hornfischer, Stephen L. Moore, and Andrew Wiest. Rob Citino serves as moderator:

Museum Senior Director of Research and History Keith Huxen examines a classic of war literature, Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis.

Museum Historian Seth Paridon delves into the Museum's Digital Collections for firsthand accounts of life on Guadalcanal during the battle.

In an essay, Rob Citino explains why the US Marines who landed on the South Pacific Island in August 1942 called it " Operation Shoestring."

Keith Huxen tours the Guadalcanal: Green Hell gallery in Road to Tokyo.

From the Collection: Curator James Linn explains a unique artifact tied to the USS New Orleans, badly damaged in action at Guadalcanal.

Assistant Director of Education for Curriculum Collin Makamson describes how a US Navy sailor survived off of Guadalcanal thanks to a life belt with a remarkable connection to home.

Seth Paridon revisits one of World War II's most brutal engagements, the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.

The early months on Guadalcanal were a protracted seesaw battle. Seth Paridon recalls the fight by US Marines to keep their precarious toehold on the island.
Firsthand accounts from the Museum's Digital Collections:
Clay Fisher: An eyewitness to the last battle of the USS Hornet.

In his Museum oral history, Harold Ward offers an eyewitness account of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.

Richard Greer's voice is one of the first things you hear when you arrive in the Guadalcanal: Green Hell gallery in Road to Tokyo. "Fear sets in," Greer says, in an excerpt from his Museum oral history. "Your mouth is dry and your heart is racing, and you wonder how you're going to perform."

Private First Class Frank Pomroy recalls some of the fiercest, most brutal fighting of World War II.

Radioman Jack Glass recalls a harrowing Japanese attack on the USS Enterprise.

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The Battle of Guadalcanal | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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On August 7, 1942, America mounted its first major amphibious landing of World War II at Guadalcanal, using innovative landing craft built by Higgins Industries in New Orleans. By seizing a strategic airfield site on the island, the United States halted Japanese efforts to disrupt supply routes to Australia and New Zealand.

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Battle of Guadalcanal, (August 1942-February 1943), series of World War II land and sea clashes between Allied and Japanese forces on and around Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific. Along with the naval Battle of Midway (June 3-6, 1942), the fighting on Guadalcanal marked a turning point in favour of the Allies in the Pacific War.

The naval campaign at Guadalcanal

Landings in the southern Solomons and the Battle of Savo Island

On July 6, 1942, the Japanese moved a force consisting of troops and labourers to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and began constructing an airfield. The Allies recognized that land-based planes operating from this field would seriously menace bases in the New Hebrides and New Caledonia as well as Port Moresby in New Guinea. Immediate steps were taken to eject the Japanese, utilizing forces that were available in the South Pacific.

On August 7, 1942, some 6,000 men of the U.S. 1st Marine Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift, launched an amphibious assault on Guadalcanal and Florida Island, surprising Guadalcanal's 2,000 Japanese defenders. The landings were made with strong naval and air support and met with little initial resistance, and the airfield on Guadalcanal and the harbour on Florida Island were seized in the first 36 hours. The Marines named the airstrip Henderson Field, after Maj. Lofton Henderson, a Marine aviator who had perished while leading a bombing run at the Battle of Midway the previous month. Henderson Field would quickly become the centre of gravity for the conflict on Guadalcanal.

The Japanese reacted quickly, and just before 2:00 am on August 9 they struck hard at the Allied naval force supporting the operation. A force of Japanese cruisers and destroyers engaged the Allied fleet in a furious night battle that came to be called the Battle of Savo Island. The result was a disaster for the Allies. Over the course of roughly a half hour, the Japanese sank the U.S. cruisers Astoria, Quincy, and Vincennes and crippled the Australian cruiser Canberra while suffering negligible losses. Over the following months, some two dozen Japanese and Allied ships would be sunk in the waters to the north of Guadalcanal; the sea lane between Guadalcanal and Florida Island would subsequently be known to Allied sailors as Ironbottom Sound.

The Battles of the Eastern Solomons, Cape Esperance, and Santa Cruz

Japanese forces began gathering at Rabaul, New Britain, some 650 miles (roughly 1,050 km) northwest of Guadalcanal, and Vice Adm. Robert Ghormley responded by concentrating Task Force 61, under Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, southeast of Guadalcanal. The carriers USS Enterprise and USS Saratoga and the battleship USS North Carolina were supported by numerous cruisers and destroyers, as well as land-based aircraft from Henderson Field. On August 24 contact was made with the powerful 1st Carrier Division under Nagumo Chūichi, and the Battle of the Eastern Solomons ensued. Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers from the Saratoga sank the Japanese light carrier Ryujo, and Saratoga dive-bombers seriously damaged the seaplane carrier Chitose. The Enterprise was struck by dive-bombers from the Japanese carrier Shokaku, and a fire deep in the ship caused its rudder to jam. It spent nearly an hour steaming in a circle before control was restored; if a second wave of Japanese planes had not followed an erroneous position report on the American carriers, the Enterprise almost certainly would not have survived the day.

Both sides withdrew their ships from the area by midnight, and a Japanese resupply convoy under the command of Rear Adm. Tanaka Raizō attempted to force its way through to Guadalcanal without the benefit of air cover on the morning of August 25. Dive-bombers from Guadalcanal struck Tanaka's flagship, the cruiser Jintsū, and inflicted heavy damage on a Japanese troop ship. U.S. Army Air Forces B-17s scored a direct hit on the destroyer Mutsuki, sinking it. Tanaka was forced to retire, but he quickly revised his tactics, and his destroyer squadron-the so-called "Toyko Express"-would ferry tens of thousands of Japanese troops and tons of vital supplies to Guadalcanal over the following months.

During the next six weeks, no major action took place in the Solomons, although Japanese planes and submarines continued to harass the U.S. resupply effort, and Japanese surface ships shelled Henderson Field. The most notable loss during this time was the carrier USS Wasp, which was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-19 on September 15. That single torpedo attack also fatally struck the destroyer USS O'Brien and damaged the USS North Carolina. The Japanese resupplied and reinforced their positions at Guadalcanal with nightly runs of the "Tokyo Express," and Tanaka would earn a reputation as arguably the most gifted destroyer captain in the Pacific War. Just before midnight on the night of October 11, five U.S. cruisers and four destroyers under the command of Rear Adm. Norman Scott intercepted a strong Japanese surface force that was en route to Henderson Field. In the ensuing Battle of Cape Esperance, the Japanese lost the heavy cruiser Furutaka and the destroyer Fubuki, while the Americans lost the destroyer USS Duncan.

Two weeks later the much larger Battle of Santa Cruz occurred against the backdrop of a major Japanese ground offensive on Guadalcanal. U.S. commanders were anticipating a Japanese attack, and Vice Adm. William ("Bull") Halsey, who had succeeded Ghormley as commander of U.S. naval forces in the South Pacific on October 18, concentrated his available assets into two carrier battle groups. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, which had spent nearly a month at Pearl Harbor undergoing repairs, sailed with the battleship USS South Dakota, the heavy cruiser USS Portland, and a screen of light cruisers and destroyers. The carrier USS Hornet was supported by the heavy cruisers USS Northampton and USS Pensacola and a light cruiser and destroyer escort. Against this force was arrayed Vice Adm. Nagumo Chūichi's fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku-both of which had participated in the Pearl Harbor attack-the light carrier Zuiho, the escort carrier Junyo, four battleships, and an assortment of destroyers and other support craft. The two forces met north of Guadalcanal on October 26, and the result was a tactical victory for Japan. The Hornet was sunk, as was the destroyer USS Porter, and the Enterprise was seriously damaged. Nagumo was forced to retire, however, as the Zuiho and the Shokaku had suffered numerous bomb hits and the loss of nearly 100 aircraft had left him without a significant portion of his naval air complement. The Japanese retreat bought the Americans a much needed breathing spell.

The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal

The climax of sea fighting in the Solomons came in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (November 12-15, 1942). On November 11-12, the U.S. landed a sizable contingent of reinforcements and supplies on the island. At roughly the same time, a fleet of Japanese transports, carrying some 7,000 men, steamed southward from Rabaul behind an escort of several battleships and a large screen of cruisers and destroyers. When the Americans detected this force descending on their vulnerable transports and cargo vessels, they dispatched a force of cruisers and destroyers to fight a delaying action. The result was a series of violent confrontations that inflicted heavy losses on both sides, but left the United States in a position of strength in the southern Solomons.

Just after midnight on November 13, the U.S. task force, under the command of Rear Adm. Daniel Callaghan, engaged Japanese ships commanded by Vice Adm. Abe Hiroaki. The battle that followed was a brutal 24-minute melee that saw capital ships on both sides blasting away at extremely close range. The Japanese lost the battleship Hiei while the U.S. lost the cruisers USS Atlanta and USS Juneau as well as several destroyers. Callaghan and Rear Adm. Norman Scott were killed in the engagement; they were the only two flag officers of the U.S. Navy to be killed in a surface engagement in World War II.

On November 14 Japanese cruisers and destroyers shelled Henderson Field, and another invasion force was discovered north of Guadalcanal. The Japanese ships were subjected to air attacks throughout the day, and that night they were engaged by the battleships USS Washington and USS South Dakota. About midnight, contact was made north of Savo Island, and another fierce night action ensued. The Japanese lost the battleship Kirishima and the heavy cruiser Kinugasa, and the U.S. lost three more destroyers.

The land campaign on Guadalcanal

The initial amphibious assault on the southern Solomons represented a superb coordination of Allied naval, air, and ground forces. Warships laid down heavy barrages to screen the approach of troop transports and carrier-based planes, and U.S. Army Air Forces bombers softened Japanese defenses. Landing craft took the Marines ashore at key points throughout the islands. The Marines rapidly secured a beachhead on Guadalcanal and captured the almost-complete airstrip that would become Henderson Field. They also seized the smaller islands of Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tanombogo. While the Japanese construction units on Guadalcanal were overcome with comparative ease-or simply melted away into the jungle-the defenders of Tulagi and Gavatu included elements of the elite Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF), and they fought desperately. The battle for Tulagi saw the Japanese garrison destroyed virtually to the last man; this would serve as a grim preview of later engagements in the U.S. campaign in the Pacific.

Almost as soon as the U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal, Japanese commanders began making preparations for the retaking of the island. Vandegrift had concentrated some 11,000 Marines into a tight defensive perimeter centred on Henderson Field. He had been warned of an imminent attack, thanks to the efforts of U.S. cryptanalysts, who had penetrated the Japanese naval code. The Japanese, believing that the Americans had withdrawn many of their troops after the stinging defeat at Savo Island, vastly underestimated the strength of the U.S. presence on Guadalcanal. In the predawn hours of August 21, the Japanese launched their first ground offensive on Guadalcanal. At the Battle of the Tenaru (also called the Battle of Alligator Creek), U.S. Marine defenders annihilated a force of some 900 veteran Japanese army troops east of Henderson Field.

Shelling by Japanese ships and aerial bombardment from Japanese planes became routine, but the U.S. defenders were able to cling to their narrow toehold on Guadalcanal, thanks in part to the efforts of the so-called " Cactus Air Force," a motley collection of Marine, U.S. Army Air Forces, and U.S. Navy aviators operating out of Henderson Field. Cactus Air Force pilots shot down more than 150 Japanese planes in the first five weeks of the battle, and Henderson's bomber contingent pounded Japanese warships and transports. On September 13-14, U.S. Marine Corps Col. Merritt ("Red Mike") Edson, the 800 Marines of the 1st Raider Battalion, and a handful of Marine parachute troops were subjected to one of the most intense assaults on Henderson Field thus far, when they were attacked by a Japanese force more than three times their size. Their tenacious defense in what came to be called the Battle of Edson's Ridge helped to cement the reputation of the Raiders in Marine lore and earned Edson the Medal of Honor.

The Japanese forces on the island reached a peak strength of 36,000 troops by October, but they were unable to overwhelm the Americans' defensive perimeter and retake the airfield. The hardest fighting occurred on October 24-25, when a single Marine battalion was all that stood between Henderson Field and two Japanese regiments. The 1st Battalion of the 7th Marine Division, commanded by Lieut. Col. Chesty Puller, repelled the Japanese assault and inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers. Reinforced by soldiers of the 164th Infantry Regiment, the first U.S. Army unit to land on Guadalcanal, Puller's Marines weathered repeated Japanese charges and held their positions. Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone was awarded the Medal of Honor for "conspicuous gallantry" during the engagement, and Puller received his third Navy Cross (of an eventual five). By November the U.S. Navy was able to land reinforcements on Guadalcanal faster than the Japanese, and Allied counterattacks had steadily pushed the Japanese toward the northwest part of the island.

In December the 1st Marine Division was withdrawn after four months of intense combat, and the U.S. 25th Infantry Division began arriving on Guadalcanal. At the start of 1943, Allied combat strength on Guadalcanal stood at two U.S. Army divisions and a Marine regiment, totaling some 44,000 troops. Offensive operations continued through January 1943, narrowing and compressing the Japanese position. During the first week of February, light surface craft began evacuating the 12,000 remaining Japanese troops from Guadalcanal. On February 8, 1943, almost exactly six months after the initial landings, the last remaining Japanese pocket of resistance was eliminated, and Guadalcanal was at last firmly in Allied hands.

Outcome and casualties

Although U.S. losses were heavy in both the naval and ground campaigns, the Battle of Guadalcanal was decisive in that U.S. positions in the southern Solomons were never again seriously threatened. The Japanese lost a total of 24,000 men killed in the Battle of Guadalcanal, while the Americans sustained 1,600 killed, 4,200 wounded, and several thousand dead from malaria and other tropical diseases. The various naval battles cost each side 24 warships: the Japanese lost 2 battleships, 4 cruisers, 1 light carrier, 11 destroyers, and 6 submarines, while the Americans lost 8 cruisers, 2 heavy carriers, and 14 destroyers.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Michael Ray.

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Battle of Guadalcanal | Facts, Map, & Significance

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Battle of Guadalcanal, (August 1942-February 1943), series of World War II land and sea clashes between Allied and Japanese forces on and around Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific. Along with the naval Battle of Midway (June 3-6, 1942), the fighting on Guadalcanal marked a turning point in favour of the Allies in the Pacific War.

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"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

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"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

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Before the Civil War, the biggest thing to happen in Gettysburg was a new railroad. Finished in 1858, it connected the Pennsylvania farm town to Hanover Junction some 20 miles away. From there, travelers could continue by rail to Baltimore or Philadelphia. Gettysburg might have stayed inconspicuous had it not been for the events of July 1863.

Sitting near the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, Gettysburg became the site of the Civil War's most famous battle. Perhaps more than any other battlefield, Gettysburg is known for its geography: the hills and ridges, the rocks and fields-each location the site of pivotal moments in the bloody battle fought over the first three days of July 1863.

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Summer of '63

The Civil War was well into its second year by June 1863. Fighting had reached a fever pitch the previous winter. Traditionally, winters were times for armies to rest and recoup, but the commanders on both sides defied the elements and kept campaigning.

Union forces in the West were holding strong and steadily gaining ground throughout the spring, but the eastern theater proved more challenging. President Abraham Lincoln grew frustrated with the Army of the Potomac's leadership, especially after the Confederacy scored major victories at Fredericksburg in December 1862 and Chancellorsville in May 1863.

On the rolling fields of Gettysburg, the newly appointed Union commander, George Meade, led some 90,000 Union soldiers against 75,000 Confederates. At battle's end, more than 50,000 men had been killed, wounded, or missing. Hailed by many as a turning point in the war, the Union victory repelled a surging Confederacy. Though it ushered a shift in momentum, Gettysburg was not a killing blow for the Confederacy.

Two more years of war would follow, but the win revitalized the North after news of it spread. Philadelphia headlines trumpeted "Victory! Waterloo Eclipsed!" After news broke of another Union triumph in the West at Vicksburg, an impromptu group of singers at the White House serenaded Lincoln, who told them:
"This last Fourth of July just passed, when we have a gigantic Rebellion ... we have the surrender of a most powerful position and army on that very day, ... and in a succession of battles in Pennsylvania, near to us, the cohorts of those who opposed the declaration that all men are created equal, 'turned tail' and ran. Gentlemen, this is a glorious theme, and the occasion for a speech, but I am not prepared to make one worthy of the occasion."
Months after Gettysburg, Lincoln had a chance to present remarks worthy of the occasion that echoed his extemporaneous expressions from that July night. In November he took the Gettysburg Railway to the Pennsylvania battlefield to honor the fallen and gave a speech that completed the small town's transformation into an American mecca.

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June 1863: Buildup to battle

Gen. Robert E. Lee's victory at Chancellorsville came at a steep price and left him determined to abandon his defenses at Fredericksburg and carry the fight north."Our loss was severe," he concluded," and again we had gained not an inch of ground." Following the death of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson on May 10, Lee welcomed the return of his "old warhorse," Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, who had been sent to southeastern Virginia with 20,000 men to shield Richmond and ease the burden of feeding Lee's army. Conferring with Lee, Longstreet agreed that "fruitless victories" like Chancellorsville "were consuming us, and would eventually destroy us." Lee decided to launch another invasion of the North-an advance into Pennsylvania that would allow his hungry, ragged troops to forage at the Union's expense and might result in a victory that would advance his cause.

Lee launched his campaign on June 3 after reorganizing his army into three corps under Longstreet, Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill, and Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell. Ewell would take charge of Jackson's old corps, while Maj. Gen. Jeb Stuart resumed his duties as Lee's cavalry commander. Union general Joseph Hooker ordered his cavalry commander, Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, to "disperse and destroy" Stuart's force, leading to the war's largest cavalry battle, waged at Brandy Station on June 9.

Stuart prevailed there and went on to shield Lee's forces as they filed through gaps in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley. Ewell led the way north, seizing Winchester from Federals in mid-June before passing through Maryland into Pennsylvania, where his corps divided, raiding Carlisle and threatening York. Hill's corps followed Ewell into Pennsylvania, with Longstreet and Lee bringing up the rear.

On June 25, Stuart embarked on an expedition around the Union army, leaving Lee ill-informed on enemy movements as Hooker plodded northward into Maryland, east of the mountains. Exasperated at Hooker's slow pace, Lincoln sacked him on June 28 in favor of Maj. Gen. George Meade, who promptly sent Brig. Gen. John Buford's cavalry division into Pennsylvania, followed by the First and 11th Corps. On June 30, Buford entered the quiet town of Gettysburg, where a dozen roads converged and two great armies would soon collide. That evening, Lee received a message at Chambersburg from Hill at Cashtown stating that hostile forces were reported in Gettysburg and he would "advance the next morning and discover what was in my front."

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July 1, 1863: The battle erupts

At dawn on July 1, Confederates of Maj. Gen. Henry Heth's division, leading the way for Hill's corps, approached Gettysburg along the Chambersburg Pike. They expected to find the town lightly defended by militia. Instead, they confronted 3,000 dismounted Federal troopers, led by Buford, that would be bolstered at midmorning by the arrival of the First Corps under Maj. Gen. John Reynolds, who would later be shot dead as he hurried men into line along McPherson's Ridge. Heth's troops fell back toward Herr Ridge, where they were reinforced by another of Hill's divisions, led by Maj. Gen. William Pender.

Lee arrived from Chambersburg at midday, ahead of Longstreet's corps, to find Ewell's divisions approaching from the north and east. "I do not wish to bring on a general engagement today," he told Heth. "Longstreet is not up." But it was too late, and Lee saw an opportunity to annihilate the Federal vanguard at Gettysburg before Meade's army got there. Told by Lee to attack as he saw fit, Ewell came in from the north with the division of Robert Rodes, who launched an assault along OakRidge, which was teeming with Yankees. Despite that debacle, Lee gained the upper hand by sending Hill's forces against the battle-weary First Corps while another of Ewell's divisions, under Jubal Early, swept in from the northeast along Harrisburg Road and surprised Oliver Howard's 11th Corps.

Caught in a vise, the Federals cracked and retreated south to high ground, where Winfield Scott Hancock rode ahead of his Second Corps. He recognized that the Federals held a stronger position. "We can fight here," he wrote Meade, who arrived overnight on the road from Taneytown, Maryland, with the bulk of his army to fill out a line around Culp's Hill and nearby Cemetery Hill and extend southward along Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top. This interior line was two miles shorter than Lee's exterior line, givingMeade a greater density of troops that he couldshift readily from one position to another. The battle that would determine "the fate of our country and our cause," in Meade's words, would be decided here at terrible cost over the next two days.

July 2, 1863: Little Round Top

Early on July 2, Meade bolstered his right flank at Culp's Hill, where he expected an attack, by shifting Brig.Gen. John Geary's 12th Corps division there from Little Round Top, which anchored the Federal left flank and offered a commanding perch for artillery. Meade expected Daniel Sickles to extend his Third Corps line southward from Cemetery Ridge to cover Little Round Top. But Sickles, a headstrong political general from New York, decided instead to advance his line westward from Cemetery Ridge-so low in places that it was barely perceptible-to slightly higher ground around the Peach Orchard. Little Round Top remained undefended as Lee prepared to hit Meade's left hard.

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Lee's plan called for two newly arrived divisions of Longstreet's corps, led by Maj. Gens. John Bell Hood and Lafayette McLaws, to mount that attack, with support from Maj. Gen. Richard Anderson's division of Hill's corps. Longstreet urged Lee to forgo that risky assault, or at least postpone it until his trailing division, under Maj. Gen. George Pickett, arrived from Chambersburg. "I never like to go into battle with one boot off," Longstreet said. Ordered by Lee to proceed, Longstreet moved slowly, countermarching his troops at one point to avoid detection, and did not unleash Hood's division-slated to launch the attack-until 4 p.m. By then, Meade had learned of Sickles's blunder and sent his chief engineer, Brig. Gen. Gouverneur Kemble Warren, to Little Round Top. Finding it exposed, Warren sought help, furnished promptly by Col. Strong Vincent of the Fifth Corps, who rushed his brigade up the hill before the Rebels got there.

Part of Hood's division advanced through Devil's Den, below Little Round Top, ousting Sickles's men in what a Texan fighting there called "one of the wildest, fiercest struggles of the war." Hood was seriously wounded early on, and Brig. Gen. Evander Law took charge, leaving no brigade commander to direct the crucial attack on Vincent's men guarding Little Round Top. "Hold this ground at all costs!" Vincent told Col. Joshua Chamberlain, whose 20th Maine Infantry occupied the very end of the Union line. After withstanding repeated assaults by the 15th Alabama Infantry, Chamberlain's men scattered their foes with a bayonet charge. Heavy fighting continued elsewhere until Brig. Gen. Stephen Weed came to the aid of the mortally wounded Vincent and secured Little Round Top for the Union at the cost of his own life.

July 2, 1863: War in the Wheat Field

The battle raged in the Wheat Field, where Sickles's beleaguered Third Corps buckled under pressure from brigades led by Col. George "Tige" Anderson of Hood's division and Brig. Gens. Paul Semmes and Joseph Kershaw of McLaws's division. To hold the line, Meade reinforced the Third Corps with men led by Brig. Gens. James Barnes and John Caldwell. Barnes went in first but found Kershaw on his flank and pulled his forces back, obstructing Brig. Gen. Samuel Zook of Caldwell's advancing division. "If you can't get out of the way," Zook shouted, "lie down, and we will march over you!" Passing through, Zook's troops entered the Wheat Field alongside the Irish Brigade of Col. Patrick Kelly.

A third brigade under Col. Edward Cross joined in a bloody assault that left Cross and Zook mortally wounded but drove the Rebels into Rose's Woods. Around 6:30 p.m., Brig. Gens. William Barksdale and William Wofford of McLaws's division delivered a staggering blow at the Peach Orchard. Pouring through the gap left by the collapse of Brig. Gen. Charles Graham's brigade, Wofford's troop of Georgians drove Federals back while Barksdale's Mississippians routed the remainder of Brig. Gen. Andrew Humphrey's division along Emmitsburg Road. The tide turned when Sickles fell wounded near the Trostle House, and Hancock of the Second Corps took command. He restored order by rallying retreating units on Cemetery Ridge and bolstering them with reinforcements. After sending a brigade led by Col. George Willard to repulse Barksdale, Hancock beat back a charge led by Brig. Gen. Cadmus Wilcox, and Lee's furious attack ended in a stalemate.

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July 3, 1863: Pickett's Charge

After two days of fighting, Lee did not give up. He ruled out another attack on Meade's left, which had been heavily reinforced. Prospects for success looked little better on Meade's right, where Confederates in Ewell's division had advanced late on July 2, breaking through at Cemetery Hill before being repulsed there, as they were at Culp's Hill. Further attacks by Ewell stood to prevent Meade from shifting forces from his right to bolster his center, along Cemetery Ridge, where Lee hoped for a decisive breakthrough. That meant advancing across open ground into the teeth of Union defenses-a perilous charge entrusted to George Pickett's fresh division of 6,000 Virginians, with Brig. Gen. J. Johnston Pettigrew's division advancing to their north and others following.

Lee's plan went awry early on July 3, when Federals attacked Culp's Hill, triggering a battle that ended inconclusively before Pickett was ready to advance. Lee still had hope that a massive artillery bombardment would impair Meade's defenses on Cemetery Ridge. At 1 p.m., Rebel gunners opened fire. For all the sound and fury, little damage was done. Many Confederate gunners overshot their targets, while Federal artillerymen limited their counterfire to conserve ammunition. When the guns fell silent, Longstreet, who had argued against the attack, signaled reluctantly for the infantry to advance. "This is a desperate thing to attempt," said Brig. Gen. Richard Garnett of Pickett's division. "It is," replied Brig. Gen. Lewis Armistead, whose brigade followed Garnett's. "But the issue is with the Almighty, and we must leave it in his hands."

To close up with Pettigrew's division to the north, Pickett's men had to march obliquely to their left, which exposed them to deadly flanking fire. Hardest hit were Brig. Gen. James Kemper's men, who went down in droves when Vermonters led by 8 Brig. Gen. George Stannard enveloped their right flank. "Great masses of men seemed to disappear in a moment," wrote Col. Wheelock Veazey of the 16th Vermont Infantry.

All along the line, Confederate ranks crumbled under the searing impact of artillery and infantry fire. Against all odds, Armistead led a few hundred followers over the stone wall at the Angle, where the Federal line jutted forward slightly, but they were soon overpowered in hand-to-hand fighting. As Lee's battered forces withdrew, hopes for the Confederate cause receded with them.

(It took more than 200 years to end slavery. Juneteenth honors that fight.)

Aftermath: the final measure

Like a monstrous storm, the Battle of Gettysburg left carnage in its wake. More than 50,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing in this tempest-a toll that bore harder on Lee's smaller army and forced him to retreat into Virginia, leaving the dead behind. "Some with faces bloated and blackened beyond recognition, lay with glassy eyes staring up at the summer sun," recalled Cpl. Thomas Marbaker of the 11th New Jersey Infantry. "Hugging the earth like a fog, poisoning every breath," he added, was "the pestilential stench of decaying humanity."

Burial parties digging in the hard, rocky soil did not linger over their grim task. "The dead are many, the time is short, so they got but very shallow graves," wrote one soldier, "in fact most of them were buried in trenches, dug not over 18 inches deep, and as near where they fell as was possible."

A few months afterward, remains of the Union's dead were moved to the Soldiers' National Cemetery, situated on Cemetery Hill, a local burial ground where Federals of Howard's 11th Corps withstood Confederate attacks on July 2. This new cemetery held more than 3,500 bodies. Those whose identities were known were grouped by state, but nearly 1,600 graves were marked unknown. On November 19 President Lincoln dedicated the cemetery by delivering his Gettysburg Address, urging that "from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion."

(This dish towel ended the Civil War.)

Portions of this article appear in Atlas of the Civil War, by Neil Kagan and Stephen H. Hyslop. Copyright © 2009 by National Geographic Society. Reprinted by permission of National Geographic Partners.

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Gettysburg was no ordinary battle. These maps reveal how Lee lost the fight.

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The distinctive terrain-from its hills and ridges to its rocks and fields-played a pivotal role in the July 1863 battle whose victory revitalized the Union.

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The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the Civil War, the Union victory that ended General Robert E. Lee's second and most ambitious invasion of the North. Often referred to as the "High Water Mark of the Rebellion", Gettysburg was the Civil War's bloodiest battle and was also the inspiration for President Abraham Lincoln's immortal "Gettysburg Address".

Have you experienced Gettysburg? This video shows you what it's like to visit Gettysburg National Military Park. From the veil of early morning fog through the day's setting sun, visitors experience all the incredible history of the battlefield.

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Gettysburg National Military Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the Civil War, the Union victory that ended General Robert E. Lee's second and most ambitious invasion of the North. Often referred to as the "High Water Mark of the Rebellion", Gettysburg was the Civil War's bloodiest battle and was also the inspiration for President Abraham Lincoln's immortal "Gettysburg Address".

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The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially extended the right to vote to women. The amendment declares in part that ‘the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.’

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Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change in the Constitution - guaranteeing women the right to vote. Some suffragists used more confrontational tactics such as picketing, silent vigils, and hunger strikes. Read more...

Primary Sources
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Additional Background Information

In July 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY. The Seneca Falls Convention produced a list of demands called the Declaration of Sentiments. Modeled on the Declaration of Independence, it called for broader educational and professional opportunities for women and the right of married women to control their wages and property. After this historic gathering, women's voting rights became a central issue in the emerging debate about women's rights in the United States.

Many of the attendees to the convention were also abolitionists whose goals included universal suffrage - the right to vote for all adults. In 1870 this goal was partially realized when the 15th amendment to the Constitution, granting black men the right to vote, was ratified. Woman suffragists' vehement disagreement over supporting the 15th Amendment, however, resulted in a "schism" that split the women's suffrage movement into two new suffrage organizations that focused on different strategies to win women voting rights.

The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in May of 1869 - they opposed the 15th amendment because it excluded women. In the year following the ratification of the 15th amendment, the NWSA sent a voting rights petition to the Senate and House of Representatives requesting that suffrage rights be extended to women and that women be granted the privilege of being heard on the floor of Congress.

The second national suffrage organization established in 1869 was the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), founded by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The AWSA supported the 15th Amendment and protested the confrontational tactics of the NWSA. The AWSA concentrated on gaining women's access to the polls at state and local levels, in the belief that victories there would gradually build support for national action on the issue. While a federal woman suffrage amendment was not their priority, an 1871 petition, asking that women in DC and the territories be allowed to vote and hold office, from AWSA leadership to Congress reveals its support for one.

In 1890, the NWSA and AWSA merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). It became the largest woman suffrage organization in the country and led much of the struggle for the vote through 1920, when the 19th Amendment was ratified. Stanton became its president; Anthony became its vice president; and Stone became chairman of the executive committee. In 1919, one year before women gained the right to vote with the adoption of the 19th amendment, the NAWSA reorganized into the League of Women Voters.

The tactics used by suffragists went beyond petitions and memorials to Congress. Testing another strategy, Susan B. Anthony registered and voted in the 1872 election in Rochester, NY. As planned, she was arrested for "knowingly, wrongfully and unlawfully vot[ing] for a representative to the Congress of the United States." She was convicted by the State of New York and fined $100, which she insisted she would never pay. On January 12, 1874, Anthony petitioned Congress, requesting "that the fine imposed upon your petitioner be remitted, as an expression of the sense of this high tribunal that her conviction was unjust."

Wealthy white women were not the only supporters of women's suffrage. Frederick Douglass, formerly enslaved and leader of the abolition movement, was also an advocate. He attended the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. In an editorial published that year in The North Star, the anti-slavery newspaper he published, he wrote, "...in respect to political rights,...there can be no reason in the world for denying to woman the elective franchise,..." By 1877, when he was U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia, Douglass's family was also involved in the movement. His son, Frederick Douglass, Jr.; daughter, Mrs. Nathan Sprague; and son-in-law, Nathan Sprague, all signed a petition to Congress for woman suffrage "...to prohibit the several States from Disfranchising United States Citizens on account of Sex."

A growing number of black women actively supported women's suffrage during this period. They organized women's clubs across the country to advocate for suffrage, among other reforms. Prominent African American suffragists included Ida B. Wells-Barnett of Chicago, a leading crusader against lynching; Mary Church Terrell, educator and first president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW); and Adella Hunt Logan, Tuskegee Institute faculty member, who insisted in articles in The Crisis, a publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), that if white women needed the vote to protect their rights, then black women - victims of racism as well as sexism - needed the ballot even more.

In the second decade of the 20th century, suffragists began staging large and dramatic parades to draw attention to their cause. One of the most consequential demonstrations was a march held in Washington, DC, on March 3, 1913. Though controversial because of the march organizers' attempt to exclude, then segregate, women of color, more than 5,000 suffragists from around the country paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue from the U.S. Capitol to the Treasury Building.

Many of the women who had been active in the suffrage movement in the 1860s and 1870s continued their involvement over 50 years later. In 1917, Mary O. Stevens, secretary and press correspondent of the Association of Army Nurses of the Civil War, asked the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to help the cause of woman suffrage by explaining: "My father trained me in my childhood days to expect this right. I have given my help to the agitation, and work[ed] for its coming a good many years."

During World War I, suffragists tried to embarrass President Woodrow Wilson into reversing his opposition and supporting a federal woman suffrage amendment. But in the heated patriotic climate of wartime, such tactics met with hostility and sometimes violence and arrest. Frustrated with the suffrage movement's leadership, Alice Paul had broken with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to form the National Woman's Party (NWP). It employed more militant tactics to agitate for the vote.

Most notably, the NWP organized the first White House picket in U.S. history on January 10, 1917. They stood vigil at the White House, demonstrating in silence six days a week for nearly three years. The "Silent Sentinels" let their banners - comparing the President to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany - speak for them. Many of the sentinels were arrested and jailed in deplorable conditions. Some incarcerated women went on hunger strikes and endured forced feedings. The Sentinels' treatment gained greater sympathy for women's suffrage, and the courts later dismissed all charges against them.

When New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917 and President Woodrow Wilson changed his position to support an amendment in 1918, the political balance began to shift in favor of the vote for women. There was still strong opposition to enfranchising women, however, as illustrated by petitions from anti-suffrage groups.

Eventually suffragists won the political support necessary for ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. For 42 years, the measure had been introduced at every session of Congress, but ignored or voted down. It finally passed Congress in 1919 and went to the states for ratification. In May, the House of Representatives passed it by a vote of 304 to 90; two weeks later, the Senate approved it 56 to 25.

Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan were the first states to ratify it. On August 18, 1920, it appeared that Tennessee had ratified the amendment - the result of a change of vote by 24 year-old legislator Harry Burn at the insistence of his elderly mother. But those against the amendment managed to delay official ratification. Anti-suffrage legislators fled the state to avoid a quorum, and their associates held massive anti-suffrage rallies and attempted to convince pro-suffrage legislators to oppose ratification. However, Tennessee reaffirmed its vote and delivered the crucial 36th ratification necessary for final adoption. While decades of struggle to include African Americans and other minority women in the promise of voting rights remained, the face of the American electorate had changed forever.
Materials created by the National Archives and Records Administration are in the public domain.

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Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change in the Constitution - guaranteeing women the right to vote. Some suffragists used more confrontational tactics such as picketing, silent vigils, and hunger strikes.

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Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote.
The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle-victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.

Beginning in the 1800s, women organized, petitioned, and picketed to win the right to vote, but it took them decades to accomplish their purpose. Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and August 18, 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly, but strategies for achieving their goal varied. Some pursued a strategy of passing suffrage acts in each state-nine western states adopted woman suffrage legislation by 1912. Others challenged male-only voting laws in the courts. Some suffragists used more confrontational tactics such as picketing, silent vigils, and hunger strikes. Often supporters met fierce resistance. Opponents heckled, jailed, and sometimes physically abused them.

By 1916, almost all of the major suffrage organizations were united behind the goal of a constitutional amendment. When New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917 and President Wilson changed his position to support an amendment in 1918, the political balance began to shift.

On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment, and 2 weeks later, the Senate followed. When Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920, the amendment passed its final hurdle of obtaining the agreement of three-fourths of the states. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920, changing the face of the American electorate forever.

The campaign for woman suffrage was long, difficult, and sometimes dramatic; yet ratification did not ensure full enfranchisement. Decades of struggle to include African Americans and other minority women in the promise of voting rights remained. Many women remained unable to vote long into the 20th century because of discriminatory state voting laws.

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19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women's Right to Vote (1920)

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Joint Resolution of Congress proposing a constitutional amendment extending the right of suffrage to women, approved June 4, 1919.; Ratified Amendments, 1795-1992; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.

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October 4, 1957

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the people of the United States by successfully launching the first earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik. During the Cold War, Americans until that moment had felt protected by their technological superiority. Suddenly the nation found itself lagging behind the Russians in the Space Race, and Americans worried that their educational system was not producing enough scientists and engineers. Sometimes, however, a shock to the system can open political opportunities.

On the day Sputnik first orbited the earth, the chief clerk of the Senate's Education and Labor Committee, Stewart McClure, sent a memo to his chairman, Alabama Democrat Lister Hill, reminding him that during the last three Congresses the Senate had passed legislation for federal funding of education, but that all of those bills had died in the House. Perhaps if they called the education bill a defense bill they might get it enacted. Senator Hill-a former Democratic whip and a savvy legislative tactician-seized upon on the idea, which led to the National Defense Education Act.

There had been strong resistance to federal aid to education, but as public opinion demanded government action in the wake of Sputnik, the Senate once again moved ahead with its education bill. Knowing that opponents in the House remained resistant, Senator Hill conferred with another Alabama Democrat, Representative Carl Elliott, who chaired the House subcommittee on education. Meeting in Montgomery, they devised a strategy for getting the NDEA enacted. They framed the debate around the question of whether federal funds should go to students as grants, as the Senate preferred, or as loans. Opponents in the House denounced the notion of grants as "socialist." When the House prevailed on loans, the rest of the Senate's version of the bill swooped through to passage. In fact, the grants versus loans debate had been a ploy. Senator Hill and Representative Elliott realized that having voted the same bill down repeatedly in the past, the House had to have something on which it could win.

The National Defense Education Act of 1958 became one of the most successful legislative initiatives in higher education. It established the legitimacy of federal funding of higher education and made substantial funds available for low-cost student loans, boosting public and private colleges and universities. Although aimed primarily at education in science, mathematics, and foreign languages, the act also helped expand college libraries and other services for all students. The funding began in 1958 and was increased over the next several years. The results were conspicuous: in 1960 there were 3.6 million students in college, and by 1970 there were 7.5 million. Many of them got their college education only because of the availability of NDEA loans, thanks to Sputnik and to Senator Hill's readiness to seize the moment.

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Sputnik Spurs Passage of the National Defense Education Act

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October 4, 1957 On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the people of the United States by successfully launching the first earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik. During the Cold War, Americans until that moment had felt protected by their technological superiority.

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National Defense Education Act (NDEA), U.S. federal legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 2, 1958, that provided funding to improve American schools and to promote postsecondary education. The goal of the legislation was to enable the country's educational system to meet the demands posed by national security needs. Of particular concern was bolstering the United States' ability to compete with the Soviet Union in the areas of science and technology.

The NDEA stands as a major act of reform. It marked the beginning of large-scale involvement of the U.S. federal government in education.

Background

In the wake of World War II, the major movement in American schools was the life adjustment movement, which aimed to provide a curriculum that would teach "life skills" that would be particularly valuable for students who did not plan to continue on to college or other types of postsecondary training after high school. This movement, headed by the vocational educator Charles Prosser, claimed to represent true "democracy" in education, but it was roundly criticized by academicians as "soft." Adherents of the National Science Foundation and others held education professors and schools of education mainly responsible for what they believed was the low-achieving status of American students, particularly in mathematics, science, and modern foreign languages.

The criticism of American education, especially its public schools, increased immensely with the launching of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, by the Soviet Union in October 1957. Eisenhower, in his Message to Congress on January 27, 1958, called for matching educational programs with national defense needs and recommended the federal government play an important part in this activity. The NDEA was the result of the enlarged federal role in education.

Provisions

The purpose of the NDEA was to improve and strengthen all levels of the American school system and to encourage students to continue their education beyond high school. Specific provisions included scholarships and loans to students in higher education, with loans to students preparing to be teachers and to those who showed promise in the curricular areas of mathematics, science, engineering, and modern foreign languages; grants to states for programs in mathematics, science, and modern foreign languages in public schools; the establishment of centres to expand and improve the teaching of languages; help to graduate students, including fellowships for doctoral students to prepare them to be professors at institutions of higher learning; assistance for the improvement of guidance, counseling, and testing programs; provisions for research and experimentation in the use of television, radio, motion pictures, and related media for educational purposes; and the improvement of statistical services at the state level.

Supporters of the NDEA pointed to federal legislative precedents, such as the Morrill Act in 1862, which granted land to the states that they could then sell to finance the establishment of colleges, and the Smith-Hughes Act in 1917, which funded vocational agricultural education programs. The NDEA differed from Smith-Hughes, however, in that professors of education, who had lost credibility by their espousal of, and involvement in, life adjustment education, played at best a minor role in the structure and operation of the NDEA. Advocates of the NDEA contended that they were not interfering with the fundamental principle that states and local communities were responsible for the conduct of American schooling and institutions of higher education. Opponents maintained, however, that categorical aid, such as was proposed by the NDEA, would shape educational policy and would place the federal government in charge. This was not, in their view, a constructive policy on the part of the federal government. Other critics, such as the National Education Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, objected to what they felt was the narrow focus of the NDEA on science and technology plus the act's reliance on the National Science Foundation university-oriented community for direction as opposed to the broader approach of the education-oriented U.S. Department of Education. In spite of such criticisms, the act was passed by Congress and signed into law in September 1958 by Eisenhower.

The NDEA was amended in 1964. The words "which have led to an insufficient proportion of our population educated in science, mathematics, and modern language and trained in technology" were deleted, as was the reference to giving preference in student loans to those preparing to teach and those with superior capacity in mathematics, science, engineering, or a modern foreign language. Aid was now available for equipment and materials to be used in the instruction of an expanded list of subjects: "science, mathematics, history, civics, geography, modern foreign language, English or reading in public elementary or secondary schools." One new feature provided assistance for those who were teaching, or preparing to teach, "disadvantaged youth."

Assessment

Overall, the NDEA reflected political support for and an attempt to garner public support of an academic curriculum. It placed education in a role of supporting and assisting national policy. The launching of Sputnik 1 galvanized political leaders into action, and books such as What Ivan Knows That Johnny Doesn't (1961) contributed to the national climate that followed. The NDEA established a precedent and led to programs on behalf of gifted and talented students (especially those in mathematics and science and related subjects) in the early 1960s.

The NDEA stands as a testament to coupling national educational policy with national needs. It represented an involvement-some would say an intrusion-of the federal government in the conduct of schooling at all levels.
Thomas C. Hunt

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National Defense Education Act | US Education Reform, 1958

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National Defense Education Act (NDEA), U.S. federal legislation adopted in 1958 that provided funding to improve American schools and to promote postsecondary education. The goal of the legislation was to enable the country's educational system to meet the demands posed by national security needs.

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Internet Modern History Sourcebook

USA and USSR: Exchange of Notes on the Berlin Wall, 1961

United States Note To The USSR On Berlin,
August 17,1961

The Embassy of the United States presents its compliments to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and upon instructions of its Government has the honor to direct the most serious attention of the Government of the USSR to the following.

On August 13, East German authorities put into effect several measures regulating movement at the boundary of the western sectors and the Soviet sector of the city of Berlin. These measures have the effect of limiting, to a degree approaching complete prohibition, passage from the Soviet sector to the western sectors of the city. These measures were accompanied by the closing of the sector boundary by a sizable deployment of police forces and by military detachments brought into Berlin for this purpose.

All this is a flagrant, and particularly serious, violation of the quadripartite status of Berlin. Freedom of movement with respect to Berlin was reaffirmed by the quadripartitc agreement of New York of May 4, 1949, and by the decision taken at Paris on June 20, 1949, by the Council of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Four Powers. The United States Government has never accepted that limitations can be imposed on freedom of movement within Berlin. Thc boundary between the Soviet sector and the western sectors of Berlin is not a state frontier. The United States Government considers that the measures which the East German authorities have taken are illegal. It reiterates that it does not accept the pretension that the Soviet sector of Berlin forms a part of the so-called "German Democratic Republic" and that Berlin is situated on its territory. Such a pretension is in itself a violation of the solemnly pledged word of the USSR in the Agreement on the Zones of Occupation in Germany and the administration of Greater Berlin. Moreover, the United States Government cannot admit the right of the East German authorities to authorize their armed forces to enter the Soviet sector of Berlin.

By the very admission of the East German authorities, the measures which have just been taken are motivated by the fact that an ever increasing number of inhabitants of East Germany wish to leave this territory. The reasons for this exodus are known. They are simply the internal difficulties in East Germany.

To judge by the terms of a declaration of the Warsaw Pact powers published on August 13, the measures in question are supposed to have been recommended to the East German authorities by those powers. The United States Government notes that the powers which associated themselves with the USSR by signing the Warsaw Pact are thus intervening in a domain in which they have no competence.

It is to be noted that this declaration states that the measures taken by the East German authorities are "in the interests of the German peoples themselves." It is difficult to see any basis for this statement, or to understand why it should be for the members of the Warsaw Pact to decide what are the interests of the German people. It is evident that no Germans, particularly those whose freedom of movement is being forcibly restrained, think this is so. This would become abundantly clear if all Germans were allowed a free choice, and the principle of self-determination were also applied in the Soviet sector of Berlin and in East Germany.

The United States Government solemnly protests against the measures referred to above, for which it holds the Soviet Government responsible. The United States Government expects the Soviet Government to put an end to these illegal measures. This unilateral infringement of the quadripartite status of Berlin can only increase existing tension and dangers.

Source:

from The Department of State Bulletin, XLV, No. 1158 (September 4, 1961 ), p. 397
To Identic Notes Dated August 17 of United States, United Kingdom, and France on Berlin, August 18, 1961
In connection with the note of the Government of the United States of America of August 177, 1961, the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics considers it necessary to state the following:

The Soviet Government fully understands and supports the actions of the Government of the German Democratic Republic which established effective control on the border with West Berlin in order to bar the way for subversive activity being carried out from West Berlin against the G.D.R. and other countries of the socialist community. . . .

West Berlin has been transformed into a center of subversive activity diversion, and espionage, into a center of political and economic provocations against the G.D.R., the Soviet Union, and other socialist countries. Former and present West Berlin municipal leaders have cynically called West Berlin an "arrow in the living body of the German Democratic Republic," a "front city," a "violator of tranquillity," the "cheapest atom bomb put in the center of a socialist state.". . .

However, West Berlin authorities and the occupation organs of the three powers did not lift a finger to put an end to this criminal activity. . . .

The question is, have such actions anything in common with the observation of the four-power status established in Berlin immediately after the defeat of Hitlerite Germany, to which the note of the Government of the U.S.A. refers? One must have an exceptionally great sense of humor to affirm that the activity carried on in West Berlin corresponds to four-power obligations. . . .

The Government of the U.S.A. should be well informed on the fact that, with the collaboration of the occupation forces, the ruling circles of the F.R.G. have turned West Berlin into the principal base of uninterrupted economic diversions against the G.D.R. At the expense of taxes collected from the population of the F.R.G., a speculative rate for the exchange of West marks for the currency of the G.D.R. was arbitrarily established and artificially maintained in West Berlin. There has never been so shameless a speculation in currency in any other city in the world as in West Berlin-and this under the protection of the occupation authorities. Buying up in the G.D.R. and export to West Berlin and the F.R.G. of valuable goods and foodstuffs was organized on an enormous scale; this inflicted colossal damage upon the population and national economy of the G.D.R. The workers of the G.D.R. were annually forced to pay at least 31/2 billion marks for the open border with West Berlin. . . .

The Government organs and concerns of the F.R.G. led from West Berlin an entire army of recruiters who, by means of deception, bribery, and blackmail, instigated a certain part of the residents of the G.D.R. to migrate to West Germany, There, these people were compelled to enter into service in the Bundeswehr and to work in the war-production industry; they were drawn into various subversive organizations. . . .

Slanderous propaganda of incitement, inimical to the Soviet Union, the G.D.R., and other socialist countries, has been and is being systematically conducted by radio and television from West Berlin. The radio and television centers in West Berlin are totally subordinated to one task: to disseminate enmity among peoples, to incite war psychosis, to attempt to organize disorders, an d to transmit enciphered instructions to agents of Western intelligence systems. . . .

The G.D.R. has displayed, over the course of many years, great tolerance in the face of such a completely disgraceful and impermissible situation. Implementing its consistently peace-loving and democratic policy, it has borne enormous sacrifices to facilitate the achievement of agreement between the two German states on the questions of peaceful settlement and reunification of Germany on peace-loving and democratic foundations.

Nevertheless, and particularly recently, following the Introduction of proposals on the immediate conclusion of a peace treaty -with Germany and on normalization on that basis of the situation in West Berlin, subversive activity from West Berlin against the G.D.R. and other socialist countries has assumed even greater proportions. At the same time, the enemies of peace and tranquillity in this area have not missed even one opportunity to interfere with the plans for socialist construction in the G.D.R., to hinder the rise in well-being of its population, and, by every means and without stopping at anything, to complicate the situation in the Republic. . . .

The Government of the U.S.A. attempts in its note to represent its effort to perpetuate the occupation of West Berlin (and this 16 years after the end of the war) as a concern for the Germans and almost as a concrete expression of the right to self-determination. Such attempts in the final analysis cannot be taken seriously. And if the taking of defensive measures on the G.D.R. border with West Berlin creates certain temporary inconveniences for the city's population, blame for this rests entirely with the occupation authorities and the F.R.G. Government, which have done everything to prevent improvement of the atmosphere in this area in accordance with the legitimate interests of all states. Thus, the protest made in the note of the Government of the U.S.A. is without foundation and is categorically rejected by the Soviet Government.

As was already stated, measures taken by the Government of the G.D.R. are temporary. The Soviet Government repeatedly has emphasized that the conclusion of a peace treaty with Germany and normalization on such a basis of the situation in West Berlin will not infringe the interests of any of the parties and will contribute to the cause of peace and security of all peoples. ,To this end it appeals to the Government of the U.S.A.

Source:

from The Department of State Bulletin, LXV, No. 1158 (September 4, 1961), pp. 397-400.

This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history.

The Site Concept and Design: created 26 Jan 1996: latest revision 14 July 2023 [ Internet History Sourcebooks Project is located at the History Department of Fordham University, New York. The Internet Medieval Sourcebook, and other medieval components of the project, are located at the Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies.The IHSP recognizes the contribution of Fordham University, the Fordham University History Department, and the Fordham Center for Medieval Studies in providing web space and server support for the project. The IHSP is a project independent of Fordham University. Although the IHSP seeks to follow all applicable copyright law, Fordham University is not the institutional owner, and is not liable as the result of any legal action. Paul Halsall CV]

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Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History

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Internet Modern History Sourcebook USA and USSR: Exchange of Notes on the Berlin Wall, 1961 United States Note To The USSR On Berlin, August 17,1961 The Embassy of the United States presents its compliments to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and upon instructions of its Government has the honor to direct the most serious attention of the Government of the USSR to the following.

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The Berlin Wall (1961-1989) was a guarded, concrete wall between West Berlin (controlled by the Western Allies) and East Berlin (the Soviet sector of Berlin and the capital of East Germany). It was constructed by East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic, and was described by its government as a barrier protecting its people from "fascist elements." The Berlin Wall closed off the population flow between East Germany and West Germany. Between 1949 and 1961 about 2.5 million East Germans had fled to the West. By the 1980s the Wall, including electrified fences and fortifications, extended 28 miles (45 km) through Berlin and a further 75 miles (120 km) around West Berlin. It came to physically symbolize the Iron Curtain that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. The Berlin Wall was demolished in 1989 as a result of the wave of democratization in East Europe, and was followed by the unification of Germany in 1990.

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The Berlin Wall (1961-1989) was a guarded, concrete wall between West Berlin (controlled by the Western Allies) and East Berlin (the Soviet sector of Berlin and the capital of East Germany). It was constructed by East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic, and was described by its government as a barrier protecting its people from "fascist elements."

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Fall of Berlin Wall: How 1989 reshaped the modern world

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The wave of revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe helped shape the continent for decades to come.

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Berlin Wall | Definition, Length, & Facts

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Berlin Wall, barrier that surrounded West Berlin and prevented access to it from East Berlin and adjacent areas of East Germany during the period from 1961 to 1989. The system of walls, electrified fences, and fortifications extended 28 miles through Berlin and extended a further 75 miles around West Berlin.

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Scans of the English Mercurie July 23, 1588. This document contains an original account of the battle between Drake and the Spanish Armada.

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History Department of the United States Military Academy at West Point

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A map showing the route of the Spanish Armada from May to October 1588 CE. The Armada was sent by Philip II of Spain (r. 1556-1598 CE) to invade the kingdom of Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603 CE…

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Spanish Armada, also called Armada or Invincible Armada, Spanish Armada Española or Armada Invencible, the great fleet sent by King Philip II of Spain in 1588 to invade England in conjunction with a Spanish army from Flanders. England's attempts to repel this fleet involved the first naval battles to be fought entirely with heavy guns, and the failure of Spain's enterprise saved England and the Netherlands from possible absorption into the Spanish empire.

Background to the invasion

Philip had long been contemplating an attempt to restore the Roman Catholic faith in England, and English piracies against Spanish trade and possessions offered him further provocation. The Treaty of Nonsuch (1585) by which England undertook to support the Dutch rebels against Spanish rule, along with damaging raids by Sir Francis Drake against Spanish commerce in the Caribbean in 1585-86, finally convinced Philip that a direct invasion of England was necessary. He decided to use 30,000 troops belonging to the veteran army of the Spanish regent of the Netherlands, the duke of Parma, as the main invasion force and to send from Spain sufficient naval strength to defeat or deter the English fleet and clear the Strait of Dover for Parma's army to cross from Flanders over to southeastern England.

The Spanish fleet

After nearly two years' preparation and prolonged delays, the Armada sailed from Lisbon in May 1588 under the command of the duke of Medina-Sidonia, a replacement for Spain's most distinguished admiral, the marquess de Santa Cruz, who had died in February. Medina-Sidonia was an experienced administrator who proved to be resolute and capable in action, but he had relatively little sea experience. The Spanish fleet consisted of about 130 ships with about 8,000 seamen and possibly as many as 19,000 soldiers. About 40 of these ships were line-of-battle ships, the rest being mostly transports and light craft. The Spaniards were conscious that even their best ships were slower than those of the English and less well armed with heavy guns, but they counted on being able to force boarding actions if the English offered battle, after which the superiority of the Spanish infantry would prove decisive.

The English fleet

The English fleet was under the command of Charles Howard, 2nd Baron Howard of Effingham; he was no more experienced an admiral than Medina-Sidonia but was a more effective leader. His second in command was Sir Francis Drake. The English fleet at one time or another included nearly 200 ships, but during most of the subsequent fighting in the English Channel it numbered less than 100 ships, and at its largest it was about the same size as the Spanish fleet. No more than 40 or so were warships of the first rank, but the English ships were unencumbered by transports, and even their smallest vessels were fast and well armed for their size. The English placed great reliance on artillery; their ships carried few soldiers but had many more and heavier guns than the Spanish ships. With these guns, mounted in faster and handier ships, they planned to stand off and bombard the Spanish ships at long range.

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Opening of the naval conflict

Gales forced the Armada back to the port of A Coruña (in northern Spain) for refitting, and it finally got under way again in July. The Armada was first sighted by the English off Lizard Point, in Cornwall, on July 29 (July 19, Old Style). The larger part of the English fleet was then at Plymouth, dead to leeward, but by a neat maneuver was able to get to the windward, or upwind, side of the enemy (i.e., west of the Armada, given the prevailing west winds) and hence gain the tactical initiative. In three encounters (off Plymouth, July 31 [July 21]; off Portland Bill, August 2 [July 23]; and off the Isle of Wight, August 4 [July 25]), the English harassed the Spanish fleet at long range and easily avoided all attempts to bring them to close action but were unable to inflict serious damage on the Spanish formation.

The Armada reached the Strait of Dover on August 6 (July 27) and anchored in an exposed position off Calais, France. The English also anchored, still to windward (west of the Armada), and were reinforced by a squadron that had been guarding the narrow seas. The first certain news of the Armada's advance reached Parma in Flanders the same day, and he at once began embarking his troops in their invasion craft, but the process required six days, and the Armada had no safe port in which to wait for him nor any means of escorting his small craft across the coastal shallows where Dutch and English warships cruised to intercept them. This defect in Spanish strategy was to prove disastrous.

Defeat of the Armada

At midnight on August 7-8 (July 28-29), the English launched eight fire ships before the wind and tide into the Spanish fleet, forcing the Spanish ships to cut or slip their cables (thus losing their anchors) and stand out to sea to avoid catching fire. The Spanish ships' formation was thus completely broken. At dawn on the 8th the English attacked the disorganized Spanish ships off Gravelines, and a decisive battle ensued. The English ships now closed to effective range and were answered largely with small arms. The Spanish ships' heavy guns were not mounted, nor were Spanish gunners trained to reload in action. They sustained serious damage and casualties without being able to reply effectively. Three Spanish ships were sunk or driven ashore, and others were badly battered. At the same time, the English were obliged by shortage of ammunition to break off the action and follow at a distance. By the morning of August 9 (July 30), the prevailing westerly winds were driving the Spaniards toward the shoals of the Zeeland banks. At the last minute, however, the wind shifted and allowed them to shape a safe course to the northward. Both the west wind and the English fleet now prevented the Armada from rejoining Parma, and it was forced to make the passage back to Spain around the northern tip of Scotland. The English fleet turned back in search of supplies when the Armada passed the Firth of Forth and there was no further fighting, but the long voyage home through the autumn gales of the North Atlantic proved fatal to many of the Spanish ships. Whether through battle damage, bad weather, shortage of food and water, or navigational error, some ships foundered in the open sea while others were driven onto the west coast of Ireland and wrecked. Only 60 ships are known to have reached Spain, many of them too badly damaged to be repaired, and perhaps 15,000 men perished. The English lost several hundred, perhaps several thousand, men to disease but sustained negligible damage and casualties in action.

Significance

The defeat of the Armada saved England from invasion and the Dutch Republic from extinction, while dealing a heavy blow to the prestige of the greatest European power of the age. Tactically, the Armada action has enduring historical significance as the first major naval gun battle under sail and as the moment from which, for over two and a half centuries, the gun-armed sailing warship dominated the seas.

Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager.

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Spanish Armada | Definition, Defeat, & Facts

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This article was most recently revised and updated by Spanish Armada, also called Armada or Invincible Armada, Spanish Armada Española or Armada Invencible, the great fleet sent by King Philip II of Spain in 1588 to invade England in conjunction with a Spanish army from Flanders.

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The Justice Department calls the Voting Rights Act of 1965 "the most successful piece of civil rights legislation ever adopted by the United States Congress."

The law put an end to literacy tests, which prevented many people from registering to vote, in a half-dozen states, granted the attorney general the power to send observers to witness elections and gave the federal government the authority to preapprove voting and election changes in places with a history of discrimination.

Within a few years of its passage, the Voting Rights Act had paved the way for thousands of Black and brown voters to go to the ballot box. Bipartisan majorities in Congress reauthorized the act five times, most recently in 2006, when then-President George W. Bush lauded the law and pledged to defend it in court.

The landmark law has gotten a different reception at the highest court in the land in the last few years. In two decisions, spanning eight years, a conservative majority of Supreme Court justices upended the law's core enforcement powers.

The most recent decision, in July, has prompted national marches, including one set to culminate in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, the anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington.

The rally comes on the heels of House passage of legislation to override the Supreme Court and update the Voting Rights Act. But prospects for the bill are dim in a closely divided Congress.

How the law came to be

In the years after the Civil War, the United States adopted three constitutional amendments. The 13th Amendment ended slavery and involuntary servitude "except as punishment for crime." The 14th Amendment codified birthright citizenship and promised "due process of law," among other steps. And the 15th Amendment gave Black men the right to vote.

For a brief period, Black voters raced to the ballot box, electing officials of their choice to high office. But all too soon, Southern states passed their own laws making it more difficult for people of color to vote, including literacy tests, poll taxes and a horrible campaign of violence. By the 1960s, white voter registration in some states was 50 percentage points greater than Black voter registration.

"Give us the ballot and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a 'Southern manifesto' because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice," King said in a major address in Washington in 1957.

Then, in early 1965, armed state troopers viciously beat a group of nonviolent marchers in Selma, Ala. Footage of those protesters being sprayed with chemicals and clubbed by police batons shocked the conscience of the country and helped then-President Lyndon B. Johnson make the case for the Voting Rights Act.

Months later, Johnson signed the act into law.

"What history shows is that sort of federal intervention was the main thing that could affect systemic change to the problem of racial discrimination in voting," professor Atiba Ellis of Marquette University told The NPR Politics Podcast for its legal series, "The Docket."

What's changed

In 2013, in a case called Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that a lot of things had changed, that the world had changed since the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The 5-4 decision effectively derailed the Justice Department's system for preapproving election changes in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination, putting a heavy burden on the federal government to identify any such changes and sue to prevent them from taking effect. The high court ruling prompted states to pass new restrictions on voting.

Then, in July, another conservative court majority severely weakened the remaining enforcement tool for the Department of Justice: a provision that gave the federal government the legal authority to challenge voting laws that discriminate on the basis of race, color and language minority status.

In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, Justice Samuel Alito concluded that some inconvenience to voters would not run afoul of the Constitution. His majority opinion also gave states a powerful defense: They could raise concerns about voter fraud to justify their election changes without having to prove any such fraud existed.

Lawsuits by the Justice Department and civil rights groups over voting changes in Georgia are continuing in the courts. But it's not yet clear what fate they will meet.

The current fight

Democrats in Congress have been pressing for at least two different voting rights measures that would restore the federal government's enforcement powers at the ballot box. One is named after the late Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat whose beating on "Bloody Sunday" in 1965 horrified a national audience and helped push the Voting Rights Act over the finish line on Capitol Hill later that year.

But Democrats are facing mathematical challenges. Based on current Senate rules, they need 60 votes, including 10 Republicans, to advance any voting measures. So far, they've been unable to muster them.

"It's a critical moment in the fight for voting rights," Mahogane Reed of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund told The NPR Politics Podcast. "The onslaught of new voting laws is so heavy. Intervention from Congress is absolutely critical."

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How The Voting Rights Act Came To Be And How It's Changed

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subscribe to The NPR Politics Podcast podcast The Justice Department calls the Voting Rights Act of 1965 "the most successful piece of civil rights legislation ever adopted by the United States Congress."

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Transcript

AN ACT To enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act shall be known as the "Voting Rights Act of 1965."

SEC. 2. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.

SEC. 3. (a) Whenever the Attorney General institutes a proceeding under any statute to enforce the guarantees of the fifteenth amendment in any State or political subdivision the court shall authorize the appointment of Federal examiners by the United States Civil Service Commission in accordance with section 6 to serve for such period of time and for such political subdivisions as the court shall determine is appropriate to enforce the guarantees of the fifteenth amendment (1) as part of any interlocutory order if the court determines that the appointment of such examiners is necessary to enforce such guarantees or (2) as part of any final judgment if the court finds that violations of the fifteenth amendment justifying equitable relief have occurred in such State or subdivision: Provided, That the court need not authorize the appointment of examiners if any incidents of denial or abridgement of the right to vote on account of race or color (1) have been few in number and have been promptly and effectively corrected by State or local action, (2) the continuing effect of such incidents has been eliminated, and (3) there is no reasonable probability of their recurrence in the future.

(b) If in a proceeding instituted by the Attorney General under any statute to enforce the guarantees of the fifteenth amendment in any State or political subdivision the court finds that a test or device has been used for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color, it shall suspend the use of tests and devices in such State or political subdivisions as the court shall determine is appropriate and for such period as it deems necessary.

(c) If in any proceeding instituted by the Attorney General under any statute to enforce the guarantees of the fifteenth amendment in any State or political subdivision the court finds that violations of the fifteenth amendment justifying equitable relief have occurred within the territory of such State or political subdivision, the court, in addition to such relief as it may grant, shall retain jurisdiction for such period as it may deem appropriate and during such period no voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect at the time the proceeding was commenced shall be enforced unless and until the court finds that such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color: Provided, That such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure may be enforced if the qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure has been submitted by the chief legal officer or other appropriate official of such State or subdivision to the Attorney General and the Attorney General has not interposed an objection within sixty days after such submission, except that neither the court's finding nor the Attorney General's failure to object shall bar a subsequent action to enjoin enforcement of such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure.

SEC. 4. (a) To assure that the right of citizens of the United States to vote is not denied or abridged on account of race or color, no citizen shall be denied the right to vote in any Federal, State, or local election because of his failure to comply with any test or device in any State with respect to which the determinations have been made under subsection (b) or in any political subdivision with respect to which such determinations have been made as a separate unit, unless the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in an action for a declaratory judgment brought by such State or subdivision against the United States has determined that no such test or device has been used during the five years preceding the filing of the action for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color: Provided, That no such declaratory judgment shall issue with respect to any plaintiff for a period of five years after the entry of a final judgment of any court of the United States, other than the denial of a declaratory judgment under this section, whether entered prior to or after the enactment of this Act, determining that denials or abridgments of the right to vote on account of race or color through the use of such tests or devices have occurred anywhere in the territory of such plaintiff. An action pursuant to this subsection shall be heard and determined by a court of three judges in accordance with the provisions of section 2284 of title 28 of the United States Code and any appeal shall lie to the Supreme Court. The court shall retain jurisdiction of any action pursuant to this subsection for five years after judgment and shall reopen the action upon motion of the Attorney General alleging that a test or device has been used for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.

If the Attorney General determines that he has no reason to believe that any such test or device has been used during the five years preceding the filing of the action for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, he shall consent to the entry of such judgment

(b) The provisions of subsection (a) shall apply in any State or in any political subdivision of a state which (1) the Attorney General determines maintained on November 1, 1964, any test or device, and with respect to which (2) the Director of the Census determines that less than 50 percentum of the persons of voting age residing therein were registered on November 1, 1964, or that less than 50 percentum of such persons voted in the presidential election of November 1964.

A determination or certification of the Attorney General or of the Director of the Census under this section or under section 6 or section 13 shall not be reviewable in any court and shall be effective upon publication in the Federal Register.

(c) The phrase "test or device" shall mean any requirement that a person as a prerequisite for voting or registration for voting (1) demonstrate the ability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter, (2) demonstrate any educational achievement or his knowledge of any particular subject, (3) possess good moral character, or (4) prove his qualifications by the voucher of registered voters or members of any other class.

(d) For purposes of this section no State or political subdivision shall be determined to have engaged in the use of tests or devices for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color if (1) incidents of such use have been few in number and have been promptly and effectively corrected by State or local action, (2) the continuing effect of such incidents has been eliminated, and (3) there is no reasonable probability of their recurrence in the future.

(e)
(1) Congress hereby declares that to secure the rights under the fourteenth amendment of persons educated in American-flag schools in which the predominant classroom language was other than English, it is necessary to prohibit the States from conditioning the right to vote of such persons on ability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter in the English language.
(2) No person who demonstrates that he has successfully completed the sixth primary grade in a public school in, or a private school accredited by, any State or territory, the District of Columbia, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in which the predominant classroom language was other than English, shall be denied the right to vote in any Federal, State, or local election because of his inability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter in the English language, except that, in States in which State law provides that a different level of education is presumptive of literacy, he shall demonstrate that he has successfully completed an equivalent level of education in a public school in, or a private school accredited by, any State or territory, the District of Columbia, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in which the predominant classroom language was other than English.

SEC. 5. Whenever a State or political subdivision with respect to which the prohibitions set forth in section 4(a) are in effect shall enact or seek to administer any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1964, such State or subdivision may institute an action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for a declaratory judgment that such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, and unless and until the court enters such judgment no person shall be denied the right to vote for failure to comply with such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure: Provided, That such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure may be enforced without such proceeding if the qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure has been submitted by the chief legal officer or other appropriate official of such State or subdivision to the Attorney General and the Attorney General has not interposed an objection within sixty days after such submission, except that neither the Attorney General's failure to object nor a declaratory judgment entered under this section shall bar a subsequent action to enjoin enforcement of such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure. Any action under this section shall be heard and determined by a court of three judges in accordance with the provisions of section 2284 of title 28 of the United States Code and any appeal shall lie to the Supreme Court.

SEC. 6. Whenever (a) a court has authorized the appointment of examiners pursuant to the provisions of section 3(a), or (b) unless a declaratory judgment has been rendered under section 4(a), the Attorney General certifies with respect to any political subdivision named in, or included within the scope of, determinations made under section 4(b) that (1) he has received complaints in writing from twenty or more residents of such political subdivision alleging that they have been denied the right to vote under color of law on account of race or color, and that he believes such complaints to be meritorious, or (2) that, in his judgment (considering, among other factors, whether the ratio of nonwhite persons to white persons registered to vote within such subdivision appears to him to be reasonably attributable to violations of the fifteenth amendment or whether substantial evidence exists that bona fide efforts are being made within such subdivision to comply with the fifteenth amendment), the appointment of examiners is otherwise necessary to enforce the guarantees of the fifteenth amendment, the Civil Service Commission shall appoint as many examiners for such subdivision as it may deem appropriate to prepare and maintain lists of persons eligible to vote in Federal, State, and local elections. Such examiners, hearing officers provided for in section 9(a), and other persons deemed necessary by the Commission to carry out the provisions and purposes of this Act shall be appointed, compensated, and separated without regard to the provisions of any statute administered by the Civil Service Commission, and service under this Act shall not be considered employment for the purposes of any statute administered by the Civil Service Commission, except the provisions of section 9 of the Act of August 2, 1939, as amended (5 U.S.C. 118i), prohibiting partisan political activity: Provided, That the Commission is authorized, after consulting the head of the appropriate department or agency, to designate suitable persons in the official service of the United States, with their consent, to serve in these positions. Examiners and hearing officers shall have the power to administer oaths.

SEC. 7. (a) The examiners for each political subdivision shall, at such places as the Civil Service Commission shall by regulation designate, examine applicants concerning their qualifications for voting. An application to an examiner shall be in such form as the Commission may require and shall contain allegations that the applicant is not otherwise registered to vote.

(b) Any person whom the examiner finds, in accordance with instructions received under section 9(b), to have the qualifications prescribed by State law not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States shall promptly be placed on a list of eligible voters. A challenge to such listing may be made in accordance with section 9(a) and shall not be the basis for a prosecution under section 12 of this Act. The examiner shall certify and transmit such list, and any supplements as appropriate, at least once a month, to the offices of the appropriate election officials, with copies to the Attorney General and the attorney general of the State, and any such lists and supplements thereto transmitted during the month shall be available for public inspection on the last business day of the month and, in any event, not later than the forty-fifth day prior to any election. The appropriate State or local election official shall place such names on the official voting list. Any person whose name appears on the examiner's list shall be entitled and allowed to vote in the election district of his residence unless and until the appropriate election officials shall have been notified that such person has been removed from such list in accordance with subsection (d): Provided, That no person shall be entitled to vote in any election by virtue of this Act unless his name shall have been certified and transmitted on such a list to the offices of the appropriate election officials at least forty-five days prior to such election.

(c) The examiner shall issue to each person whose name appears on such a list a certificate evidencing his eligibility to vote.

(d) A person whose name appears on such a list shall be removed therefrom by an examiner if (1) such person has been successfully challenged in accordance with the procedure prescribed in section 9, or (2) he has been determined by an examiner to have lost his eligibility to vote under State law not inconsistent with the Constitution and the laws of the United States.

Sec. 8. Whenever an examiner is serving under this Act in any political subdivision, the Civil Service Commission may assign, at the request of the Attorney General, one or more persons, who may be officers of the United States, (1) to enter and attend at any place for holding an election in such subdivision for the purpose of observing whether persons who are entitled to vote are being permitted to vote, and (2) to enter and attend at any place for tabulating the votes cast at any election held in such subdivision for the purpose of observing whether votes cast by persons entitled to vote are being properly tabulated. Such persons so assigned shall report to an examiner appointed for such political subdivision, to the Attorney General, and if the appointment of examiners has been authorized pursuant to section 3(a), to the court. SEC. 9.

(a) Any challenge to a listing on an eligibility list prepared by an examiner shall be heard and determined by a hearing officer appointed by and responsible to the Civil Service Commission and under such rules as the Commission shall by regulation prescribe. Such challenge shall be entertained only if filed at such office within the State as the Civil Service Commission shall by regulation designate, and within ten days after the listing of the challenged person is made available for public inspection, and if supported by (1) the affidavits of at least two persons having personal knowledge of the facts constituting grounds for the challenge, and (2) a certification that a copy of the challenge and affidavits have been served by mail or in person upon the person challenged at his place of residence set out in the application. Such challenge shall be determined within fifteen days after it has been filed. A petition for review of the decision of the hearing officer may be filed in the United States court of appeals for the circuit in which the person challenged resides within fifteen days after service of such decision by mail on the person petitioning for review but no decision of a hearing officer shall be reversed unless clearly erroneous. Any person listed shall be entitled and allowed to vote pending final determination by the hearing officer and by the court.

(b) The times, places, procedures, and form for application and listing pursuant to this Act and removals from the eligibility lists shall be prescribed by regulations promulgated by the Civil Service Commission and the Commission shall, after consultation with the Attorney General, instruct examiners concerning applicable State law not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States with respect to (1) the qualifications required for listing, and (2) loss of eligibility to vote.

(c) Upon the request of the applicant or the challenger or on its own motion the Civil Service Commission shall have the power to require by subpoena the attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of documentary evidence relating to any matter pending before it under the authority of this section. In case of contumacy or refusal to obey a subpoena, any district court of the United States or the United States court of any territory or possession, or the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia, within the jurisdiction of which said person guilty of contumacy or refusal to obey is found or resides or is domiciled or transacts business, or has appointed an agent for receipt of service of process, upon application by the Attorney General of the United States shall have jurisdiction to issue to such person an order requiring such person to appear before the Commission or a hearing officer, there to produce pertinent, relevant, and nonprivileged documentary evidence if so ordered, or there to give testimony touching the matter under investigation, and any failure to obey such order of the court may be punished by said court as a contempt thereof.

SEC. 10. (a) The Congress finds that the requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting (i) precludes persons of limited means from voting or imposes unreasonable financial hardship upon such persons as a precondition to their exercise of the franchise, (ii) does not bear a reasonable relationship to any legitimate State interest in the conduct of elections, and (iii) in some areas has the purpose or effect of denying persons the right to vote because of race or color. Upon the basis of these findings, Congress declares that the constitutional right of citizens to vote is denied or abridged in some areas by the requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting.

(b) In the exercise of the powers of Congress under section 5 of the fourteenth amendment and section 2 of the fifteenth amendment, the Attorney General is authorized and directed to institute forthwith in the name of the United States such actions, including actions against States or political subdivisions, for declaratory judgment or injunctive relief against the enforcement of any requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting, or substitute therefor enacted after November 1, 1964, as will be necessary to implement the declaration of subsection (a) and the purposes of this section.

(c) The district courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction of such actions which shall be heard and determined by a court of three judges in accordance with the provisions of section 2284 of title 28 of the United States Code and any appeal shall lie to the Supreme Court. It shall be the duty of the judges designated to hear the case to assign the case for hearing at the earliest practicable date, to participate in the hearing and determination thereof, and to cause the case to be in every way expedited.

(d) During the pendency of such actions, and thereafter if the courts, notwithstanding this action by the Congress, should declare the requirement of the payment of a poll tax to be constitutional, no citizen of the United States who is a resident of a State or political subdivision with respect to which determinations have been made under subsection 4(b) and a declaratory judgment has not been entered under subsection 4(a), during the first year he becomes otherwise entitled to vote by reason of registration by State or local officials or listing by an examiner, shall be denied the right to vote for failure to pay a poll tax if he tenders payment of such tax for the current year to an examiner or to the appropriate State or local official at least forty-five days prior to election, whether or not such tender would be timely or adequate under State law. An examiner shall have authority to accept such payment from any person authorized by this Act to make an application for listing, and shall issue a receipt for such payment. The examiner shall transmit promptly any such poll tax payment to the office of the State or local official authorized to receive such payment under State law, together with the name and address of the applicant.

SEC. 11. (a) No person acting under color of law shall fail or refuse to permit any person to vote who is entitled to vote under any provision of this Act or is otherwise qualified to vote, or willfully fail or refuse to tabulate, count, and report such person's vote.

(b) No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for urging or aiding any person to vote or attempt to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for exercising any powers or duties under section 3(a), 6, 8, 9, 10, or 12(e).

(c) Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address, or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both: Provided, however, That this provision shall be applicable only to general, special, or primary elections held solely or in part for the purpose of selecting or electing any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, presidential elector, Member of the United States Senate, Member of the United States House of Representatives, or Delegates or Commissioners from the territories or possessions, or Resident Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

(d) Whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of an examiner or hearing officer knowingly and willfully falsifies or conceals a material fact, or makes any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or representations, or makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry, shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

SEC. 12. (a) Whoever shall deprive or attempt to deprive any person of any right secured by section 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, or 10 or shall violate section 11(a) or (b), shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

(b) Whoever, within a year following an election in a political subdivision in which an examiner has been appointed (1) destroys, defaces, mutilates, or otherwise alters the marking of a paper ballot which has been cast in such election, or (2) alters any official record of voting in such election tabulated from a voting machine or otherwise, shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both

(c) Whoever conspires to violate the provisions of subsection (a) or (b) of this section, or interferes with any right secured by section 2, 3 4, 5, 7, 10, or 11(a) or (b) shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

(d) Whenever any person has engaged or there are reasonable grounds to believe that any person is about to engage in any act or practice prohibited by section 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, or subsection (b) of this section, the Attorney General may institute for the United States, or in the name of the United States, an action for preventive relief, including an application for a temporary or permanent injunction, restraining order, or other order, and including an order directed to the State and State or local election officials to require them (1) to permit persons listed under this Act to vote and (2) to count such votes.

(e) Whenever in any political subdivision in which there are examiners appointed pursuant to this Act any persons allege to such an examiner within forty-eight hours after the closing of the polls that notwithstanding (1) their listing under this Act or registration by an appropriate election official and (2) their eligibility to vote, they have not been permitted to vote in such election, the examiner shall forthwith notify the Attorney General if such allegations in his opinion appear to be well founded. Upon receipt of such notification, the Attorney General may forthwith file with the district court an application for an order providing for the marking, casting, and counting of the ballots of such persons and requiring the inclusion of their votes in the total vote before the results of such election shall be deemed final and any force or effect given thereto. The district court shall hear and determine such matters immediately after the filing of such application. The remedy provided in this subsection shall not preclude any remedy available under State or Federal law.

(f) The district courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction of proceedings instituted pursuant to this section and shall exercise the same without regard to whether a person asserting rights under the provisions of this Act shall have exhausted any administrative or other remedies that may be provided by law

SEC. 13. Listing procedures shall be terminated in any political subdivision of any State (a) with respect to examiners appointed pursuant to clause (b) of section 6 whenever the Attorney General notifies the Civil Service Commission, or whenever the District Court for the District of Columbia determines in an action for declaratory judgment brought by any political subdivision with respect to which the Director of the Census has determined that more than 50 percentum of the nonwhite persons of voting age residing therein are registered to vote, (1) that all persons listed by an examiner for such subdivision have been placed on the appropriate voting registration roll, and (2) that there is no longer reasonable cause to believe that persons will be deprived of or denied the right to vote on account of race or color in such subdivision, and (b), with respect to examiners appointed pursuant to section 3(a), upon order of the authorizing court. A political subdivision may petition the Attorney General for the termination of listing procedures under clause (a) of this section, and may petition the Attorney General to request the Director of the Census to take such survey or census as may be appropriate for the making of the determination provided for in this section. The District Court for the District of Columbia shall have jurisdiction to require such survey or census to be made by the Director of the Census and it shall require him to do so if it deems the Attorney General's refusal to request such survey or census to be arbitrary or unreasonable. SEC. 14.

(a) All cases of criminal contempt arising under the provisions of this Act shall be governed by section 151 of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (42 U.S.C.1995).

(b) No court other than the District Court for the District of Columbia or a court of appeals in any proceeding under section 9 shall have jurisdiction to issue any declaratory judgment pursuant to section 4 or section 5 or any restraining order or temporary or permanent injunction against the execution or enforcement of any provision of this Act or any action of any Federal officer or employee pursuant hereto.

(c)
(1) The terms "vote" or "voting" shall include all action necessary to make a vote effective in any primary, special, or general election, including, but not limited to, registration, listing pursuant to this Act, or other action required by law prerequisite to voting, casting a ballot, and having such ballot counted properly and included in the appropriate totals of votes cast with respect to candidates for public or party office and propositions for which votes are received in an election.
(2) The term "political subdivision" shall mean any county or parish, except that, where registration for voting is not conducted under the supervision of a county or parish, the term shall include any other subdivision of a State which conducts registration for voting.

(d) In any action for a declaratory judgment brought pursuant to section 4 or section 5 of this Act, subpoenas for witnesses who are required to attend the District Court for the District of Columbia may be served in any judicial district of the United States: Provided, That no writ of subpoena shall issue for witnesses without the District of Columbia at a greater distance than one hundred miles from the place of holding court without the permission of the District Court for the District of Columbia being first had upon proper application and cause shown.

SEC. 15. Section 2004 of the Revised Statutes (42 U.S.C.1971), as amended by section 131 of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (71 Stat. 637), and amended by section 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (74 Stat. 90), and as further amended by section 101 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (78 Stat. 241), is further amended as follows:

(a) Delete the word "Federal" wherever it appears in subsections (a) and (c);

(b) Repeal subsection (f) and designate the present subsections (g) and (h) as (f) and (g), respectively.

SEC. 16. The Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, jointly, shall make a full and complete study to determine whether, under the laws or practices of any State or States, there are preconditions to voting, which might tend to result in discrimination against citizens serving in the Armed Forces of the United States seeking to vote. Such officials shall, jointly, make a report to the Congress not later than June 30, 1966, containing the results of such study, together with a list of any States in which such preconditions exist, and shall include in such report such recommendations for legislation as they deem advisable to prevent discrimination in voting against citizens serving in the Armed Forces of the United States.

SEC. 17. Nothing in this Act shall be construed to deny, impair, or otherwise adversely affect the right to vote of any person registered to vote under the law of any State or political subdivision.

SEC. 18. There are hereby authorized to be appropriated such sums as are necessary to carry out the provisions of this Act

SEC 19. If any provision of this Act or the application thereof to any person or circumstances is held invalid, the remainder of the Act and the application of the provision to other persons not similarly situated or to other circumstances shall not be affected thereby.

Approved August 6, 1965.

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: An act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States and for other purposes, August 6, 1965; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789-; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives View All Pages in the National Archives Catalog View Transcript This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson.

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V. Lenin "The State and the Revolution"

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Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History

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One hundred years ago, in wartime Petrograd, Russian radicals known as the Bolsheviks carried out " the Great October Socialist Revolution." On the night of October 24, 1917, Bolshevik Red Guards began to take control of key points in the Russian capital-railway stations, telegraph offices, and government buildings. By the following evening, they controlled the entire city with the exception of the Winter Palace, the seat of the Provisional Government.
Vladimir Lenin giving a speech in Moscow.
This government had ruled Russia since Tsar Nicholas II's abdication the preceding February, but it had lost almost all support as Russia's horrific World War I casualties continued to mount. In fact, at this crucial moment Provisional Government ministers could find almost no one willing to defend them. That night, Bolshevik Red Guards broke into the palace and arrested the ministers, bringing the Provisional Government to an end.
Former Tsar Nicholas II in Tsarskoye Selo following his abdication in March 1917, (left) and Bolshevik forces marching on Red Square, 1917 (right).
The "storming of the Winter Palace" has gone down in history as the climactic moment of the October Revolution. But overthrowing the existing government turned out to be the easy part. Over the next three years, the Bolsheviks (soon renamed Communists) would have to win power in a bloody civil war and reestablish order in a country that had descended into anarchy.

For both opponents and supporters, the October Revolution represented the advent of socialism. Those on the political right saw socialism as scourge that entailed the violent expropriation of private property and the trampling of individual liberties. And throughout the twentieth century, Soviet socialism continued to be seen as an existential threat to liberal democracy and capitalism.

But many on the left welcomed the Revolution as the start of a new era, with harmony and equality for all people. Particularly given the senseless slaughter of millions of soldiers during the First World War, the October Revolution seemed to offer an alternative-a government ruled in the interests of the common people that would ultimately produce a communist utopia.
"Sacrifice to the International," an anti-Bolshevik propaganda poster, in which Lenin is depicted in a red robe, aiding other Bolsheviks in sacrificing Russia to a statue of Marx, 1919 (left), and "Glory to victorious Red Army soldier!" by Dmitrii Stakhievich Moor, 1920 (right). (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
One hundred years later, the October Revolution still stands as a seminal event in world history. But no longer can it be seen in Marxist terms as part of the inevitable progression from feudalism to capitalism to socialism to communism. Instead, the Revolution today is often viewed as a cautionary tale about the dangers of socialist ideology.
Russian Civil War era poster by Alexander Apsit reading "To Horse, Proletarian!," 1918.
According to this thinking, the socialist ideas pursued by Communist Party leaders led to the crimes of Stalinism, which produced neither equality nor harmony but left millions of people dead. With the collapse of the Communist regime in 1991, the anniversary of the October Revolution is no longer celebrated in Russia. Many people regard the entire Soviet epoch as a tragedy, the result of socialist thought put into practice.
Soviet poster depicting Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, 1933.
Was the Soviet regime really a product of socialist ideology? In some ways it was. Vladimir Lenin and other Communist Party leaders were committed to Marxism, one branch of socialism, and they understood the world in terms of class categories. Their policies included violent expropriation of private property and class warfare.

But Marxist thought provided no blueprint for constructing a socialist state. Most of Karl Marx's writings had been a critique of capitalism, and he described the socialist future only in vague terms. Nowhere did he outline what became the fundamental institutions of the Soviet state-a fully state-run, planned economy; government bureaucracies for censorship and propaganda; the secret police and its system of surveillance; and the network of forced labor camps known as the Gulag. These institutions were instead based upon wartime practices of the First World War and Russian Civil War.
Red Army soldiers before being sent to the Civil War, 1919.
Combatant countries throughout Europe during the First World War had increased state control over their economies, through price controls, rationing, production quotas, and grain requisitioning. They had utilized censorship and propaganda to maintain soldiers' and citizens' morale. The governments of all combatant countries also had engaged in widespread surveillance of their citizens. And in addition, they had created concentration camps to intern "enemy aliens" and, in some cases, their own subjects during the war.

After the October Revolution, Communist leaders used all of these methods to fight the Civil War and establish control over the far-flung Russian empire. Unlike in other countries, where governments stepped back from total war practices after the war ended, the Soviet state was formed in conditions of anarchy and civil war, and these practices became institutionalized as permanent features of governance.

Refugees fleeing the Civil War (left), and prisoners working at Belbaltlag, a camp for building the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal (from the 1932 documentary film Baltic to White Sea Water Way, Central Russian Film and Photo Archive)
The October Revolution, then, produced a highly militarized version of socialism, one in which state control and violence became fundamental components. While Marxist ideas and categories shaped Communist policies, the Soviet state cannot be divorced from the historical conjuncture in which it arose-a moment of total war.

In the 1930s, Soviet state violence became even more pervasive, as Joseph Stalin sought to prepare the Soviet Union for the next war. Wartime practices such as grain requisitions and deportations were used to collectivize agriculture. The Soviet planned economy, essentially a wartime economy, marshaled labor and raw materials for enormous industrial projects that modernized the country. During the Second World War, the Stalinist leadership relied on these same institutions of state violence and control to mobilize vast human and material resources for the war effort.

Both Stalinist industrialization and victory over Nazi Germany, however, were obtained at tremendous cost. During the 1930s, several million Soviet citizens died due to famines, deportations, and executions. An estimated 27 million more died during the Second World War. Even after the war, the Stalinist government continued large-scale deportations and incarcerations of its own citizens.
Children dig up potatoes on a collective farm near Udachne villiage, Donec'k oblast, 1933 (left), and collective farmers from the Moscow suburbs handing over tanks manufactured on their money to Soviet servicemen, December 1942 (right).
"Everything for the Front. Everything for Victory." USSR propaganda poster from World War II, 1941 (left); and '"Stalin's spirit makes our army and country strong and solid," Viktor Deni & Nikolai Dolgorukov, 1939 (right). Parade on Moscow's Red Square celebrating the 67th anniversary of the October Revolution, November 7, 1984.
In the end, the Soviet state's legacy of coercion and bloodshed proved to be its undoing. When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev lifted censorship in the 1980s, discussion of the system's violent past quickly undercut its legitimacy. By 1991, Communist rule had ended and the Soviet Union disintegrated.

The October Revolution shaped the twentieth-century world arguably more than any other single event. It brought to power a new regime, one that ruled in the name of the working class and that established a non-capitalist, state-run economy. This regime carried out a brutal industrialization drive that enabled the Soviet Union to play the leading role in defeating Nazi Germany and winning World War II. And the existence of the Soviet Union also led to the Cold War, the superpower confrontation with the United States that dominated world affairs for the entire postwar era.

The October Revolution did not, however, mark a new stage in history or humankind's inevitable progression toward a communist utopia. And the Soviet system that resulted from it, while socialist in some respects, was characterized by institutions of government control and state violence. A century after the October Revolution, we can see that above all else the Soviet state reflected the era of mass warfare in which it arose.

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One hundred years ago, in wartime Petrograd, Russian radicals known as the Bolsheviks carried out " the Great October Socialist Revolution." On the night of October 24, 1917, Bolshevik Red Guards began to take control of key points in the Russian capital-railway stations, telegraph offices, and government buildings.

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From the beginning of the 20th century there were three principal revolutionary parties in Russia. The Socialist Revolutionary Party, whose main base of support was the peasantry, was heavily influenced by anarchism and resorted to political terror. In the first decade of the century, members of this party assassinated thousands of government officials, hoping in this way to bring down the government. The Social Democrats ( Russian Social Democratic Worker's Party) believed such terror to be futile; they followed the classic doctrines of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, according to which the development of capitalism inevitably created a radicalized proletariat that would in time stage a revolution and introduce socialism. The party split in 1903 into two factions, which soon developed into separate parties. The Mensheviks, loyal to traditional Social Democratic teachings, concentrated on developing ties with labour and rejected as premature political revolution in agrarian, largely precapitalist Russia. The Bolsheviks, who in some respects were closer to the Socialist Revolutionaries, believed that Russia was ready for socialism. Their leader, Vladimir Ilich Lenin, was a fanatical revolutionary, who managed to organize a relatively small but totally devoted and highly disciplined party bent on seizing power. Convinced that workers by themselves could not progress beyond peaceful trade- unionism, he wanted the party to direct the working class on the revolutionary path.

During World War I Lenin, living in neutral Switzerland, agitated for Russia's defeat. This attracted the attention of the Germans, who came to realize that they could not win the war unless they somehow succeeded in forcing Russia to sign a separate peace. In April 1917 they arranged for Lenin's transit through Germany to Sweden and thence to Russia, where they hoped the Bolsheviks would fan antiwar sentiment. To this end they generously supplied Lenin with the money necessary to organize his party and build up a press.

Sensing the weakness of the provisional government and the inherent instability of "dual power," on arrival in Russia (April 3, 1917 [April 16, New Style]) Lenin wanted to launch a revolution immediately. He had to contend, however, with the majority of his followers who doubted it would succeed. The skeptics were vindicated in July 1917 when a putsch led by the Bolsheviks badly misfired. They were near success when the government released information on Lenin's dealings with the Germans, which caused angry troops to disperse the rebels and end the uprising. Abandoning his followers, Lenin sought refuge in Finland.

After the abortive Bolshevik July rising the chairmanship of the provisional government passed to Kerensky. A Socialist Revolutionary lawyer and Duma deputy, Kerensky was the best-known radical in the country owing to his defense of political prisoners and fiery antigovernment rhetoric. A superb speaker, he lacked the political judgment to realize his political ambitions. Aware that such power as he had rested on the support of the All-Russian Soviet, Kerensky decided that the only threat Russian democracy faced came from the right. By this he meant conservative civilian and military elements, whose most visible symbol was General Lavr Kornilov, a patriotic officer whom he had appointed commander in chief but soon came to see as a rival. To win the support of the Soviet, still dominated by Socialists Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, Kerensky did not prosecute the Bolsheviks for the July putsch and allowed them to emerge unscathed from the debacle.

By general consent the decisive event in the history of the provisional government was Kerensky's conflict with Kornilov, which broke into the open in August (September, New Style). Although many aspects of the "Kornilov affair" remain obscure to this day, it appears that Kerensky deliberately provoked the confrontation in order to be rid of a suspected competitor and emerge as the saviour of the Revolution. The prime minister confidentially informed Kornilov that the Bolsheviks were planning another coup in Petrograd in early September (which was not, in fact, true) and requested him to send troops to suppress it. When Kornilov did as ordered, Kerensky charged him with wanting to topple the government. Accused of high treason, Kornilov mutinied. The mutiny was easily crushed.

It was a Pyrrhic victory for Kerensky. His action alienated the officer corps, whose support he needed in the looming conflict with the Bolsheviks. It also vindicated the Bolshevik claim that the provisional government was ineffective and that the soviets should assume full and undivided authority. In late September and October the Bolsheviks began to win majorities in the soviets: Leon Trotsky, a recent convert to Bolshevism, became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, the country's most important, and immediately turned it into a vehicle for the seizure of power.

The Bolshevik coup

The events of February 1917 merit the name of Revolution because they were essentially spontaneous. October 1917 (November, New Style), by contrast, was a classic coup d'état carried out by a small group of conspirators.

The Bolshevik Central Committee made the decision to seize power at a clandestine meeting held on the night of October 10 (October 23, New Style). There were considerable disagreements over the timing: Lenin wanted the coup to be carried out immediately; Trotsky and most of the others preferred to convene a national Congress of Soviets, packed with Bolsheviks, and have it proclaim the overthrow of the provisional government. A compromise was struck: the coup would take place as soon as practicable, and the Congress of Soviets would ratify it. This decided, Lenin returned to his hideaway, leaving the direction of the coup in the hands of Trotsky.

Disregarding the authority of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet, dominated as before by the Mensheviks and Socialists Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks invited those local soviets in which they enjoyed majorities to attend a national congress beginning on October 25 (November 7, New Style). In the meantime they built up an armed force to carry out a coup. The task was facilitated by the decision of the Soviet to form a Military Revolutionary Committee to organize Petrograd's defense from an expected German attack. Since the Bolsheviks were the only organization with an independent armed force, they took over the Military Revolutionary Committee and used it to topple the government.

During the night of October 24-25, Bolshevik Red Guards peacefully occupied strategic points in Petrograd. On the morning of October 25, Lenin, reemerging from his hideaway, issued a declaration in the name of the Military Revolutionary Committee, which had no authority to do so, that the provisional government was overthrown and all power was assumed by the soviets. The declaration referred neither to the Bolsheviks nor to socialism, for which reason the inhabitants of the city had no inkling how profound a change had occurred. Kerensky tried to rally the armed forces to save his government but found no response among officers furious at his treatment of Kornilov. On October 26 the rump Congress of Soviets confirmed the transfer of power and passed several decrees submitted to it by Lenin, including one that socialized nonpeasant private land. It also formed a new provisional government, chaired by Lenin, that was to administer until the Constituent Assembly convened.

In Moscow the Bolshevik coup met with armed resistance from cadets and students, but they were eventually overcome. In the other cities of Russia soldiers, lured by Bolshevik slogans of immediate peace, crushed the opposition. The march to power was facilitated by the ambivalence of the Mensheviks and Socialists Revolutionaries who, though opposed to the October coup, feared a right-wing counterrevolution more than Bolshevism and discouraged physical resistance to it.

The Bolshevik dictatorship

Although Lenin and Trotsky had carried out the October coup in the name of soviets, they intended from the beginning to concentrate all power in the hands of the ruling organs of the Bolshevik Party. The resulting novel arrangement-the prototype of all totalitarian regimes-vested actual sovereignty in the hands of a private organization, called "the Party," which, however, exercised it indirectly, through state institutions. Bolsheviks held leading posts in the state: no decisions could be taken and no laws passed without their consent. The legislative organs, centred in the soviets, merely rubber-stamped Bolshevik orders. The state apparatus was headed by a cabinet called the Council of Peoples' Commissars ( Sovnarkom), chaired by Lenin, all of whose members were drawn from the elite of the Party.

The Bolsheviks were solemnly committed to convening and respecting the will of the Constituent Assembly, which was to be elected in November 1917 on a universal franchise. Realizing that they had no chance of winning a majority, they procrastinated under various pretexts but eventually allowed the elections to proceed. The results gave a majority (40.4 percent) of the 41.7 million votes cast to the Socialists Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks received 24 percent of the ballots. They allowed the assembly to meet for one day (January 5 [January 18, New Style], 1918) and then shut it down. The dispersal of the first democratically elected national legislature in Russian history marked the onset of the Bolshevik dictatorship. In the months that followed, one party after another was outlawed, non-Bolshevik newspapers and journals closed, and all overt opposition suppressed by a new secret police, the Cheka, which was given unlimited authority to arrest and shoot at its discretion suspected "counterrevolutionaries." The Peasant Union, representing four-fifths of the country's population, which had opposed the October coup, was subverted from within and replaced by an organization created and run by Bolsheviks.

In March 1918 the Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) in order to distinguish it from Social Democratic parties in Russia and Europe and to separate the followers of Lenin from those affiliated with the nonrevolutionary Socialist International. The party was directed by a Central Committee. To streamline work, from March 1919 onward its management was entrusted to the Secretariat, the Organizational Bureau (Orgburo), and the Political Bureau (Politburo). The Secretariat and Orgburo dealt largely with personnel matters, while the Politburo combined legislative and executive powers.

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From the beginning of the 20th century there were three principal revolutionary parties in Russia. The Socialist Revolutionary Party, whose main base of support was the peasantry, was heavily influenced by anarchism and resorted to political terror. In the first decade of the century, members of this party assassinated thousands of government officials, hoping in this way to bring down the government.

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(Vol. III) Herodotus

94 Rawlinson p482 H & W Thus Athens and Aegina grappled together in p247 war. But the Persian was going about his own business; for his servant was ever reminding them to remember the Athenians,​ 1 and the Pisistratidae were at his elbow maligning the Athenians, and moreover Darius desired to take this pretext for subduing all the men of Hellas that had not given him earth and water. As for Mardonius, who had fared so ill with his armament, him he dismissed from his command, and appointed other generals to lead his armies against Athens and Eretria, Datis a Mede, and his own nephew Artaphrenes son of Artaphrenes; and the charge he gave them at their departure was, to enslave Athens and Eretria, and bring the slaves into his presence.

95 When these the appointed generals on their way from the king's presence were arrived at the Aleïan plain in Cilicia, bringing with them a host great and well furnished, there they encamped and were overtaken by all the armament of ships that was assigned to each portion; and the transports too for horses came up, that in the year before this Darius had bidden his tributary subjects to make ready. Having cast the horses into these, and embarked the land army in the ships, they sailed to Ionia with six hundred triremes. Thence they held their course not by the mainland and straight towards the Hellespont and Thrace, but setting forth from Samos they sailed by the Icarian sea and from island to island; this, to my thinking, was because they feared above all the voyage round Athos, seeing that in the year past they had come to great disaster by holding their course that way; p249 and moreover Naxos constrained them, in that they had not yet taken it.

98 H & W This done, Datis sailed with his host against Eretria first, taking with him Ionians and Aeolians; and after he had put out thence to sea, there was an earthquake in Delos, the first and last, as the Delians say, before my time. This portent was sent by p251 heaven, as I suppose, to be an omen of the ills that were coming on the world. For in three generations, that is, in the time of Darius son of Hystaspes and Artoxerxes son of Xerxes,​ 4 more ills befel Hellas than in twenty generations before Darius; which ills came in part from the Persians and in part from the wars for preëminence among the chief of the nations themselves. Thus it was no marvel that there should be an earthquake in Delos where none had been ere that. Also there was an oracle concerning Delos, wherein it was written:

Now as touching the names of those three kings, Darius signifies the Doer, Xerxes the Warrior, Artoxerxes the Great Warrior; and such the Greeks would rightly call them in their language.

100 The Eretrians, when they learnt that the Persian host was sailing to attack them, entreated aid from the Athenians. These did not refuse the p253 aid, but gave the Eretrians for their defenders the four thousand tenant farmers that held the land of the Chalcidian horse-breeders.​ 5 But it would seem that all was unstable in the designs of the Eretrians; for they sent to the Athenians for aid, but their counsels were divided; the one part of them planned to leave the city and make for the heights of Euboea, the other part plotted treason in hope so to win advantage for themselves from the Persians. Then Aeschines son of Nothon, who was a leading man in Eretria, out of his knowledge of both designs told those Athenians who had come how matters stood, and entreated them, moreover, to depart to their own country, lest they should perish like the rest; and the Athenians in this followed Aeschines' advice.

101 Rawlinson p488 So they saved themselves by crossing over to Oropus; the Persians in their sailing held their course for Temenos and Choereae and Aegilea, all in Eretrian territory, and having taken possession of these places they straightway disembarked their horses and made preparation to attack their enemies. The Eretrians had no design of coming out and fighting; all their care was to guard their walls, if they could, seeing that it was the prevailing counsel not to leave the city. The walls were stoutly attacked, and for six days many fell on both sides; but on the seventh two Eretrians of repute, Euphorbus son of Alcimachus and Philagrus son of Cineas, betrayed the city to the Persians. These entered the city and plundered and burnt the temples, in p255 revenge for the temples that were burnt at Sardis; moreover they enslaved the townspeople, according to Darius' command.

102 H & W Having subdued Eretria they delayed for a few days, and then sailed to the Attic land, pressing hard forward and thinking that they would do to the Athenians what they had done to the Eretrians; and Marathon​ 6 being the fittest part of Attica for horsemen to ride over, and nearest to Eretria, thither they were guided by Hippias son of Pisistratus.

103 Rawlinson p490 When the Athenians learnt of this, they too marched out to Marathon. Ten generals led them, of whom the tenth was Miltiades, whose father, Cimon son of Stesagoras, had been, as fate would have it, banished from Athens by Pisistratus son of Hippocrates. Being an exile, he had the luck to win the prize for four-horse chariots at Olympia, by this victory gaining the same honour as his mother's son Miltiades had won. At the next Olympiad he was a winner again with the same team of mares, but suffered Pisistratus to be proclaimed victor, for which surrender of his victory he returned to his home under treaty. A third Olympic prize he won with the same team; after that, Pisistratus himself being now dead, fate willed that Miltiades should be slain by Pisistratus' sons; these suborned men and slew him by night in the town-hall. Cimon lies buried outside the city, beyond the road that is called Through the Hollow; and the mares that won him the three Olympic prizes are buried over against his grave. None others save the mares of p257 the Laconian Evagoras had ever achieved the same. Now Stesagoras, the eldest of Cimon's sons, was at that time being brought up in the Chersonese with Miltiades his uncle; but the younger, named Miltiades after that Miltiades who planted a settlement on the Chersonese, was with Cimon himself at Athens.

105 And first, while they were yet in the city, the generals sent as a herald to Sparta Phidippides, an Athenian, and one, moreover, that was a runner of long distances and made that his calling. This man, as he said himself and told the Athenians, when he was in the Parthenian hills above Tegea, met with Pan; who, calling to Phidippides by name, bade him say to the Athenians, "Why is it that ye take no thought for me, that am your friend, and ere now have oft been serviceable to you, and will be so again?" This story the Athenians believed to be true, and when their state won to prosperity they founded a p259 temple of Pan beneath the acropolis, and for that message sought the god's favour with yearly sacrifices and torch-races.

106 Rawlinson p494 H & W But now, at the time when he was sent by the generals and said that Pan had appeared to him, this Phidippides was at Sparta on the day after he left Athens;​ 7 and he came before the rulers and said, "Lacedaemonians, the Athenians entreat you to send them help, and not suffer a most ancient city of Hellas to be brought into bondage by foreigners; for even now Eretria has been enslaved, and Hellas is the weaker by the loss of a notable city." Thus Phidippides gave the message wherewith he was charged, and the Lacedaemonians resolved to send help to the Athenians; but they could not do this immediately, being loath to break their law; for it was the ninth day of the first part of the month, and they would make no expedition (they said) on the ninth day, when the moon was not full. 8

107 So they waited for the full moon. As for the Persians, they were guided to Marathon by Hippias son of Pisistratus. Hippias in the past night had seen a vision in his sleep, wherein he thought that he lay with his own mother; he interpreted this dream to signify that he should return to Athens and recover his power, and so die an old man in his own mother-country. Thus he interpreted the vision; for the nonce, being the Persians' guide, he carried the slaves taken in Eretria to the island of the Styreans called Aeglea; moreover, it was he who made the p261 ships to anchor when they had put in at Marathon, and who set the foreigners in array when they were landed. Now while he dealt with these matters he fell a‑sneezing and a‑coughing more violently than he was wont; he was well stricken in years, and the most of his teeth were loose; whereby the violence of his cough made one of his teeth to fall out. It fell into the sand, and Hippias used all diligence to find it; but the tooth being nowhere to be seen, he said lamentably to them that stood by, "This land is none of ours, nor shall we avail to subdue it; my tooth has all the share of it that was for me."

108 Rawlinson p496 This then Hippias guessed to be the fulfilment of his dream. The Athenians were arrayed in the precinct of Heracles, and now the whole power of the Plataeans came to their aid; for the Plataeans had put themselves under the protection of Athens,​ 9 and the Athenians had taken upon them many labours for their sake. The manner of the Plataeans' so doing was this: - Being hard pressed by the Thebans, they had offered themselves to the first comers, Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides and the Lacedaemonians; but these would not accept them, and said: "We dwell afar off, and such aid as ours would be found but cold comfort to you; for you might be enslaved many times over ere any of us heard of it. We counsel you to put yourselves in the protection of the Athenians, who are your neighbours, and can defend you right well." This counsel the Lacedaemonians gave not so much out of their goodwill to the Plataeans, as because they desired that the Athenians should bring trouble on themselves p263 by making enemies of the Boeotians. The Lacedaemonians, then, gave them this counsel; the Plataeans obeyed it, and when the Athenians were sacrificing to the twelve gods​ 10 they came as suppliants and sat them down by the altar, and so put themselves under protection. Hearing of this the Thebans sent an army against the Plataeans, and the Athenians came to the Plataeans' aid; but when they were about to join general, the Corinthians would not suffer them; as they chanced to be there, they made a reconciliation at the instance of both the parties, and drew a frontier line on the condition that the Thebans should not meddle with such Boeotians as desired not to be reckoned as part and parcel of Boeotia. Having given this judgment the Corinthians took their departure; but when the Athenians were on their way home the Boeotians set upon them and were worsted in the fight. The Athenians then made a frontier beyond that which had been assigned by the Corinthians for the Plataeans, and set the Asopus itself for the Theban border on the side of Plataea and Hysiae. - In the manner aforesaid the Plataeans had put themselves in the protection of the Athenians, and now they came to Marathon to aid them.

109 Rawlinson p498 H & W But the counsels of the Athenian generals were divided; some advised that they should not fight, thinking they were too few to do battle with the Median army, and some, of whom was Miltiades, that they should. Now there was an eleventh that had a vote, namely, that Athenian who had been p265 chosen as polemarch​ 11 by lot, - for by old Athenian custom the polemarch voted among the generals, - and at this time the polemarch was Callimachus of Aphidnae; so their counsels being divided and the worse opinion like to prevail, Miltiades betook himself to this man. "Callimachus," said he, "it is for you to‑day to choose, whether you will enslave Athens, or free her and thereby leave such a memorial for all posterity as was left not even by Harmodius and Aristogiton. For now is Athens in greater peril than ever since she was first a city; and if her people bow their necks to the Medes, their fate is certain, for they will be delivered over to Hippias; but if our city be saved, she may well grow to be the first of Greek cities. How then this can be brought about, and how it comes that the deciding voice in these matters is yours, I will now show you. We ten generals are divided in counsel, some bidding us to fight and some to forbear. Now if we forbear to fight, it is likely that some great schism will rend and shake the courage of our people till they make friends of the Medes; but if we join battle before some at Athens be infected by corruption, then let heaven but deal fairly with us, and we may well win in this fight. It is you that all this concerns; all hangs on you; for if you join yourself to my opinion, you make your country free and your city the first in Hellas; but if you choose the side of them that would persuade us not to fight, you will have wrought the very opposite of the blessings whereof I have spoken."

110 By this plea Miltiades won Callimachus to be his ally; and with the polemarch's vote added it p267 was resolved to fight. Thereafter the generals whose counsel was for fighting made over to Miltiades the day's right of leading that fell to each severally;​ 12 he received it, but would not join battle till the day of his own leadership came round.

114 In this work was slain Callimachus the polemarch, after doing doughty deeds; there too died one of the generals, Stesilaus son of Thrasylaus; moreover, Cynegirus​ 15 son of Euphorion fell there, his hand smitten off by an axe as he laid hold of a ship's poop, and many other famous Athenians.

116 Rawlinson p504 So the Persians sailed round Sunium; but the Athenians marched back with all speed to defend their city, and outstripped the foreigners in their coming; they came from one precinct of Heracles at Marathon, and encamped in another at Cynosarges. The foreign fleet lay a while off Phalerum, which was then the Athenians' arsenal; there they anchored, and thence sailed away back to Asia.

p273 118 Rawlinson p506 Datis journeyed with his army to Asia; and being arrived at Myconos he saw a vision in his sleep. What that vision was, no man says; but as soon as day broke, Datis made search through his ships; and finding in a Phoenician ship a gilt image of Apollo, he enquired whence this plunder had been taken. Learning from what temple it had come, he sailed in his own ship to Delos; where, the Delians being now returned to their island, Datis set the image in the temple, and charged the Delians to carry it away to the Theban place Delium, on the sea‑coast over against Chalcis. This charge given, Datis sailed back. But the Delians never carried that statue away; twenty years after that, the Thebans brought it to Delium, being so commanded by an oracle.

119 When Datis and Artaphrenes touched Asia in their voyage, they carried the enslaved Eretrians inland to Susa. γ Before the Eretrians were taken captive king Darius had been terribly wroth with them for doing him unprovoked wrong; but seeing them brought before him and subject to him, he did them no hurt, but gave them a domain of his own called Ardericca in the Cissian land to dwell in; this place is two hundred and ten furlongs distant from Susa, and forty from the well that is of three kinds, whence men bring up asphalt and salt and oil. This is the manner of their doing it: - a windlass is used in the drawing, with half a skin made fast to it in place of a bucket; therewith he that draws dips into p275 the well, and then pours into a tank, whence what is drawn is poured into another tank, and goes three ways; the asphalt and the salt grow forthwith solid; the oil,​ 16 which the Persians call rhadinace, is dark and evil-smelling. There king Darius planted the Eretrians, and they dwelt in that place till my time, keeping their ancient language. Such was the fate of the Eretrians.

120 Rawlinson p508 After the full moon two thousand Lacedaemonians came to Athens, making so great haste to reach it that they were in Attica on the third day from their leaving Sparta. Albeit they came too late for the battle, yet they desired to see the Medes; and they went to Marathon and saw them. Presently they departed back again, praising the Athenians and their achievement.

121 It is to me a thing marvellous and incredible, that the Alcmeonidae could ever by agreement have held up a shield as a sign for the Persians, desiring to make Athens subject to foreigners and to Hippias; for it is plain to see that they were despot-haters as much as Callias (son of Phaenippus and father of Hipponicus), ay, and even more than he. Callias was the only Athenian who dared buy Pisistratus' possessions when they were put up to auction by the state after Pisistratus' banishment from Athens; and he devised other acts of bitter enmity against him.

This Callias is worthy of all men's remembrance for many reasons: firstly, because he so excellently freed his country, as I have said; 122​ 17 p277 secondly, for what he did at Olympia, where he won a horse-race, and was second in a four-horse chariot-race, having already won a Pythian prize, and was the cynosure of all Hellas for the lavishness of his spending; and thirdly, for his way of behaviour in the matter of his three daughters. For when they were of marriageable age, he gave them a most splendid gift and one very pleasant to them, promising that each of them should wed that husband whom she should choose for herself in all Athens.

125 The Alcmeonidae had been men of renown in old time at Athens, and from the days of Alcmeon​ 18 and also Megacles their renown increased. For when the Lydians sent from Sardis came from Croesus to the Delphic oracle, Alcmeon son of Megacles wrought with and zealously aided them; so Croesus, hearing from the Lydians who visited the oracle of Alcmeon's benefits to himself, sent for him to Sardis, and there made him a gift of as much gold as he could carry away at one time on his person. Such being the gift, Alcmeon planned and practised a device: he donned a wide tunic, leaving a deep fold in it, and shod himself with the most spacious buskins that he could find, and so entered the treasury whither he was guided. There, falling upon a heap of gold-dust, first he packed by his legs as much as gold as his buskins would contain; then he filled the fold of his tunic all full of gold and strewed the dust among the hair of his head, and took more of it into his mouth; till when he came out the treasury, hardly dragging the weight of his buskins, he was like anything rather than a human creature, with his mouth crammed full and his body swollen. When Croesus saw him he fell a‑laughing, and gave him all the gold he already had and as much more again. Thus that family grew very rich, and Alcmeon came to keep four-horse chariots, and won therewith at Olympia.

p281 126 Rawlinson p512 In the next generation Cleisthenes​ 19 the despot of Sicyon raised that house yet higher, so that it grew more famous in Hellas than it had formerly been. For Cleisthenes son of Aristonymus, who was the son of Myron, who was the son of Andreas, had one daughter, whose name was Agariste. He desired to wed her to the best man he could find in Hellas; wherefore, the Olympian games being then toward, wherein he was victor in a race of four-horse chariots, Cleisthenes made a proclamation, bidding whatever Greek thought himself worthy to be his son-in‑law come on the sixtieth day from then or earlier to Sicyon, where (said Cleisthenes) he would make good his promise of marriage in a year from that sixtieth day. Then all the Greeks who were proud of themselves and their country came to ask the lady's hand; whom, having that end in view, Cleisthenes made to contend in running and wrestling.

127 From Italy came Smindyrides of Sybaris, son of Hippocrates, the most luxurious liver of his day (and Sybaris was then at the height of its prosperity), and Damasus of Siris, son of that Amyris who was called The Wise. These came from Italy; from the Ionian Gulf, Amphimnestus son of Epistrophus, an Epidamnian; he was of the Ionian Gulf. From Aetolia came Males, the brother of that Titormus who excelled all Greeks in strength, and fled from the sight of men to the farthest parts of the Aetolian land. From the Peloponnese came Leocedes, son of Phidon the despot of Argos, that Phidon who made weights and measures for the Peloponnesians, 20 p283 and dealt more high-handedly than any other Greek; for he drove out the Elean stewards of the lists, and ordered the contests at Olympia himself; this man's son now came; and Amiantus an Arcadian from Trapezus, son of Lycurgus; and an Azenian from the town of Paeus, Laphanes son of that Euphorion who, as the Arcadian tale relates, gave lodging to the Dioscuri, and from that time forward kept open house for all men; and Onomastus from Elis, son of Agaeus. These came from the Peloponnese itself; from Athens, Megacles, son of that Alcmeon who visited Croesus, and beside him Hippoclides son of Tisandrus, the richest and goodliest man in Athens. From Eretria, which at that time was prosperous, Lysanias; he was the only man from Euboea; from Thessaly came a Scopad, Diactorides of Crannon; and from the Molossians, Alcon.

p285 129 When the day appointed came for the marriage feast to be held and Cleisthenes himself to declare whom he chose out of all, Cleisthenes sacrificed a hundred oxen and gave a feast to the suitors themselves and the whole of Sicyon. After dinner the suitors vied with each other in music and social discourse. As they sat late drinking, Hippoclides, now far outdoing the rest, bade the flute-player play him music, and when the flute-player so did, he began to dance; and he pleased himself marvellous well with his dancing; but Cleisthenes saw the whole business with much disfavour. After a while, Hippoclides bade a table be brought; when it came he danced on it Laconian first and then Attic figures; last of all he rested his head on the table and made gestures with his legs in the air.​ a Now Cleisthenes at the first and the second bout of dancing could no more bear to think of Hippoclides as his son-in‑law, for his dancing and his shamelessness; yet he had held himself in check, not willing to vent his wrath on Hippoclides; but when he saw him making gestures with his legs, he could no longer keep silence, but cried, " 'Tis very well, son of Tisandrus, but you have danced yourself out of your marriage." Whereat quoth the other, "Hippoclides cares nought for that!" which is a byword from that day.

132 After the Persian disaster at Marathon, the fame of Miltiades, which had before been great at Athens, was increased. He asked of the Athenians seventy ships and an army and money, not telling them against what country he would lead them, but saying that he would make them rich men if they followed him; for he would bring them to a country whence they should easily carry away abundance of gold; so he promised when he asked for the ships; which the Athenians, being thus assured, gave him.

134 Rawlinson p520 As far as this all Greeks tell the same story; thenceforward this is the tale as it is told by the Parians themselves: Miltiades (they say) being in a quandary, a Parian slave woman named Timo, who was an under-priestess of the goddesses of the dead, had speech with him; coming before Miltiades, she counselled him, if he set great store by the taking of Paros, to do as she should advise him. Presently, at her advice, he passed through to the hill before the city, and there he climbed over the fence of the precinct of Demeter the Lawgiver, - not being able to open the door, - and having so done went to the shrine, whether to move something that should not be moved, or with some other intent; but when he was at the very door he was seized straightway by panic fear and returned by the same way; and in p291 leaping down from the wall he twisted his thigh, or as some say took a blow on his knee.

135 H & W So Miltiades sailed back home in sorry plight; for he brought no wealth, nor had he won Paros; he had besieged the town for six-and‑twenty days and laid waste the island. The Parians, learning that Timo the under-priestess of the goddesses had been Miltiades' guide, desired to punish her for this, and having now rest from the siege sent messengers to Delphi to enquire if they should put the under-priestess to death for having compassed the taking of her country by guiding its enemies, and revealing to Miltiades the rites that no male should know. But the Pythian priestess forbade them; it was not Timo, she said, that was in fault, but Miltiades was doomed to make an ill end, and an apparition had guided him in these evil courses.

137 Rawlinson p522 Now this is how Miltiades son of Cimon won Lemnos. When the Pelasgians​ 21 were cast out of Attica by the Athenians, whether justly or unjustly, - as to that I can say nothing, beyond what is recorded, namely, that Hecataeus the son of Hegesandrus declares in his history that the act was unjust; for (says Hecataeus) when the Athenians saw the land under Hymettus which, being their own, they had given to the Pelasgians as a dwelling-place in reward for the wall that had once been built round the acropolis, - when the Athenians saw how well this place was tilled which erewhile had been bad and worthless, they grudged and coveted the land, and so drove the Pelasgians out on this and no other pretext. But the Athenians themselves say that their reason for expelling the Pelasgians was just. The Pelasgians, they say, issued out from their settlement at the foot of Hymettus and dealt wrongfully with the Athenians in this wise: neither the Athenians nor any other dwellers in Hellas had as yet servants at that time, and their sons and daughters resorted to the Nine Wells​ 22 for water; and whenever they came, the Pelasgians mistreated them out of mere arrogance and pride. Nor yet were they content with so doing, but at last were caught in the act of planning to attack Athens. The Athenians, by their own showing, dealt so much more rightly than the Pelasgians, that when they might have killed them, caught plotting as they were, they would not so do p295 but bade them depart out of the country. Thereupon the Pelasgians departed, and took Lemnos in possession, besides other places. This is the Athenian story; the other is told by Hecataeus.

138 Rawlinson p524 H & W These Pelasgians, dwelling at that time in Lemnos and desiring vengeance on the Athenians, and well knowing the time of the Athenian festivals, got them fifty-oared ships and lay in ambush for the Athenian women when they were celebrating a festival for Artemis at Brauron;​ b carrying off many of the women, they sailed away further with them and brought them to Lemnos to be their concubines. Now as these women bore more and more children, they taught their sons the speech of Attica and Athenian manners. These boys would not consort with the sons of the Pelasgian women; if one of themselves were beaten by one of the others, they would all run to his aid and help each other; nay, the Athenian-bred boys even claimed to rule the others, and were much the stronger than they. When the Pelasgians perceived that, they took counsel together; and it troubled them much in their counsels to think what the boys would do when they grew to man's estate, if they were resolved to help each other against the sons of the lawful wives and essayed to rule them forthwith. Thereupon the Pelasgians judged it best to slay the sons of the Attic women; and this they did, and slew the boys' mothers likewise. From this and the former deed which was one by the women, when they slew their own husbands who were Thoas' companions, a "Lemnian crime" has been a proverb in Hellas for any deed of cruelty.

p297 139 Rawlinson p526 But when the Pelasgians had slain their own sons and the women, their land brought forth no fruit, nor did their wives and their flocks and herds bear offspring as before. Under stress of hunger and childlessness they sent to Delphi to ask for some way of release from their present ills; and the Pythian priestess bidding them pay the Athenians whatsoever penalty the Athenians themselves would adjudge, the Pelasgians went to Athens and offered to pay the penalty for all their wrong-doing. The Athenians set in their town-hall a couch adorned to the best of their power, with a table thereby covered with all manner of good things, and said to the Pelasgians, "Deliver your land to us in a like state"; whereto the Pelasgians answered, "We will deliver it when a ship shall accomplish her voyage with a north wind from your country to ours in one day"; this they said, well assured that the thing was impossible; for Attica is far to the south of Lemnos.

140 This and no more was then said. But a great many years afterward, when the Chersonese by the Hellespont was made subject to Athens, Miltiades son of Cimon did, by virtue of the Etesian​ 23 winds then constantly blowing, accomplish the voyage from Elaeus on the Chersonese to Lemnos; which done, he issued a proclamation to the Pelasgians bidding them leave their island, reminding them of the oracular word which the Pelasgians thought they would never see fulfilled. The men of Hephaestia, then, obeyed him; but they of Myrina would not agree that the Chersonese was Attic land, and they stood a siege; but in the end they too submitted. Thus did Miltiades and the Athenians take Lemnos in possession.

The Loeb Editor's Notes:

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2 This probably refers to the Persian treatment of rebels, described in chs. 31 and 32.

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3 Apollo and Artemis.

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6 For a detailed discussion of various questions connected with the battle of Marathon, readers are referred to How and Wells, Appendix XVIII .

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7 According to Isocrates the distance traversed was 150 miles.

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8 This statement probably applies only to the month Carneius (Attic Metageitnion), when the Carneia were celebrated at Sparta in honour of Apollo, from the 7th to the 15th of the month.

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9 In 519, according to Thucydides ; Grote gives a later date.

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10 The twelve gods were Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Athene, Ares, Aphrodite, Hermes, Hestia. The was a central altar in the agora, from which distances were measured.

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11 One of the nine archons, all chosen by lot.

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12 Each general seems to have been generalissimo in turn.

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13 There was a fixed official order; but Plutarch's account of the battle places certain tribes according to a different system. Perhaps the battle-order was determined by lot.

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14 e.g. the great Panathenaea, and the festival of Poseidon.

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15 Brother of the poet Aeschylus.

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16 Petroleum.

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17 This chapter is generally held to be an interpolation; it is only found in one (not the best) class of the MSS., and contains un‑Herodotean words and phrases.

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18 Alcmeon 'flourished' about 590; Croesus' reign was 560‑546; it was Megacles son of Alcmeon, and not Alcmeon himself, who was Croesus' contemporary.

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19 Cleisthenes of Sicyon was contemporary with Alcmeon.

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20 P. introduced the "Aeginetan" system of weights and measures. For the chronological difficulty connected with this mention of him, see the commentators.

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21 The Pelasgians were driven into Attica by the Boeotian immigration, about sixty years after the Trojan war according to legend.

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22 S. E. of Athens, near the Ilissus.

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23 North-east winds, blowing in July, August, and September.

Thayer's Notes:

a It took the late twentieth century to make this passage intelligible again: Hippoclides was break-dancing. And times do change: contrast Cleisthenes' reaction with that of St. John Paul II in this video of break dancers performing for him at the Vatican.

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b A good account of the festival and its history, with further citations, is given by the article Brauronia in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.

Lendering's Notes:

α This would be eight metric tons, which is not very likely (and quite impossible in the literal sense of placing the entire amount on an altar) but compare 1.183. The Persians may have identified the prophetic god Apollo, worshipped on Delos, with their own "wise lord" Ahuramazda.

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β Archaeologists have identified a destroyed temple, but their interpretation that this was one of the sanctuaries destroyed by the Persian army is contested.

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γ Cuneiform sources document the existence of colonies of deported people in Babylonia. According to Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 1.23, the descendants of the Eretrians were still a recognizable group in the second quarter of the first century A.D.

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LacusCurtius * Herodotus - Book VI: Chapters 94‑140

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Part of a complete English translation of Herodotus. Site contains many Greek and Latin texts, translations and related material.

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Athens was not entirely alone in its fight against the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in 490 bce. Plataea fought beside Athens, true to the alliance of 519, and the Tomb of the Plataeans, excavated in 1966, probably commemorates the place where they fell. Eretria, which had also sent help to the Ionian revolt, had already been pounced on and destroyed. The reasons for the Persian choice of Marathon, as given by Herodotus, were proximity to Eretria (that is, the Persians wanted a short line of communications) and the good cavalry terrain there. He does not add, however, that a third powerful motive was political. The deposed Peisistratid tyrant Hippias, now a bitter old man, accompanied the Persian forces. (The Peisistratids came originally from eastern Attica.) Cleisthenes, in implementing his democratic reforms after the fall of the tyrants, had perhaps tried to break up old sources of political influence in this region. For instance, Rhamnus, a little to the north of Marathon and a vital coastal garrison site in Classical and Hellenistic times, seems to have been anomalously attributed to a city trittys; and an ancient local organization known as the Marathonian "Four Cities," or Tetrapolis, was broken up among more than one of the new tribes. Reasonably or unreasonably, Hippias was obviously hoping to establish a kind of political bridgehead here by appealing to old bonds of clientship.

The Athenians, however, marched out immediately under Miltiades, who had been recalled a year or two earlier from the Chersonese to help Athens meet the danger. Then, perhaps when the Persian cavalry was temporarily absent, they attacked the Persians "at a run." This last detail impressed itself on the tradition, as it undoubtedly impressed the waiting Persians, and the discovery of Persian arrowheads in the Athenian burial mound makes it possible to supply the explanation that had eluded Herodotus. The Athenian advance was evidently achieved under a hail of arrows; and the quicker the dangerous ground was covered, the better.

The Athenian victory was overwhelming; there were 6,400 Persian casualties to 192 Athenian. It was an important victory for two reasons. First, it showed what lethal damage hoplites could do to Persian forces; this encouraging message was not missed by the Spartans who arrived to view the corpses and departed with patronizing congratulations to the Athenians. Second and more important, it was a propaganda victory, celebrated in all the available media. Marathon soon became an almost mythical event. The Athenian Treasury at Delphi was built out of the spoils of the battle. An ambitious conjecture seeks to equate the 192 Marathon dead with the 192 equestrian figures on the Parthenon frieze. The horses on the frieze would be a difficulty if the idea was to recall the battle in a literal way, because the battle was definitely not a cavalry affair; but it has been ingeniously suggested that the horses were intended to suggest "heroic" status in the technical sense of "hero," or demigod. Heroic cult often involved horses (as perhaps at Lefkandi), and heroic funerals regularly included equestrian events. This interpretation, however, poses problems for two reasons: the frieze was partially destroyed in the 17th century and reconstruction depends on old drawings, and the evidence for actual heroization of the Marathonian dead is late. Other, though not necessarily incompatible, interpretations of the Parthenon frieze are available: perhaps it represents the mythical daughters of Erechtheus, who saved the city by sacrificing themselves, a favourite and familiar theme in Athenian myth.

Still, there is no doubting the symbolic significance of Marathon, or the way in which well after the Persian Wars the victory was exploited in epigram and painting. For instance, there was a famous rendition of the Battle of Marathon in the "Painted Colonnade" at Athens (now lost), which was perhaps commissioned by Miltiades' son Cimon. This was celebratory artistic propaganda, with a far clearer message than that of the Peisitratids. The Battle of Marathon and the Persian Wars must be recognized as an artistic watershed. There was admittedly something splendid about the gesture of sending help to the Ionian revolt, and it has been suggested accordingly that early 5th-century depictions on vases of Theseus attacking the Amazons (inhabitants of Anatolia) may be a coded allusion to Athens' Asiatic adventure of the 490s. The vindictive Athenian treatment of the playwright Phrynichus for referring in a play to the fall of Athens' daughter city Miletus shows, however, that the Ionian revolt was a dangerous subject, not lightly to be treated by pot painters. Marathon was the beginning of an epoch that lasted for centuries, during which Athens asserted its claim to uniqueness on the basis of two things: its achievements in the Persian Wars and (in and after the 4th century) its cultural primacy.

Meanwhile the Persians retreated, and Darius died, to be succeeded in 486 by Xerxes. No Greek could have doubted that Marathon, for all its symbolic importance, was not the end of the matter and that Xerxes would return with a much larger invasion force.

The administration of democracy

The appointment of archons

The internal Athenian reaction to this latest military success of the Cleisthenic democracy was to take the development of that democracy a stage further. First, a change was made in the method of appointment to the chief magistracy, the archonship. From then on the archons were appointed by lot from a preliminary elected list instead of being directly elected, as the stratēgoi continued to be. There were nine archons and a secretary. Three of the archons had special functions: the basileus, or "king"; the polemarchos, originally a military commander (though after the institution of the Cleisthenic stratēgoi, military authority passed to this new panel of 10); and the "eponymous archon," who gave his name to the year. Interpretation of the significance of the change varies according to the view taken of the importance of the archonship itself in the period 508-487; perhaps it was a young man's office and of no great consequence. The period is patchily documented, however, and in any case it would be eccentric to query the distinction of some of the names preserved. The point has a bearing on the composition and authority of the ancient Council of the Areopagus, which was recruited from former archons. The role of the Areopagus was to be much reduced in the late 460s, and if the archonship was after all not especially prestigious, then the importance of that subsequent attack on the Areopagus would be correspondingly reduced. A more substantial reason for thinking that the archonship mattered less after 508 than it had, for instance, under the Peisistratids lies in the "seesaw" argument that the rise of the stratēgia must have led to a fall in the power and prestige of the archonship.

The reform of 487 was probably the first time that lot or "sortition" had been used, though it is possible that Cleisthenes, or even Solon, used it as a device for distributing posts equitably among basically elected magistrates. This would not be unthinkable in the 6th century, when the Athenian state still contained so many aristocratic features; after all, the Romans used sortition in this way, not as a consciously "democratic" procedure but as a way of resolving the competing claims of ambitious individuals. If so, sortition did not necessarily entail a downgrading of the importance of the office of archon. There is a further slight uncertainty about the system of "sortition from an elected shortlist." The usual and probably correct view is that this system was discarded, not long after 457, for the archonship and other offices appointed to by lot in favour of unqualified sortition. But there is enough evidence for the survival of the preliminary stage of election to have encouraged a theory that the hybrid system continued in use down to the 4th century. This, if true, would have serious implications for our picture of Athenian democracy, but the best evidence for the hybrid system is in untypically conservative contexts, such as appointment to deme priesthoods.

A further novelty of the early 480s was the first ostracism. This was a way of getting rid of a man for 10 years without depriving him of his property. First, a vote was taken as to whether an ostracism should be held in principle; if the voters wanted one, a second vote was taken, and, if the total number of votes now cast exceeded 6,000, the "candidate" whose name appeared on the largest number of potsherds, or ostraca, went into this special sort of exile. An obstinate tradition associates the introduction of ostracism with Cleisthenes, but this hardly matters because the evidence is explicit that no ostracism was actually held until 487. The object of this very unusual political weapon has been much discussed; whereas some ancient writers considered it as a way of preventing a revival of the Peisistratid tyranny (hardly a real threat after 490), modern scholars see it as a device for settling policy disputes-that is, as a kind of ad hominem referendum. It is possible, however, to be too rational about ostracism; of the large numbers of ostraca that survive, not all have been completely published, but one can see that their content is sometimes abusive and sometimes obscene. One accuses Cimon of incest with his sister, another says that Pericles' father Xanthippus "does most wrong of all the polluted leaders." The idea of the politician-leader as polluting scapegoat is a recurrent one in Greek political invective, and it is perhaps in terms of invective, or the need for a religious safety valve, that ostracism can best be understood.

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Ancient Greek civilization - Battle of Marathon, Athenians, Persians

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ancient Greek civilization - Ancient Greek civilization - Battle of Marathon, Athenians, Persians: Athens was not entirely alone in its fight against the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in 490 bce. Plataea fought beside Athens, true to the alliance of 519, and the Tomb of the Plataeans, excavated in 1966, probably commemorates the place where they fell.

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When dawn broke one summer morning in 490 B.C., Greek troops stood ready for battle on the coastal plain near Marathon, northeast of Athens. They awaited the charge of their mighty enemy: the powerful hosts of Persia, led by Darius the Great. His relentless expansion was headed westward, toward the heart of the ancient Greek world, a society he aimed to subjugate.

The Battle of Marathon marked a turning point in the wars between Greece and Persia. Prior to this defeat, the Persian Empire seemed unbeatable. Other leaders and other forces had fallen before its might, but the Battle of Marathon revealed that Persia, too, had weaknesses.

The victory became a bright, shining moment in the history of Athens. It inspired numerous legends and tales, including one in which the Athenian hero Theseus visits the battlefield to inspire the Greek forces to beat back their enemies. ( Theseus faced off against the Minotaur in this famous myth.) Millennia later, the battle would even provide an origin story for a long-distance Olympic event: the marathon.

Persian might

The buildup to Marathon began years before, and is chronicled by the fifth-century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus. He wrote about the battle some 30 years after it happened, and his text is one of the main sources on the event.

The mighty Persian Empire was led by Darius I, the third Persian king of the Achaemenid dynasty, who took power around 522 B.C. Persia reached its peak under Darius's rule, as its lands sprawled from Turkey to the edge of India. Darius sought to control the Aegean and moved his forces to conquer parts of the Greek world-including Thrace, Macedonia, Ionia, and the Aegean Islands. ( Under Cyrus the Great, Persia became the world's first superpower.)

By the end of the sixth century B.C., Athens grew alarmed by the westward extension of Persian influence. In 499 B.C. Ionian Greeks revolted against Persia, and Athens moved to support them. The Athenians sent ships and soldiers to aid the rebels and beat back the empire.

A Persian victory at the naval Battle of Lade in 494 crushed the Ionian rebellion, but Darius was infuriated by the Athenians' insolence. He swore revenge. He also must have recognized that the city-state must be subdued in order to control the eastern Mediterranean.

In the summer of 490 B.C., Darius sent 600 ships carrying an army of some 25,000 men over the Aegean, under the command of Admiral Datis. After laying waste to islands and cities, Datis's fleet made landfall on the long beach of Marathon in early September. For the Persians, this battle would have seemed a minor obstacle on their path to controlling the Aegean. For the Greeks, the stakes could not have been higher.

When the news reached Athens, an emergency assembly convened. Their decision was a difficult one. Leaving Athens to fight an army vastly superior in number was extremely dangerous. But waiting for the Persians to come to Athens was not a good option either, as the city's defenses were weak. Sheltering and protecting the entire population of Attica, the region around Athens, would also be impossible.

After much debate, the assembly voted on a proposal put forward by Miltiades, the most charismatic of the 10 commanders leading the Athenian army. Convinced by Miltiades' arguments, the Athenians mobilized and sent a messenger to the Spartans to ask for their aid, as Athens and Sparta had agreed to a mutual defense pact against the Persians. ( Ancient Spartans were bred for battle.)

Armed and dangerous

As the envoy made his way to Sparta to deliver the plea for reinforcements, 10,000 hoplites marched to Marathon. The presence of allies from the central Greek city of Plataea brought the Greek numbers up to around 11,000. In addition to the Plataean battalion, the Greek hosts consisted of 10 battalions, one for each of the tribes or administrative divisions in Athens.

Each hoplite wielded an eight-foot spear made of ash, while his body armor consisted of a breastplate, helmet, and greaves, all made of bronze. The most important defensive item was a large wooden shield covered in bronze. The shield was positioned in such a way that almost half of it extended past the soldier's left side and protected the hoplite standing next to him. This interlocking "wall" of shields protected the hoplite phalanx. The keys to its success were its cohesion and unity: While the wall remained closed, it was virtually impenetrable.

Among the Greek hoplites was 35-year-old Aeschylus, soon to become-along with Euripides and Sophocles-one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens. Aeschylus's experiences in this and other battles would later inspire one of his most famous plays, The Persians. Aeschylus and his brothers-in-arms had cause for trepidation that morning: The Persians, comprising as many as 25,000 soldiers, outnumbered them considerably, and were backed up in the bay behind the battleground by their huge navy.

Among the things that the Greeks most feared were the Persian archers, famous for their skill and accuracy. Even though Greek hoplites were formidable in hand-to-hand combat, hails of Persian arrows had to be endured first. Their adversaries were also buoyed with confidence: Darius I's army was formidable and had enjoyed a string of victories.

Ready for battle

For days, the two armies kept a wary eye on each other from a distance, engaging in nothing more than minor skirmishes. The Athenians were hesitant to march out onto the open plain, where the enemy horsemen could out-flank them and attack from the rear while the Persian archers shot at them from the front. For their part, the Persians did not dare attack the solid position taken up by the Greeks on the mountainside. The Persian leader Datis was mindful that the Spartan reinforcements would arrive soon to support the Athenians. He was losing time.

What Datis did next has puzzled historians: He sent his cavalry onto his boats and sailed them down the coast, presumably in a bid to try and take the undefended city of Athens. His withdrawal of such a vital component of his forces may also have been intended to lure the Athenians into battle with his infantry before the Greeks' Spartan allies arrived.

The Greeks convened a hurried war council at night. Some advocated returning to defend Athens, leaving thousands of enemies at their back. But Miltiades, whose turn it was to command that day, convinced the other nine generals that the best plan was to go out and fight on the plain even though the Spartans had not yet arrived. The Persians were known for their tactic of sending in their cavalry once their enemy had been weakened by repeated waves of arrows. With the cavalry off the scene, the Greeks believed they stood a much better chance of a hoplite-led victory.

On the run

On the morning of September 12, as the priests made sacrifices to the gods and the generals rallied the men in each tribe, the Greeks contemplated who they would be fighting. In the front line were the sparabara, who bore shields the size of doors made of reeds and leather. Behind them were rows of archers who could shoot volleys of arrows so fast that the second was whistling through the air before the first had landed. A Spartan would say years later that when the Persians fired their arrows, they blocked out the sun.

At last, the Athenian troops and their allies took up their shields and advanced. In his Histories, Herodotus vividly described their advance as seen by the incredulous Persians:
The space between the armies was not less than eight stades: and the Persians seeing them advancing to the attack at a run, made preparations to receive them; and in their minds they charged the Athenians with madness which must be fatal, seeing that they were few and yet were pressing forwards at a run, having neither cavalry nor archers.
"Eight stades" is roughly a mile. Herodotus's implication that the Greeks covered all of this distance at a run has been contested by most modern historians, as the weight of their armor and weapons would have left them exhausted. It seems likelier they marched at a normal pace to the point where the Persian arrows could reach them when Miltiades gave the order to charge.

The hoplites' speed minimized the amount of time they were exposed to the barrage of arrows. Such a charge could not have lasted for much more than 30 seconds. Once the dash was over, those hoplites who survived could fight hand to hand and press the advantage of better protection from their sturdier shields.

The hoplites in the front row were driven forward by those behind them and began to press into the enemy, cutting them down as they advanced. The Persians' high-ranking officers were well armed, but the infantry around them began to fall.

Turning point

The center of the Greek lines bore the brunt of the Persian defense. Miltiades had chosen to thin out the ranks in order to extend the line, and so forestall any outflanking maneuvers. Consequently, the Greek troops were only four men deep instead of the usual eight. Overwhelmed, the Athenians in the center lines were unable to contain the enemy. The Persians broke through the center, but the Greek troops on both flanks wheeled inward and surrounded the enemy forces, who were then massacred.

In an attempt to escape from the carnage, the Persians began to break ranks and flee toward their ships, pursued by the Greeks who cut many down as they fled. Some hoplites got too far ahead and so lost the protection provided by their comrades. Among the Greeks who advanced too rapidly was Aeschylus's own brother Cynaegirus, who threw himself onto an enemy ship. Herodotus records that "while taking hold there of the ornament at the stern of a ship, he had his hand cut off with an ax and fell; and many others also of the Athenians who were men of note were killed."

When the fallen were counted, there were fewer than 200 Greek casualties, including one general. Persian losses totaled more than 6,000. Despite this resounding victory, the Athenians had only captured seven Persian ships; some of the Persian navy was already approaching Athens on the boats sent the day before. Datis had managed to get most of the rest of his fleet out of Marathon Bay in his bid to attack Athens from the western coast.

The exhausted Greek troops were marched overland back to the capital. The dash home paid off: Datis did not find the city defenseless, as he had hoped, but protected by the same army that had routed him hours earlier. Realizing it would be suicide to disembark, he gave his ships the order to raise anchor and retreat. Soon after the last Persian boat disappeared over the horizon, Spartan reinforcements arrived to discover it was all over.

Taking stock

At the battleground the Greeks buried their dead. Their sacrifice would become an important part of Athenian heritage: The memory of Marathon would rally Greek spirits when the Persian fleet returned a few years later to try, once again, to subdue Athens.

Historians have no substantial Persian sources to draw upon for the Battle of Marathon. One late classical writer quotes an anonymous Persian soldier, who claims the battle was an "unimportant failure." This assessment was not wide of the mark. The Persian military had been rebuffed, not permanently expelled. Marathon was just the first of a series of harsh tests that the city of Athens had to face. In 480 B.C. the Athenians were forced to watch as Athens was put to the torch by Xerxes, Darius's son.

Nevertheless, Marathon marked the first in a series of spectacular Greek victories in the Greco-Persian wars, culminating in the battles of Salamis in 480 B.C. and Plataea in 479, which finally ended the Persian threat. These events secured Athens militarily and inspired a cultural flowering as well. The victory at Marathon was not only documented in Herodotus's Histories, but also in a wider outpouring of art, sculpture, and architecture. They inspired Aeschylus to write The Persians, his play set in the aftermath of the Persians' final defeat.

So important was the memory of Marathon to Aeschylus that on his death in Sicily in 456 B.C., his epitaph makes no mention of the fact that he had been awarded the prize for the best tragic playwright in the Athenian festival, the Dionysia. It states, instead: "Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus . . . of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak, and the long-haired Persian knows it well."

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The surprise defeat of the mighty Persian Empire in 490 B.C. began the Golden Age of Athens and the Greco-Persian wars.