Robert E. Lee surrenders
In Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 Confederate troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option.
In retreating from the Union army’s Appomattox Campaign, the Army of Northern Virginia had stumbled through the Virginia countryside stripped of food and supplies. At one point, Union cavalry forces under General Philip Sheridan had actually outrun Lee’s army, blocking their retreat and taking 6,000 prisoners at Sayler’s Creek. Desertions were mounting daily, and by April 8 the Confederates were surrounded with no possibility of escape. On April 9, Lee sent a message to Grant announcing his willingness to surrender. The two generals met in the parlor of the Wilmer McLean home at one o’clock in the afternoon.
Lee and Grant, both holding the highest rank in their respective armies, had known each other slightly during the Mexican War and exchanged awkward personal inquiries. Characteristically, Grant arrived in his muddy field uniform while Lee had turned out in full dress attire, complete with sash and sword. Lee asked for the terms, and Grant hurriedly wrote them out. All officers and men were to be pardoned, and they would be sent home with their private property–most important, the horses, which could be used for a late spring planting. Officers would keep their side arms, and Lee’s starving men would be given Union rations.
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
1947
The Journey of Reconciliation—considered the first Freedom Ride—sets out from D.C.
On April 9, 1947, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sends 16 Black and white activists on a bus ride through the American South to test a recent Supreme Court decision striking down segregation on interstate bus travel. The so-called Journey of Reconciliation, which lasted two weeks, was an important precursor to the Freedom Rides of the 1960s. In Morgan v. Virginia (1946), the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to enforce segregated seating on interstate busses. Shortly after, activist and WWII veteran Wilson A. Head put the ruling to a test and rode a Greyhound bus from Atlanta to Washington, D.C. relatively unscathed. After the success of his trip, CORE treasurer Bayard Rustin saw an opportunity to hold a larger, more confrontational demonstration to raise awareness of the ruling and challenge Jim Crow laws.
ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1962
Rita Moreno becomes the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar
On April 9, 1962, Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno becomes the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar, for her role of Anita in West Side Story (1961). Moreno, who was born in Puerto Rico in 1931 and grew up in Long Island, New York, began acting at a young age, landing her first Broadway role at the age of 13. Later in life, Moreno recalled her early career as a time when the only roles available to her were stereotypes: "The Conchitas and Lolitas in westerns ... it was humiliating, embarrassing stuff." Nonetheless, she was successful, appearing in a supporting role in the The King and I, which won five Academy Awards in 1956.
MIDDLE EAST
2003
Baghdad falls to U.S. forces
On April 9, 2003, just three weeks into the invasion of Iraq, U.S. forces pull down a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, symbolizing the end of the Iraqi president’s long, often brutal reign, and a major early victory for the United States.
GREAT BRITAIN
2005
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles wed
Nearly eight years after Princess Diana’s death in a car crash was mourned the world over, Prince Charles, her widower and heir to the British throne, weds his longtime mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles. The marriage, a private civil ceremony, took place at Windsor Guildhall, 30 miles outside of London. The ceremony was originally supposed to take place on April 8, but had to be rescheduled so as not to conflict with the funeral of Pope John Paul II.
SPACE EXPLORATION
1959
NASA introduces America’s first astronauts
On April 9, 1959, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduces America’s first astronauts to the press: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr. and Donald Slayton.
VIETNAM WAR
1969
“Chicago Eight” plead not guilty to federal conspiracy charges
The Chicago Eight, indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, plead not guilty. The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”); Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; and two lesser known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines.
CRIME
1881
Billy the Kid convicted of murder
After a one-day trial, Billy the Kid is found guilty of murdering the Lincoln County, New Mexico, sheriff and is sentenced to hang. There is no doubt that Billy the Kid did indeed shoot the sheriff, though he had done so in the context of the bloody Lincoln County War, a battle between two powerful groups of ranchers and businessmen fighting for economic control of Lincoln County. When his boss, rancher John Tunstall, was murdered before his eyes in February 1878, the hotheaded young Billy swore vengeance. Unfortunately, the leader of the men who murdered Tunstall was the sheriff of Lincoln County, William Brady. When Billy and his partners murdered the sheriff several months later, they became outlaws, regardless of how corrupt Brady may have been.
ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1859
Mark Twain receives steamboat pilot’s license
On April 9, 1859, a 23-year-old Missouri youth named Samuel Langhorne Clemens receives his steamboat pilot’s license. Clemens had signed on as a pilot’s apprentice in 1857 while on his way to Mississippi. He had been commissioned to write a series of comic travel letters for the Keokuk Daily Post, but after writing five, decided he’d rather be a pilot than a writer. He piloted his own boats for two years, until the Civil War halted steamboat traffic. During his time as a pilot, he picked up the term “Mark Twain,” a boatman’s call noting that the river was only two fathoms deep, the minimum depth for safe navigation. When Clemens returned to writing in 1861, working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, he wrote a humorous travel letter signed by “Mark Twain” and continued to use the pseudonym for nearly 50 years.
ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1939
Marian Anderson sings on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
At the height of the civil rights movement in 1963, these famous words were spoken from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'” But Martin Luther King Jr., was not the first to raise his voice from those steps with a message of hope for America’s future. That distinction belongs to the world-famous contralto Marian Anderson, whose performance at the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939, made a compelling case for the transformative power of music, and in a place typically associated with the power of words.
CRIME
1984
Man attempts to kill wife for money using car bomb
Margaret Backhouse turns the ignition of her husband’s car, setting off a pipe bomb filled with nitroglycerine and shotgun pellets in the small farming community of Horton, England. Hundreds of pellets lacerated her body and practically tore away her legs, but she was relatively lucky in that most of the bomb’s force was deflected away from her. Passersby found Backhouse and brought her to a local hospital, where she was treated and later recovered.
COLD WAR
1987
U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz condemns Soviet spying
Just days before he is to travel to Moscow for talks on arms control and other issues, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz states that he is “damned angry” about possible Soviet spy activity in the American embassy in the Soviet Union. Soviet officials indignantly replied that the espionage charges were “dirty fabrications.”
WORLD WAR II
1942
Troops surrender in Bataan, Philippines, in largest-ever U.S. Surrender
On April 9, 1942, Major General Edward P. King Jr. surrenders at Bataan, Philippines—against General Douglas MacArthur’s orders—and 78,000 troops (66,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans), the largest contingent of U.S. soldiers ever to surrender, are taken captive by the Japanese.
WORLD WAR II
1940
Germany invades Norway and Denmark
On April 9, 1940, German warships enter major Norwegian ports, from Narvik to Oslo, deploying thousands of German troops and occupying Norway. At the same time, German forces occupy Copenhagen, among other Danish cities. German forces were able to slip through the mines Britain had laid around Norwegian ports because local garrisons were ordered to allow the Germans to land unopposed. The order came from a Norwegian commander loyal to Norway’s pro-fascist former foreign minister Vidkun Quisling. Hours after the invasion, the German minister in Oslo demanded Norway’s surrender. The Norwegian government refused, and the Germans responded with a parachute invasion and the establishment of a puppet regime led by Quisling (whose name would become a synonym for “traitor”). Norwegian forces refused to accept German rule in the guise of a Quisling government and continued to fight alongside British troops. But an accelerating German offensive in France led Britain to transfer thousand of soldiers from Norway to France, resulting ultimately in a German victory.
WORLD WAR II
1945
Anti-Nazi theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged
On April 9, 1945, Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged at Flossenburg, only days before the American liberation of the POW camp. The last words of the brilliant and courageous 39-year-old opponent of Nazism were “This is the end—for me, the beginning of life.” Two days after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, lecturer at Berlin University, took to the radio and denounced the Nazi Fuhrerprinzip, the leadership principle that was merely a synonym for dictatorship. Bonhoeffer’s broadcast was cut off before he could finish. Shortly thereafter, he moved to London to pastor a German congregation, while also giving support to the Confessing Church movement in Germany, a declaration by Lutheran and evangelical pastors and theologians that they would not have their churches co-opted by the Nazi government for propagandistic purposes. Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1935 to run a seminary for the Confessing Church; the government closed it in 1937.
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