JUNE 19 -- 1778 Washington leaves Valley Forge; 1953 Rosenburgs executed for espionage; ELECTIONS: 1856 -- California's Fremont wins first Republican nomination
JUNE 19 1778 – Washing ton leaves Valley Forge. Even though the battles occurred this is where the Continental army camped, and the army was in bad shape. Bloody, starving, diseased, battle-worn, and beaten, the Continental army was ready to surrender to the British. The winter weather was brutal, troops were starving, and cries of beef echoed throughout the camp. There was no help in sight. There were dozens of desertions. Disease debilitated. Death descended in droves. Even General Washington said, “If the army does not get help soon, in all likelihood it will disband”.
What? Quit!?
According to ushistory.org, by February 1778 the weather eased somewhat – moving from brutal to merely miserable. In March, General Nathanael Greene was appointed head of the dismal Commissary Department and magically food and supplies started to trickle in.
By April, Baron Von Steuben, a quirky mercenary who was not really a baron, began to magically transform threadbare troops into a fighting force.
Also in April, the Conway Caval, a plot to remove George Washington from power, was quashed for good. May brought news of French alliance and with it the military and financial support of France. On June 19, 1778, exactly six months after the Americans arrived, a new army anxious to fight the British streamed out of Valley Forge toward New Jersey.
They had been transformed from Rebel into a Mature Army. Like a boss!
1953 – The Rosenbergs fry in the electric chair. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage, relating to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths.
What appears to be an example of the anti-communistic hysteria in America during the 1950s, the Rosenbergs were the first US citizens to be convicted and executed for espionage during peacetime and their case remains controversial to this day. According to confessions by others involved, turns out Ethel was innocent the whole time.
Oops.
1956 -- Fremont wins the first Republican nomination.
Col John Charles Fremont, the Pathfinder as he was nicknamed, led quite the controversial career; he fought in the Mexican-American War and was involved with other western surveys, had his share of disputes with land ownerships in the Sierra foothills, and was Senator from California.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed the state of Main to join the United States as a free state while Missouri would be joined as a slave state, seemed to settle the differences of slavery between the North and the South. But the Kansas-Nebraska Act had recently upset all that, as slave-owners in Missouri headed to Kansas in droves near the Missouri border, working on passing laws to make slavery legal.
But in Topeka, free spoilers opposed the concept of slave power, or the belief that southern states had enough power in Congress to make any new state a slave state, including Kansas. Anyway, I go into Bleeding Kansas on my October 23rd ep, but as you can imagine, it was ugly times in America. Basically the attacks were brutal, and led to more attacks on the Senate floor in D.C., were South Carolina Congressman Preston Smith Brooks savagely beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner nearly to death, details of that on my May 22nd ep.
Anti-slavery activist John Brown led an attack that killed five men in Pottawatomie Creek, that’s on my Oct 16th ep. Congress would declare slavery illegal in Kansas, and President Franklin Pierce would ignore the legislation, and sent in federal troops to stop anti-slavery protests. Anybody but Pierce! That would cost the Young Hickory of the Granite Hills Handsome Frank Pierce the nomination for his own party, and the Democrats would turn towards U.S. Minister to Great Britain James Buchanan of Pennsylvania.
Also running in the 1856 Election, the Native American Party, the American Party, the Known Nothing Party, led by former president Millard “The American Louis Philippe” Fillmore along with another New Yorker, steamboat bigwig George Law. That was interesting simply due to the fact that Fillmore was out of the country when he was nominated, and had not even attended any of the neither Know Nothing nor American party rallies.
So there you have it; Buchanan, Fremont or Fillmore. Ding, ding, it was on. For the first time and only time in U.S. history, a party member would replace a sitting party member, as Old Buck Buchanan, at 174 electoral and 1.8M popular, would beat the Pathfinder, who got 114 electoral and 1.3M. The Republican Party would not win their first presidential election, but the 33% was very impressive. It put the party on the map, and a lawyer from Kentucky would have to win that election in 1860. Meanwhile, Fillmore received 8 electoral votes and 873K popular. Things were just beginning to heat up my friends, as the slavery issue further dominated the north and the south.
There was a civil war already in progress in Kansas, and Buchanan had his hands full. But for now, at the Musical Fund Hall of Philly PA had just ended. The controversial John C. Fremont, the Pathfinder, made the Republican Party’s intentions crystal clear: an end to slavery, and end to polygamy in Merman areas of Utah, and a government funding for a transcontinental that would just give kickbacks to Pacific Railroad Surveys, lost this election.
Fremont’s novelist Allan Nevins wrote in 1939 that he lived a dramatic lifestyle; one of remarkable success and one of dismal failures.
2005 – A very controversial ending to the US Grand Prix. … After 14 Formula One race car drivers withdraw due to safety concerns over the Michelin-made tires on their vehicles, German driver Michael Schumacher wins a less-than-satisfying victory at the United States Grand Prix on June 19, 2005. The race, held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, will go down one of the most controversial Formula One racing events in history.
1962 – Happy birthday Paula Abdul. …From San Fernando she started her career as a cheerleader for the LA Lakers. During the 1980s and 1990s per pop singing and dancing career took off and she scored six number one hits, tying her with Diana Ross. During the 2000s she was a judge on American Idol for eight seasons.
In 2004 straight up! She had a hit and run see what I did there driving her Mercedes in LA but was caught and had to pay a small fine and do some probation.
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