AceHistoryDesk – Today in History – On December 7, 1941: The U.S.S. Arizona was completely destroyed and the U.S.S. Oklahoma capsized. A total of twelve ships sank or were beached in the attack and nine additional vessels were damaged. More than 160 aircraft were destroyed and more than 150 others damaged.

Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Dec.07: 2023: History Today News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe

AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT DRILL.

A hurried dispatch from the ranking United States naval officer in Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, Commander in Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, to all major navy commands and fleet units provided the first official word of the attack at the ill-prepared Pearl Harbor base. It said simply:

The following day, in an address to a joint session of Congress, President Franklin Roosevelt called December 7, 1941 “a date which will live in infamy.” Congress then declared War on Japan, abandoning the nation’s isolationism policy and ushering the United States into World War II. Within days, Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States, and the country began a rapid transition to a wartime economy by building up armaments in support of military campaigns in the Pacific, North Africa, and Europe.

Also on the day following Pearl Harbor, Alan Lomax, head of the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song, sent a telegram to colleagues around the U.S. asking them to collect people’s immediate reactions to the bombing. Over the next few days prominent folklorists such as John Lomax, John Henry Faulk, Charles Todd, Robert Sonkin, and Lewis Jonesresponded by recording “man on the street” interviews in New York, North Carolina, Texas, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. They interviewed salesmen, electricians, janitors, oilmen, cabdrivers, housewives, students, soldiers, physicians, and others regarding the events of December 7. Among the interviewees was a California woman then visiting her family in Dallas, Texas.

“My first thought was what a great pity that… another nation should be added to those aggressors who strove to limit our freedom. I find myself at the age of eighty, an old woman, hanging on to the tail of the world, trying to keep up. I do not want the driver’s seat. But the eternal verities–there are certain things that I wish to express: one thing that I am very sure of is that hatred is death, but love is light. I want to contribute to the civilization of the world but…when I look at the holocaust that is going on in the world today, I’m almost ready to let go…”

““Man-on-the-Street,” Dallas Texas, December 9, 1941.” Lena Jameson, Interviewee; John Lomax, interviewer; Dallas, Texas, December 9 & 10, 1941. After the Day of Infamy: “Man-on-the-Street” Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor. American Folklife Centernone

The Office of War Information (OWI) capitalized on the fear and outrage associated with the bombings to encourage support of war mobilization.

Created in June 1942, some six months after the air raid on Pearl Harbor, the OWI served as a U.S. government propaganda agency generating pictures and copy such as the above photograph of Pearl Harbor widows. Concentrating on subjects like aircraft factories, training for war, women in the workforce, and the armed forces, the OWI documented and celebrated American patriotism in the military and on the home front.

The Memory Gallery of American Treasures of the Library of Congresscontains an annotated script of a December 7, 1941, NBC news report on the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The script preserves the announcer’s markings for emphasis. The “program analysis” index card outlines all of the network’s news broadcasts of that day, including the break in regularly scheduled programming to announce the tragic news from Pearl Harbor.

Other NBC documentation at the Library outlines nearly every program heard over the network during the World War II era. Recordings of more than half of these programs are held by the Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division.

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AceHistoryDesk – Today in History – On December 6, 1864, Abraham Lincoln nominated Salmon P. Chase for chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; he was sworn in on December 15. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Chase studied law under Attorney General William Wirt.

Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Dec.06: 2023: History Today News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe

Salmon P. Chase

He championed Sunday schools and temperance in the 1830s, and by the 1840s was an active member of the abolitionist movement. Chase defended fugitive slaves in Ohio and played a key role in creating the Free Soil Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories. With Free Soil support, Chase was elected to the Senate early in 1849.

Chase founded the Ohio Republican party and next served as the state’s first Republican governor from 1855 to 1859. In office, he vigorously opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and defended the rights of African Americans.

At the 1860 Republican convention, Chase permitted delegates pledged to support him to cast decisive votes for Abraham Lincoln. As a reward, in 1861–just two days after beginning his second term as senator, Chase left the Senate to serve as Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury.

Chase continued to support African Americans. He drafted the first two clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Signed into law in 1868, the amendment extended citizenship rights to all people born or naturalized in the United States.

In a letter to the Colored People’s Educational Monument Association, Chase asserted:

Our national experience has demonstrated that public order reposes most securely on the broad basis of universal suffrage. It has proved, also, that universal suffrage is the surest broad basis of universal guarantee and most powerful stimulus of individual, social, and political progress. May it not prove, moreover, in that work of re-organization which now engages the thoughts of all patriotic men, that universal suffrage is the best reconciler of the most comprehensive lenity with the most perfect public security and the most speedy and certain revival of general prosperity?

Letter from Hon. Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the United States. Wakefield, R.I., August 16, 1865. [To Williams Syphax and J.F. Cook, Committee]. In Celebration by the Colored People’s Educational Monument Association in Memory of Abraham Lincoln on the Fourth of July, 1865…. Washington, D.C.: McGill & Witherow, printers 1865. p. 9 African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection. Rare Book and Special Collections Divisionnone

During his time as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court—where he served until his death–Chase presided over the Senate’s impeachment trial and acquittal of President Andrew Johnson. Chase suffered a stroke and died on May 7, 1873. He was honored with a formal state funeral. Originally buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C., he was later reinterred in Spring Grove Cemetery in Ohio, the state that he served.

Learn More

• Explore the Salmon P. Chase Papers to learn more about the life of this man who served in many significant positions from governor of Ohio to a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. A Timelinehighlights notable events.
• Read The Address and Reply on the Presentation of A Testimonial to S. P. Chase.” This 1845 document from African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection records a ceremony honoring Chase for his defense of escaped slave Samuel Watson.
• View the feature on Chase in the January This Month in Business History.
• For a less-than-flattering review of Chase’s performance on the campaign trail read page 92 of H.P. Hall’s Observations: being more or less a history of political contests in Minnesota from 1849 to 1904. A prominent Minnesota journalist, Harlan Page Hall’s memoir is available through the collection Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820 to 1910.
• Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress includes approximately 20,000 online documents. Search on Salmon P. Chaseto view correspondence regarding the statesman.
• Read a letter from Chase to Mrs. Abraham Lincoln on the occasion of Lincoln’s taking the oath of office during his second inauguration.
• Search the phrase Salmon P. Chase in Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers to find newspaper articles throughout his career.

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December 5, 1782, in Kinderhook, New York. Just five feet six inches tall, with reddish-blond hair, Van Buren earned the nicknames “The Little Magician” and the “Red Fox of Kinderhook” for his legendary skill in political manipulation. Alongside his gift for politics, however, Van Buren harboured a sense of idealism that helped lead him, late in his career, to oppose the westward expansion of slavery.

Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Dec.05: 2023: History Today News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe

The Little Magician

Van Buren rose to national fame under the wing of Andrew Jackson, who defeated President John Quincy Adams in Adams’ 1828 bid for a second term. Before coming to Washington as a senator in 1821, Van Buren crafted the powerful New York political machine known as the “Albany Regency.” In 1825, he put his formidable political skills at Jackson’s disposal.

Having assembled the coalition that made possible “Old Hickory”‘s ascension to the presidency in 1828, Van Buren was rewarded with an appointment as secretary of state. The election, the first in which a candidate directly appealed for the popular vote, marked a turning point in American politics and confirmed the emergence of the Democratic Party as heir to the Jeffersonian Republicans.

When Jackson sought a second term in 1832, he chose Van Buren for vice president, and Van Buren was nominated at the Democrats’ first official national convention. On January 13, 1833, Jackson wrote a letterto his soon-to-be second-in-command reiterating his determination to stand firm in the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33. The letter also reveals the president’s personal relationship with Van Buren, then his most trusted advisor. “I have recd. several letters from you which remain unanswered,” he begins:

You know I am a bad correspondent at any time–lately I have been indisposed by cold, & surrounded with the nullifiers of the South, & the Indians in the South, & West; that has occupied all my time, not leaving me a moment for private friendship, or political discussion with a friend.

In 1837, Van Buren succeeded Jackson in the White House. Almost immediately, the Panic of 1837 sent the national economy into a tailspin.

Van Buren’s inability to alleviate the depression, along with his opposition to the annexation of Texas on grounds it would divide the nation over the expansion of slavery, led to his drubbing by Whig candidate William Henry Harrison in 1840. Van Buren retired to Lindenwald, his estate at Kinderhook.

In 1848, he agreed to run for president again on the Free Soil ticket, but was overwhelmingly defeated by Zachary Taylor. As one opposition Whig Party song spoofed him:

Come good Whigs listen to me, and some instruction learn,
While about the race of ’48 I spin you a little yarn,
First on the list stood Kinderhook, that fox so shrewd and sly,
Who swore he’d win the race, or else he’d know the reason why.

Oh, Matty Van! you are a used-up man,
One thing is plain, o’er this land to reign,
Again you never can.

The political race. Air,–“Dearest Maie.” [n. p.] [n. d.]. America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets. Rare Book & Special Collections Divisionnone

He died a prodigal Democrat at Lindenwald in 1862. At the time of his death, the political coalition between Northerners and Southerners that Van Buren had so skillfully assembled had been obliterated by civil war–but the Democratic Party that he helped to found endured to become the world’s oldest political party.

Learn More

• The Martin Van Buren Papers, 1787 to 1910, is one of twenty-three presidential collections in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Included are more than 6000 items spanning his career from the time he was a U.S. senator from New York, through his presidency and the decade thereafter when he made unsuccessful bids to return to the presidency. Featured items include his certificate of appointment as U.S. envoy and minister to Great Britain signed by Andrew Jackson, August 1, 1831.
• Martin Van Buren: A Resource Guide compiles online resources found across the Library of Congress website. It also includes a Selected Bibliography and curated selection of external websites from across the Internet.
• Read Van Buren’s position on one of the burning topics of his day—the distribution of public lands. A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875 reports a speech that Van Buren made in the Senate in May 1826. Search on Van Buren to find this and other documents pertaining to his senatorial career.
• Explore the resource guides for the presidential elections of 1836, 1840, and 1848 in which Van Buren ran as a candidate for president.
• “A Time of Universal Prosperity and What Came of It” discusses the impact of the Panic of 1837 on Michigan citizens. This essay is part of Memorials of a Half-Century by Bela Hubbard. The complete text is available through Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820 to 1910.
• Search on Van Buren in the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection to find more photographs of the president’s Lindenwald estate. Author Washington Irving wrote Rip Van Winkle at Lindenwald and is said to have gathered information there for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
• Search on Van Buren in Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera to find broadsides publicizing several episodes in Van Buren’s political career.

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AceHistoryDesk – Today in History – On December 5, 1776, Phi Beta Kappa, America’s most prestigious undergraduate honor society, was founded. Organized by five students at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, Phi Beta Kappa was the nation’s first Greek letter society. From 1776 to 1780, members met regularly at William and Mary to write, debate, and socialize. They planned the organization’s expansion and established the characteristics typical of American fraternities and sororities: an oath of secrecy, a code of laws, mottoes in Greek and Latin, a badge and a seal, a special handclasp, and an elaborate initiation ritual.

Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Dec.05: 2023: History Today News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe

When the Revolutionary War forced William and Mary to close in 1780, newly formed chapters at Harvard and Yale directed Phi Beta Kappa’s growth and development. By the time the William and Mary chapter was revived in 1851, Phi Beta Kappa was represented at colleges throughout New England.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the once secretive, exclusively male social group had dropped its oath of secrecy, opened its doors to women, and transformed itself into a national honor society dedicated to fostering and recognizing excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.

In 1988 the organization changed its name to The Phi Beta Kappa Society, which today has over 270 chapters.

Membership in the national organization is based on outstanding achievement in the liberal arts and sciences. Approximately ten percent of the nation’s institutions of higher learning have Phi Beta Kappa chapters, with membership typically limited to students in the upper tenth of their graduating class. As of 2022, the society counts six of the nine current U.S. Supreme Court justices and former presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, plus 14 others as members.

Phi Beta Kappa sponsors campus and community activities, fellowships, and service and literary awards. Since 1932, the society has published The American Scholar, a quarterly journal inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1837 Harvard lecture. The journal aspires to Emerson’s ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to world affairs and to books, history, and science.

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AceHistoryDesk – Today in History Fraunces Tavern opened in 1762 as the “Queen’s Head Tavern” and also was known as the “Sign of Queen Charlotte” for its portrait of the queen. Under the proprietorship of Samuel Fraunces, a patriot of African and French extraction born in the French West Indies, the tavern was located across the Bowling Greenfrom the Whitehall Ferry landing. There, a barge waited to carry Washington across the Hudson River to New Jersey and then to Annapolis to resign his commission.

Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Dec.04: 2023: History Today News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe

Goodbye to General Washington with a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you.

I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable. I cannot come to each of you, but shall feel obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.

General George Washington’s Farewell to his Officers. In Memoir of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge–Prepared by Himself, at the Request of His Children. New York: T. Holman, 1858. p. 63none

After British troops evacuated the city on November 25, 1783, Governor George Clinton threw a huge party at Fraunces Tavern in honor of General Washington. On December 1, a display of “fire-works and illuminations” was viewed from the Battery.

All the festivities were reported in the newspaper published by James Rivington, formerly “Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.” With the departure of the British, The Royal Gazette became Rivington’s New-York Gazette, and Universal Advertiser. The December 6, 1783, issue of the newspaper described Washington’s farewell to his officers:

Last Thursday noon (December 4), the principal officers of the army in town assembled at Fraunces Tavern, to take a final leave of their illustrious, gracious, and much loved Comrade, General Washington. The passions of human nature were never more tenderly agitated, than in this interesting and distressful scene…[His] words produced extreme sensibility on both sides…

Rivington’s New-York Gazette, and Universal Advertiser, December 6, 1783.none

According to Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge’s account, General Henry Knox stood closest to General Washington.

As the general concluded his address, the two turned to each other and “suffused in tears…embraced each other in silence.” Then, each of the officers followed suit, afterwards following Washington to the ferry landing where he departed, waving to them from his barge.

General Washington had already issued his Farewell Orders to the Continental Army. The outpouring of emotion and affection for Washington upon his retirement to Mount Vernon for Christmas imposed a heavy burden of reciprocal correspondence. The general authored many letters of recommendation for former soldiers and patriots including a testimonial for Samuel Fraunces, who likely assisted the Continental Army by obtaining intelligence from British army officers frequenting his tavern while New York was under royal government. Fraunces later was employed by Washington as a steward in his presidential households in New York and Philadelphia.

Learn More

• Read Washington’s correspondence. Search the George Washington Papers using the terms Fraunces, Tallmadge, or Knox to find a wealth of material, including documentation of Washington’s expenditures at the tavern. Search the collection using the term Washington farewellto locate more words from Washington at the time of his retirement. View the Timeline and the Essays in the collection for additional biographical information about Washington.
• Search Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774 to 1789 using the term army for material related to the Continental Army, including a documentrepealing “rations, subsistence, or allowances to officers over and above their pay.”
• Search Today in History with the term George Washington to learn more about the first president. Features highlight the president’s birthday, his resignation as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and his death.

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