Free Republic

On June 10, 1964, Everett Dirksen (R-IL), the Republican Leader in the U.S. Senate, condemned the Democrats’ 57-day filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Leading the Democrats in their opposition to civil rights for African-Americans was Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), who got into politics as a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan. At 9:51 on the morning of June 10, 1964, Senator Byrd completed an address that he had begun 14 hours and 13 minutes earlier. Democrats still call Robert Byrd “the conscience of the Senate.”

The first modern income tax was levied in Britain between 1799 and 1816 to fund the Napoleonic wars, but it did not become permanent until 1874. Similarly the United States adopted a like measure during the Civil War, but it was not institutionalized until the ratification of the 16th amendment to the Constitution in 1913. Related: tax protester Sixteenth Amendment arguments. When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. ~ Frédéric...

September 13th and 14th mark the anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812, remembered primarily for the unsuccessful British bombardment of Fort McHenry and Francis Scott Key's penning the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner" while interned on a British warship. President James Madison had declared war on Great Britain in June 1812 in response to interference with American shipping and the impressment of U.S. merchant seamen during the Napoleonic wars, as well as the British stirring up the Indians of the Ohio Valley to resist American settlement. Following an abortive American invasion of southern Canada, the...

September 7 is the anniversary of the battle of Borodino in 1812, at which Napoleon's Grande Armée grappled bitterly with massed Russian forces defending Moscow under Marshal Mikhail Kutusov during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Kutusov suffered significant losses, and the French occupied Moscow a week later, but in a month, Napoleon's disastrous retreat toward the west had begun. As Tolstoy noted in War and Peace, "The cudgel of the people's war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic might, and caring nothing for good taste and procedure, with dull-witted simplicity but sound judgment, it rose and fell, making no...

June 18 is the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo in 1815, in which British forces under the Duke of Wellington and the Prussians under Field Marshal Blücher decisively defeated the French under Napoleon to end the "Hundred Days Campaign." After the allies took Paris in March 1814, Napoleon was initially exiled to Elba. A year later, however, he returned to France amid great acclaim, re-entered Paris, declared himself emperor again, and retook command of the French armies to renew the struggle. Four days after the debacle at Waterloo - which Wellington described as "the nearest-run thing you ever saw...

May 8th is the anniversary of V.E. Day (for "Victory in Europe") in 1945, and commemorates the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces, ending World War II in Europe. With Adolf Hitler dead by his own hand, German military leaders signed surrender documents at several locations in Europe on May 7, capitulating to each of their victorious foes. Germany’s partner in fascism, Italy, had switched sides in 1943, though many Italians continued to fight alongside their German comrades in Italy. Upon entering the war in December 1941, the United States had agreed on a “Europe first” strategy:...

Paul Revere gets all of the credit, but he never actually finished that famous ride, and in fact warned the British that the Americans were coming. William Dawes and Samuel Prescott were left out of the poem and subsequently most elementary history books: it was actually Samuel Prescott who completed the midnight ride. In addition to Dawes and Prescott, dozens of other men helped spread the word that night. Revere started other express riders on their way before leaving Boston, and he also alerted others along his journey. They too began riding, or shot guns and rang church bells to...

The first modern income tax was levied in Britain between 1799 and 1816 to fund the Napoleonic wars, but it did not become permanent until 1874. Similarly the United States adopted a like measure during the Civil War, but it was not institutionalized until the ratification of the 16th amendment to the Constitution in 1913. When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. ~ Frédéric Bastiat A government that robs Peter...

Although he actually died at 7:30 the following morning, today is the anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) on 14 April 1865, only five days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Lincoln was very fond of the theater, and that evening, he and Mrs. Lincoln - likely in a celebratory mood because of the end of the Civil War - attended a performance of the comedy, "Our American Cousin", by English playwright Tom Taylor at Ford's Theater on 10th Street NW in Washington. There, following the intermission, actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth managed to gain access...

Everyone has posted the speech itself (and it's included here), but the background information is also interesting - not only the situation in America at the time, but also the extent to which the structure of the speech mimics (draws from?) Thucydides' account of Pericles' 430 B.C funeral oration at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War. Today is the anniversary of President Lincoln's delivery of his few "brief remarks" at the dedication of the new national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, only four or so months after the great Civil War battle there that emerged as "the...

It's President James Garfield's birthday - when he was shot, Alexander Graham Bell showed up with a metal detector to try to locate the bullet. Born in Moreland Hills, Ohio to a widowed farm wife, Garfield worked at a series of menial jobs but eventually attended Williams College, graduating in 1856. He entered politics as a Republican and served in the Ohio State Senate until the outbreak of the Civil War, in which he saw combat as a Union major general. In 1862 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served in that body until 1880, after...

Today is the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, 11 November 1918, when at the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month, the First World War came to an end after more than four years of carnage. (Armistice Day became Veterans' Day in 1954.) Described by British historian Corelli Barnett as a war that had "causes but no objectives, "the "Great War" left a legacy of disillusionment in its wake and made a shambles of the rest of the 20th century. All told, there were ten million military dead and seven million civilians killed. The resulting economic collapse,...

October 21 is Trafalgar Day, the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar and the death of England's greatest naval hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson, on 21 October 1805. Fought off the southwest coast of Spain, Trafalgar was the greatest naval victory of the Napoleonic wars and essentially destroyed the sea power of France in a single engagement. Nelson and the British fleet had been blockading the French and Spanish fleet under Villeneuve in Cadiz after pursuing it to the Caribbean and back. When Villeneuve finally emerged to give battle, Nelson, depending on the superior seamanship and fighting skill of his "band...

Quotations from Friedman, variously attributed: Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government-- in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player. The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion...

Today is the anniversary of the denouement of the nearly-forgotten "20th of July" plot in 1944, when a courageous, but incredibly quixotic, group of old-fashioned German patriots under the leadership of Army officer Count Claus von Stauffenberg sought to achieve a compromise end to World War II in Europe by assassinating Adolf Hitler in his headquarters at Rastenburg, East Prussia, preparatory to opening peace negotiations with the western allies (i.e., excluding Russia). The conspiracy involved a number of high-ranking officers, including Generals Ludwig Beck and Friedrich Obert, but collapsed when a bomb placed by Stauffenberg himself failed to kill Hitler,...

The Night of the Long Knives was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders. When Hitler rose to power in early 1933, he owed much of his success to the muscle of his Nazi Storm Troopers, the SA, a violent, ruthless army headed by Ernst Röhm, Hitler’s long-time friend. Röhm and his Storm Troopers brought Germany into submission by gaining control of the streets gangster-style and violently eliminating Hitler’s political enemies. However, a threatening, revolutionary force was no longer useful now...

June 28 is the anniversary of two days that might be said to mark the beginning and end of the First World War. It's the anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife - heirs to the Austrian throne - by Serbian radical Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914, the proximate cause of the beginning of the war. If you're interested in further information on the subject there are hundreds of books and films - the best books I know of (and I'm no expert) are Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August (this won a...

I'd like to ask for email and publicity support to fight proposed gun restrictions where I live - Loudoun County, VA. There' hasn't been a lot written about this incident, but it turns out someone was target shooting in Loudoun County, Virginia on May 5, 2018 and some bullets hit three houses. Nobody was hurt, thankfully. It appears (again, limited reporting) as if the Loudoun County Sheriff's Department knows who was doing the shooting, but is not planning to prosecute them. It's not clear why that's the case - several state laws were clearly violated, including reckless endangerment. Why are...

June 18 is the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo in 1815, in which British forces under the Duke of Wellington and the Prussians under Field Marshal Blücher decisively defeated the French under Napoleon to end the "Hundred Days Campaign." After the allies took Paris in March 1814, Napoleon was initially exiled to Elba. A year later, however, he returned to France amid great acclaim, re-entered Paris, declared himself emperor again, and retook command of the French armies to renew the struggle. Four days after the debacle at Waterloo - which Wellington described as "the nearest-run thing you ever saw...

The Magna Carta (the "Great Charter"), the basis of the thesis that leaders are not above the law, the beginning of the path from absolute monarchy to the rule of law, and an important foundation of our Anglo-Saxon liberties, was signed on June 15, 1215 by England's King John at Runnymede, south of London. John, the youngest son of Henry II, reigned from 1199 to 1216 and aroused fierce opposition in both the nobility and the church for his high-handed authoritarianism. The resulting bloodless rebellion ended when John - under compulsion - signed the Great Charter, drafted in Latin by...