JUNE 8 — ELECTIONS: National Union Party nominates Lincoln and Johnson for 1864; 1776 Battle of Trois-Riveres; 1867 Happy birthday Frank Lloyd Wright, architecture; 2015 Brookfield Flotating Bridge reopens in Vermont
JUNE 8
1864 — National Union party nominates Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson for the presidential election of 1864.
During this point in the American Civil War, the Democrat party was split between peace Democrats and War Democrats. The Southern states of the Confederate States weren’t voting in the Union election, Former Union Major General of the Potomac George B. McLellan, the same one that Lincoln fired earlier in the war, would be the Democratic notation, but he wasn’t really the face of his party’s peaceful agenda.
The main two things Americans were voting for were, should the war continue, and what’s going to happen to black people afterwards? What if McLellan had won?
Well after the National Union convention was over, the blood continued to spill all over Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, the Union army was still nowhere close to taking Richmond and casualties continue to mount by the thousands. It seemed every family member lost at least a son, a brother, or a father on both sides. McLellan stood a pretty good chance here!
According to battlefield.org, Lincoln had warned his administration of that very reality. “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such grounds that he cannot possibly save it afterwards.”
But as IO said earlier, McLellan, the General from Tennessee, really didn’t represent his party’s platform for peace. But he still can’t take Virginia, and the Confederate States of America wins the war, Arizona and New Mexico will join that union instead of the United States, the Mississippi River is used solely in the south, Kentucky, W. Virginia and Missouri stay with the United States, maybe the Virginia Peninsula if it can be worked out, etc.
But no, in this reality of the multiverse, that’s not what happened for two reasons: one, because the Democratic Party was completely split between war and peace, actually fractioning off to a party called the Copperheads, who were northern Democrats that wanted an end to war without actually bothering to take Richmond.
Totally not going to happen. Then there were the Radical Democrats, led by John Fremont from California. Fremont didn’t win the in last election either, and he wouldn’t win here.
Besides, Lincoln still had Generals Ulysses Grant and William T. Sherman, and in early autumn Sherman took Atlanta. Instantly support for Lincoln spiked. The party chanted “Don’t change a horse in the middle of a stream,” and then the Union army wrapped up the Valley Campaign at Shenandoah to give a sweet victory to Lincoln’s campaign.
The votes came in on November 8, including for the first time Kansas, Nevada and West Virginia. They all voted for Lincoln too! The overwhelming landslide would be 212 electoral and 2.2 million popular for Lincoln, while McLellan would get a petty 21 electoral, with 1.8 popular.
Kentucky and Maryland is all he could take. Vice president Johnson would of course take the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination, April 15 the following year.
1966 – The American Football League
…merges with the National Football League.
Although it maintained separate regular season schedules for the next four seasons from 1966 through 1969, it officially merged before the 1970 to form one league with two conferences. This of course led to the first super bowl! Let me back up a bit.
In 1958, the NFL championship game between the Baltimore colts and New York giants drew 45 million viewers on MNCBC and established pro football as an entertainment commodity to rival baseball. The NFL suddenly had a line of business men waiting to purchase new franchises in new markets, but most were turned away.
Lamar Hunt, the son of an oil tycoon, recruited seven businessmen from cities hungry for pro-football to for a league that would rival the NFL. NFL Commissioner Bert Bell welcomed the idea of a rival, saying that competition would stimulate both leagues.
The NFL expanded just as quickly as the AFL and teams got placed in Minneapolis, Oakland, Los Angeles, Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Buffalo, Boston, Denver and Houston as the original eight AFL cities. In 1965 the New York Jets got Joe Namath from the University of Alabama with the biggest contract in pro football history.
The two leagues started competing over fans, players and coaches, but not players. At least until 1966 when the New York Giants signed kicker Pete Gogolak away from the AFL’s Buffalo Bills. Neither league could afford a bidding war, so owners began talking about a merger. That’s now the NFL became a new league with two separate conferences; the AFC and the NFC. The first two Super Bowls proved the NFC to be the better league, with Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers winning both games.
However in Super Bowl 3, Joe Namath and the Jets upset the favored Baltimore Colts, giving legitimacy to the AFC. These days the Super Bowl is the most watched televised sporting event in the WORLD with more than140 million viewers.
In Canadian news…
1776 – Battle of trios-Rivieres.
…And thanks for nothing canuckleheads on this one. A British army under Quebec Gov. Guy Carleton defeated an attempt by units from the Continental Army under the command of Brig. Gen. William Thompson to stop a British advance up the St. Lawrence River Valley.
The battle occurred as a part of the American colonists’ invasion of Quebec, which had begun in September 1775 with the goal of removing the province from British rule.
Legend, or probably more like folklore, says that Molly Pitcher was there bringing water to the men in battle. But since her existence was never verified, she sits in the folklore category. These days, a site near the Le Jeune Bridge was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1920 in order to commemorate the battle.
1867 – Happy birthday Frank Lloyd Wright,
…one of our great architects, interior designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 100 structures, 532 of which were completed. Wright believed in designing structure that was in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture.
This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater in 1935, who has called Wright the best all-time work of American architecture. Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home, his unique vision for urban planning in the US.
1963 – American Heart Association,
…led by Edward R. Annis, is the first agency to campaign against cigarettes. Yeah, 1963. He went against the King Anderson bill, which would authorize the use of Social Security taxes to pay for heal care benefits for retirees.
2015 – Brookfield Floating Bridge reopens again.
See, the problem with floating bridges is that sometimes a 320’ long wooden bridge that sits on barrels of Styrofoam sink. That’s just the inherent flaw. But the Sunset Lake in Vermont is very deep and back when Luther Adams and his buddies were building it they couldn’t use traditional pilings. Route 65 is the road that crosses Sunset Lake, and since 1820 it’s been closed and reopened seven times.
Mainly because it just looks like someone got their engineering degree from a Cracker Jack box. Not cool if you’re on a motorcycle and you get an unwelcome bath. Not okay. Now this pontoon looks like its open to stay, but it’s not as floaty as it used to be. Some people say it just looks like a regular pontoon bridge and aren’t very impressed by the $2.4 M it took to fix it up.