DECEMBER 23 — 1777 Battle of Trenton Pt. 1: Washington draws inspiration for Continental Army from Thomas Paine’s An American Crisis; 1919 Alice Parker patents gas heating furnace; 1883 Maj. Rathbone snaps; 1972 The Immaculate Reception
DECEMBER 23
1777 — Battle of Trenton P. 1: Thomas Paine publishes An American Crisis.
USHistory.org has the full booklet. It addresses the conflict between the good American devoted to civic virtue and the selfish provincial man.
Washington gave this pamphlet to his army, and they needed to hear the words of inspiration in there. General George Washington had written to his cousin recently, telling him he should’ve laid waste to New York City before the Redcoats took hold of it. He regretted not burning the whole city to the ground on his army’s retreat. It was a cold dark long winter.
As I mentioned in my December 19th ep, Congress had denied him funding. They wrote back that they would establish a committee on the subject.
Washington was furious. He wanted No More Meetings! Money, artillery, supplies, clothes, food, now! And he was denied.
Thomas Paine: These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in his crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now, deserves the love and the thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. Unquote.
At the end of the year these enlistments were free to go home as of 1778, which was next week. On some levels this was personal for Washington. He just wasn’t as popular as King George was in New York. And this winter was particularly cold and dark.
While British General William Howe was loving the good life in New York, openly having an affair with one of his officer’s wives, Washington wrote to his brother, “You can form no idea of the perplexity of my situation. No man, I believe, ever had a greater choice of difficulties and less means to extricate himself from them.” An American Crisis, in fact.
But George had a man. This man could turn things around, right now.
And he wasn’t just any man, he was a Honeyman! I’ll get back to that story tomorrow.
Since the only help Washington got was a letter from John Hancock, along with a plate of salted fish, stating that Congress was not going to help, he would need the spy who never was. Meanwhile, Washington’s troops were reading the latest from Thomas Paine, who wrote the formation of American ideals in Common Sense. These were the times of trying the souls indeed. “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem to lightly. It is dearness only that gives everything. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
To be continued.
1986 — Voyager completes global flight. Voyager completed the first nonstop, non-refueled flight around planet Earth. Constructed from carbon fiber tape and paper injected with epoxy resin, this experimental aircraft lifted from Edwards AFB, California shortly after 8:00 am PST on Dec. 14, and on this day nine days later again around 8 a.m., she returned. By the time pilots Dick Rutan and Jeanna Yeager returned 25,000 miles later, they only had five gallons of fuel left in the tank. In fact, about 450 miles away from home, one of the Voyager’s engines went out and the plane dropped from 8500 to 5,000 feet before the alternate engine kicked in.
Dick and Jeana, as well as Dick’s brother and Voyager designer Burt Rutan and crew chief Bruce Evans, earned the Collier Trophy, which is the most prestigious award one can get in the field of aviation. It took them six years to design, and it sits proudly at National Air and Space Museum in D.C.
1947 – The team of Shockley, Brattain and Bardeen invent the transistor. Did if take all three of them? Not if you ask them. John Bardeen was just crazy brilliant, Walter Britain could put just about anything together MacGyver style, and William Shockley saw the bigger picture and knew they were stepping into a gold mine. Once the realized the seemingly endless capabilities of the transistor, Shockley wanted all the glory, since in his mind, it was his idea in the first place. The three men parted ways, only to reunite to accept the 1956 Physics Nobel Peace Prize. In black history news…
1919 – Alice H Parker patents the gas heating furnace. Merry Christmas everyone! And it’s cold outside. Parker absolutely revolutionized the way that millions of people heated up their houses. With her invention, people no longer needed to burn wood in a conventional furnace, which was an idea the fire marshall was never too keen on in the first place.
1883 – Major Rathbone snaps. Henry Reed Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris were with President Abraham Lincoln during his assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater. Days after the Civil War ended, President Abraham Lincoln was taking lots of chances going outside the White House. Though he was constantly getting death threats and had recently dreamt of his own demise, he wasn’t worried about going to social events, such as Our American Cousin that was playing on April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theater. Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln had a hard time finding people who wanted to go with, not so much because Lincoln was a target, it was just that others had plans for that evening.
But diplomat Major Henry Reed Rathbone and his fiancée and stepsister Clara harris, decided to join the President on that fateful night. During the play, Lincoln and the First Lady sat on the left of the stage box overlooking the Ford Theater stage, and Rothbone and Clara sat on the right. John Wilkes Booth, knew the theater like the back of his hand; seeing as though he was a famous actor who had performed here hundreds of times. Booth moved in the stagebox swiftly and shot the president.
Major Rathbone leaped across the stage box to subdue Booth, and Booth dropped the gun, raised the knife he was carrying and stabbed Rathbone through his left arm. We all know what happens next, right? Booth jumped nine feet down on the stage, busted his leg on the way down when the spur of his boot got caught in an American Flag, scream Sic Semter Tyeranis on stage, and hobbled away. When the doctors came, they paid little attention to Major Rathbone and concentrated everything they had on the president. Rathbone wasn’t exactly bleeding to death from the wound, but that’s only because Booth missed a major artery by mere centimeters.
Nonetheless, Rathbone stood by helplessly and bled, and sadly watched the President be taken away from the theater to what would be Lincoln’s death the following morning. That was in 1865. Now, fast forward to 1883. He managed to recover and got back ino politics, but his inability to stop Lincoln’s assassination started really getting to him as time went on. His mental health declined and madness overtook him one night on December 23, 1886, when in a fit of rage he tried to kill his children. Clara tried to stop him and he shot her and stabbed her multiple times, then turned the knife on himself, stabbing himself five times. He survived his suicide and would be sentenced to life in a mental asylum, where he died in 1911.
1972 – The Immaculate Reception! Pittsburgh Steelers V Oakland Raiders for the divisional playoffs. Steelers down 7-6 with mere seconds to go in the game. Steeler QB Terry Bradshaw throws to John Guqua, but the ball bounced off the hands to Raider safety Jack Tatum. As the ball fell forward towards the ground, Steeler fullback Franco harris scooped it up and ran for a game winning touchdown. It was controversial, it was epic, and it led to a bitter feud between the Raiders and Steelers.