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SEPTEMBER 17 — Battle of Antietam; 1787 Article 1 is signed (what that means to you!); 1957 Louis Armstrong cancels Soviet Union tour; TV Fall LIneup: 1963 The Fugitive, 1964 Bewitched, 1965 Hogan’s Heroes, 1967 Mission Impossible, 1972 MASH; 1964 Mantle makes 2,000 hit
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SEPTEMBER 17
1862 — Battle of Antietam.
…On the Blue side it was George McLellan V Robert E. Lee on the grey side. The result: tactically inconclusive, but strategically a decisive Union victory.
Lee was recently victorious at Manasses, and wanted to keep the momentum going, writing a letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis “we cannot afford to be idle.” Lee wanted to take the state of Maryland and possibly continue up to Pennsylvania, thus ending the war for the Union. Victory in Maryland would lead to international support from England and France, who were at the time nearly officially recognizing the Confederate States of America as an independent nation. The southern cause would be recognized and respected from major European powers, giving the south diplomatic and possibly financial leverage.
But first, the CSA would have to prove itself on the battlefield.
On the other hand, if the Union would be victorious here, USA President Abraham Lincoln was poised to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. And in Maryland, McLellan outgained Lee’s manpower on a ratio of 2:1, with 85,000 troops against Lee’s 40,000. Lee boldly issued Special Orders 191, which split his army into two.
But a copy of SO191, now known as the Lost Orders of the Mariyland Campaign, wound up in the Union hands. So now On September 14, McClellan is ready to take on Lee at the South Mountain. McClellan men overtook three mountains in the area. But on the 15th, the Union surrendered Harper’s Ferry to the Rebels. Now on the 17, McLlellan and Lee meet in Atietam. The fighting was vicious and began early with bloody casualties throughout Miller’s Cornfield and the West Woods.
During the first hour of the battle, one soldier on either side was killed every second. Yup, that’s 3600, all in the first hour. Within a few hours, around 8500 fallen soldiers littred the bloody cornfields. Lee had reinforcements coming from Stonewall Jackson at Harper’s Ferry, and James Longstreet from west of Antietam Creek. McLellan also had union reinforcements. And wave after bloody wave the fighting raged. The Yankees were able to pierce the Confederate center at Old Sunken Road, now called Bloody Lane. 5,000 casualties on one side of Old Sunken Road, 5,000 more casualties on the other side.
By 1:00 in the afternoon, the casualty level reached 17,000. Later in the day, the last major assault by the Yankees pushed through the bridge at Antietam Creek. And just when they started to push the Rebels back, Confederate reinforcements had arrived. The fighting continued and ended in a stalemate. Lee would retreat his army back to Virginia, and as usual, McLellan failed to pursue him. This overcautious on McClellan part would cost him his job, as Lincoln would remove him of command that following November.
As a result of Antietam, the British and French decided not to recognize the CSA as an independent nation. President Lincoln now had the justification he needed to release the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. In all, during the 13 hour battle, there were over 22,000 casualties, making September 17th 1862 as the bloodiest day in American history.
1916 – Happy birthday Oswald Garrison Villard Jr, although you can just call him Mike.
…He was a little ahead of his time in the areas of electrical engineering. He came up with, among other fun things to do with radar, the over-the-horizon radar, which worked by reflecting high frequency radar from the ionosphere.
1787 – Article 1 of the legislative branch is signed.
It did a lot more than just establish a House and a Senate; it would take me all day just to list everything in here. I do want to talk about Section 8, the enumerated powers, that says the Congress shall have the power to set taxes, tariffs, and other means of raising federal revenue and authorizing the expenditure of federal funds for the military, building of roads, in general provide for the Taxing and Spending, the Necessary and Proper Clause and general welfare of the United States, and several other things.
Terms like common defense and general welfare have been construed by such broad ranges it often remains to this day subject to interpretation. Is my general welfare the same as your general welfare? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. What about Clause 5: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures. That’s a tricky one. The letter “C” in the word coin is not capitalized which clearly makes it a verb. So what does it mean to coin money? The same this as to coin a phrase? Pretty much, yes it does. Very vague. Weights and measures? Sure! What are our options here for weighing and measuring, pounds, bushels, ounces, yards, acres, gallons? All the above? Some of the above? What exactly can be coined? We’re talking paper money. It’s the way to go.
Thomas Paine: “of all the various sorts of base coin, paper money is the basest.” Benjamin Franklin was such a solid believer in paper money he called it “coined land.” It’s ideal until the quantity is abused, at which point, to quote Thomas Jefferson in a letter dated 1788 to Edward Carrington, Paper is poverty – it is only the ghost of money and not money itself.
1957 – Louis Armstrong cancels Soviet Union tour.
…Satchmo tells off Ike and the US. During the Cold War, one of America’s racial discrimination events that would eventually lead to a civil rights movement was seen all over the world. It made America look hypocritical the way that people are treated here in this country, so a propaganda tour in order to defend American democracy featuring African American celebrities in the sports and entertainment industries, such as boxer Joe Louis, the Harlem Globetrotters, singer Marian Anderson.
Also among these celebrities was Satchmo, who was ready to tour the Soviet Union. Then the events at Little Rock happened and that changed everything. When crowds of white citizens and armed National Guardsmen physically kept nine African American students from entering the all-white Central High School, Louis Armstrong blew his lid, and not his trumpet. He said, “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell.” He said that Eisenhower had no guts in dealing with the Alabama governor Orval Gaubus, or the ignorant plow boy as Louis called him.
He concluded it’s getting so bad; a colored man hasn’t got any country. For what it’s worth, one year to the day prior, in Kentucky a similar event was happening. African Americans were trying to get into a school in Clay Kentucky, and in this case the National Guard and Kentucky police were sent to restore order and ensure that all pupils of any color were entitled to their right to go to public schools.
New TV shows debute: The Fugitive in 1963, Bewitched in 1964, Hogan’s Heros in 1965, Mission Impossible in 1967, MASH in 1972
1964 –Mickey Mantle gets his 2000th hit and 450th HR, ends with 2415 hits and 536 HRs.
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