History of the Week: Madison, Newburgh Address, Pocahontas, GOP, St. Patrick, Einstein, Marx, Iraq War &More
“It had long come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them,” observed Leonardo da Vinci. “They went out and happened to things.” Great men make history. Below are some of the important birthdays, deaths, and events that occurred this past week in history.
March 12
538 - Reported date on which Vittigis or Wittigis and his Ostrogoths end the Siege of Rome, leaving Byzantine general Belisarius victorious.
604 - Pope St. Gregory the Great dies. He ransomed prisoners, helped persecuted Jews and plague victims, and sent missionaries to England. A skillful writer and preacher, and possibly the reviser of Gregorian Chant, Gregory is a doctor of the Church.
1925 - Sun Yat-Sen, “Leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party, known as the father of modern China,” dies.
March 13
624 - Muhammed and his Muslim forces defeat the Meccans at the Battle of Badr.
1781 - Astronomer William Herschel discovers the planet Uranus.
1884 - Siege of Khartoum (Sudan) begins. It ended with the slaughter of the British defenders by Al-Mahdi and his forces.
March 14
1590 - King Henry IV of France defeats the Catholic League at the Battle of Ivry during the French wars of religion.
1794 - Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin, revolutionizing the cotton industry.
1879 - Albert Einstein is born in Germany. A mathematician, physicist, and Nobel Prize winner, he was one of the most impactful scientists in history.
1883 - Karl Marx dies. His anti-religious, unrealistic, secular, pernicious philosophy of Communism has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, and the most bloody, tyrannical regimes in history.
March 15
44 BC - Would-be dictator Julius Caesar is stabbed by a crowd of Roman senators led by Caesar’s erstwhile friend Brutus. Caesar had been warned about the Ides of March (the 15th) but ignored the warning.
1820 - Maine becomes a state.
1767 - Andrew Jackson is born. Unfortunately his victory at the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812 made him a national hero, and after losing once to John Quincy Adams he succeeded in becoming the first Democrat president. Jackson openly and proudly violated the Constitution and was responsible for the Trail of Tears, where native tribes were forcibly driven off their land. Jackson was also a brutal slave owner.1
1783 - Washington puts an end to the Newburgh Conspiracy, where American Revolutionary officers had planned to rise up against the Continental Congress in anger over the latter’s continuing inability to meet financial obligations for the army. “Known today as the Newburgh Address, Washington gave an emotional speech to his officers on March 15, 1783. Responding to an anonymous petition which encouraged officers to protest if Congress did not provide the promised pay and pensions, Washington told his troops that the petition had some valid points, that he supported his officers, but the author’s proposed solution of mutiny was not the answer. Washington supported the freedom to express their opinions, and used this very petition to remind his troops what they were fighting for – their freedom.”
The usually stoic Washington, who had so often appeared almost superhuman to his soldiers, could not read them a letter from a congressman without the aid of spectacles. Pulling the spectacles out, he said, “Gentleman, you must pardon me, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in service to my country.” The officers were deeply moved, and some of them began openly weeping. After Washington’s address, the repentant conspirators decided to give their leader “the unanimous thanks of the officers” and the message that “the officers reciprocate his affectionate expressions, with the greatest sincerity of which the human heart is capable.”
1917 - Nicholas II, last czar of Russia, is forced to abdicate during the Communist revolution. He and his family were later murdered.
March 16
1527 - Battle of Khanua or Khanwa between the Mughal Empire’s founder (who won) and a coalition of Rajput rulers.
1751 - Birthday of Founding Father James Madison. “[History] James Madison (1751-1836) was a Founding Father of the United States and the fourth American president, serving in office from 1809 to 1817. An advocate for a strong federal government, the Virginia-born Madison composed the first drafts of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights and earned the nickname ‘Father of the Constitution.’
“In 1792, Madison and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) founded the Democratic-Republican Party, which has been called America’s first opposition political party. When Jefferson became the third U.S. president, Madison served as his secretary of state. In this role, he oversaw the Louisiana Purchase from the French in 1803.” Madison was the fourth U.S. president, leading America during the War of 1812 against Great Britain; during the burning of Washington DC, his wife Dolley famously saved a portrait of George Washington. After his presidency, Madison retired to his Montpelier plantation.
1792 - “Enlightened Despot” King Gustav III of Sweden is fatally shot.
March 17
180 - Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, Stoic philosopher, and persecutor of Christians, dies.
5th century - St. Patrick, the British bishop who converted Ireland to Christianity, dies. His feast day is a major holiday in Ireland and America.
1406 - Influential Muslim Arab historian Ibn Khaldun dies.
1861 - Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy becomes the first King of Italy, an event commemorated as the Unification of Italy, or its modern birth as a single nation.
1905 - Albert Einstein sends in his revolutionary light quantum paper for publication.
1919 - Talented pianist and singer Nat King Cole is born in Alabama.
1942 - Belzec Concentration Camp begins operations. Between 500,000 and 600,000 people were massacred there, mostly Jews.
March 18
1123 - The First Lateran Council opens. The clerics at the council were focused on reforming the Church and resolving the issue of church-state tensions.
1869 - Neville Chamberlain, famous—or infamous—as the British PM who foolishly tried to appease Hitler, is born.
1922 - Trouble-maker Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison by the British.
1940 - “[Chicago Tribune] Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met at the Brenner Pass, where the Italian dictator agreed to join Germany’s war against France and Britain.”
1965 - Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performs history’s first spacewalk.
March 19
1279 - The naval Battle of Yamen occurs between the Song Dynasty and the invading Mongol Yuan Dynasty. It was the end of the Song Dynasty, as the Yuan force was victorious.
1848 - Wyatt Earp, iconic figure of the Wild West and hero of many stories then and since, is born. The lawman and gunfighter is most famous for his role in taking out members of the Clanton-McLaury gang at the OK Corral shootout in 1881, about which you can read here.
1863 - Confederate cruiser SS Georgiana is “sunk off the present day Isle of Palms in 1863 while attempting to breach the Federal blockade of Charleston, South Carolina, while carrying a million dollar cargo.”
1920 - The U.S. Senate rejects the WWI-ending Treaty of Versailles for the second time, including the provision for a UN precursor, the League of Nations. The treaty created many resentments and problems that eventually led to WWII.
2003 - The War in Iraq begins, initiated by U.S. and coalition (mostly UK) forces.
2008 - Actor Paul Scofield, famous for his Shakespearean performances and his portrayal of St. Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons” (see below), for which he won an Oscar, dies.
March 20
1815 - Following his escape from exile on Elba, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte re-enters Paris, beginning his “Hundred Days” of reigning.
1854 - The Republican Party is formed in Wisconsin with the express goal of preventing the spread of slavery.
1873 - Russian composer and piano virtuoso Sergey Rachmaninoff is born (his birthday is April 1 in the reformed calendar).
1933 - “[WIRED] The first Nazi concentration camp is established on the outskirts of Dachau.”
March 21
1349 - Reported date of the Erfurt Massacre, as the German city’s Jewish community was slaughtered by Christians irrationally blaming the Jews for the deadly Black Death plague, despite papal assurances of the Jews’ innocence.
1617 - Pocahontas is buried in Gravesend. A daughter of a Native American Indian chief, as a child, she intervened to save English explorer John Smith and bring peace between the English colonists and the natives. She later converted to Christianity, married John Rolfe, had a son, and went to England, where she died in her early 20s. As the young mother died, she said, “‘Tis enough that the child liveth.”
1804 - Napoleonic Code adopted in France.
1856 - Henry Ossian Flipper is born as a slave in Georgia. He later became the first black American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
1975 - Members of a military coup abolish the 3000-year-old Ethiopian monarchy.
2014 - Russian president Vladimir Putin annexes Crimea.
Did I miss any important events? Let me know in the comments.
See D’Souza’s “Hillary’s America.”
You are such a an excellent and interesting History teacher, Catherine. Thank you for what you do for us all.
Paul Scofield as St. Thomas More standing against the entire court, filled with men who used to be his friends until coward dictated otherwise, is so inspiring! Thank you for including Nat King Cole’s performance of that iconic song. Finally, I had never heard of the Erfurt massacre, which, as a Catholic, makes me so very sad.