April's rains, and pains
Reviewing the most consequential—and costly—month in American history
Welcome back to the This Day newsletter. Each week, a member of our team gathers together bits of America’s past and attempts to find a throughline that might add a little understanding to our current moment.
Before we get going, in our episode about the history of the Girl Scouts cookies, we said we’d let the listeners weigh in on the best cookie. So, here you go. Comment if you voted “other” and make your case!
Here’s what happened over the week ahead in American political history…
April 10
1865: A day after his surrender to Union forces, Confederate General Robert E. Lee addresses his troops for the last time
1866: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City
1957: The Suez Canal is reopened for all shipping after a wreck
1963: 129 American sailors die when the submarine USS Thresher sinks at sea, east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts
1988: The Good Friday Agreement is signed
April 11
1962: Ads appear in Louisiana newspapers offering one-way bus rides to northern cities for Black southerners
1968: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in housing
1976: A controversy arises as Gov. Ronald Reagan warns against agitating for change in Africa
1999: Jack Kevorkian is sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison for the assisted suicide of a person who had Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS
April 12
1844: The Tyler-Texas treaty is signed to annex Texas, leading Mexico to sever diplomatic relations with the United States
1861: The American Civil War begins at Fort Sumter
1941: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt takes an airplane ride in a small plane piloted by Charles “Chief” Anderson, a Black pilot and member of the Tuskegee airmen
1945: Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of a stroke
1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space
April 13
1743: Thomas Jefferson is born at the family's Shadwell Plantation in the British Colony of Virginia
1810: A new canal is being built in Washington, DC in an attempt to give a little logic to the topography of the nation’s capital
1873: More than 60 Black men are murdered in the Colfax massacre
1943: The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1953: CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program Project MKUltra
2012: Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich is nipped by a penguin at the St. Louis Zoo. Seriously.
April 14
1775: The first abolitionist society in the U.S., the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, organizes in Philadelphia.
1865: Abraham Lincoln is assassinated while attending a special performance of the comedy, "Our American Cousin”
1919 : Socialist leader Eugene V Debs is sent to prison for violating the Espionage Act in his opposition to WWI. It wasn’t the first time Debs had been imprisoned — but a year later he would run for president and earn almost 4% of the vote from inside his jail cell
1959: NASA announces the selection of America's first seven astronauts
April 15
1865: Abraham Lincoln dies from wounds suffered the night before in the Petersen House, in Washington
1912: The Titanic sinks
1947: Jackie Robinson breaks MLB's color barrier while playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers
1959: Fidel Castro visits the United States, four months after leading a successful revolution in Cuba
2013: More than 260 people are injured in the Boston Marathon bombing
April 16
1789: George Washington leaves Mount Vernon for his inauguration
1862: Slavery is abolished in the District of Columbia
1863: Abraham Lincoln signs an act admitting West Virginia to the Union
1947: Bernard Baruch first describes the term 'Cold War’ in a speech to the South Carolina House of Representatives
2007: A gunman kills 32 people at Virginia Tech before committing suicide
In which we take the above collection of events and find themes, throughlines, rabbit holes and more. This week it’s Kellie Carter Jackson’s turn at the typewriter.
This week’s connecting the dots is all about the Civil War. Nearly every April from 1861 to 1865 was rough. It was in April of 1861 that the Confederacy fired its first shots at Fort Sumter, effectively kicking off the Civil War that would become the nation’s deadliest war. Make no mistake, the war was fought over slavery. And in April 1862, one year into the war, slavery was abolished in the District of Columbia. The move was strategic. It warned the South of what they could expect: slavery’s abolition.
One year after that, in 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation would free three million of the four million people enslaved. That same year, Abraham Lincoln signed an act admitting West Virginia to the Union—as a free state. Slavery was finally dying a painful death as the war drew to a close. On April 10, 1865 a day after his surrender to Union forces, Confederate General Robert E. Lee addressed his troops for the last time. A war that began in April was now ending in April. But just as the nation was being restored or reconstructed, Lincoln was assassinated while attending a special performance of the comedy, “Our American Cousin.” He would succumb to his wounds just hours after being shot. Given that the American Civil War caused the highest number of casualties of Americans—more than all the other wars that America has fought in combined—is no small thing. It reveals that the greatest threat to our nation is not actually outside forces, but ourselves. If we are not careful, we will be our downfall. Great empires like Rome collapsed from within. So, when writer Wright Thompson argues that we are in some ways still fighting the battles of the Civil War, he’s not wrong. The war over race, class, and even region continues unabated.
There’s an old adage that says, “April showers bring May flowers.” It’s hopeful. The bloodshed of war has seeped into the American soil like rain. But my hope is always is that the lessons of slavery, violence, and greed caution us to cultivate seeds of liberty, unity, and justice for all.
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