1801 – Lt Col Commandant William W. Burrows rode with president Thomas Jefferson to look for “a proper place to fix the Marine Barracks on.” President Jefferson was a personal friend of the Commandant, and deeply interested in the welfare of the Corps and accompanied Burrows on horseback on the morning of 31 March. They chose a square in Southeast Washington, bounded by 8th and 9th streets, and a & I streets, because it lay near the Navy Yard and was within easy marching distance of the Capitol.
1814 – In a message to Congress, President Madison recommends the repeal of the Embargo and Non-Importation Acts. This legislation has failed to achieve its purpose, and the repeal is supported by New England, despite the newly developing industries that have been protected by the acts.
1854 – In Tokyo, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade and permitting the establishment of a U.S. consulate in Japan. In July 1853, Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay with a squadron of four U.S. vessels. For a time, Japanese officials refused to speak with Perry, but eventually they accepted letters from U.S. President Millard Fillmore, making the United States the first Western nation to establish relations with Japan since it was declared closed to foreigners in 1683. After giving Japan time to consider the establishment of external relations, Perry returned to Tokyo in March 1854, and on March 31 signed the Treaty of Kanagawa, which opened Japan to trade with the United States, and thus the West. In April 1860, the first Japanese diplomats to visit a foreign power reached Washington, D.C., and remained in the U.S. capital for several weeks discussing expansion of trade with the United States. Perry’s great achievement was widely recognized at the time. Perhaps there is no better praise for this naval veteran of 45 years’ service than the collective memorial sent by the American merchants at Canton to the Commodore in Sept. 1854 on his return trip to the U.S.: “You have conquered the obstinate will of man and, by overturning the cherished policy of an empire, have brought an estranged but culturated people into the family of nations. You have done this without violence, and the world has looked on with admiration to see the barriers of prejudice fall before the flag of our country without the firing of a shot.”
1862 – Skirmishing between Rebels and Union forces took place at Island 10 on the Mississippi River.
1863 - Confederate troops opened a sustained attack and siege of the Union position at Washington, North Carolina. The assaulting forces erected numerous batteries along the Pamlico River in an effort to check the Union Navy. Nonetheless, the senior naval officer, Commander Daven-port, moved quickly to aid the beleaguered Union soldiers. He dispatched all but two gunboats guarding New Bern to Washington and left only one at Plymouth, before the attack was broken up on 16 April, the warships’ heavy gunfire support swung the balance in stopping the Con-federates. In addition, small boats transported desperately needed ammunition to the troops and ultimately it was the waterborne supplies reaching the garrison that induced the Confederates to withdraw.
1865 – The final offensive of the Army of the Potomac gathers steam when Union General Phil Sheridan moves against the left flank of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The limited action set the stage for the Battle of Five Forks on April 1. This engagement took place at the end of the Petersburg line. For 10 months, the Union had laid siege to Lee’s army at Petersburg, but the trenches stretched all the way to Richmond, 25 miles north of Petersburg. Lee’s thinning army attacked Fort Stedman on March 25 in a futile attempt to break the siege, but the Union line held. On March 29, General Ulysses S. Grant, General-in-Chief of the Union Army and the field commander around Petersburg, began moving his men past the western end of Lee’s line. Torrential rains almost delayed the move. Grant planned to send Sheridan against the Confederates on March 31, but called off the operation. Sheridan would not be denied a chance to fight, though. “I am ready to strike out tomorrow and go to smashing things!” he told his officers. They encouraged him to meet with Grant, who consented to begin the move. Near Dinwiddie Court House, Sheridan advanced but was driven back by General George Pickett’s division. Pickett was alerted to the Union advance, and during the night of March 31, he pulled his men back to Five Forks. This set the stage for a major strike by Sheridan on April 1, when the Yankees crushed the Rebel flank and forced Lee to evacuate Richmond and Petersburg.
1870 – Following its ratification by the requisite three-fourths of the states, the 15th Amendment, granting African-American men the right to vote, is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution. Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment reads, “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” One day after it was adopted, Thomas Peterson-Mundy of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, became the first African American to vote under the authority of the 15th Amendment. In 1867, the Republican-dominated Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act, over President Andrew Johnson’s veto, dividing the South into five military districts and outlining how new governments based on universal manhood suffrage were to be established. With the adoption of the 15th Amendment in 1870, a politically mobilized African-American community joined with white allies in the Southern states to elect the Republican Party to power, which brought about radical changes across the South. By late 1870, all the former Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union, and most were controlled by the Republican Party, thanks to the support of African-American voters. In the same year, Hiram Rhoades Revels, a Republican from Natchez, Mississippi, became the first African American ever to sit in Congress. Although African-American Republicans never obtained political office in proportion to their overwhelming electoral majority, Revels and a dozen other African-American men served in Congress during Reconstruction, more than 600 served in state legislatures, and many more held local offices. However, in the late 1870s, the Southern Republican Party vanished with the end of Reconstruction, and Southern state governments effectively nullified the 14th and 15th Amendments, stripping Southern African Americans of the right to vote. It would be nearly a century before the nation would again attempt to establish equal rights for African Americans in the South.
1899 – Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, was captured by American forces. The Capture of Malolos, alternately known as the Battle of Malolos, occurred on Bulacan, during the Philippine-American War. General Arthur MacArthur, Jr.’s division advanced to Malolos along the Manila–Dagupan Railway. By March 30, American forces were advancing on Malolos. Meanwhile, the Aguinaldo government had moved its seat from Malolos to San Isidro, Nueva Ecija.
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