1804 – The tradition of the Marine Band serenading the Commandant was established.
1808 – A U.S. law banning the import of slaves comes into effect, but is widely ignored.
1815 – At New Orleans, British commander Sir Edward Pakenham leads an attack against the US fortifications around the city. Under General Andrew Jackson, the US Artillery proves superior, and the British are forced to withdraw in order to await reinforcements.
1862 – U.S.S. Yankee, Lieutenant Eastman, and U.S.S. Anacostia, Lieutenant Oscar C. Badger, exchanged fire with Confederate batteries at Cockpit Point, Potomac River; Yankee was damaged slightly. Attacks by ships of the Potomac Flotilla were instrumental in forcing the withdrawal of strong Confederate emplacements along the river. Batteries at Cockpit and Shipping Point were abandoned by 9 March 1862.
1863 – Confederate General Braxton Bragg and Union General William Rosecrans readjust their troops as the Battle of Murfreesboro continues.
1863 – President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, calling on the Union army to liberate all slaves in states still in rebellion as “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity.” These three million slaves were declared to be “then, thenceforward, and forever free.” The proclamation exempted the border slave states that remained in the Union at the start of the Civil War and all or parts of three Confederate states controlled by the Union army. As a Republican politician, Lincoln had fought to isolate slavery from the new territories, not outlaw it outright, and this policy carried over into his presidency. Even after the Civil War began, Lincoln, though he privately detested slavery, moved cautiously on the emancipation issue. However, in 1862, the federal government began to realize the strategic advantages of emancipation: The liberation of slaves would weaken the Confederacy by depriving it of a major portion of its labor force, which would in turn strengthen the Union by producing an influx of manpower. That year, Congress annulled the fugitive slave laws, prohibited slavery in the U.S. territories, and authorized Lincoln to employ freed slaves in the army. Following the major Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September, Lincoln issued a warning of his intent to issue an Emancipation Proclamation for all states still in rebellion on New Year’s Day. The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the Civil War from a war against secession into a war for “a new birth of freedom,” as Lincoln stated in his Gettysburg Address in 1863. This ideological change discouraged the intervention of France or England on the Confederacy’s behalf and enabled the Union to enlist the 200,000 African-American soldiers and sailors who volunteered to fight between January 1, 1863, and the conclusion of the war. In 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution formally abolished slavery.
1863 – Confederate warships under Major Leon Smith, CSA, defeated Union blockading forces at Galveston in a fierce surprise attack combined with an assault ashore by Confederate troops that resulted in the capture of the Northern Army company stationed there. Smith’s flotilla included the improvised cotton-clad gunboats C.S.S. Bayou City and Neptune, with Army sharpshooting boarding parties embarked, and tenders John F. Carr and Lucy Gwin. The Union squadron under Commander William B. Renshaw, U.S.S. Harriet Lane, Owasco, Corypheus, Sachem, Clifton, and Westfield, was caught off guard. Despite the surprise, Harriet Lane, Commander Jonathan M. Wainwright, put up a gallant fight. She rammed Bayou City, but without much damage. In turn she was rammed by Neptune, which was so damaged by the resulting impact and a shot from Harriet Lane taken at the waterline that she sank in 8 feet of water. Bayou City, meanwhile, turned and rammed Harriet Lane so heavily that the two ships could not be separated. The troops from the cotton-clad clambered over the bulwarks to board Harriet Lane. Commander Wainwright was killed in the wild hand-to-hand combat and his ship was captured. In the meantime, Westfield, Commander Renshaw, had run aground in Bolivar Channel prior to the action, could not be gotten off, and was destroyed to prevent her capture. Renshaw and a boat crew were killed when Westfield blew up prematurely. The small ships comprising the remainder of the blockading force ran through heavy Confederate fire from ashore and stood out to sea. Surprise and boldness in execution, as often in the long history of warfare, had won another victory. The tribute paid by Major General John Bankhead Magruder, CSA, was well deserved. “The alacrity with which officers and men, all of them totally unacquainted with this novel kind of service, some of whom had never seen a ship before, volunteered for an enterprise so extraordinarily and apparently desperate in its character, and the bold and dashing manner in which the plan was executed, are certainly deserving of the highest praise.”
1883-William Jacob Donovan, American lawyer and director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), was born in Buffalo, N.Y. Distinguished service in World War I won him medals and the nickname Wild Bill Donovan. He was prominent in Republican politics and served (1925-29) in the office of the Attorney General. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent him on foreign missions, and in 1942 he was made head of the newly created OSS, which he made into a formidable and successful intelligence agency. Donovan was given the rank of major general and served until 1945, and later returned to public service as ambassador to Thailand (1953-54). His enthusiasm for covert operations and paramilitary interventions helped shape the psychology of the Central Intelligence Agency, which replaced the OSS as the premier U.S. intelligence agency in 1947.
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