1803 – In one of the great surprises in diplomatic history, French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand makes an offer to sell all of Louisiana Territory to the United States. Talleyrand was no fool. As the foreign minister to French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, he was one of the most powerful men in the world. Three years earlier, Talleyrand had convinced Napoleon that he could create a new French Empire in North America. The French had long had a tenuous claim to the vast area west of the Mississippi River known as Louisiana Territory. In 1800, Napoleon secretly signed a treaty with Spain that officially gave France full control of the territory. Then he began to prepare France’s mighty army to occupy New Orleans and bolster French dominion. When President Thomas Jefferson learned of Napoleon’s plans in 1802, he was understandably alarmed. Jefferson had long hoped the U.S. would expand westward beyond the Mississippi, but the young American republic was in no position militarily to challenge France for the territory. Jefferson hoped that his minister in France, Robert Livingston, might at least be able to negotiate an agreement whereby Napoleon would give the U.S. control of New Orleans, the gateway to the Mississippi River. At first, the situation looked bleak because Livingston’s initial attempts at reaching a diplomatic agreement failed. In early 1803, Jefferson sent his young Virginia friend James Monroe to Paris to assist Livingston. Fortunately for the U.S., by that time Napoleon’s situation in Europe had changed for the worse. War between France and Great Britain was imminent and Napoleon could no longer spare the military resources needed to secure control of Louisiana Territory. Realizing that the powerful British navy would probably take the territory by force, Napoleon reasoned it would be better to sell Louisiana to the Americans than have it fall into the hands of his enemy. After months of having fruitlessly negotiated over the fate of New Orleans, Livingston again met with Talleyrand on this day in 1803. To Livingston’s immense surprise, this time the cagey French minister coolly asked, “What will you give for the whole?” He meant not the whole of New Orleans, but the whole of Louisiana Territory. Quickly recognizing that this was an offer of potentially immense significance for the U.S., Livingston and Monroe began to discuss France’s proposed cost for the territory. Several weeks later, on April 30, 1803, the American emissaries signed a treaty with France for a purchase of the vast territory for $11,250,000. A little more than two weeks later, Great Britain declared war on France. With the sale of the Louisiana Territory, Napoleon abandoned his dreams of a North American empire, but he also achieved a goal that he thought more important. “The sale [of Louisiana] assures forever the power of the United States,” Napoleon later wrote, “and I have given England a rival who, sooner or later, will humble her pride.”
1856 – Battle of Rivas; Costa Rica beat William Walker’s invading Nicaraguans. The Second Battle of Rivas between Costa Rican militia under General Mora and the Nicaraguan forces of William Walker. The lesser known First Battle of Rivas took place on 29 June 1855 between Walker’s forces and the forces of the Chamorro government of Nicaragua. At the time, a major trade route between New York City and San Francisco ran through southern Nicaragua. Ships from New York would enter the San Juan River from the Atlantic and sail across Lake Nicaragua. People and goods would then be transported by stagecoach over a narrow strip of land near the city of Rivas, before reaching the Pacific and being shipped to San Francisco. The commercial exploitation of this route had been attained from a previous Nicaraguan administration to Wall Street tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Accessory Transit Company. Garrison and Morgan had wrested control of the company from Vanderbilt and then supported Walker’s expedition. Vanderbilt spread rumors that the company was issuing stock illegally in order to depress its value, allowing him to regain controlling interest. In July 1856, Walker set himself up as president of Nicaragua, after conducting a farcical election. As ruler of Nicaragua, Walker then revoked the Transit Company’s charter, claiming that it had violated the agreement, and granted use of the route back to Garrison and Morgan. Outraged, Vanderbilt successfully pressured the U.S. government to withdraw its recognition of Walker’s regime. Walker had also scared his neighbors and American and European investors with talk of further military conquests in Central America. Vanderbilt finance and train a military coalition of these states, led by Costa Rica, and worked to prevent men and supplies from reaching Walker. He also provided defectors from Walker’s army with payments and free passage back to the U.S. Realizing that his position was becoming precarious, he sought support from the Southerners in the U.S. by recasting his campaign as a fight to spread the institution of black slavery, which many American Southern businessmen saw as the basis of their agrarian economy. With this in mind, Walker revoked Nicaragua’s emancipation edict of 1824. This move did increase Walker’s popularity in the South and attracted the attention of Pierre Soulé, an influential New Orleans politician, who campaigned to raise support for Walker’s war. Nevertheless, Walker’s army, thinned by an epidemic of cholera and massive defections, was no match for the Central American coalition and Vanderbilt’s agents. Costa Rican President Juan Rafael Mora watched with great interest as Walker consolidated his forces and power in Nicaragua. Fearing that Walker would become unbeatable and at the urging and backing of Vanderbilt’s business empire Mora declared war, not on Nicaragua, but on Walker and his filibusters, on March 1, 1856. Having been talking about the filibusters for a while, Mora’s (or Don Juanito as he was called) made this declaration in a famous speech that begins with the words, “Countrymen, take your weapons, the time that I’ve been warning you has arrived” (a paraphrase of the opening words of the Marseillaise). Enraged Walker ordered the invasion of Costa Rica and a filibuster force crossed the border into Guanacaste, while the Costa Rican army moved down from the Central Valley in the same direction. With the army traveled the President but command was in the hands of his brothers Jose Joaquin Mora and his brother in law General Cañas. Upon hearing that a small contingent of men were encamped near the city of Guanacaste’s Hacienda Santa Rosa Mora led three thousand of his men to attack. Walker’s men were under the command of Colonel Louis Schlessinger, an inexperienced officer. On March 20, with no sentries posted, Mora’s Costa Ricans surprised and attacked the small group; Schlessinger himself ran away, leaving his troops vulnerable, disorganized, and without leadership. Walker alarmed by the defeat heard unfounded rumors that Mora’s army was going to attack from the North. So he foolishly decided to abandon the key city of the Nicaragua at that time and meet the army from the north. Mora quickly slipped into Rivas with 3,000 men. Walker then, just four days after giving up the city, marched his men back into Rivas to try to take it back. His small force was able to score a number of victories through street to street fighting and were able to create a stalemate at a key building in town, El Mesón de Guerra, the Guerra family home, which was located in the corner of the park, covered the approach to Rivas church; from the towers of the church Walker’s snipers enjoyed a wide firing range. Walker and his surviving soldiers fled to Granada during the night. Several factions inside the Costa Rican Army sought to pursue and kill Walker, thus ending the war. President Mora cancelled the plan, seeing his troops were already battle-worn. Mora wanted to use his resources to bury the dead and take care of the wounded and sick. Although Costa Rica was victorious in the Battle of Rivas, the country could not enjoy the victory. Bodies from the fighting were dumped in the wells of the city causing a huge outbreak of cholera.
1861 – Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard ordered the Federals under the command of Major Robert Anderson to surrender Fort Sumter, but Anderson refused. Anticipating war between North and South, Confederate President Jefferson Davis had ordered Beauregard to clear the harbor forts in Charleston, South Carolina, of Union troops. For three long months, Anderson and his besieged troops had waited for reinforcements at Fort Sumter. Back in Washington, Union naval officer Gustavus Fox raced against time to organize just such a mission.
1862 – Fort Pulaski, guarding the mouth of the Savannah River in Georgia, surrenders after a two-day Union bombardment tears great holes in the massive fort. Fort Pulaski was constructed in 1847 as part of the country’s coastal defense network. The imposing masonry stronghold was named for Polish Count Casimir Pulaski, who was killed at Savannah by British troops during the American Revolution. The Union landed troops on Tybee Island, a mile south of Pulaski, in early 1862 and prepared for an attack. An engineering officer, Captain Quincy Gilmore, spent two months moving heavy artillery into place. These included large smoothbore cannon and smaller, rifled guns that shot conical shells at high speed and with greater accuracy than the larger pieces. The attack began on April 10, and Gilmore’s work paid off. The rifled cannon fired shots that penetrated two feet into Fort Pulaski’s seven-foot-thick walls. By the morning of April 11, two huge gaps had been torn in the fort walls and a group of Federal infantry was poised for an attack. Colonel Charles Olmstead, commander of Fort Pulaski, recognized that further resistance was futile, and he surrendered the fort to Union troops. The Savannah River was sealed and a vital Confederate port was closed, although Savannah itself would not be captured until General William T. Sherman marched across Georgia two and a half years later. The destruction of Fort Pulaski signaled an end to the era of brick fortifications, though, which had been made obsolete by the new rifled artillery.
1862 – The Revenue steamer E. A. Stevens, laying close aboard the USS Monitor, fired four or five rounds at the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia when the latter approached the Union fleet in Hampton Roads. The Virginia had fired a single round at the Stevens. After a historic battle between the Monitor and the Virginia, the first ever between two “ironclads,” the Virginia retreated.
1863 – Battle of Suffolk, VA (Norfleet House).
1865 – Lincoln urged a spirit of generous conciliation during reconstruction.
1865 – Battle of Mobile, AL., evacuated by Confederates.
1890 – Ellis Island was designated as an immigration station.
1898 – American President McKinley asked Congress for a declaration of war against Spain.
1899 – The Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish-American War was declared in effect. Spain ceded Puerto Rico to US.
1899 – The Battle of Pagsanjan was a small skirmish between the 1st Battalion of Sharpshooters, under the command of Brigadier General Charles King, and Philippine Nationalists led by Col. Pedro Caballes during the Laguna Campaign of the Philippine Insurrection. Upon capturing Santa Cruz, General Henry W. Lawton then moved to capture the town of Pagsanjan from the Filipinos. The expedition began at 6 a.m. A battalion of sharpshooters was sent ahead of the command as an advance guard, and as they came within 1.5 miles (2 km) of Pagsanjan, they were fired upon by a small force of Filipinos from hastily built breastworks blocking the road. The sharpshooters returned fire and caused considerable losses to the Filipinos. An artillery piece was then brought up and fired two shrapnel rounds into the breastworks, which were soon abandoned by most of the Filipinos. Some Filipinos remained in the breastworks after the bombardment and were driven out as well after the sharpshooters gave the breastworks another heavy volley. General Lawton and his command then went on to capture Pagsanjan with no further resistance. The next day, Lawton’s command succeeded in capturing Paete and the Laguna Campaign was over and deemed a success.
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