Hello, Hiram!
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History February 24 - March 2.
All Jefferson Davis wanted was to lead a country separate from the United States where he was free to enslave black people and enrich himself, his family, and his fellow white man.
Well, the Civil War didn’t turn out the way he wanted, and instead, Jeff was a First and Only kinda guy.
To add to those challenges, his home state of Mississippi decided it wanted to make history, so it elected the first Black United States senator, Hiram Revels, on February 25, 1870.
Revels was born free in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1827. He later moved to Ohio, where he attended seminary and became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. During the Civil War, he recruited and organized Black regiments for the Union Army, demonstrating leadership and commitment to the cause of freedom. After the war, he settled in Mississippi and became a prominent educator and politician.
The Mississippi state legislature was much different from the one before, which had seceded from the Union and overwhelmingly supported Revels with a vote of 81-15. When Hiram arrived in Washington, DC, his election was met with fierce opposition from Southern Democrats, who still desperately wanted to be Confederates and tried to prevent seating him.
He ultimately won, and during his brief tenure in the Senate, he advocated for civil rights, education, and reconciliation between the North and South before leaving office in 1871. It’s too bad we know so little about Hiram and too much about Davis.
Okay, let's highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events celebrate their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here's what I got:
1. A 312-foot pneumatic subway was opened in New York City on February 26, 1870. The system was called the “Beach Pneumatic Transit,” named after the guy Al Beach, who invented the process of using hydraulics to move a train down the tracks. I had to look up the word pneumatic, and there is no way I know how to pronounce it. Funding for a larger version never materialized, so that’s why we have a boring subway system powered by electricity.
2. The U.S. Congress authorized the first census on March 1, 1790. Mandated by the Constitution, the census counted people using six questions, much like federal employees sending a random citizen five bullet points on what they did last week. The first census counted over 3 million citizens, but George Washington and Thomas Jefferson thought it undercounted people, which is probably a correct assumption due to a few factors, like being unable to reach everyone
3. Yahoo! was incorporated on March 1, 1995. Remember when Yahoo! was the king of the internet? Neither does Google. I still have a Yahoo email address.
As we begin year Five of Okay History, Anonymous and I will take time off starting tomorrow as we fly down to our special island. Blue will be staycationing with our dog sitter, which means he will eat a steady diet of peanut butter for the next week.
The good news is that this is the week that I focus on reading. I’ll try to work on some essays, but I need to take advantage of the break, especially taking care of Anonymous, whose spy job has been especially challenging recently.
Have a great week, and thanks for the support. See you soon!
Okay,
Chris
