Today In History American Revolution Oct 29, 1777: Hancock resigns as president of Congress John Hancock resigns his position as president of the Continental Congress, due to a prolonged illness, on this day in 1777. Hancock was the first member of the Continental Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence and is perhaps best known for his bold signature on the ground-breaking document. First elected to the Continental Congress in 1774 as a delegate from Massachusetts, Hancock became its president upon the resignation of Peyton Randolph in May 1775. During his tenure as president, Hancock presided over some of the most historic moments of the American Revolution, culminating in the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776. After resigning his position as president, Hancock returned to his home state of Massachusetts, where he continued his work in public service. After helping to establish the states first constitution, Hancock was elected first governor of the commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1780 and served for five years. He declined to run for reelection in 1785, but returned after a two-year absence and was elected governor for a second time in 1787. He held the position until his death in 1793. Hancock will forever be remembered for his bold and defiant signature on the Declaration of Independence, but bold and defiant could also describe the way he lived. The wealthiest colonist in New England, Hancock risked losing everything he had for the cause of American independence. Nothing better exemplifies Hancocks defiance than the first words he spoke after signing the Declaration of Independence. In response to the bounty the British had placed on the heads of prominent revolutionary leaders, Hancock replied, The British ministry can read that name without spectacles; let them double their reward. World War I Oct 29, 1915: Jane Addams writes to Woodrow Wilson about dangers of preparing for war On October 29, 1915, Jane Addams, a leading American social activist, writes to United States President Woodrow Wilson, warning him of the potential dangers of readying the country to enter the First World War. When World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, President Wilson accurately reflected the isolationist view of the majority of Americans when he called the war a cause with which we have nothing to do, whose causes cannot touch us. In the wake of the German sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania in May 1915—which left 1,201 people dead, including 128 Americans—public opinion, along with U.S. governmental policy, began to turn ever more steadily towards entrance into the war against the Central Powers. Before the end of that year, Wilson had issued a call to improve U.S. military preparedness, including a spike in the production of armaments and a twofold increase in the size of the army. Addams, the celebrated founder of Hull House, a social settlement that served as a welfare agency for needy families in Chicago, had also become a leading international voice for peace and the chairwoman of the Women’s Peace Party. In April 1915, she attended the International Congress of Women at The Hague in the Netherlands, an assemblage of women from around the world, including the belligerent nations, who advocated a non-violent method of conflict resolution. Disturbed by Wilson’s call for increased military preparedness, Addams wrote to the president on October 29 of that year in the name of the Women’s Peace Party. Above all, Addams expressed concern that the rich, powerful U.S. was setting an example for other, poorer nations, who would feel compelled to increase their own preparedness and move the world ever further from the ideal of peace and international cooperation. At this crisis of the world, to establish a ‘citizen soldiery’ and enormously to increase our fighting equipment would inevitably make all other nations fear instead of trust us, Adams argued. It has been the proud hope of American citizens who love their kind, a hope nobly expressed in some of your own messages, that to the United States might be granted the unique privilege not only of helping the war-worn world to a lasting peace, but of aiding toward a gradual and proportional lessening of that vast burden of armament which has crushed to poverty the people of the old world. Wilson assured Addams at the time that he had no intention of leading the U.S. into war; he was in fact re-elected that November on the slogan He Kept Us Out of War. By the following spring, however, events—including continued German aggression at sea and an intercepted telegram from the German foreign office proposing an alliance between Germany and Mexico in the case of war with the U.S.—had seemingly conspired to change his mind and to turn the tide of American public opinion more fully toward intervention against the Central Powers. On April 2, 1917, Wilson delivered his war message to Congress; the U.S. formally entered World War I four days later. Addams continued her work with the Women’s Peace Party, which in 1919 became the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). As the WILPF’s first president, she served until 1929; she also assisted Herbert Hoover, head of the American Relief Administration, with that organization’s efforts to provide food supplies for millions in poverty-stricken post-war Europe. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, Addams died four years later; her funeral was held in the courtyard of Hull House. World War II Oct 29, 1942: The British protest against the persecution of Jews On this day in 1942, leading British clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register their outrage over the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany. In a message sent to the meeting, Prime Minister Winston Churchill summed up the sentiments of all present: The systematic cruelties to which the Jewish people-men, women, and children-have been exposed under the Nazi regime are amongst the most terrible events of history, and place an indelible stain upon all who perpetrate and instigate them. Free men and women, Churchill continued, denounce these vile crimes, and when this world struggle ends with the enthronement of human rights, racial persecution will be ended. The very next day, the power of protest over cruelty was made evident elsewhere in Europe. When Gestapo officers in Brussels removed more than 100 Jewish children from a childrens home for deportation, staff members refused to leave the sides of their young charges. Both the staff and the children were removed to a deportation camp set up in Malines. Protests rained down on the Germans, who had occupied the nation for more than two years, including one lodged by the Belgian secretary-general of the Ministry of Justice. The children and staff were returned to the home. Oct 29, 1929: Stock market crashes Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16,410,030 shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression. During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929, a period of wild speculation. By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. Among the other causes of the eventual market collapse were low wages, the proliferation of debt, a weak agriculture, and an excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated. Stock prices began to decline in September and early October 1929, and on October 18 the fall began. Panic set in, and on October 24—Black Thursday—a record 12,894,650 shares were traded. Investment companies and leading bankers attempted to stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock, producing a moderate rally on Friday. On Monday, however, the storm broke anew, and the market went into free fall. Black Monday was followed by Black Tuesday, in which stock prices collapsed completely. After October 29, 1929, stock prices had nowhere to go but up, so there was considerable recovery during succeeding weeks. Overall, however, prices continued to drop as the United States slumped into the Great Depression, and by 1932 stocks were worth only about 20 percent of their value in the summer of 1929. The stock market crash of 1929 was not the sole cause of the Great Depression, but it did act to accelerate the global economic collapse of which it was also a symptom. By 1933, nearly half of Americas banks had failed, and unemployment was approaching 15 million people, or 30 percent of the workforce. It would take World War II, and the massive level of armaments production taken on by the United States, to finally bring the country out of the Depression after a decade of suffering.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 14:19:05 +0000
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