American History
Isabella (Belle) Boyd – The Story of a Confederate Spy (American Civil War)
On 29th July 1862, Belle Boyd, the confederate spy was arrested by the Union troops for providing valuable information to the confederates during the American Civil War.
Isabella Marie Boyd, popularly known as Belle Boyd was born in Martinsburg, Virginia on 9th May 1844. She attended Mount Washington Female College in Baltimore, Maryland and actively participated in fund raising activities for the Confederacy. In July 1861, the Union forces occupied the city of Martinsburg. However, the Boyd house still openly displayed confederate flags. On noticing this, the Union soldiers tried to enter the house and raise the Union flag. In this process one of the soldiers cursed and Boyd’s mother and Boyd retaliated by shooting him to death. Though she was acquitted of all charges, Union soldiers were posted around her house. From here began her career as a “rebel spy” at the age of 17.
Source: Wikipedia
Boyd used this opportunity to engage in conversations with Union soldiers and obtain valuable information about the federal troops which she delivered to the confederate soldiers via her servant. During the Battle of Winchester she undertook hazardous journey to personally deliver crucial information to the confederates led by General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson which helped him to defeat General Nathaniel Banks’s forces in the war. Boyd’s continued exploits to provide Union secrets to the Confederacy helped her achieve significant fame.
However, she was arrested and imprisoned in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington on 29th July 1862 and was eventually released as part of exchange of prisoners. Again she was arrested in July 1863 and imprisoned for 3 months. After her release she volunteered to courier confidential confederate papers.
In 1864, she sailed for England with letters from the Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The ship was intercepted by a Union vessel. Boyd with the help of Samuel Wylde Hardinge, a naval officer of the Union forces made it possible for the Confederate captain of the vessel to escape. On returning to the United States Hardinge faced court martial for assisting the enemy. Boyd was banished to Canada but she managed to reach England and married Hardinge in August 1964, only to be widowed in early 1965.
In 1865, she published her two-volume memoir of her war time activities, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison.
In 1866 she debuted on the stage in The Lady of Lyons in Manchester. She worked in several plays over the next few years and was proclaimed for her beauty. She retired in 1869 and married John Swainston Hammond. However the marriage was dissolved in 1884.
Boyd returned to the stage to support her family after her third marriage with Nathaniel Rue High of Toledo, Ohio, a stock-company actor. She toured the country staging narratives of her own exploits as a spy.
She died on 11 th June 1900 during her speaking tour in Wisconsin and was buried in the Wisconsin Spring grove Cemetery.
Source: Civil War Trust; American Civil War Story; Encyclopaedia Britannica; National Park Service; The Latin Library
Machu Picchu: Hiram Bingham Discovered the Lost City of the Incas
On July 24th 1911, Hiram Bingham, an academic, explorer and politician from the United States located an ancient Inca settlement in Peru named Machu Picchu.
In 1911, Bingham organized the 1911 Yale Peruvian Expedition to search for the lost city of Vitcos, the last capital of the Incas. The team travelled from Cuzco into the Urubamba Valley and camped at Mandor Pampa. There a local farmer and innkeeper, Melchor Arteaga informed Bingham some excellent ruins on the top of mountain Machu Picchu, which meant “Old Peak” in the native Quechua language.
Next day, on 24 th July 1911 amidst bad weather conditions Bingham climbed to the top of the mountain to reach intricate network of stone structures covered densely with vegetation. This site was nothing but the famed ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu, often called “The Lost City of the Incas,” which has become a legendary site today.
Source: Wikipedia
Following this discovery Bingham returned to Machu Picchu in 1912 for further excavations which were sponsored by both Yale University and the National Geographic Society. Later in 1948 he published a book based on his research findings named “Lost City of the Incas”. The book and Bingham is credited with bringing this lost location of South America back to global attention.
However, Peru has long sought the return of the estimated 40,000 artifacts, including mummies, ceramics and bones that Bingham had excavated and exported from the Machu Picchu site. On 14th September, 2007, an agreement was made between Yale University and the Peruvian government for the return of the objects.
The fact that Bingham was the first to discover Machu Picchu also remains debated. Others who have claimed to come across Machu Picchu earlier include British missionary Thomas Payne, German engineer named J. M. von Hassel and more recently a German named Augusto Berns.
Machu Picchu today stands as one of the greatest man-made wonders stretching across five miles, with over 3,000 stone steps linking its many different levels. The site has been declared a “historical sanctuary” by the Peruvian government and it was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1983.
Source: HistoryToday; Rediscover Machu Picchu; Wired.com; History.com
Treaty of Cession of Manu’a (Deed of Cession of Manuʻa) to the United States – Now a Part of American Samoa
Present day American Samoa is an archipelago located in South Pacific Ocean. It is located south east of the sovereign state of Samoa and east of the International Date Line and south of the equator. American Samoa comprises of five islands and two atolls namely Tutuila, Aunuu, Rose, Swains and the Manua group of Tau, Olosega and Ofu.
Around 4000 years ago, the seafaring Polynesians from South East Asia was the initial inhabitants of this island group. Genealogy and evidence from legends suggests Samoa was governed by the faamatai chiefly system and was involved in war with the islands of Tonga and Fiji.
Source: Wikipedia
Copyright: Creative Commons
Western contact with the Samoan islands began in 1722 with the arrival of Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen. In 1768, French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville named them the Navigator islands. Missionary influence dates back to the 19th century and the western missionaries led by John Williams of the (Congregationalist) London Missionary Society came to Savai’i in 1830.
Soon Britain, USA and Germany engaged in rivalry over the control of the islands. The rivalries were settled by the Treaty of Berlin signed in 1899 in which the Samoan archipelago was divided between Germany and US (Britain relinquished its claim over the islands).
America soon took ownership of the eastern Samoan islands and established a coaling station on Pago Pago Bay in Tutuila Island.
Tui Manuʻa Elisara was the last independent ruler of Manuʻa, and he was forced to cede the island of Manu’a in the deed of cession of Manu’a on 16th July, 1904.
At present American Samoa is an ‘unincorporated territory’ of the United States. This is because the region is not fully bound by the American Constitution. The Samoan Constitution was enacted in 1967 and it upholds the supremacy of Samoan traditional law. An elected governor is the head of the Samoan state. People born in American Samoa are considered as natives (they are not American citizens but US nationals) by the US government and the territory does not have a voting right in the US House of Representatives.
Source: The Commonwealth ; Embassy of the United States; Nations Online; American Samoa Bas Association; Wp Council; New World Encyclopedia
The Niagara Movement – Forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
In the year 1905, African-American scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois spearheaded the formation of The Niagara Movement, a civil rights organization of the African Americans. The movement was founded on 11th July 1905. Being denied entry into any of the hotels on the American side, the first meeting of the group was held on the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls and that was how the movement got its name. Other eminent names associated with this movement include William Monroe Trotter, Fredrick L. McGhee of St. Paul, Minnesota and Charles Edwin Bentley of Chicago.
Source: Wikipedia
The Niagara Movement, a major step towards black militancy was formed primarily to oppose the Accommodation Policy advocated by Booker T. Washington in the Atlanta Compromise of 1895. In his publication The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois had vehemently criticized the conciliatory policies of Washington and his refusal to support black rights. The movement called for the end of racial discrimination and sought equality in education and economic opportunity amongst others.
The movement slowly grew and by 1906 it had spread over 34 states and included 170 members. However, even though the movement managed to attract initial attention it did not manage to have any substantial impact on legislative policies. Despite encountering several difficulties, both external and within the group, annual meetings of the Niagara Movement were held until 1908.
In 1908, a major race riot broke out in Springfield, Illinois in which around 2000 blacks were forced to flee and 8 were killed. Following this riot, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed in 1910 by the black militants with support from the white liberals with an aim to combat racial discrimination. Du Bois , the founding member of the Niagara Movement was appointed the NAACP’s director of publicity and research of NAACP.
The Niagara Movement was suspended in 1910 and NAACP gradually emerged as the principal African-American civil rights organization of the 20th century.
Source: nps.gov; Biography.com; Pbs.org; Encyclopaedia Britannica; TeachingAmericanHistory.org
Matthew Perry’s Expedition: Japan Opened Trade with the West After 200 Years
On 8th July 1853, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry sailed in the Tokyo Bay aboard the frigate Susquehanna along with a squadron of four ships. He represented the US Navy and had reached Japan with an agenda of reviving regular trade and discourse between Japan and the West which were then suspended for a period of 200 years.
Matthew Perry was the younger brother of Oliver Hazard Perry who had led the American’s to victory over the British in the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813. Matthew himself was a leader of a squadron in the Battle against Mexico in which the American’s emerged victorious in 1848.
Source: Wikipedia
Trade relations between the Japan and the West had ceased in 1639 owing to the attempts of Europeans to convert the Japanese to Catholicism as well as the unfair trade practices followed by the West. Only selective trading with Dutch and Chinese ships was allowed thereafter.
During this period all Western powers were trying to expand trade relations in the East, both to access new regions for their manufactured products as well as to obtain supply of raw materials.
Perry was authorized by American President Millard Fillmore to visit Japan and force end the 200 year isolation of Japan from trade. Perry met with the Japanese Emperor and delivered the letter regarding the opening up of trade relations from the American President. He returned to Tokyo, with a larger fleet comprising of 9 ships to obtain an answer from the Japanese Government.
The Treaty of Kanagawa was signed on 31st March 1854 between America and Japan by which ports of Shimoda and Hakodate were opened to trade as well as a US consulate was established in Japan. The first group of Japanese diplomats visited US in 1860 to discuss the scope of the treaty.
Following the Treaty of Kanagawa, similar trade treaties with Russia, Britain, France, and Holland were also signed resulting in regular trade relations, thus putting an end to the 200 year isolation of Japan from the Western powers.
Source: US Department of State; Asia For Educators; PBS.org; MIT.edu; History.com
Blogging on History - An Offbeat Chronicle 