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Highlights for February 6
778 Franco-American alliances signed
During the American War for Independence, representatives from the United States and France sign the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance in Paris.
The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognized the United States as an independent nation and encouraged trade between France and the America, while the Treaty of Alliance provided for a military alliance against Great Britain, stipulating that the absolute independence of the United States be recognized as a condition for peace and that France will be permitted to conquer the British West Indies.
With the treaties, the first entered into by the U.S. government, the Bourbon monarchy of France formalized its commitment to assist the American colonies in their struggle against France's old rival, Great Britain. The eagerness of the French to help the United States was motivated both by an appreciation of the American revolutionaries' democratic ideals and by bitterness at having lost most of their American empire to the British at the conclusion of the French and Indian Wars in 1763.
In 1776, the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee to a diplomatic commission to secure a formal alliance with France. Covert French aid began filtering into the colonies soon after the outbreak of hostilities in 1775, but it was not until the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777 that the French became convinced that the Americans were worth backing in a formal treaty.
On February 6, 1778, the treaties of Amity and Commerce and Alliance were signed, and in May 1778 the Continental Congress ratified them. One month later, war between Britain and France formally began when a British squadron fired on two French ships. During the American Revolution, French naval fleets proved critical in the defeat of the British, which culminated in the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781.
1820 Freed U.S. slaves depart on journey to Africa
The first organized immigration of freed slaves to Africa from the United States departs New York harbor on a journey to Freetown, Sierra Leone, in West Africa. The immigration was largely the work of the American Colonization Society, a U.S. organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to return freed American slaves to Africa. However, the expedition was also partially funded by the U.S. Congress, which in 1819 had appropriated $100,000 to be used in returning displaced Africans, illegally brought to the United States after the abolishment of the slave trade in 1808, to Africa.
The program was modeled after British's efforts to resettle freed slaves in Africa following England's abolishment of the slave trade in 1772. In 1787, the British government settled 300 former slaves and 70 white prostitutes on the Sierra Leone peninsula in West Africa. Within two years, most members of this settlement had died from disease or warfare with the local Temne people. However, in 1792, a second attempt was made when 1,100 freed slaves, mostly individuals who had supported Britain during the American Revolution and were unhappy with their postwar resettlement in Canada, established Freetown under the leadership of British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson.
During the next few decades, thousands of freed slaves came from Canada, the West Indies, and other parts of West Africa to the Sierra Leone Colony, and in 1820 the first freed slaves from the United States arrived at Sierra Leone. In 1821, the American Colonization Society founded the colony of Liberia south of Sierra Leone as a homeland for freed U.S. slaves outside of British jurisdiction.
Most Americans of African descent were not enthusiastic to abandon their homes in the United States for the West African coast. The American Colonization Society also came under attack from American abolitionists, who charged that the removal of freed slaves from the United States strengthened the institution of slavery. However, between 1822 and the American Civil War, some 15,000 African Americans settled in Liberia, which was granted independence by the United States in 1847 under pressure from Great Britain. Liberia was granted official U.S. diplomatic recognition in 1862. It was the first independent democratic republic in African history.
1891; Dalton Gang commits its first train robbery
The members of the Dalton Gang stage an unsuccessful train robbery near Alila, California--an inauspicious beginning to their careers as serious criminals.
Bob, Emmett, and Grat Dalton were only three of Lewis and Adeleine Dalton's 10 sons. The brothers grew up on a succession of Oklahoma and Kansas homesteads during the post-Civil War period, when the region was awash in violence lingering from the war and notorious outlaw bands like the James-Younger Gang. Still, the majority of the Dalton boys became law-abiding citizens, and one of the older brothers, Frank, served as a deputy U.S. marshal.
Ironically, Frank's position in law enforcement brought his younger brothers into lives of crime. When Oklahoma whiskey runners murdered Frank in 1887, Grat took Frank's place as a deputy marshal and recruited Emmett and Bob as assistants. Disillusioned by the fate of their older law-abiding brother, the three Dalton boys showed little respect for the law and began rustling cattle and horses to supplement their income. The brothers soon began to use their official law enforcement powers for their own ends, and in 1888, they killed a man for pursuing Bob's girlfriend.
Such gross abuses of authority did not escape attention for long. By 1890, all three men were discredited as lawmen, though they managed to escape imprisonment. Taking up with some of the same hardcore criminals they had previously sworn to bring to justice, the Daltons decided to expand their criminal operations. Bob and Grat headed to California, leaving Emmett behind in Oklahoma because they felt he was still too young for a life of serious crime. In California, they planned to link up with their brother Bill and become bank and train robbers.
The Dalton Gang's first attempt at train robbery was a fiasco. On February 6, 1891, Bob, Grat, and Bill tried to rob a Southern Pacific train near Alila, California. While Bill kept any passengers from interfering by shooting over their heads, Bob and Grat forced the engineer to show them the location of the cash-carrying express car. When the engineer tried to slip away, one of the brothers shot him in the stomach. Finding the express car on their own, Bob and Grat demanded that the guard inside open the heavy door. The guard refused and began firing down on them from a small spy hole. Thwarted, the brothers finally gave up and rode away.
The Daltons would have done well to heed the ominous signs of that first failed robbery and seek safer pursuits. Instead, they returned to Oklahoma, reunited with young Emmett, and began robbing in earnest. A year later, the gang botched another robbery, boldly attempting to hit two Coffeyville, Kansas, banks at the same time. Townspeople caught them in the act and killed Bob, Grat, and two of their gang members. Emmett was seriously wounded and served 14 years in prison.
Of all the criminal Dalton brothers, only Emmett lived into old age. Freed from prison in 1907, he married and settled in Los Angeles, where he built a successful career in real estate and contracting.
1928 ANASTASIA ARRIVES IN THE U.S.:
On February 6, 1928, a woman calling herself Anastasia Tschaikovsky and claiming to be the youngest daughter of the murdered czar of Russia arrives in New York City. She held a press conference on the liner Berengaria, explaining she was here to have her jaw reset. It was broken, she alleged, by a Bolshevik soldier during her narrow escape from the execution of her entire family at Ekaterinburg, Russia, in July 1918. Tschaikovsky was welcomed to New York by Gleb Botkin, the son of the Romanov family doctor who was executed along with his patients in 1918. Botkin called her "Your Highness" and claimed that she was without a doubt the Grand Duchess Anastasia with whom he had played as a child.
Between 1918 and 1928, more than half a dozen other women had come forward claiming to be a lost heir to the Romanov fortune, so some American reporters were understandingly skeptical of Tschaikovsky's claims. Nevertheless, she was treated as a celebrity during her stay in New York and occasioned society parties and fashionable hotels worthy of a Romanov heir. Registering for one hotel during her visit, she used the name Anna Anderson, which later became her permanent alias.
In 1917, the February Revolution in Russia forced Czar Nicholas II to abdicate the throne. Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and their four girls and one son were held at Czarskoye Selo palace and then taken to Ekaterinburg in the Urals after the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution. Civil war raged throughout 1918, and in July anti-Bolshevik Russian forces approached Ekaterinburg. Fearing that Nicholas and his family would be rescued, the local authorities passed a death sentence on the Romanovs.
Just after midnight on July 17, 1918, Nicholas, Alexandra, their five children, and four family retainers, among them Dr. Botkin, were ordered to dress quickly and go down to the cellar of the house in which they were being held. There, the family and servants were arranged in two rows--for a photograph, they were told, to quell rumors that they had escaped. Suddenly, nearly a dozen armed men burst into the room and shot the imperial family in a hail of gunfire. Those who were still breathing when the smoked cleared were stabbed to death.
The executioners then took the bodies to an abandoned mine shaft some 14 miles from Ekaterinburg, burned them in a gasoline-fueled bonfire, and doused the bones with sulfuric acid to further disguise the remains. Finally, what was left was thrown into the mine pit, which was covered with dirt.
At first, the Bolshevik government reported that only Nicholas was executed and that his wife and children were moved to a safe location. Later, reports that the entire family had perished were confirmed by Russian investigators. At the same time, however, a persistent rumor spread through Europe, telling of a Romanov child, usually Anastasia, who had survived the carnage. Several pretenders came forward, hoping to cash in on the Romanov fortune reportedly held in European banks, but they were quickly exposed as frauds. Europe, however, had yet to meet Anna Anderson.
In 1920, an apparently suicidal young woman was pulled from the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. She refused to tell authorities her identity and was committed to the Dalldorf Asylum, where she lived in anonymity until 1922, when she suddenly announced that she was none other the Grand Duchess Anastasia.
At the time, Europe was filled with Russian exiles who had fled the Bolshevik Revolution, and a number of sympathetic czarists rushed to the aid of this young woman, who at first glance was certainly articulate and beautiful enough to be the lost Anastasia. Her body showed ugly scars, which she said she incurred from Bolshevik knives during the execution of her family. One Bolshevik soldier, she said, finding her alive, had helped her, and she eventually escaped to the West. Several months after claiming to be Anastasia, she was released from the asylum and moved in with the first of a long line of supporters.
During the next few years, her entourage of Russian émigrés grew, and she became particularly close to Gleb Botkin, who as the son of the slain Romanov family physician had spent considerable time with the imperial family in his childhood. During this time, numerous Romanov relatives and acquaintances interviewed her, and many were impressed by both her resemblance to Anastasia and her knowledge of the small details of the Romanov's family life. Others, however, left skeptical when she failed to remember important events of young Anastasia's life. Her knowledge of English, French, and Russian, which the young Anastasia knew how to speak well, were also significantly lacking. Many blamed these inconsistencies on her reoccurring mental illness, which led to short stays in mental institutions on several occasions.
Meanwhile, her supporters began a long battle to win her legal recognition as Anastasia. Such recognition would not only win her access to whatever Romanov riches remained outside the USSR but would make her a formidable political pawn of czarist exiles who still hoped to overthrow Russia's communist leaders.
The Grand Duke of Hesse, Alexandra's brother and Anastasia's uncle, was a major critic of this effort, and he hired a private investigator to determine Anastasia Tschaikovsky's true identity. The investigator announced that she was in fact Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish-German factory worker from Pomerania who had disappeared in 1920. Schanzkowska had a history of mental instability and was injured in a factory explosion in 1916, which accounted for the scars. These findings were published in German newspapers but were not proved definitively.
The woman who became known as Anna Anderson continued her fight for recognition, losing several court cases as the decades passed. A French play about her story, Anastasia, debuted in 1954, and in 1956 an American film version appeared, with Ingrid Bergman winning an Academy Award for her title role.
In 1968, Anne Anderson married an American history professor, J.E. Manahan, and moved to the United States, living her final years in Charlottesville, Virginia. In 1970, she lost her last major suit, and a remaining portion of the Romanov fortune was awarded to the duchess of Mecklenberg. Anna Anderson Manahan died in 1984.
In 1991, Russian amateur investigators, using a recently released government report on the Romanov execution, found what they thought to be the Romanov burial site. Russian authorities took over and exhumed human remains. Scientists studied the skulls, claiming that Anastasia's was among those found, but the Russian findings were not conclusive. To prove that the remains were indisputably those of the Romanovs, the Russians enlisted the aid of British DNA experts.
First, the scientists tested for sex and identified five females and four males among the remains. Next they tested to see how, if at all, these people were related. A father and mother were identified, along with three daughters. The four other remains were likely those of servants. The son Alexei and one daughter were missing.
To prove the identity of Alexandra and her children, the scientists took blood from Prince Philip, the consort of Queen Elizabeth II and the grand nephew of Alexandra. Because they all share a common maternal ancestor, they would all share mitochondria DNA, which is passed almost unchanged from mother to children. The comparison between the mtDNA in Philip's blood and in the remains was positive, proving them to be the Romanovs. To prove the czar's identity, who would not share this mtDNA, the remains of Grand Duke George, the brother of Nicholas, was exhumed. A comparison of their mtDNA proved their relation.
A Romanov daughter was missing from the burial site. Could Anastasia have escaped and resurfaced as Anna Anderson? In 1994, American and English scientists sought to answer this question once and for all. Using a tissue sample of Anderson's recovered from a Virginia hospital, the English team compared her mtDNA with that of the Romanovs. Simultaneously, an American team compared the mtDNA found in a strand of her hair. Both teams came to the same decisive conclusion: Anna Anderson was not a Romanov.
Later, the scientists compared Anna Anderson's mtDNA with that of Karl Maucher, a great nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska. The DNA was a match, finally proving the theory put forth by a German investigator in the 1920s. One of the great mysteries of the 20th century was solved.
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