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Highlights for February 24
1582: Pope Gregory XIII Decreed Calendar Reform
Pope Gregory XIII issued a Papal Bull to drop ten days from the calendar. In Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, and other major Roman Catholic countries, the day following October 4, 1582 was to be October 15, 1582. To better approximate the length of the astronomical year in order to make more accurate calculation of saints' days and other religious events, the Julian calendar, which had been in effect for 1600 years, was to be replaced by the Gregorian calendar, the fruit of careful research and calculation by a group of mathematicians and scholars assembled by the Vatican. The removal of ten days was meant to correct the error accumulated since A.D. 1, and to bring the date back in line with the seasons.
Most Roman Catholic countries quickly adopted the new calendar, but Protestant countries at first refused to make the change decreed by a pope. It wasn't until 1701 that the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the greater part of Protestant Germany made the switch, and England didn't move to the Gregorian calendar until 1752, which caused riots even then, with Sweden coming on board the following year. By that time, 11 days had to be subtracted instead of the original 10. Even more resistant than the Protestant nations were the Eastern Orthodox countries. It took the Bolshevik revolution of 1918 to make the change in Russia, and the Greeks didn't go Gregorian until 1923.
Other Highlights for February 24
1836: Travis sends for help at the Alamo
Texan Colonel William Travis sends a desperate plea for help for the besieged defenders of the Alamo, ending the message with the famous last words, "Victory or Death."
Travis' path to the Alamo began five years earlier when he moved to the Mexican state of Texas to start fresh after a failed marriage in Alabama. Trained as a lawyer, he established a law office in Anahuac, where he quickly gained a reputation for his willingness to defy the local Mexican officials. In 1832, a minor confrontation with the Mexican government landed Travis in jail. When he was freed a month later, many Anglo settlers hailed him as a hero. As Anglo-American resentment toward the Mexican government grew, Travis was increasingly viewed as a strong leader among those seeking an independent Texan republic.
When the Texas revolution began in 1835, Travis joined the revolutionary army. In February 1936, he was made a lieutenant colonel and given command of the regular Texas troops in San Antonio. On February 23, the Mexican army under Santa Ana arrived in the city unexpectedly. Travis and his troops retreated to the Alamo, an old Spanish mission and fortress, where they were soon joined by James Bowie's volunteer force. The Mexican army of 5,000 soldiers badly outnumbered the several hundred defenders of the Alamo. Their determination was fierce, though, and when Santa Ana asked for their surrender the following day, Travis answered with a cannon shot.
Furious, Santa Ana began a siege. Recognizing he was doomed to defeat without reinforcements, Travis dispatched via couriers several messages asking for help. The most famous was addressed to "The People of Texas and All Americans in the World" and was signed "Victory or Death." Unfortunately, it was to be death for the defenders: only 32 men from nearby Gonzales responded to Travis' call for reinforcements. On March 6, the Mexicans stormed the Alamo and Travis, Bowie, and about 190 of their comrades were killed. The Texans made Santa Ana pay for his victory, though, having claimed at least 600 of his men during the attack.
Although Travis' defense of the Alamo was a miserable failure militarily, symbolically it was a tremendous success. "Remember the Alamo" quickly became the rallying cry for the Texas revolution. By April, Travis' countrymen had beaten the Mexicans and won their independence. Travis' daring defiance of the overwhelmingly superior Mexican forces has since become the stuff of myth, and a facsimile of his famous call for help is on permanent display at the Texas State Library in Austin.
1868: President Andrew Johnson impeached
The U.S. House of Representatives votes 11 articles of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson, nine of which cite Johnson's removal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The House vote made President Johnson the first president to be impeached in U.S. history.
At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Andrew Johnson, a senator from Tennessee, was the only U.S. senator from a seceding state who remained loyal to the Union. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee, and in 1864 he was elected vice president of the United States. Sworn in as president after Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, President Johnson enacted a lenient Reconstruction policy for the defeated South, including almost total amnesty to ex-Confederates, a program of rapid restoration of U.S.-state status for the seceded states, and the approval of new, local Southern governments, which were able to legislate "Black Codes" that preserved the system of slavery in all but its name.
The Republican-dominated Congress greatly opposed Johnson's Reconstruction program and in March 1867 passed the Tenure of Office Act over the president's veto. The bill prohibited the president from removing officials confirmed by the Senate without senatorial approval and was designed to shield members of Johnson's Cabinet like Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who had been a leading Republican radical in the Lincoln administration. In the fall of 1867, President Johnson attempted to test the constitutionality of the act by replacing Stanton with General Ulysses S. Grant. However, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to rule on the case, and Grant turned the office back to Stanton after the Senate passed a measure in protest of the dismissal.
On February 21, 1868, Johnson decided to rid himself of Stanton once and for all and appointed General Lorenzo Thomas, an individual far less favorable to the Congress than Grant, as secretary of war. Stanton refused to yield, barricading himself in his office, and the House of Representatives, which had already discussed impeachment after Johnson's first dismissal of Stanton, initiated formal impeachment proceedings against the president. On February 24, Johnson was impeached, and on March 13 his impeachment trial began in the Senate under the direction of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. The trial ended on May 26 with Johnson's opponents narrowly failing to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to convict him.
If you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please E-Mail me.
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