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Birth of William Randall Roberts, Fenian & U.S. Representative

William Randall Roberts, Fenian Brotherhood member, United States Representative from New York (1871–1875), and a United States Ambassador to Chile, is born on February 6, 1830, in Mitchelstown, County Cork.

Roberts is the son of Randall Roberts, a baker, and Mary Roberts (née Bishop). He is educated locally and in July 1849 leaves with his family for the United States. For several years he works as a clerk for a dry goods company in New York City. In 1857, he sets up his own dry goods business, the Crystal Palace, which becomes successful. He retires in 1869 as a very wealthy man.

Having joined the American Fenian Brotherhood in 1863, Roberts gives it strong financial support for the remainder of the decade. He also supports several Irish American charitable organisations, including the Knights of St. Patrick, of which he is president. In October 1865, he is responsible for a change in the constitution of the Fenian Brotherhood, which results in a split in the movement. The majority of the Brotherhood supports his proposal to elect a “senate” to govern the organisation, with himself as president, in place of the autocratic leader, John O’Mahony. After the suppression of the Irish People and the arrest of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) leaders in Dublin in September 1865, he believes that it to be foolish to send American Fenian troops to Ireland.

Seeking to capitalise on the bad relations that develop between the United States and Britain during the American Civil War, Roberts hopes that a Fenian Brotherhood invasion Canada might provoke a war between Britain and the United States and thereby make a successful insurrection in Ireland more possible. Once the invasion takes place (May 31 – June 3, 1866), however, the American government seizes the Fenians’ supplies and reinforcements, thereby prompting him to abandon the attack. He is arrested in New York on June 7 and detained in prison, but escapes prosecution and is released on June 15. Three days later, with the support of Irish American politicians, he is allowed to deliver an address to the United States Senate appealing for support for the cause of the amnesty of IRB prisoners in Ireland. Thereafter he goes on a lecture tour and argues that American politicians cannot hope to receive Irish American electoral support if they do not support the Fenian cause. In response to demands from Irish American politicians, in September 1866, President Andrew Johnson orders that the arms seized by the United States army be returned to the Fenian Brotherhood.

After the failure of the March 1867 rising in Ireland, Roberts sends men to Ireland to assume command of the IRB on his behalf. A significant number of IRB men follow his lead, and in June 1867 a convention is held in Paris over which he presides. At this he proposes the establishment of a Supreme Council to govern the IRB, a proposal that is soon accepted. He seeks to be appointed president of the new Supreme Council, but the IRB refuses owing to his being such a divisive figure within American Fenianism. In dismay he resigns as president of the Senate wing of the Fenian Brotherhood on December 31, 1867, and becomes less active in the revolutionary movement. In 1870, he opposes the attempt of Fenians to invade Canada once more, and in January 1871 organises a welcoming committee in New York for five recently released IRB leaders who had been banished from Ireland.

By that time, however, Roberts is more concerned with American politics. During 1870, he is elected to Congress as a Democratic Party candidate for New York, a seat he holds until 1874 when, due to financial difficulties, he decides not to run for reelection. As a congressman, he criticises the Republican government for its policy towards the former Confederate states, opposes the increasing power of railroad companies, demands greater protection for American citizens living in foreign countries (including the Fenians imprisoned in Canada), and supports civil rights for black people. He also attracts much praise for his strong criticism of British foreign policy.

After leaving Congress, Roberts becomes a member of the Tammany Society and attains prominence in New York municipal politics, being elected president of the New York City Board of Aldermen in 1878. The following year, he runs for the position of sheriff of New York, but is defeated. Thereafter, he leaves the Tammany Society and establishes a rival organisation, the New York County Democracy. In 1882, he supports Grover Cleveland for the governorship of New York and in 1884 as the Democratic candidate for the United States presidency. He is rewarded on April 2, 1885, when President Cleveland appoints him Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Chile.

Roberts’s term of office is cut short, however, when he suffers a paralytic stroke in May 1888. He is sent back to New York and to hospital, where he remains for nine years. He never regains his mental or physical health and dies on August 9, 1897. His funeral takes place on hospital grounds with few people in attendance. He had been separated from his wife, of whom nothing is known, except that they had at least one son, prior to being admitted to hospital. He is buried at Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York City.

(From: “Roberts, William Randall” by Owen McGee, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Daniel F. Cohalan, Irish American Lawyer & Politician

Daniel Florence Cohalan, American lawyer and politician of Irish descent, is born December 21, 1867, in Middletown, Orange County, New York, the eldest of five sons of Timothy E. Cohalan and Ellen Cohalan (née O’Leary), both Irish immigrants.

Cohalan graduates from Manhattan College in 1885, takes a master’s degree in 1894, and is given an honorary LL.D. in 1911. He is admitted to the bar in 1888, and practices law in New York City. In September 1889, he removes to the Bronx, practices law there, and enters politics, joining Tammany Hall, becoming an adviser to party boss Charles F. Murphy and later to John F. Curry. He is Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society from 1908 to 1911.

Cohalan is active in Democratic Party politics by 1900, drafting state party platforms and serving as a delegate to the national conventions in 1904 and 1908.

On May 18, 1911, Cohalan is appointed by Gov. John Alden Dix to the New York Supreme Court, to fill the vacancy caused by the election of James Aloysius O’Gorman as U.S. Senator from New York. In November 1911, he is elected to succeed himself. On December 28, 1923, he tenders his resignation, to become effective on January 12, 1924, claiming that the annual salary of $17,500 is not enough to provide for his large family.

Cohalan is a close associate of Irish revolutionary leader John Devoy and is influential in many Irish American societies including Clan na Gael. He helps to form the Sinn Féin League in 1907 and is a key organiser of the Irish Race Convention and the Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF) on March 4-5, 1916. He is involved with the financing and planning of the Easter Rising in Dublin and is instrumental in sending Roger Casement to Germany in 1914. He is Chairman of the Irish Race Convention held in Philadelphia on February 22-23, 1919, and active in the Friends of Irish Freedom (1916–34).

When the United States enters World War I, Cohalan’s earlier work to obtain German assistance for Ireland becomes a liability, but he urges Irish Americans to support the war effort and to insist that self-determination for Ireland be included among the war aims. He opposes the peace treaty and the League of Nations and leads an Irish American delegation to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearings, contributing to the defeat of the treaty in the Senate.

Cohalan strongly opposes President Woodrow Wilson‘s proposals for the League of Nations, on the basis that the Irish Republic had been denied a policy of self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. In 1920, he works for the nomination of Hiram W. Johnson as the Republican Party candidate for president. His quarrels with Franklin D. Roosevelt begin in 1910, and he fights Roosevelt’s nomination for president in 1932 and 1936. He breaks with both Éamon de Valera and Irish American leader Joseph McGarrity in late 1919 on Irish American political direction.

In the aftermath of the Anglo–Irish Treaty, Cohalan and the FOIF back Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins and the Irish Free State. He visits Ireland in 1923 and supports William T. Cosgrave in the election of that year.

Cohalan dies at his home in Manhattan, New York, on November 12, 1946, and is buried on November 15 at the Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens, New York. The Daniel F. Cohalan papers are in the possession of the American Irish Historical Society, New York.

State Senator John P. Cohalan (1873–1950) is one of Cohalan’s eleven siblings, and church historian Monsignor Florence Daniel Cohalan (1908–2001) is one of his nine children.


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Brig. Gen. Thomas Smyth Mortally Wounded in the American Civil War

Thomas Alfred Smyth, a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, is mortally wounded in a battle near Farmville, Virginia, on April 7, 1865. He dies two days later. He is the last Union general killed in the war.

Smyth is born on December 25, 1832 in Ballyhooly, Cork County, and works on his father’s farm as a youth. He emigrates to the United States in 1854, settling in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He participates in William Walker‘s expedition to Nicaragua. He is employed as a wood carver and coach and carriage maker. In 1858, he moves to Wilmington, Delaware.

Smyth is a Freemason. He is raised on March 6, 1865 in Washington Lodge No. 1 in Wilmington, Delaware.

Smyth enlists in 1861 in the Union Army in an Irish American three-months regiment, the 24th Pennsylvania, and quickly makes the rank of captain. He is later commissioned as major of the 1st Delaware Infantry, a three-years regiment. He serves at the battles of Fredericksburg (following which he is promoted to lieutenant colonel and then to colonel) and Chancellorsville. During the Gettysburg campaign, he commands the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division of the II Corps. During the Battle of Gettysburg, his men help defend Cemetery Ridge and advance to the area of the Bliss farm to oust enemy sharpshooters. He is wounded on the third day of the battle and relinquishes command briefly.

Smyth retains brigade command during the reorganization of II Corps before General Ulysses S. Grant‘s Overland Campaign. He leads the second brigade of the first division from March 25 to May 17, 1864. When Col. Samuel S. Carroll is wounded, Smyth is transferred to his command, the third brigade of second division, the Gibraltar Brigade. In October 1864, he is promoted to brigadier general during the Siege of Petersburg. He retains command of his brigade throughout the siege.

Between July 31, 1864 and August 22, 1864 and between December 23, 1864 and February 25, 1865, Smyth commands the 2nd division of the corps. On April 7, 1865 near Farmville, Virginia, he is shot through the mouth by a Confederate sniper, with the bullet shattering his cervical vertebrae and paralyzing him. He dies two days later at Burke’s Tavern, the same day Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his army surrender at Appomattox Court House.

On March 18, 1867, President of the United States Andrew Johnson nominates Smyth for posthumous appointment to the grade of brevet major general of volunteers to rank from April 7, 1865, the date he was mortally wounded, and the United States Senate confirms the appointment on March 26, 1867. Smyth is the last Union general killed or mortally wounded during the war, and is buried in Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery in Wilmington, Delaware.


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Sinn Féin Joins Northern Ireland Peace Process

Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), joins the Northern Ireland peace process on September 9, 1997 that aims to determine the future of Northern Ireland, after renouncing violence as a political tool.

The move paves the way for Sinn Féin’s first face-to-face talks with British Cabinet ministers since 1921, when the country was partitioned. Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, chief negotiator Martin McGuinness and party secretary Lucilita Bhreatnach agree behind closed doors at Stormont Castle in east Belfast to abide by the guiding principles underlying the Northern Ireland all-party talks.

These principles were set up in January 1996 by former United States Senator George J. Mitchell, former Canadian Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. John de Chastelain and former Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri. They are generally referred to as the “Mitchell Principles,” and require negotiators to affirm their commitment to the tenets listed below:

  • Democratic and peaceful means of resolving political issues. Total disarmament of all paramilitary organizations. The disarmament must be verifiable to the satisfaction of an independent commission.
  • Renounce for themselves and oppose any effort by others to use force or threaten to use force to influence the course or outcome of all-party negotiations.
  • Abide by the terms of any agreement reached in all-party negotiations and to resort to democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in trying to alter any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree.
  • Urge that “punishment” killings and beatings stop, and take effective steps to prevent such actions.

Sinn Féin pledges to honor the Mitchell Principles exactly 51 days after the IRA stopped its decades-old violent campaign against British rule of Northern Ireland. “This is a watershed. There is an expectation and understanding out there of the importance of this moment,” Adams says.

Paul Murphy, minister for political development in the province, says the Sinn Féin pledge marks a new phase in the peace process. “The significance I am sure is that we are now entering a new era … in the sense that the gun is going out of politics in Northern Ireland and that here Sinn Féin is ascribing to those principles of nonviolence, of democratic government.”

“I believe people outside these buildings, outside Stormont, are of the view that enough is enough, and that change must come,” Murphy adds. “But that change must be change which encompasses everybody’s aspirations and which will last for generations.”

The pledge to honor the Mitchell Principles means that the ten parties involved can proceed with round-table talks on the future of Northern Ireland on Monday, September 15, as planned.

However, two mainstream Protestant parties that favor continued British rule of Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the UK Unionist Party (UKUP), plan to boycott the talks. In addition, the powerful Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), is expected to decide on Saturday, September 13, whether to attend the crucial new round of negotiations.

In a statement, the Ulster Unionists call Sinn Féin’s commitment “a charade.” “The subscription of Sinn Féin to the Mitchell Principles will completely lack credibility. Actions matter much more than words,” the statement says.

The London and Dublin governments agree that sovereignty in Northern Ireland can only be changed through the ballot box. While Protestants generally are determined to remain British, most Catholics favor making Northern Ireland part of Ireland.

(From: “Sinn Fein gains access to Northern Ireland talks” on CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com, September 9, 1997)


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Death of James A. Mulligan, Union Army Colonel

James Adelbert Mulligan, a colonel of the 23rd Illinois Infantry Regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War, dies on July 26, 1864 of wounds sustains at the Second Battle of Kernstown three days earlier.

Mulligan is born on June 30, 1830 in Utica, New York. His parents had immigrated from Ireland and his father died when he was a child. His mother remarries a Michael Lantry of Chicago, Illinois, and moves there with her son, who later attends the St. Mary’s on the Lake College of North Chicago. From 1852–54 he reads law in the offices of Isaac N. Arnold, U.S. Representative from the city. He is admitted to the bar in 1856, and commissioned a second lieutenant in the “Chicago Shield Guards.”

At the onset of the American Civil War, Mulligan raises the 23rd Illinois Infantry Regiment in 1861, which is locally known as the “Irish Brigade” (not to be confused with a New York unit by the same name). This unit includes the Chicago Shield Guards. In September 1861, he leads his troops toward Lexington, Missouri, as word had been received that this vital river town will be attacked by the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard under Major General Sterling Price.

The First Battle of Lexington, often referred to as the Battle of the Hemp Bales, commences on September 13, 1861, when 12,500 soldiers of the Missouri State Guard begin a siege of Mulligan’s diminutive command, entrenched around the town’s old Masonic College. On September 18, Price’s army mounts an all-out assault on Mulligan’s works, which fails. Cannon fire continues through September 19. On the 20th, units of Price’s army use hemp bales soaked in the Missouri River as a moving breastworks to work their way up the river bluffs toward Mulligan’s headquarters. By 2:00 PM, Mulligan has surrendered. Combined casualties are 64 dead, and 192 wounded. Price is reportedly so impressed by Mulligan’s demeanor and conduct during and after the battle that he offers him his own horse and buggy, and orders him safely escorted to Union lines.

Mulligan is commander of Camp Douglas, a prisoner of war camp in Chicago, from February 25, 1862 to June 14, 1862. The camp had been constructed as a short term training camp for Union soldiers but is converted to a prisoner of war camp for captured Confederate soldiers after the fall of Fort Donelson.

Mulligan and his regiment are assigned to the Railroad Division of the Middle Department between December 17, 1862 and March 27, 1863. Then they are assigned to 5th Brigade, 1st Division, VIII Corps in the Middle Department between March 27, 1863 and June 26, 1863.

Between August and December 1863, Mulligan oversees the construction of Fort Mulligan, an earthworks fortification located in Grant County, West Virginia. This fort remains one of the best-preserved Civil War fortifications in West Virginia, and has become a local tourist attraction.

On July 3, 1864, only three weeks before his death, Mulligan distinguishes himself in the Battle of Leetown, fought in and around Leetown, Virginia. Federal troops are retreating in the face of Major General Jubal Early‘s relentless Confederate advance down the Shenandoah Valley during the Second Valley Campaign. Hoping to buy time to concentrate Union forces and supplies, Major General Franz Sigel orders him to hold Leetown for as long as possible and then conduct a fighting retreat as slowly as possible to cover the other withdrawing Union units. He manages to hold Leetown for the entire day before being compelled to retreat, albeit very slowly. He continues to battle Early’s troops all the way from Leetown to Martinsburg, West Virginia, buying valuable time for Union commanders to concentrate their forces in the Valley.

On July 24, 1864, Mulligan leads his troops into the Second Battle of Kernstown, near Winchester, Virginia. Late in the afternoon, Major General John B. Gordon’s Confederate force attacks Mulligan’s 1,800 soldiers from ground beyond Opequon Church. Mulligan briefly holds off Gordon’s units, but Confederate Major General John C. Breckinridge leads a devastating flank attack against the Irishmen from the east side of the Valley Pike. Sharpshooters then attack his right flank from the west. Now encompassed on three sides, the Union battle line falls apart.

With Confederates closing from all around, Mulligan orders his troops to withdraw. As he stands up in his saddle to spur his men on, Confederate sharpshooters concealed in a nearby stream bed manage to hit the Union commander. His soldiers endeavor to carry him to safety, but the unyielding Confederate fire make this an impossible task. He is well aware of his situation, and the danger his men are in, and so he famously orders, “Lay me down and save the flag.” His men reluctantly comply. Confederate soldiers capture him and carry the mortally wounded colonel into a nearby home, where he dies two days later on July 26, 1864. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Evanston, Illinois.

On February 20, 1865, the United States Senate confirms the posthumous appointment of Mulligan to the rank of brevet brigadier general of U.S. Volunteers to rank from July 23, 1864, the day before he is mortally wounded at the Second Battle of Kernstown.


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Death of Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States

Ulysses S. Grant, American military leader who serves as the 18th president of the United States (1869 to 1877), dies on July 23, 1883 after a long and painful battle with throat cancer.

Grant is born Hiram Ulysses Grant in Point Pleasant, Ohio, on April 27, 1822 to Jesse Root Grant, a tanner and merchant, and Hannah Simpson Grant. His mother descends from Presbyterian immigrants from Ballygawley, County Tyrone.

Raised in Ohio, Grant possesses an exceptional ability with horses, which serves him well through his military career. He is admitted to West Point, graduates 21st in the class of 1843 and serves with distinction in the Mexican–American War. In 1848, he marries Julia Dent, and together they have four children. He abruptly resigns his army commission in 1854 and returns to his family, but lives in poverty for seven years.

Grant joins the Union Army after the American Civil War breaks out in 1861 and rises to prominence after winning several early Union victories on the Western Theater. In 1863 he leads the Vicksburg campaign, which gains control of the Mississippi River. President Abraham Lincoln promotes him to lieutenant general after his victory at Chattanooga. For thirteen months, he fights Robert E. Lee during the high-casualty Overland Campaign and at Petersburg. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox. A week later, Lincoln is assassinated and is succeeded by Andrew Johnson, who promotes him to General of the Army in 1866. Later he openly breaks with Johnson over Reconstruction policies as he used the Reconstruction Acts, which had been passed over Johnson’s veto, to enforce civil rights for recently freed African Americans.

A war hero, drawn in by his sense of duty, Grant is unanimously nominated by the Republican Party and is elected president in 1868. As president, Grant stabilizes the post-war national economy, supports ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, and crushes the Ku Klux Klan. He appoints African Americans and Jewish Americans to prominent federal offices. In 1871, to help reduce federal patronage, he creates the first Civil Service Commission. The Liberal Republicans and Democrats unite behind his opponent in the 1872 presidential election, but he is handily re-elected. His Native American policy is to assimilate Indians into the White culture. The Great Sioux War of 1876 is fought during his term. In his foreign policy, the Alabama claims against Great Britain are peacefully resolved, but his prized Caribbean Dominican Republic annexation is rejected by the United States Senate.

Grant’s responses to corruption charges, in his federal departments rife with scandal, are mixed, often naïvely defending the culprits, particularly his war-time comrade Orville E. Babcock. But he also appoints cabinet reformers, such as John Brooks Henderson, for the prosecution of the Whiskey Ring. The Panic of 1873 plunges the nation into a severe economic depression that allows the Democrats to win the House majority. In the intensely disputed 1876 presidential election, he facilitates the approval by Congress of a peaceful compromise.

In his retirement, Grant is the first president to circumnavigate the world on his tour, meeting with Queen Victoria and many prominent foreign leaders. In 1880, he is unsuccessful in obtaining the Republican presidential nomination for a third term. In the final year of his life, facing severe financial reversals and dying of throat cancer, he writes his memoirs, which prove to be a major critical and financial success.

After a year-long struggle with throat cancer, surrounded by his family, Grant dies at 8:08 AM at his Mount McGregor cottage on July 23, 1885, at the age of 63. Philip Sheridan, then Commanding General of the Army, orders a day-long tribute to Grant on all military posts, and President Grover Cleveland orders a thirty-day nationwide period of mourning. After private services, the honor guard places Grant’s body on a special funeral train, which travels to West Point and New York City. A quarter of a million people view it in the two days before the funeral. Tens of thousands of men, many of them veterans from the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), march with Grant’s casket drawn by two dozen black stallions to Riverside Park in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. His pallbearers include Union generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan, Confederate generals Simon Bolivar Buckner and Joseph E. Johnston, Admiral David Dixon Porter, and Senator John A. Logan, the head of the GAR. Following the casket in the seven-mile-long procession are President Cleveland, the two living former presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester A. Arthur, all of the President’s Cabinet, as well as the justices of the Supreme Court.

Attendance at the New York funeral tops 1.5 million. Ceremonies are held in other major cities around the country, while Grant is eulogized in the press and likened to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. His body is laid to rest in a temporary tomb in Riverside Park. Twelve years later, on April 17, 1897, he is reinterred in the General Grant National Memorial, also known as “Grant’s Tomb,” the largest mausoleum in North America.


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Birth of John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Irish American politician who serves as the 35th president of the United States, is born in Brookline, Massachusetts on May 29, 1917. He serves from 1961 until his assassination in 1963 during the height of the Cold War, with the majority of his work as president concerning relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Kennedy is born into the wealthy, political Kennedy family, the son of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a businessman and politician, and Rose Kennedy (née Fitzgerald), a philanthropist and socialite. All four of his grandparents are children of Irish immigrants. He graduates from Harvard University in 1940, before joining the United States Naval Reserve the following year. During World War II, he commands a series of PT boats in the Pacific theater and earns the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his service.

Following a brief stint in journalism, Kennedy, a Democrat, represents a working-class Boston district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953. He is subsequently elected to the U.S. Senate and serves as the junior senator for Massachusetts from 1953 to 1960. While in the Senate, Kennedy publishes his book, Profiles in Courage, which wins a Pulitzer Prize.

Kennedy meets his future wife, Jacqueline Lee “Jackie” Bouvier (1929–1994), while he is a congressman. Charles L. Bartlett, a journalist, introduces the pair at a dinner party. They are married a year after he is elected senator, on September 12, 1953. Following a miscarriage in 1955 and a stillbirth in 1956, they produce three children, Caroline, John, Jr., and Patrick, who dies of complications two days after birth.

In the 1960 presidential election, Kennedy narrowly defeats Republican opponent Richard Nixon, who is the incumbent vice president. His humor, charm, and youth in addition to his father’s money and contacts are great assets in the campaign. His campaign gains momentum after the first televised presidential debates in American history. He is the first Catholic elected president of the United States.

Kennedy’s administration includes high tensions with communist states in the Cold War. As a result, he increases the number of American military advisors in South Vietnam. The Strategic Hamlet Program begins in Vietnam during his presidency. In April 1961, he authorizes an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. He authorizes the Cuban Project, also known as Operation Mongoose, in November 1961. He rejects Operation Northwoods, plans for false flag attacks to gain approval for a war against Cuba, in March 1962. However, his administration continues to plan for an invasion of Cuba in the summer of 1962.

In October 1962, U.S. spy planes discover Soviet missile bases have been deployed in Cuba. The resulting period of tensions, termed the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly results in the breakout of a global thermonuclear conflict. He also signs the first nuclear weapons treaty in October 1963.

Kennedy presides over the establishment of the Peace Corps, Alliance for Progress with Latin America, and the continuation of the Apollo space program with the goal of landing a man on the Moon. He also supports the civil rights movement but is only somewhat successful in passing his New Frontier domestic policies.

On November 22, 1963, Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumes the presidency upon Kennedy’s death. Marxist and former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested for the state crime but is shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later. The FBI and the Warren Commission both conclude Oswald had acted alone in the assassination, but various groups contest the Warren Report and believe that Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy.

After Kennedy’s death, Congress enacts many of his proposals, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Revenue Act of 1964. Despite his truncated presidency, he ranks highly in polls of U.S. presidents with historians and the general public. His personal life has also been the focus of considerable sustained interest following public revelations in the 1970s of his chronic health ailments and extramarital affairs. He is the last U.S. President to have been assassinated as well as the last U.S. president to die in office.

(Pictured: John F. Kennedy, photograph in the Oval Office, July 11, 1963)


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Birth of Richard Busteed, Union Army General & U.S. Federal Judge

Richard Busteed, Union Army general during the American Civil War and United States federal judge, is born in County Cavan on February 16, 1822. Busteed comes first to Canada, then the United States with his family while a child. They settle in New York City.

Busteed reads law in 1846. He enters private practice in New York City from 1846 to 1856 and is Corporation Counsel for New York City from 1856 to 1859. He serves as a Captain in the United States Army in 1861, and a Brigadier General from 1862 to 1863, during the American Civil War.

Once when confronted with black men being thrown out of a white railroad car by the conductor, Busteed pulls his pistol and defends the black men allowing them to stay.

Busteed receives a recess appointment from President Abraham Lincoln on November 17, 1863, to a joint seat on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama and the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama vacated by Judge George Washington Lane. He is nominated to the same position by President Lincoln on January 5, 1864. He is confirmed by the United States Senate on January 20, 1864, and receives his commission the same day. His service terminates on October 20, 1874, due to his resignation.

Alabamians generally consider Busteed corrupt and pro-Northern. In December 1867, he is shot on the street in Mobile, Alabama by United States Attorney Lucien V. B. Martin, who fires two more shots into him after he falls. Martin goes to Texas and is never prosecuted, while Busteed recovers rapidly.

Busteed is nominated by President Ulysses S. Grant to the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia (now the United States District Court for the District of Columbia) on January 13, 1873. At the same time, President Grant nominates Judge David Campbell Humphreys, an Alabama native serving on the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, to assume Busteed’s seat, each nomination made contingent on the other’s resignation. The Senate returns the nominations to the President as irregular in form on February 13, 1873.

In 1873, Busteed is the subject of an impeachment inquiry by the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. The Committee recommends his impeachment on charges of failing to maintain a residence in his judicial district, failing to hold scheduled terms of court, and using his official position to promote his personal interests, specifically, by remitting a fine due to the Federal government in order to obtain release from a personal judgment against him in a State court. He resigns before the full House can vote on the recommendation.

Following his resignation from the federal bench, Busteed resumes private practice in New York City starting in 1874. He dies on September 14, 1898, in New York City and is interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.


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Mitchell Returns to Belfast to Save the Peace Process

george-mitchellFormer United States Senator George Mitchell returns to Belfast on September 13, 1999 in a bid to prevent the Northern Ireland peace process from coming apart at the seams.

The soft-spoken but firm Mitchell leads a review of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which he played a crucial part in brokering. The aim is to halt a renewed drift to violence by pro-British Protestant and pro-Irish Catholic paramilitaries, and to persuade the two communities to begin cooperating in the province’s elected assembly.

“The peace process is mired in mistrust on both sides of the sectarian divide,” says a British government official, who declines to be identified. “It will need somebody of Mr. Mitchell’s political caliber and neutrality to find a way forward.” The future role of the Northern Ireland police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), will be “part of the tangle [Mitchell] has to unravel,” the official adds. The 92% Protestant force, in a society where Catholics make up 42% of the population, is widely seen as requiring urgent attention.

The Protestant political leaders are unwilling to accept the good faith of Sinn Féin, the political ally of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). They are also attacking Northern Ireland Secretary of State Mo Mowlam for having refused to acknowledge that republican paramilitaries have breached the cease-fire despite several violent incidents and the discovery of an alleged plot to send arms to the IRA from the United States.

Mowlam’s decision enraged David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Northern Ireland’s main Protestant political party and first minister-designate in a devolved Belfast government. Trimble and his senior lieutenants called for her to be fired. Trimble also launches a bitter attack on the Patten Commission after a leaked report indicates it would recommend allowing active IRA members to join the RUC police force.

Mitchell’s main contribution to the peace process has been to insist that the issue of decommissioning terrorist arms must be addressed in parallel with talks on future political structures in Northern Ireland. But he still has to find a formula that will satisfy Unionists for the IRA to begin handing in its weapons and explosives. Trimble and other Protestant leaders insist the IRA must agree to decommission before Sinn Féin is allowed to join a devolved Belfast government. Sinn Féin says that was not part of the 1998 peace accord.

Most worrying for Mitchell is the recent outcry over IRA tactics that makes a solution to the problem of law and order all the more important. The IRA is known to use threats and so called “punishment beatings” to maintain law and order in areas under its control, where RUC forces dare not tread. Six Catholic youths are in hiding in Britain after being threatened with violence, even death, if they remained in Northern Ireland.

According to the RUC, the youths have been targeted because of their refusal to accept the authority of sectarian paramilitaries in the areas where they live. Vincent McKenna, spokesman for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau, says, “The IRA thinks it has the right to police its own areas, and it is determined to punish anyone critical of the political direction of the Sinn Féin leadership.” He adds that since the Belfast agreement was signed 16 months earlier, 757 young people have been “exiled” by the IRA and Protestant paramilitary groups.

Mowlam reportedly says that if the Patten Commission can come up with a blueprint for the police that gives Catholics a larger role in legitimate law enforcement, the scope for policing by paramilitary groups will be reduced.

(From: “Mitchell returns to N. Ireland tinderbox,” The Christian Science Monitor, September 2, 1999)


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Death of Thomas Fitzsimons, U.S. Merchant & Statesman

thomas-fitzsimonsThomas Fitzsimons, American merchant and statesman of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, dies in Philadelphia on August 26, 1811. He represents Pennsylvania in the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention and the United States House of Representatives.

Fitzsimons is born in Ireland in 1741. In the mid-1750s his family immigrates to Philadelphia, where his father dies soon thereafter. He has enough education that he begins work as a clerk in a mercantile house. He marries Catherine Meade on November 23, 1761 and forms a business partnership with her brother George. Their firm, which specializes in the West Indies trade, operates successfully for over 41 years.

The firm is soon hit by the new revenue measures created to help support the finances of the British Empire, including the much reviled Stamp Act of 1765. Concerned with these ideas, Fitzsimons becomes active in the Irish merchant community in Philadelphia. He is a founding member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in 1771 and later, in 1774, a steering committee organized to protest the Coercive Acts.

When Pennsylvania begins mobilizing and organizing a militia to fight the British, Fitzsimons is soon involved. He serves as captain of a company of home guards under the command of Colonel John Caldwalader. Initially his company serves as part of the soldiers who man posts along the New Jersey coast. His unit later serves as part of the reserve at the Battle of Trenton in 1776. Later in the war, he served on the Pennsylvania Council of Safety and heads a board to oversee the newly formed Pennsylvania Navy.

Fitzsimons enters active politics as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1782 and 1783. He is a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1786 until 1795. He is also a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787. Although not a leading member of that convention, he supports a strong national government, the end of slavery, the United States Congress‘s powers to impose a tariff on imports and exports, the granting the House of Representatives, and power in equal to the United States Senate in making treaties. He is one of only two Catholic signers of the Constitution of the United States, the other being Daniel Carroll of Maryland.

After the Constitution is established, he serves in the first three sessions of the House of Representatives as a Federalist, where he favors protective tariffs and a strong navy, co-drafting the Naval Act of 1794 authorizing the original six frigates of the United States Navy. He fails to win re-election in 1794. This was partially attributed to public opinion turning against the Federalist Party over the forceful suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion. Although he never holds elective office again, he serves in 1798 as head of the committee of merchants overseeing the subscription-loan to build a warship at private expense for use in the Quasi-War.

In 1796, FitzSimons, along with James Innes of Virginia, is appointed by President John Adams to serve as one of two American members on the five-man debt commission charged under Article VI of the Jay Treaty with examining the claims of British subjects unable to collect debts incurred by Americans prior to the American Revolution. FitzSimons, Innes and Samuel Sitgreaves, who replaces Innes upon the latter’s death, become annoyed with the arguments used by their British counterparts to inflate the claims total. FitzSimons and Sitgreaves angrily and permanently seceded from the board in July 1799. The claims are eventually disposed of by a lump-sum payment, agreed upon by United States Minister to Britain Rufus King with British Foreign Secretary Robert Banks Jenkinson and approved by President Thomas Jefferson and the Senate in 1802.

While withdrawing from politics, Fitzsimons remains active in civic and business affairs. He serves as president of Philadelphia’s Chamber of Commerce, as a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, Director of the Delaware Insurance Company and a director of the Bank of North America from 1781–1803. He is a founder of the bank and supports efforts to found Georgetown College. He also helps found the Insurance Company of North America.

Fitzsimons dies on August 26, 1811, in Philadelphia, where he is buried in the cemetery of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, which is in present-day Independence National Historical Park.