On May 24th in US Political History
Part II
Part II
On May 24th in 1844 Samuel F.B. Morse, before a crowd of dignitaries in the chambers of the Supreme Court, tapped out the message, "What hath God wrought?" to his partner in Baltimore, Alfred Vail. Congress had appropriated $30,000 for the experimental line built by Ezra Cornell between Washington and Baltimore. Morse developed the technology for electrical telegraphy in the 1830s, the first instantaneous form of communication using an electrical circuit opened and closed for longer or shorter periods. An operator would tap out a coded message composed of dots and dashes. Public demonstrations of the equipment were made in February 1838, but it was necessary for Morse to secure financial backing to build the first telegraph line to carry the signal over distance. In 1843, Congress appropriated the funds required for a 37-mile transmission line between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
On May 24th in 1846 General Zachary Taylor captured Monterey in the Mexican War.
On May 24th in 1856 The Potawatomi Massacre took place in Kansas. John Brown, American abolitionist, presided over the death by machete of five unarmed pro-slavery men in Potawatomi, Kansas.
On May 24th in 1861 General Benjamin Butler, Union commander of Fort Monroe, Va., declared slaves to be the contraband of war in order to avoid returning them to their owners under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
On May 24th in 1861 Shortly after Union troops quietly occupied Alexandria, Va., 24-year-old Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth and a handful of friends from the 11th New York Regiment impulsively entered the Marshall Hotel to forcibly remove a Confederate flag from the roof. Hotel proprietor James W. Jackson shot and mortally wounded Ellsworth as he descended the stairs, flag in hand. Jackson himself was then shot by a Union soldier.
On May 24th in 1866 Founders of UC Berkeley named their town after Bishop George Berkeley due to a line Berkeley’s poem: On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America: "Westward the course of empire takes its way."
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