This week in the Civil War: July 27, 1864

Battle of the Crater, Petersburg, Va.

Union forces capped weeks of stealthy underground excavation by exploding an underground mine beneath Confederate defenses near Petersburg, Virginia, on July 30, 1864. The Union aim: to overrun Confederate defenses and seize the city less than 25 miles south of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Confederate troops, weapons and debris were tossed in the air by the thundering blast. Despite the shock to the Confederate defenders, a planned Union attack after the blast went askew quickly. Federal forces charging into the huge crater created by the explosion became disoriented and confused. Their planned assault on the Confederate fortifications fell apart as the Confederates regrouped and fought back fiercely. Soon the Confederates had sealed off the gaping hole in their defenses and inflicted heavy casualties on Union forces. This day 150 years ago in the Civil War would mark a clear Confederate victory, though months of siege warfare would follow in the trenches before the Union would eventually prevail.

Día de Muertos

Greta Garb-oh!

Living in the Southwest, Momma has become a fan of many Mexican and Hispanic traditions.

One of her favorites is the calavera (Spanish for "skull"), a sugar or clay model of a human skull which is used in the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead and the Roman Catholic holiday All Souls Day. 

So she went a little nuts when she spotted this fabric decorated with colorful calaveras. (Momma decided that My Dear Friend Josefina's Feast Outfit was the perfect pattern for this outfit.) She chose a sparkly, white calico for the camisa to mimic the sugar skulls.

The China poblana (or Chinese Pueblan) is known as a traditional dress for women in the Mexican Republic, although it was only worn in some urban areas in the middle and southeast of the country, before it disappeared in the second half of the 19th century.

The China poblana is made with a white blouse, with fringing and embroidery in geometric and floral designs in bright colors. (The blouse was sufficiently low-cut to allow part of the neck and the bosom to be seen.)

A castor skirt (or "beaver"), named after the material it was made from, was decorated with sequins and camarones (literally, shrimp) that formed geometric and floral shapes. 

A white slip with the lower hem criss-crossed with zig-zagged lacework would peek out under the skirt, and served to keep the form of a woman attired in the china dress from showing in silhouette.

Clementine loves her new outfit! Don't you?

This week in the Civil War: July 20, 1864

Fighting near Atlanta

Union forces led by Maj. Gen William T. Sherman continued pressing toward Atlanta, bidding to capture the key Southern city 150 years ago this week in the Civil War. Union forces fought it out with Confederate rivals on the outskirts of Atlanta July 22, 1864. At the time, Confederates led by Gen. John Bell Hood sought to attack a Union column east of the city. But the Southern attack quickly lost momentum as fighting escalated. Sherman, in the end, positioned artillery on a hilltop, halting Confederate advances and inflicting high casualties on the Confederates at the gates to Atlanta.

This week in the Civil War: July 13, 1864

Life and death in the trenches near Petersburg, Virginia.

The Boston Evening Transcript of Boston, Massachusetts reported July 15, 1864, on the death of a beloved Massachusetts officer fighting for the Union in Petersburg, Virginia, when it came under siege 150 years ago in the Civil War. The dispatch said Col. P.S. Davis was "mortally wounded in the trenches near Petersburg." War dispatches gave an account of his death: "One of the rebel shell entered his tent on Monday, and after rolling under the chair in which he was quietly seated, reading a newspaper, exploded and wounded him in so shocking a manner, that he expired within an hour." Just 40 years old, Davis left behind a wife and three children in Massachusetts, along with a business selling books and stationery in Boston. The Boston paper reported that under Davis' command, his regiment had flourished and "was frequently mistaken for regulars, from their admirable bearing and discipline." It added Davis was deeply missed by many: "Beloved in all the walks of private life, his public career as an officer of the union army has been honorable to himself and the State which claimed him as one of its most patriotic citizens."

Fez-o-rama!

Sorry for my absence lately, but Momma and I have been insanely busy.

Not only have we been insanely busy, but it appears that most of my blogs about Phoenix Comicon have been absorbed into the æther!

The Shame! The Horror!

Looking back, other than having my photo taken with Nathan Fillion, Fez-o-rama was one of my PC14 highlights.

A fez is a traditional felt hat of two types: either a cone or a short cylinder, both usually with a tassel attached to the top.

Fez-o-rama LLC has produced thousands of fezzes since it began in 2005. Fez-o-rama is a unique small business that produces fine hand-made, embroidered velvet fezzes and caps, fez accessories, and original art. What makes them a truly unique company is not only what they make, but also the fact that they are artist owned and operated. 

Momma and I have loved Fez-o-rama for years, so imagine my delight when we stopped by and saw they had not one, not two, but  four mini fezzes in my size!

• The Orloj Fez
• The Mimic Fez
• The Feznovian Fez
• The Cthulhu Fez

Sadly, the $30 mini fezzes are not available online at this time, but if you contact them you should be able to order one. 

Tell 'em Steampunk Addie sent you.

Fez-o-rama LLC gets my Gear of Approval!

This week in the Civil War: July 6, 1864

The Battle That Saved Washington, D.C.

Some 15,000 Confederate troops under the command of Jubal Early* surged northward into Maryland in the summer of 1864, reaching the outskirts of Frederick, Md., hoping to slide around toward the lightly defended nation's capital. The Confedreate surge northward came amid a bid by Robert E. Lee to pressure Washington, D.C., even as the Union was plunging deep into Virginia. But Northern railroad agents, detecting the Confederate incursion, quickly alerted federal authorities. By July 9, 1864, the rival sides were battling each other fiercely along the Monocacy River in Maryland, the Union throwing some 5,800 fighters into the fray. It would be the final time the Confederates took the battle to the North. "INVASION!!" a headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer blared. "EXCITING NEWS FROM WASHINGTON. THE NATIONAL CAPITAL IN DANGER." Fighting raged for hours that day, but the Union pressure on the Confederates gave the Union time to reinforce defenses around the nation's capital. The fight subsequently became known as the "Battle That Saved Washington." And an Associated Press, in a dispatch July 12, 1864, confirmed the Confederates had been driven out of Frederick, Maryland. One smaller outcome, AP noted, Frederick residents complained hungry rebel foraging parties had rounded up their livestock and horses. "At times the main streets of Frederic were literally filled with horses and cattle, all of which were driven down to the fords and sent across into Virginia," AP noted.


*Did you know that actor Nathan Fillion says he is a descendent of General Jubal Early? In the final episode of Fillion's short-lived series Firefly, "Objects in Space,"  the bounty hunter was named Jubal Early after Fillion's ancestor. Early was played by Richard Brooks (who is, ironically, an African-American). 

When in the Course of human events

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. 

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. 

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

(The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:)

Column 1
Georgia:

Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton 

Column 2
North Carolina:

William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

South Carolina:

Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton 

Column 3
Massachusetts:

John Hancock

Maryland:

Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton 

Virginia:

George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton 

Column 4
Pennsylvania:

Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

Delaware:

Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean 

Column 5
New York:

William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

New Jersey:

Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:

Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple

Massachusetts:

Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:

Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

Connecticut:

Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire:

Matthew Thornton

Justice, equality, and democracy

Happy 50th Anniversary to the Civil Rights Act of 1964!

(Momma is quite proud that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is only nine days older than she is.)

Civil Rights Acts have been enacted in 1866, 1871, 1875, 1957, 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1991, but the most famous of which is the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The 1964 Act is the most important because it outlawed more types of discrimination than any of the others. (Another important civil rights law that is not called a Civil Rights Act was the Voting Rights Act of 1965.)

 

President Barack Obama said about the 1964 Act's 50th anniversary that "few pieces of legislation have defined our national identity as distinctly, or as powerfully."

"It transformed the concepts of justice, equality, and democracy for generations to come."

The Civil Rights Act of 1866, (14 Stat. 27-30) enacted April 9, 1866, was the first United States federal law to define United States citizenship and affirmed that all citizens were equally protected by the law. It was mainly intended to protect the civil rights of African-Americans, in the wake of the American Civil War.

The Civil Rights Act of 1871 (17 Stat. 13), empowered the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to combat the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other white supremacy organizations during the Reconstruction Era. The act was passed by the 42nd United States Congress during the Reconstruction Era and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on April 20, 1871. The act was the last of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress from 1870 to 1871 during the Reconstruction Era to combat attacks upon the suffrage rights of African Americans.

The Civil Rights Act of 1875, (18 Stat. 335-337), was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction Era that guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and prohibited exclusion from jury service. The Supreme Court decided the act was unconstitutional (!) in 1883.

The Civil Rights Act of 1957, (71 Stat. 634) enacted Sept. 9, 1957, primarily a voting rights bill, was also Congress's show of support for the Supreme Court's Brown decisions. The Brown v. Board of Education (1954), eventually led to the integration of public schools. Following the Supreme Court ruling, Southern whites in Virginia began a "Massive Resistance." Violence against blacks rose there and in other states, as in Little Rock, Arkansas, where that year President Dwight D. Eisenhower had ordered in federal troops to protect nine children integrating a public school, the first time the federal government had sent troops to the South since Reconstruction. There had been continued physical assaults against suspected activists and bombings of schools and churches in the South. The administration of Eisenhower proposed legislation to protect the right to vote by African Americans.

The Civil Rights Act of 1960 (74 Stat. 89) enacted May 6, 1960, was a United States federal law that established federal inspection of local voter registration polls and introduced penalties for anyone who obstructed someone's attempt to register to vote. It was designed to deal with discriminatory laws and practices in the segregated South, by which blacks had been effectively disfranchised since the late 19th and start of the 20th century. It extended the life of the Civil Rights Commission, previously limited to two years, to oversee registration and voting practices. The act was signed into law by President Eisenhower and served to eliminate certain loopholes left by the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (78 Stat. 241) was called for by President John F. Kennedy in his civil rights speech of June 11, 1963, in which he asked for legislation "giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments," as well as "greater protection for the right to vote." Kennedy delivered this speech following a series of protests from the African-American community, the most notable being the Birmingham campaign (sometimes referred to as the "Children's Crusade") in which students and children endured attacks by police dogs and high pressure fire hoses during their protests against segregation.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968, (82 Stat. 73) enacted April 11, 1968, is a landmark part of legislation in the United States that provided for equal housing opportunities regardless of race, creed, or national origin and made it a federal crime to “by force or by threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone … by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin.” The Act was signed into law during the King assassination riots by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had previously signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act into law.

Finally (at least for now) The Civil Rights Act of 1991 was passed in response to a series of United States Supreme Court decisions which limited the rights of employees who had sued their employers for discrimination. The Act represented the first effort since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to modify some of the basic procedural and substantive rights provided by federal law in employment discrimination cases. It provided the right to trial by jury on discrimination claims and introduced the possibility of emotional distress damages, while limiting the amount that a jury could award.