MILESTONES: September 20, birthdays for John Tavares, George R.R. Martin, Jon Bernthal
ON THIS DAY IN 1851, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Jefferson Davis, U.S. Sen. from Mississippi, has consented to run as the secessionist candidate for governor of that state, in place of Gen. [John A.] Quitman, who declined.”
***
ON THIS DAY IN 1881, the Eagle reported, “James A. Garfield, the twentieth president of the U.S., died last night at Long Branch of a wound received on the 2nd of July last in the city of Washington at the hands of an assassin named Guiteau. In this event three things are seen: A villainous blow at popular liberty; a strange mockery of human foresight and ambition; and a tragedy as pathetic as any that has ever shocked the affectations of men … So many reflections crowd upon the brain, in view of this calamity, that one hardly knows which to repress and which to utter. The passageway of the mind is partially blocked by rushing thoughts, as the doorway of a theater is sometimes choked by persons so anxious to get out that they stop each other.”