Brooklyn Today for January 16
Good morning. Today is the 16th day of the year. On this day in 1847, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published an editorial by Walt Whitman on the Mexican War. After remarking on the anniversary of the end of the Revolutionary War (Jan. 14, 1784), Whitman compared the members of the Whig Party who opposed American intervention in Mexico to the pro-British Tories during the American Revoluion.
Whitman went on to say, however, that “our support of our president and this country in this matter does not prevent our earnest invocations for the earliest possible peace. War is, at best, a hateful evil.” One of those people who protested the Mexican War, by the way, was Abraham Lincoln, then a little-known Whig congressman from Illinois.
Well-known people who were born today include football star Joe Flacco, baseball player Albert Pujols, model Kate Moss, dancer-singer Debbie Allen, opera singer Marilyn Horne, author William Kennedy ( “Ironweed,” “Roscoe”), former baseball player Jack Burns McDowell and country singer Ronnie Milsap.