Milestones: February 6, 2024

February 6, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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‘UNLIKELY’ MONARCH REIGNED THE LONGEST — AS BRITAIN MOURNED KING GEORGE VI, WHO DIED IN HIS SLEEP ON FEB. 6, 1952, HIS ELDEST DAUGHTER, PRINCESS ELIZABETH, BECAME QUEEN. Elizabeth was not originally in the line of succession. Her bachelor uncle, David, who became King Edward VIII, if he married while serving as king, would have sired heirs to the throne. But Edward VIII as sovereign was also head of the Church of England, and would have created a constitutional crisis with his choice of a bride: a twice-divorced socialite from America. When David abdicated in December 1936, his younger brother became king and took the name George VI. Princess Elizabeth was already 10 years old at the time that she became heir to the throne.

When she received the news of her father’s death, Elizabeth, then 25, and Prince Philip were on safari in Africa. She reportedly had no black mourning clothing packed with her. Elizabeth became England’s and the world’s longest-reigning monarch, living to see her 70th Jubilee in 2022.

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TWO TREATIES WITH FRANCE — DELEGATES FROM THE UNITED STATES AND FRANCE ON FEB. 6, 1778, SIGNED THE TREATY OF AMITY AND COMMERCE AND THE TREATY OF ALLIANCE IN PARIS. France, in signing the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, recognized the United States as an independent nation and encouraged trade between the two countries. The Treaty of Alliance established a military alliance against Great Britain, with the condition that the absolute independence of the United States be recognized as a condition for peace. It also permitted France to conquer the British West Indies. Although France had already begun sending covert aid to the American colonies as early as 1775, it was the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 that convinced France that the Americans’ cause was worth brokering a treaty. Congress ratified both treaties in May 1778.

The treaties also allowed France to move forward on exacting revenge on her opponent, Great Britain. The French naval fleet made it possible for America to defeat the British, which climaxed in the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.

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RETURNING TO AFRICA — THE FIRST ORGANIZED IMMIGRATION OF FORMERLY ENSLAVED PEOPLE FROM THE UNITED STATES TO WESTERN AFRICA departed via ship from New York Harbor on Feb. 6, 1820, more than four decades before the Civil War began. The United States government had abolished and declared the international slave trade to be a felony as early as 1808. A man named Robert Finley in 1816 established the American Colonization Society, with the purpose of returning formerly enslaved African people to Africa. His group organized the voyage to Freetown, Sierra Leone, with funding from Congress, which had allocated $100,000 for returning Africans who had been brought to the U.S. after 1808. The American Colonization Society in 1821 then founded the colony of Liberia, south of Sierra Leone, as a homeland for the liberated slaves.

However, most Americans of African descent did not meet these endeavors with enthusiasm, as they had built lives for themselves and homes that they were loath to abandon. U.S. abolitionists accused the American Colonization Society of reinforcing slavery by removing the liberated slaves from the country.

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PRESIDENCY HIS GREATEST ROLE? — FUTURE ACTOR AND U.S. PRESIDENT RONALD WILSON REAGAN WAS BORN ON FEB. 6, 1911, IN ILLINOIS. Before entering state and national politics, Reagan was a Hollywood star, appearing in many films, including “Knute Rockne: All American” (1940) “Love is on the Air,” (1937) and “Kings Row” (1942). He also narrated documentaries and played a radio announcer (a job that he’d held before becoming a movie actor). Reagan entered labor politics, becoming actively involved in the Screen Actors Guild, serving six terms as its president and leading the union through some of the industry’s most turbulent years. In 1966, he defeated incumbent Pat Wilson in that year’s gubernatorial race. A proponent of small government, Reagan won the 1980 election based on this ability to project optimism and handle adversity with such aplomb that he was nicknamed “The Teflon President.” Reagan, who knew how to cut deals with his evangelical base, created a new brand of conservatism, which got him reelected in 1984.

When Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th president in 1981, he was 69 years old, and, until 2017 when Donald Trump took office, was the oldest to take office.

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‘THE REAGAN DOCTRINE’ —PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN, JUST TWO WEEKS INTO HIS SECOND TERM AND ON HIS 74TH BIRTHDAY, PROCLAIMED THAT HIS ADMINISTRATION WOULD SUPPORT “FREEDOM FIGHTERS.’ The policy, which gained the moniker “Reagan Doctrine,” prioritized giving military aid (sometimes covertly) to guerillas and other resistance movements fighting Communist regimes, such as the Soviet Union. The U.S. aimed to curb the expansion of Communism and to end the Cold War. He supported guerillas in Cambodia, Angola and Nicaragua. Reagan declared, “We must stand by our democratic allies. And we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives — on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua — to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth. Support for freedom fighters is self-defense.”

Critics in the U.S. accused the Reagan Administration of hindering democracy in those regions. And then, in 1986-87, the Iran-Contra Deal scandal story broke: The U.S. was selling arms to Iran illegally during an embargo on that country and using the profits to fund the Contras, an anti-Communist guerilla group in Nicaragua.

See previous milestones, here.