Milestones: April 12, 2024

April 12, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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CIVIL WAR BREAKS OUT—THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR BEGAN ON APRIL 12, 1861, when General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston. South Carolina had led a number of states in seceding from the Union in the wake of Abraham Lincoln – and the recently anti-slavery Republican party’s successful bid for the White House. During that first battle at Fort Sumter, which lasted almost a day and a half, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the fort, which could not supply those defending it, and U.S. Major Robert Anderson was forced to surrender it.

Two days after Anderson’s defeat, President Lincoln on April 15, 1861. issued a proclamation recruiting volunteer soldiers to squash the “insurrection.”

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BRUTALIZED UNION’S BLACK SOLDIERS — EXACTLY THREE YEARS INTO THE CIVIL WAR, ON APRIL 12, 1864, Confederate raiders under the command of Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked the Union garrison at Fort Pillow, Tennessee. Federal forces had two years earlier seized this fort that, despite its strategic importance, was remote. More than half of the garrison defending this fort were African American soldiers. When General Forrest asked for their commander’s surrender, he refused, leading Forrest to easily take the fort without high casualties on the Confederate side. However, the Union garrison did suffer major losses: 231 killed and more than a hundred seriously wounded.

The Confederates disputed criticism and questions on what was considered their conduct toward the Black troops, including the massacre after they surrendered.

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LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL — ALMOST A CENTURY LATER, BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER, THE REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., WAS BEING JAILED for speaking out about his people’s mistreatment. Dr. King, his Southern Christian Leadership Conference and their partners in the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, had led a campaign of marches and sit-ins and on April 12, 1963 was in prison along with his fellow activists for these protests. It was from the Birmingham jail that he wrote his famous letter, addressed to “Fellow Clergymen,” particularly those who had criticized his approach. He wrote, in part, “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

King also refuted the “Wait and See,” mindset, saying that non-violence did not translate to inaction. “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed,” King wrote.

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GALILEO DEBATES THE INQUISITOR — BEING JAILED FOR STAUNCH DIFFERENCE OF OPINION is centuries old. It’s what the 17th-century physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei faced for “holding the belief” that the Earth revolves around the sun. Pope Urban VIII had appointed a chief inquisitor, Father Vincenzo Maculani da Firenzuola, to begin Galileo’s trial on April 12, 1633, for the scientist’s refusal to ascribe to the Roman Catholic Church’s orthodoxy of that time, which held that Earth was the immovable center of the universe. They had forbidden Galileo from defending the belief that the earth revolved around the sun, a theory of Copernicus, who had lived in the previous century. During his inquisition, Galileo argued that rather than “holding” such beliefs, he was discussing them in his writings.

Even though scientists throughout Europe had known for centuries that the earth was not the center of the universe, the Church at that time refused to change its teaching, holding that it was absolutely scriptural.

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FDR’S DEATH — PRESIDENT FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT DIED UNEXPECTEDLY ON APRIL 12, 1945, just weeks into his unprecedented fourth term. At the time he was at his personal retreat in Warm Spring, Georgia, in the company of two ladies, one of whom was painting his portrait. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. The two ladies, one of which was Lucy Mercer, FDR’s presumed mistress, of course, had to leave. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who had been traveling on a speaking tour, was told only that the President “had fainted.” Later, she had a premonition that her husband had died but remained serene and cool-headed. It was Mrs. Roosevelt who wound up informing the Vice President, Harry S. Truman that President Roosevelt had died, leaving him in the midst of a world war and in charge of a terrifying and deadly weapon — the bomb.

When Truman asked if there was anything he could do for her, she responded, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”

See previous milestones, here.