On This Day in History: July 28

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing to African Americans citizenship and all its privileges, is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution.

Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts, where new state governments, based on universal manhood suffrage, were to be established. Thus began the period known as Radical Reconstruction, which saw the 14th Amendment, which had been passed by Congress in 1866, ratified in July 1868. The amendment resolved pre-Civil War questions of African American citizenship by stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.” The amendment then reaffirmed the privileges and rights of all citizens, and granted all these citizens the “equal protection of the laws.”

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868 as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.

Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that blacks could not be citizens of the United States.

Its Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving people (individual and corporate) of life, liberty, or property without certain steps being taken. This clause has been used to make most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, as well as to recognize substantive rights and procedural rights.

Its Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. This clause later became the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision which precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation in the United States.

The amendment also includes a number of clauses dealing with the Confederacy and its officials.

Bill Egnor, aka Something the Dog Said, @ FDL, posted a series of discussion on the Constitution and the Amendments. Here is the link to his article Friday Constitutional 16 – Amendments 13 and 14, Slavery and Equal Protection

 1540 – Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day.

1609 – Bermuda is first settled by survivors of the English ship Sea Venture en route to Virginia.

1794 – Maximilien Robespierre is executed by guillotine in Paris during the French Revolution.

1809 – Peninsular War: Battle of Talavera: Sir Arthur Wellesley’s British, Portuguese and Spanish army defeats a French force under Joseph Bonaparte.

1821 – José de San Martín declares the independence of Peru from Spain.

1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Ezra Church: Confederate troops make a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, Georgia.

1868 – The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is passed, establishing African-American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.

1896 – The city of Miami, Florida is incorporated.

1914 – World War I: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia after Serbia rejects the conditions of an ultimatum sent by Austria on July 23 following the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.

1932 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover orders the United States Army to forcibly evict the “Bonus Army” of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C.

1933 – Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Spain are established.

1935 – First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.

1942 – World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into the Soviet Union. Under the order all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so were to be immediately executed.

1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah: The British bomb Hamburg causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians.

1945 – A U.S. Army B-25 bomber crashes into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building killing 14 and injuring 26.

1948 – The Metropolitan Police Flying Squad foils a bullion robbery in the “Battle of London Airport”.

1955 – The Union Mundial pro Interlingua is founded at the first Interlingua congress in Tours, France.

1965 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.

1973 – Summer Jam at Watkins Glen: 600,000 people attend a rock festival at the Watkins Glen International Raceway.

1976 – The Tangshan earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 moment magnitude flattens Tangshan, the People’s Republic of China, killing 242,769 and injuring 164,851.

1993 – Andorra joins the United Nations.

  1996 – Kennewick Man, the remains of a prehistoric man, is discovered near Kennewick, Washington.

1997 – Guatemala becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.

2001 – Australian Ian Thorpe becomes the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single World Championships.

2002 – Nine coal miners trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, are rescued after 77 hours underground.

2005 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army calls an end to its thirty year long armed campaign in Northern Ireland.

2005 – Tornadoes touch down in a residential areas in south Birmingham & Coventry England, causing £4,000,000 worth of damages and injuring 39 people.

2008 – The historic Grand Pier in Weston-super-Mare burns down for the second time in 80 years.