Tag Page USHIstory

How I Became a Lawyer Without a Teacher or School I was born in 1809 in a log cabin in Kentucky and had less than a year of formal schooling. Books were rare, so I walked miles to borrow them and read by firelight whenever I could. I told myself, “I will prepare and some day my chance will come,” because learning was the only way forward. I read everything I could find, learning arithmetic, grammar, and history before I ever thought of law, and I tried to understand what I read as deeply as possible. When my mother died, my stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, joined our family. She encouraged my reading, lent me books, and showed patience when others expected me to work the fields. She taught me that education was more than books; it was forming the mind and character. Her guidance gave me the confidence to pursue knowledge on my own and made me value persistence and curiosity. I taught myself law by studying Blackstone’s Commentaries and other legal manuals. I spent hours in courthouses in Springfield and New Salem, watching lawyers, listening to arguments, and learning from what I observed. I practiced drafting contracts and resolving disputes on my own. “I studied with an unassisted mind, with no teacher, in my leisure time,” I said later. By 1836, my study and observation prepared me to pass the bar and begin practicing law. Others saw something in me. Walt Whitman described me as “Gentle, plain, just and resolute,” while William Gladstone called me a man of “moral elevation most rare in a statesman.” Those words reflect how persistence, curiosity, and guidance from someone who believes in you can shape a life. “The things I learned were not in the schools. I had to find them myself and keep at it,” I said. From log cabin to law office, self-education, careful observation, and determination made my life possible. #History #USHistory #America #USA #Lincoln #Motivation #KnowledgeIsPower

On December 29, 1890, U.S. Army troops from the 7th Cavalry surrounded a Lakota Sioux encampment near Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota during a forced disarmament operation. Tensions escalated as soldiers attempted to confiscate weapons. After a single shot was fired under disputed circumstances, troops opened fire using rifles and Hotchkiss cannons. An estimated 150 to 300 Lakota men, women, and children were killed, many of them unarmed. As people fled, gunfire continued across the encampment. Numerous victims were later found frozen in the snow. The massacre occurred amid federal fear surrounding the Ghost Dance, a spiritual movement officials misinterpreted as a threat rather than a religious practice. Military force was deployed instead of diplomacy. Earlier that month, the killing of Lakota leader Sitting Bull intensified tensions across the region. Wounded Knee is widely regarded as marking the violent end of large scale Indigenous armed resistance on the Plains. No meaningful accountability followed, and several soldiers later received military commendations. Today, the massacre remains a defining example of state violence against Indigenous people and continues to shape debates about historical memory and justice in the United States. #WoundedKnee #December29 #USHistory #NativeHistory #Lakota #SouthDakota #HistoricalRecord #AmericanHistory #HistoryMatters

The 1924 Rondout Train Robbery: Largest Train Heist in American History The 1924 Rondout train robbery is the largest and most lucrative train heist in United States history. On June 12, 1924, a mail train operated by the Chicago Milwaukee St Paul and Pacific Railroad, called the Fast Mail, was stopped near Rondout Illinois, 30 miles north of Chicago. Six criminals carried out the robbery using inside knowledge from corrupt United States Postal Inspector William J Fahy, later convicted. Fahy knew train schedules, mail car layouts, and security procedures, enabling the robbery. The gang was led by brothers Willis, Jess, and Doc Newton of the Newton Gang. Willis and Doc boarded the northbound train leaving Chicago, forcing the engineer and fireman at gunpoint to stop near Rondout where four accomplices waited in automobiles. The robbers confronted crew and mail clerks using weapons and 12 tear gas smoke bombs to force compliance. They removed 45 mail sacks containing $2,137,000 in cash, money orders, securities, and valuables, equivalent to roughly $38,000,000 today. Each sack contained thousands of items including registered letters, small gold shipments, business payrolls, and government bonds. The gang had maps of train routes and schedules, allowing them to know exactly where to stop the train for the ambush. A critical error occurred when the engineer stopped 400 feet past the planned ambush point, causing confusion. During the chaos, Doc Newton was shot 5 times by a fellow conspirator and critically wounded. Doc fled to a Chicago residence, drawing suspicion. Authorities quickly identified three gang members and Fahy, revealing the inside job. Fahy received a 25-year federal prison sentence, the only Postal Inspector convicted of mail theft. Authorities recovered most stolen funds, but some items, including rare securities and cash, were never found. A simple bronze marker now marks the exact spot of America’s greatest train heist. #USHistory #History #USA

On January 9, 1861, Mississippi formally voted to secede from the United States, becoming the second state to leave the Union in the tense months leading up to the Civil War. This decision was not abstract politics or distant ideology. It was a direct declaration that slavery would be protected, expanded, and defended at all costs. For enslaved Black people across Mississippi and the broader Deep South, secession carried immediate meaning. It signaled that those in power were willing to fracture the nation rather than consider any future without human bondage. Families already living under brutal conditions understood that this choice hardened their reality and closed off any remaining hope that change might come without conflict. Mississippi’s leaders were explicit about their reasoning. In its secession declaration, the state named slavery as the central cause, tying its economy, social order, and political identity to the continued ownership of Black lives. This clarity matters, because it removes any doubt about what was being defended and who was being sacrificed. As the nation moved closer to war, decisions made in early 1861 reshaped the paths of millions. Enslaved people would later escape behind Union lines, resist through sabotage and survival, or enlist in the United States Colored Troops once allowed. These acts of courage were not spontaneous. They were responses to years of tightening control and to moments like Mississippi’s secession, when the stakes became unmistakably clear. January 9, 1861 stands as a reminder that the Civil War did not begin in confusion. It began with choices. And for Black Americans, those choices made by others turned the fight for freedom into a matter of survival, resistance, and eventual transformation through war. #AmericanHistory #CivilWarEra #MississippiHistory #DeepSouth #USHistory #HistoricalRecord #FreedomStruggles #SlaveryHistory