Posts Tagged United States

"Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. John L. Burns, the 'old hero of Gettysburg,' with gun and crutches" Photo by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, July 1863.

During the Battle of Gettysburg, [John L.] Burns, a 70-year-old civilian living nearby, grabbed his flintlock musket and powder horn and walked out to the battlefield to join in with Union troops. The soldiers took him in, and Burns served well as a sharpshooter. During a withdrawal, Burns was wounded several times and left on the field. he managed to get himself to safety, his wounds were treated, and his story elevated him to the status of National Hero briefly.

The Atlantic

Wonder Women: 1942

August 1942. “Formerly a sociology major at the University of Southern California, Mrs. Eloise J. Ellis (left) now “keeps ‘em flyin’” at the Naval Air Base, Corpus Christi, Texas. She is a supervisor under civil service in the Assembly and Repair Department. It is her job to maintain morale among the women by helping them solve housing and other personal problems. With her is Jo Ann Whittington, an NYA trainee at the plant.” Large format Kodachrome transparency by Howard Hollem for the Office of War Information.

Shorpy Historical Photo Archive

Robert Smalls was born on Ashdale Plantation on Lady’s Island, South Carolina. As a descendent of Guinea slaves, Smalls was hired as a deckhand on the CSS Planter, an armed Confederate military transport in 1861. He served under Brigadier General Roswell Ripley, commander of the Second Military District of South Carolina. Smalls was promoted to pilot of the Planter within a year.

On May 12, 1862, the Planter’s officers decided to have the crew spend the night ashore. In the early morning hours, Smalls, then 23, commandeered Planter. At that time, the ship was loaded with weapons and equipment for the rebel forts. Along with seven of the eight enslaved crewmen, Smalls stopped by a nearby wharf to pick up Smalls’ wife, children and twelve relatives of the other crewmen. They sailed towards the nearest Union blockading ship, Onward, with a raised white flag. Dressed in a captain’s uniform, Smalls reported shouted, “Good morning, sir! I have brought you some of the old United States’ guns, sir!”

Regarded as a national hero in the north, Smalls and his associates were given prize money from President Lincoln for their efforts and information regarding rebel locations. Smalls continued to fight in the Civil War for the Union and became the first black captain of a United States vessel. After the war, he learned to read and write and participated in the drafting of South Carolina’s state constitution. Smalls went on to serve five terms as a U.S. Congressman representing South Carolina. He moved back to Beaufort, South Carolina and served for nearly 20 years as U.S. Collector of Customs and lived, as the owner, in the same house in which he had been a slave.

Further Reading
The Atlantic
Robert Smalls on the Biographical Directory of the US Congress
RobertSmalls.org

Written on April 13, 1989, this letter was sent from second-grader Kelli Middlestead of the Franklin School in Burlingame, California, to Walter Stieglitz the Regional Director of the Alaska Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, lamenting the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 24, 1989.

National Archives

Timothy H. O'Sullivan, photographer; printed by Alexander Gardner; negative July 4, 1863; print 1866.

Of the Civil War photographs, the most moving are the inhumanly objective records of combat deaths. Perhaps the most reproduced of these Civil War photographs is [Timothy] O’Sullivan’s A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 1863. Although this image could be seen as simple reportage, is also functions to impress on people the high price of the Civil War. Corpses litter the battlefield as far as the eye can see. O’Sullivan presented a scene that stretches far to the horizon. As the photograph modulates from the precise clarity of the bodies of Union soldiers in the foreground, boots stolen and pockets picked, to the almost illegible corpses in the distance, the suggestion of innumerable other dead soldiers is unavoidable. . . . Though it was years before photolithography could reproduce photographs like this in newspapers, they were publicly exhibited and made an impression that newsprint engravings never could.

- Gardner’s Art Through the Ages

Fred S. Kleiner & Christin J. Mamiya, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, Twelfth Edition: Volume II, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2005, 850.
Photo via The J. Paul Getty Museum website.

Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

“Thirsty young football players drink water from a garden hose in Denver, Colorado, in 1939.”

LIFE

Despite the best efforts of authorities, Seattle remained “wet” during Prohibition. Here, King County Sheriff Matt Starwich destroys bottles of confiscated alcohol, ca. 1925.

(University of Washington Library Digital Collections, found here).

By an unknown photographer, unknown location, December 22, 1943

“A Bell System switchboard where overseas calls are handled. Not all of the services shown here are available under wartime conditions”

The most famous female worker of World War II was the mythical Rosie the Riveter, who patriotically joined the industrial workforce to do her bit in a shipyard or an aircraft factory. There were many real-life Rosies, but many more women worked in service or clerical jobs as secretaries, bank tellers, retail clerks, and telephone operators.

(National Archives, Records of the Women’s Bureau (86-WWT-28-3))

Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The caption that accompanied this image when it appeared in the January 23, 1939, issue of LIFE: “The top box-office star of Warner Bros., in blue slacks, skims through the morning newspapers in the playroom of her home. The walls are decorated with Mexican posters.”

LIFE

Instructing nurses on the use of respirator for a polio patient, May 23, 1958

Nursing uniforms initially resembled maids’ uniforms and emphasized the subservient nature of their position. By the early 20th century, however, nursing schools adopted distinctive uniforms to foster professional identity. In this particular photograph, the nurses are being instructed on the use of an iron lung for polio patients.

(National Archives, General Records of the Department of Labor (174-G-30-1))
[See Also: The Iron Lung]

Abraham Lincoln created the model with his own hands out of wood. It is on display at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History.

President Abraham Lincoln was the only president to hold a patent.

Information & Photo via the National Museum of American History

It’s the newspaper in which George Washington placed an ad to lease part of his Mount Vernon land.

It’s where Noah Webster’s “Blue-Backed Speller” was first published.

Thomas Jefferson sued this newspaper for libel – and lost.

And Mark Twain tried to buy stock in this paper but his offer was turned down.