Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be a mostly sunny day, with a high of forty-five.
Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets this afternoon at 5 PM.
On this day in 1862, Pres. Lincoln removes a hesitant general:
….a tortured relationship ends when President Abraham Lincoln removes General George B. McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan ably built the army in the early stages of the war but was a sluggish and paranoid field commander who seemed unable to muster the courage to aggressively engage Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
After Lee defeated Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run in late August, 1862 he invaded Maryland. With the Confederates crashing into Union territory, Lincoln had no choice but to turn to McClellan to gather the reeling Yankee forces and stop Lee. On September 17, 1962, McClellan and Lee battled to a standstill along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. Lee retreated back to Virginia and McClellan ignored Lincoln’s urging to pursue him. For six weeks, Lincoln and McClellan exchanged angry messages, but McClellan stubbornly refused to march after Lee. In late October, McClellan finally began moving across the Potomac in feeble pursuit of Lee, but he took nine days to complete the crossing. Lincoln had seen enough. Convinced that McClellan could never defeat Lee, Lincoln notified the general on November 5 of his removal. A few days later, Lincoln named General Ambrose Burnside to be the commander of the Army of the Potomac.
After his removal, McClellan battled with Lincoln once more–for the presidency in 1864. McClellan won the Democratic nomination but was easily defeated by his old boss.
Paranoid seems harsh as a description of McClellan, but frequently and unjustifiably nervous does the trick.
In Wisconsin on this day in 1912, a suffrage amendment fails:
1912 – Women’s Suffrage Referendum
On this date Wisconsin voters (all male) considered a proposal to allow women to vote. When the referendum was over, Wisconsin men voted women’s suffrage down by a margin of 63 to 37 percent. The referendum’s defeat could be traced to multiple causes, but the two most widely cited reasons were schisms within the women’s movement itself and a perceived link between suffragists and temperance that antagonized many German American voters. Although women were granted the vote in 1920 by the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Wisconsin’s own constitution continued to define voters as male until 1934. [Source: Turning Points in Wisconsin History]
Google’s daily puzzle asks about American rivers: “What is the location of the confluence of the two rivers that create the largest tributary to the Mississippi River?”