Good morning,
It’s a cloudy day in Whitewater, with a chance of thunderstorms, and a probable high temperature in the upper sixties.
There’s a Planning Commission meeting scheduled for Whitewater tonight, at 6 p.m., with a single item on the agenda: “Review the proposal to acquire land for the Starin Road extension from North Fremont Street to Highway 59fNorth Newcomb Street and make a report to the council which will include approval or non-approval by the Plan Commission of the acquisitions.”
There will also be a Library Board meeting tonight, at 6:30 p.m. The agenda for the meeting is available online.
Our public school district’s administrator will hold a public listening session tonight from 5 to 5:45 p.m. at the district’s central office.
It’s Cancer Awareness Week at Whitewater High School, with dress days based on color throughout the week, with a particular color for each day: students are asked to wear a particular color to honor the fight against a particular type of cancer. The days are as follows: Monday Blue for Teen Cancer, Tuesday Orange for Leukemia, Wednesday Green for Lymphoma, Thursday Yellow for Ewing’s Sarcoma and White for Bone Cancer, Friday Pink for Breast Cancer.
On this day in 1861, the Civil War began. The History Channel recalls the beginning of that years-long conflict:
The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.”
As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between North and South over the issue of slavery had led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln’s victory over the divided Democratic Party in November 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On December 20, the South Carolina legislature passed the “Ordinance of Secession,” which declared that “the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved.” After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states–Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana–had followed South Carolina’s lead.
In February 1861, delegates from those states convened to establish a unified government. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was subsequently elected the first president of the Confederate States of America. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, a total of seven states (Texas had joined the pack) had seceded from the Union, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. Four years after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead.
Fort Sumter is now a United States national monument.
