Good morning, Whitewater.

It’s the first day of autumn. Google has a doodle to mark the change of season —

Tuesday will be sunny in Whitewater, with a high of seventy-four. Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset is 6:50 PM. We’ll have a new moon early tomorrow morning.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets this afternoon at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1952, Sen. Richard Nixon, candidate for vice president, delivers his Checkers speech:

Los Angeles, Sept. 23–Senator Richard M. Nixon, in a nation-wide television and radio broadcast tonight, defended his $18,235 “supplementary expenditures” fund as legally and morally beyond reproach.

He laid before the Republican National Committee and the American people the question of whether he should remain on the Republican party’s November election ticket as the candidate for Vice President.

Rising, near the end of his talk, from the desk at which he had sat, Senator Nixon urged his auditors to “wire and write” the Republican National Committee whether they thought his explanation of the circumstances surrounding the fund was adequate.

“I know that you wonder whether or not I am going to stay on the Republican ticket or resign,” he said. “I don’t believe that I ought to quit, because I’m not a quitter….”

Nixon remained on the ticket; as expected, Dwight Eisenhower won easily over Adlai Stevenson.

Google-a-Day has a question about literature and history:

What Tom Wolfe novel is named after a 1497 ritual that Savonarola led involving mirrors?

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday will be sunny and mild, with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 6:42 AM and sunset is 6:52 PM. The moon is a waning crescent with just two percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, Pres. Lincoln first publicly announces the Emancipation Proclamation:

In September 1862, the Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the victory he needed to issue the Emancipation. In the battle, though General McClellan allowed the escape of Robert E. Lee’s retreating troops, Union forces turned back a Confederate invasion of Maryland. On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam occurred, Lincoln called his cabinet into session and issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.[54] According to Civil War historian James M. McPherson, Lincoln told Cabinet members that he had made a covenant with God, that if the Union drove the Confederacy out of Maryland, he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation.[55][56] Lincoln had first shown an early draft of the proclamation to Vice President Hannibal Hamlin,[57] an ardent abolitionist, who was more often kept in the dark on presidential decisions. The final proclamation was issued January 1, 1863. Although implicitly granted authority by Congress, Lincoln used his powers as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, “as a necessary war measure” as the basis of the proclamation, rather than the equivalent of a statute enacted by Congress or a constitutional amendment. Some days after issuing the final Proclamation, Lincoln wrote to Major General John McClernand: “After the commencement of hostilities I struggled nearly a year and a half to get along without touching the “institution”; and when finally I conditionally determined to touch it, I gave a hundred days fair notice of my purpose, to all the States and people, within which time they could have turned it wholly aside, by simply again becoming good citizens of the United States. They chose to disregard it, and I made the peremptory proclamation on what appeared to me to be a military necessity. And being made, it must stand.”[58]

Initially, the Emancipation Proclamation effectively freed only a small percentage of the slaves, those who were behind Union lines in areas not exempted. Most slaves were still behind Confederate lines or in exempted Union-occupied areas. Secretary of State William H. Seward commented, “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.” Had any slave state ended its secession attempt before January 1, 1863, it could have kept slavery, at least temporarily. The Proclamation only gave Lincoln the legal basis to free the slaves in the areas of the South that were still in rebellion. However, it also took effect as the Union armies advanced into the Confederacy.

The Emancipation Proclamation also allowed for the enrollment of freed slaves into the United States military. During the war nearly 200,000 blacks, most of them ex-slaves, joined the Union Army.[59] Their contributions gave the North additional manpower that was significant in winning the war. The Confederacy did not allow slaves in their army as soldiers until the last month before its defeat.[60]

Google-a-Day asks a question about a sports games:

The basis of modern Fantasy Football was developed by Wilfred Winkenbach in 1962, laying the blueprint for a League that was known by what acronym?

Good morning, Whitewater.

It’s a cloudy day in town, with the sky giving way later to sunshine and a high of sixty-one.

Today is the UN-sponsored International Peace Day, yet unobserved (even if known) in the many places around the planet where war rages, including among this places eastern Europe.

Over night, SpaceX successfully launched a cargo mission to the International Space Station.

Earlier this week, NASA selected SpaceX to be one of two companies (Boeing being the other) to receive a contract for building manned spacecraft for America.

On this day in 1780 Benedict Arnold becomes a Benedict Arnold:

Once he established himself at West Point, Arnold began systematically weakening its defenses and military strength. Needed repairs on the chain across the Hudson were never ordered. Troops were liberally distributed within Arnold’s command area (but only minimally at West Point itself), or furnished to Washington on request. He also peppered Washington with complaints about the lack of supplies, writing, “Everything is wanting.”[79] At the same time, he tried to drain West Point’s supplies, so that a siege would be more likely to succeed. His subordinates, some long-time associates, grumbled about Arnold’s unnecessary distribution of supplies and eventually concluded that Arnold was selling supplies on the black market for personal gain.[79]….

Arnold and [British Major John] André finally met on September 21 at the Joshua Hett Smith House. On the morning of September 22, James Livingston, the colonel in charge of the outpost at Verplanck’s Point, fired on HMS Vulture, the ship that was intended to carry André back to New York. This action did sufficient damage that she retreated downriver, forcing André to return to New York overland. Arnold wrote out passes for André so that he would be able to pass through the lines, and also gave him plans for West Point.[82]

On Saturday, September 23, André was captured, near Tarrytown, by three Westchester militiamen named John Paulding, Isaac Van Wart and David Williams;[83] the papers exposing the plot to capture West Point were found and sent to Washington, where Arnold’s intentions came to light after Washington examined them.[84] Meanwhile, André convinced the unsuspecting commanding officer to whom he was delivered, Colonel John Jameson, to send him back to Arnold at West Point. However, Major Benjamin Tallmadge, a member of Washington’s secret service, insisted Jameson order the prisoner intercepted and brought back. Jameson reluctantly recalled the lieutenant, who had been delivering André into Arnold’s custody, but then sent the same lieutenant as a messenger to notify Arnold of André’s arrest.[85]….

When presented with evidence of Arnold’s activities, it is reported that Washington remained calm. He did, however, investigate its extent, and suggested in negotiations with General Clinton over the fate of Major André that he was willing to exchange André for Arnold. This suggestion Clinton refused; after a military tribunal, André was hanged at Tappan, New York on October 2. Washington also infiltrated men into New York in an attempt to capture Arnold; this plan, which very nearly succeeded, failed when Arnold changed living quarters prior to sailing for Virginia in December.[90]

Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have scattered thunderstorms this Saturday in Whitewater, with a high of seventy-seven.

One always hopes for good days – here’s someone who, if he were to hope, would probably see those wishes fulfilled every day:

Via YouTube, one reads that he’s a “three-month-old fennec fox [who] is full of energy and ready to play in the Children’s Zoo Nursery at the San Diego Zoo. The young male, who weighs just 1.5 pounds, is in quarantine before training to serve as an animal ambassador for his species.”

On this day in 1777, British troops engage in a massacre of sleeping Americans:

On the evening of September 20, 1777, near Paoli, Pennsylvania, General Charles Grey and nearly 5,000 British soldiers launch a surprise attack on a small regiment of Patriot troops commanded by General Anthony Wayne in what becomes known as the Paoli Massacre. Not wanting to lose the element of surprise, Grey ordered his troops to empty their muskets and to use only bayonets or swords to attack the sleeping Americans under the cover of darkness.

With the help of a Loyalist spy who provided a secret password and led them to the camp, General Grey and the British launched the successful attack on the unsuspecting men of the Pennsylvania regiment, stabbing them to death as they slept. It was also alleged that the British soldiers took no prisoners during the attack, stabbing or setting fire to those who tried to surrender. Before it was over, nearly 200 Americans were killed or wounded. The Paoli Massacre became a rallying cry for the Americans against British atrocities for the rest of the Revolutionary War.

Less than two years later, Wayne became known as “Mad Anthony” for his bravery leading an impressive Patriot assault on British cliff-side fortifications at Stony Point on the Hudson River, 12 miles from West Point. Like Grey’s attack at Paoli, Wayne’s men only used bayonets in the 30-minute night attack, which resulted in 94 dead and 472 captured British soldiers.