Celebrations Today – December 30
Holidays and observances
- Christian feast day:
- Day of the Declaration of Slovakia as an Independent Ecclesiastic Province (Slovakia)
- Rizal Day (Philippines)
- The fifth day of Kwanzaa. (United States)
- The sixth of the Twelve Days of Christmas. (Western Christianity)
Celebrations Today – USA: December 30
National Bicarbonate of Soda Day
Falling Needles Family Fest Day
Bacon Day
National Festival of Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
National No Interruptions Day
Today in US History: December 30
The Gadsden Purchase
The Cathedral, City of Mexico
William Henry Jackson, photographer, between 1884-1900.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920
U.S. Minister to Mexico James Gadsden, and three envoys of the President of Mexico General Antonio López de Santa Anna Pérez de Lebrón, signed the Gadsden Purchase, or Gasden Treaty, in Mexico City on December 30, 1853. Santa Anna needed money to help defray expenses caused by the Mexican War and ongoing rebellions, so he sold land to the United States. The treaty, amended and finally approved by the U.S. Senate on April 25, 1854, settled the dispute over the exact location of the Mexican border west of El Paso, Texas, giving the U.S. claim to some 29,600 square miles of land, ultimately for the price of $10 million. The land is what is now southern New Mexico and Arizona.
General D. Antonio Lopez de Santa-Anna, President of the Republic of Mexico,
c1847.
Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
U.S. President Franklin Pierce, influenced by Gadsden’s friend, Jefferson Davis, sent Gadsden to negotiate with Santa Anna for this tract of land. Many supporters of a southern Pacific railroad route, including Davis, believed that a transcontinental route which stretched through this territory would greatly benefit southern states should hostilities break out with the north.
The first transcontinental railroad was, however, constructed along a more northerly route by the “big four” of western railroad construction—Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker. A southern transcontinental route through territory acquired by the Gadsen Purchase was not a reality until 1881 when the tracks of the “big four’s” Southern Pacific met those of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe in the Territory of New Mexico.
Search the Today in History Archive on the terms Santa Anna and Jefferson Davis to learn more about two of the principals involved in the Gadsden Purchase.
- Search the Today in History Archive on the terms Santa Anna and Jefferson Davis to learn more about two of the principals involved in the Gadsden Purchase. Search as well on Arizona or New Mexico for more information on the history of each of these states. Read, for example, about the Arizona Territory.
- Read accounts of the history of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Search on Southern Pacific and transcontinental railroad in “California as I saw It”: First-Person Narratives of California’s Early Years, 1849-1900, selecting “Search the full text of the collection.”
Southern Pacific Railroad Transfer Boat Carrier, New Orleans, Louisiana, between 1905-15.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920 - Search across the American Memory pictorial collections on Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, or railroad for more images.
- Hispano Music & Culture of the Northern Rio Grande: The Juan B. Rael Collection documents the religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural northern New Mexico (and southern Colorado). Until about twenty-five years after the Gadsden Purchase, the area’s remote location contributed to a chronic shortage of clergy, a vacuum filled by extraordinary Hispanic religious and ceremonial music: alabados [italic](hymns), folk drama, wedding songs, and dance tunes such as the “Varsoviana (Varceliana).”
- Search on the term Jefferson Davis and railroad in the Transportation and Communication section of Map Collections to see a number of maps which were ordered by the secretary of war. See, for example, a Map of the Territory of the United States from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean signed by Millard Fillmore. These maps accompanied reports of explorations for a transcontinental railroad route. Also search on New Mexico or Arizona in Map Collections for additional representations of the topography of the southwest United States.
John Peter Altgeld
John P. Altgeld, Portrait Photograph,
Schloss, photographer, ca. 1893.
Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair, 1886-1887
Turn-of-the-century progressive reformer John Peter Altgeld was born in Germany on December 30, 1847. Despite his humble origins and a father who saw no benefit in education, Altgeld read law and was admitted to the bar. He committed himself to politics and served as city attorney (1872-73) and county prosecutor (1874-75). Altgeld next was elected to the Cook County Superior Court (1886-91). He won the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor in 1892.
Statue of Former Governor of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, Located in Lincoln Park,
September 3, 1915.
Photographs from the Chicago Daily News
As governor, Altgeld made improvements in state institutions and passed reforms in the penal and legal systems, as well as in early child and women’s labor legislation. However, he is most famous for his June 1893 pardon of the three surviving bombers involved in the May 1886 Haymarket Riot, a labor protest in support of the eight-hour day. The protest had escalated into a violent confrontation in which seven policemen were killed. Altgeld, whose law partner was Clarence Darrow, argued that the trial had been unfair because the judge was prejudiced and the jury stacked.
Parade Banner of Veterans of the Haymarket Riot,
Police Department Veterans of the Haymarket Riot, ca. 1895.
Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affairs, 1886-1887
A year later, in May 1894, Altgeld refused to order the militia to intervene in the Pullman railroad strike the American Railway Union protested a reduction in salary without an accompanying reduction in the cost of company-owned housing and other expenses. Ultimately, President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops to Chicago to suppress the strike, exercising his authority to protect mail and interstate commerce. Altgeld’s Progressive Era-legislation and commitment to the laboring classes made him a hero to activists, workers, and farmers, and an enemy of big business.
Using income derived from his legal work, Altgeld had successfully amassed a small fortune by investing in real estate and construction in Chicago in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, he suffered financial disaster in the late nineteenth century and lost almost his entire estate in 1900.
- For more information about the history of American reform, labor, and politics, see these American Memory collections:
- African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907
- American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I and the 1920 Election, 1918-1920
- A Century of Lawmaking for a new Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875
- Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921
- By Popular Demand: “Votes for Women” Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920
- See interior and exterior views of a variety of Pullman railroad cars. Search on the term Pullman in History of the American West, 1860-1920: Photographs from the Collection of the Denver Public Libraryto see, for example, the interior of the Denver & Salt Lake, railroad cars of about 1913, and the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad’s “Tryphosa” Pullman of 1906. Also see the uniform of a Pullman railroad conductor.
- Search on the term Pullman in Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920 for additional images.
- Search on terms such as Altgeld, Chicago, or police in Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair 1886-1887 to learn more about that event. Also examine trial evidence related to the Haymarket Affair.
Today in History – December 30-External Links
Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia