Reading 3 of 6 free1776 Club · all 6 storiesTuesday, October 20
From the desk
Start with 1973: Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre - Nixon ordered Archibald Cox fired and lost two attorneys general to resignation before Robert Bork, next in line, finally carried out the order. Worth a longer look: 1944, MacArthur wading ashore at Leyte under Japanese fire, two years after he promised he'd be back. For contrast, 1803 shows the Senate buying 828,000 square miles without firing a shot, proof that October 20 has held both war and paperwork equally well.
— The Patriot Compass desk
1973Featured · This day in history
Two Justice Department chiefs quit in one night rather than fire the Watergate prosecutor
Archibald Cox had subpoenaed Nixon's Oval Office tapes, and a federal court had just rejected the president's claim of executive privilege. On the night of October 20, 1973, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. Nixon turned to Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, who also refused and resigned. Solicitor General Robert Bork, now the department's senior official, carried out the order.
U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.Story page →
The American Throughline
Two Senate-confirmed law enforcement chiefs chose unemployment over an order they considered unlawful. The precedent they set, that cabinet officials answer to the law before the Oval Office, has outlasted both their careers. The episode flipped public opinion: a plurality backed impeachment for the first time, and journalists and lawmakers still reach for it whenever a president is accused of pressuring the Justice Department.
Did you know
QHow did the White House first misreport Ruckelshaus's departure?
The Nixon White House initially told reporters that Ruckelshaus had been fired, not that he had resigned. The Washington Post ran a correction the following day, setting the record straight that Ruckelshaus had refused the order to dismiss Cox and resigned on his own terms rather than being dismissed himself. The error briefly cast Ruckelshaus as compliant rather than defiant, the opposite of what had actually happened that night. The correction helped cement the public record of two officials walking out voluntarily rather than being purged, a detail that shaped how newspapers across the country characterized the night in the days that followed.
QWhat ceremony did Bork go through before he could fire Cox?
Before carrying out the dismissal, Robert Bork was driven to the White House by limousine and sworn in as acting attorney general. Only after taking that oath did he hold the legal authority to remove Cox, since Richardson and Ruckelshaus had already resigned and the office was otherwise vacant. That meant the firing carried the authority of a properly sworn attorney general, not an improvised stand-in. Bork completed the swearing-in and the dismissal within the same night, a sequence that made him, for a few hours, both the newest attorney general in American history and the man who carried out one of its most contested orders.
QHow far did Nixon's approval rating fall after that single night?
Nixon's public approval rating dropped to 27 percent in the aftermath, a collapse that registered within days of the firings becoming public. Telegrams and calls to the White House and Congress spiked to volumes unusual for the period, and for the first time a plurality of Americans told pollsters they favored impeachment. The drop reversed months of relatively steady, if eroding, support and gave congressional Democrats room to move from quiet investigation to open impeachment drafting. Within ten days, on October 30, the formal impeachment process against Nixon had begun, a sign of how quickly the ground had shifted under Nixon.
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1774government
Congress bans British trade; twelve colonies sign the Continental Association
For six weeks, delegates meeting at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia had debated how to answer Parliament's Coercive Acts against Massachusetts. On October 20, 1774, the First Continental Congress adopted the Continental Association, banning British tea immediately and setting December 1 as the start of a wider ban on importing or consuming British, Irish, and West Indian goods. Local committees would police compliance, and colonists who broke the pledge faced public shaming. Twelve colonies signed on at once; Georgia held back, joining the following year.
The Association turned thirteen separate colonies into one coordinated economic bloc for the first time, run by local committees that soon acted like shadow governments. Abraham Lincoln later pointed straight back to this document, arguing the Union itself predated the Constitution by thirteen years. A boycott pledge became the first working model of American self-governance.
Did you know
QHow far did the Continental Association's funeral rules actually go?
The delegates legislated mourning etiquette down to the ribbon. Gentlemen were permitted only a black crepe or ribbon on the arm or hat; ladies, a black ribbon and necklace. The Association also banned the old custom of handing out gloves and scarves to funeral guests, a common colonial-era expense for grieving families. It sat alongside bans on gambling, stage plays, and other 'extravagance and dissipation.' It sat alongside bans on gambling, stage plays, and other "extravagance and dissipation," showing delegates meant the boycott to reshape daily colonial behavior, well beyond import ledgers. A congress debating constitutional rebellion still found time to specify what ribbon was acceptable at a burial.
QWhat did one Annapolis merchant do with a shipload of British tea rather than sell it?
He burned it, ship and all. Rather than risk being named a violator under the Association's compliance committees, the Maryland merchant destroyed his own vessel loaded with imported tea instead of attempting a sale. The Association relied on public shame as its enforcement tool, with newspapers and town gossip naming anyone caught breaking the pledge as an enemy of American liberty. Facing that kind of exposure, torching the cargo outright was cheaper than being branded a traitor to the cause. It stands out among a document otherwise enforced through lists and ledgers.
QWho first proposed the non-importation idea that became the Continental Association, and what Boston body endorsed the concept months earlier?
Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee suggested the non-importation agreement that Congress eventually adopted, building on a model already tested in his home colony. Months before Congress acted, a Boston Town Meeting on May 13, 1774, had passed a resolution declaring that a joint colonial boycott, stopping all importation from Britain and all exports to Britain and the West Indies, would prove "the salvation of North America and her liberties." That local resolution anticipated the national strategy closely. The idea traveled from a Massachusetts town hall to a Virginia delegate's proposal before it became continental policy.
1803government
The Senate votes 24 to 7: Louisiana is bought
Six months after Robert Livingston and James Monroe signed in Paris for $15 million, the deal still needed Washington's approval. On October 20, 1803, the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase treaty by a vote of 24 to 7, over Federalist objections that the Constitution gave the president no power to add new territory. The next day the Senate authorized Jefferson to take possession and set up a temporary military government over the land. Roughly 828,000 square miles, bought without a shot fired, now belonged to the United States.
The ratification vote forced the country's first real argument over whether the Constitution could grow with the nation, a debate that resurfaced every time America later annexed territory, from Texas to Alaska. Jefferson, a strict constructionist, set aside his own doubts, comparing his role to a guardian investing a ward's money for the ward's future good.
Did you know
QHow much did the Louisiana Purchase cost per acre?
At $15 million for roughly 828,000 square miles, the United States paid out to less than three cents an acre. The money wasn't even American: the Treasury didn't have $15 million sitting around, so Jefferson's administration borrowed the full amount from British and Dutch banking houses at six percent annual interest. France, at war with Britain again within months, received payment that was itself borrowed from British and Dutch banks.
QWhat did Robert Livingston say the moment he signed the treaty in Paris?
Livingston, who had spent months negotiating in Paris only to see Monroe arrive and share credit for the final deal, couldn't resist a grand line once the ink was dry on April 30, 1803. He told the room, "We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our whole lives... From this day the United States take their place among the powers of the first rank." Napoleon, for his part, was reportedly less concerned with American rank than with keeping the land out of British hands.
QWhich present-day states and countries came out of the Louisiana Purchase?
The territory eventually became all or part of fifteen U.S. states, stretching from Louisiana and Arkansas up through the Dakotas and Montana, plus two Canadian provinces along the northern edge of the land France had claimed. No survey crew had mapped most of it in 1803; Jefferson was buying a vast, largely unmeasured expanse based on French colonial boundary claims rather than any firm cartography.
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Quote of the day
“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.”
