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18521776 Club

Douglass tells a packed Rochester hall: the Fourth of July is "yours, not mine"

Speaking the day after Independence Day at Corinthian Hall, he calls slavery "the great sin and shame of America" before a mostly white crowd invited by the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society.

Rochester's Corinthian Hall was packed the day after Independence Day, 1852, when the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society invited Frederick Douglass to speak. He gave the crowd, mostly white, no comfortable holiday oratory. Douglass told them the Fourth of July was "yours, not mine," and called slavery "the great sin and shame of America." The speech became one of the most devastating critiques of American hypocrisy ever delivered on American soil…

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More from July 5
1814

Scott's regulars break Riall's line at Chippawa; the British general had taken them for militia

After 25 minutes of volley fire on open ground near the Niagara, the Right Division's lines collapse and American regulars prove they can stand against British veterans.
1775

Congress sends King George a loyalty oath and a list of grievances; the delegates call it their olive branch

Hancock and the full Congress sign the petition in Philadelphia, and envoys Richard Penn and Arthur Lee are bound for London with the appeal.
1859

Captain Brooks claims a mid-Pacific atoll for the United States; he calls it the Middlebrook Islands

The sealing ship Gambia raised the flag under the Guano Islands Act, planting a U.S. claim a third of the way between Honolulu and Tokyo.
18651776 Club
Three months after Appomattox, Treasury stands up its first detective force to fight a flood of fake U.S. currency that has spread across the country since the war.
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More from Expansion & Antebellum
1846

Congress declares war on Mexico; Polk tells the nation its blood was shed on its own soil

The vote formalizes three weeks of open conflict rooted in a disputed border, the annexation of Texas, and a decade of unresolved claims between two nations.
1854

Pierce signs the Kansas-Nebraska Act; the Missouri Compromise's thirty-four-year line is gone

Douglas's "popular sovereignty" doctrine now lets settlers in both territories vote on slavery themselves, erasing the 36°30' ban that has held since 1820.
1846

Thirty-three armed settlers seize Sonoma before dawn; California declares itself a republic

General Vallejo is taken prisoner in his own home, 170 government horses are seized, and a hand-sewn bear flag now flies over the barracks.
1846

Sloat raises the flag over Monterey; Mexico's California falls without a shot

Sailors and marines from three warships walk ashore unopposed, ending both Mexican rule and the weeks-old California Republic declared at Sonoma.
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