Christmas Every Day

1859

The Pig War between Canada and the USA

The Oregon Treaty of 1846 had settled the boundary between British North America (later to be Canada) and the United States from the prairies to the Pacific along the 49th parallel. Things got a bit tricky however in the waters between the mainland and Vancouver Island — the Island, occupied by the British, dips below the parallel. Unfortunately, ambiguity in the language of the treaty resulted in rival claims to the San Juan Islands. An online article by Tod Matthews takes up the story:

Before the Pig War, the British were determined to resist the tide of American migration sweeping across the Rocky Mountains. They argued that the Americans were trespassing on land guaranteed to Britain by earlier treaties and explorations and through trading activities of the long-established Hudson’s Bay Company. Americans considered the British presence an affront to their “manifest destiny to overspread the continent” and rejected the idea that the land west of the Rockies should remain under foreign influence. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 gave the United States undisputed possession of the Pacific Northwest south of the 49th parallel, extending the boundary “to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver’s Island; and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of Fuca’s straits to the Pacific Ocean.” However, the treaty created additional problems because its wording left unclear who owned San Juan Island. The difficulty arose over that portion of the boundary described as the “middle of the channel” separating British-owned Vancouver Island from the mainland. Actually, there were two channels: Haro Strait (nearest Vancouver Island) and Rosario Strait (nearer the mainland). San Juan Island lay between the two. Britain insisted that the boundary ran through Rosario Strait; the Americans claimed it lay through Haro Strait. Thus, both sides considered San Juan theirs for settlement.

By 1859, there were about 25 American settlers on San Juan Island. They were settled on redemption claims which they expected the U.S. Government to recognize as valid but which the British considered illegal. Neither side recognized the authority of the other. Amazingly, this conflict occurred on an island only 20 miles long and seven miles wide, covering 55 square miles

When American settler Lyman Cutlar shot and killed the Hudson’s Bay Company’s marauding pig, the feud between nation’s came to blows. British authorities threatened to arrest him. American citizens requested military protection. Brig. Gen. William S. Harney, the commander of the Department of Oregon and anti-British to boot, responded by sending a company of the 9th U.S. Infantry under Capt. George E. Pickett to San Juan. James Douglas, governor of the Crown Colony of British Columbia, was angered at the presence of American soldiers on San Juan. He had three British warships under Capt. Geoffrey Hornby sent to dislodge Pickett but with instructions to avoid an armed clash if possible. By August 1861, five British warships mounting 167 guns and carrying 2,140 troops opposed 461 Americans, protected by an earthen redoubt and 14 cannons. When word of the crisis reached Washington, officials there were shocked that the simple action of an irate farmer had grown into an explosive international incident. San Juan Island remained under joint military occupation for the next 12 years. In 1871, when Great Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Washington, the San Juan question was referred to Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany for settlement. On October 21, 1872, the emperor ruled in favor of the United States, establishing the boundary line through Haro Strait. Thus San Juan became an American possession and the final boundary between Canada and the United States was set. On November 25, 1872, the Royal Marines withdrew from English Camp. By July 1874 the last of the U.S. troops had left American Camp. Peace had finally come to the 49th parallel.

1900

“Smash! Smash! For Jesus’ sake, smash!”: Carrie Nation attacks her first saloon

Carrie Nation (1846-1911) was an American teacher and member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union who vociferously opposed the sale of alcohol. In 1900, in her home of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, she received a message from God:

The next morning I was awakened by a voice which seemed to me speaking in my heart, these words, “GO TO KIOWA,” and my hands were lifted and thrown down and the words, “I’LL STAND BY YOU.” The words, “Go to Kiowa,” were spoken in a murmuring, musical tone, low and soft, but “I’ll stand by you,” was very clear, positive and emphatic. I was impressed with a great inspiration, the interpretation was very plain, it was this: “Take something in your hands, and throw at these places in Kiowa and smash them.”

Taking this message to heart, she went to Dobson’s Saloon in Kiowa and greeted the patrons with the words “Men, I have come to save you from a drunkard’s fate”. She then proceeded to smash the bar and its bottles of the demon rum with rocks she had picked up and a sledge hammer. Other saloons in the area received similar treatment at the hands of this fiery Amazon — she was over six feet tall and weighed 250 pounds. Her husband jocularly suggested that she use a hatchet during her next attack and this became her trademark; she called her assaults “hatchetations”. She and her followers from the WCTU or the Anti-Saloon League attacked bars across the United States, resulting in a series of arrests and fines which did not deter her. She died in 1911, a national celebrity and eight years later the United States adopted Prohibition.

1453

The Fall of Constantinople

On May 29, 1453, the troops of the Turkish Sultan Mehmet II broke through the defences of Constantinople and completed the conquest of the city. Michael Paleologus, the last ruler of the Roman Empire died fighting before the city was comprehensively sacked and its inhabitants sold into slavery. The great Church of Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia, was immediately turned into a mosque. The most sacred relic of eastern Christians, the Hodegetria, a portrait of Mary and the baby Jesus supposedly painted by Luke the Evangelist, was chopped into bits for the gold in its frame.

By that time, Constantinople, once the grandest city on the planet, was only a hollow shell of its former self and the Roman Empire, of which it had been its capital, was reduced to a few scattered holdings. But the capture of the city had enormous political and symbolic importance. Both the Turks and the Russians claimed to be the heirs of Byzantium. Mehmet styled himself the Kayser-i-Rum, “Roman Emperor” and decreed that his next conquest would be Rome itself. The ruler of Muscovy, Ivan III, married a Byzantine princess and declared that he was the successor of Orthodox supremacy, appropriating the title of Czar, or “Caesar”. The flood of exiles from the city who found refuge in Italy brought with them manuscripts and a knowledge of Greek that helped fuel a second stage in the Renaissance. Turkish expansion brought with it a strangling of the trade between Asia and Europe, encouraging Europeans to embark on direct voyages to the East rather than relying on Islamic middle men; the expeditions of Columbus and Vasco da Gama are results of the fall of Constantinople.

Today, visitors to Constantinople, called “Istanbul” by the Turks, can visit a tiny enclave in the Fener district by the Golden Horn and see the compound of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the last remaining official of the Roman Empire.

1660

Battle of the Long Sault

The continued existence of the colony of New France was always more than a little perilous. At risk from European powers when the home country went to war with the Dutch or the British, and under the constant threat of native resistance, particularly from the savage Iroquois Confederacy, the colonists lived in a state of perpetual tension.

Dollard des Ormeaux was a young man with some military experience before migrating to New France where he settled in Ville-Marie, what is now Montreal. Learning that an Iroquois force assembling on the Ottawa River was intent on raiding French settlements on the St Laurence, Dollard proposed taking a party inland and ambushing the hostile natives. With the agreement of the town’s leadership, Dollard gathered 17 settler volunteers and 4 Huron for the guerrilla task. In early May they reached the Ottawa and established themselves in an old Algonquian fort at the Long Sault, where they were joined by another 40 Huron warriors.

The Iroquois force they meant to ambush was far larger than anticipated, numbering perhaps 700, and Dollard and his men soon found themselves besieged. They held off the Iroquois for five days, despite the defection of many of the Huron. The crucial moment came when Dollard lit a barrel of explosives which he meant to hurl into the enemy ranks but at that moment he was shot and the gunpowder fell back into the fort, killing many of its defenders in the explosion. The Iroquois soon overran the palisades and found only 5 Frenchmen alive; 4 soon died and the other was taken prisoner along with a few Huron to be tortured to death and cannibalized.

The fact that the Iroquois, at this point, returned home and did not attack the settlements has led to Dollard and his men being treated as the saviours of New France. Recent historians have tried to downplay the heroic aspect, suggesting that Dollard was really intent on stealing furs, and that the Iroquois would not have gone on to imperil New France anyway. The debate continues.

A Big Day in Tudor History

1499

Heir to the Tudor dynasty of England, Prince Arthur, weds by proxy Spanish princess Katharine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. Katharine is 13 and Arthur is 12; they will not meet until over two years later. They were married on November 14, 1501 but they may not have consummated the marriage — a matter of enormous consequence as Arthur died in April 1502 and Katharine was left a widow. Her claim to be a virgin sped the papal dispensation that allowed her to marry Henry VIII, Arthur’s brother, in 1509.

1536

Henry VIII divorced his wife Katharine of Aragon in order to marry his pregnant mistress Anne Boleyn. Unfortunately for Anne, she could not produce a male heir, giving birth only to a daughter Elizabeth, and suffering three miscarriages. Henry then decided to replace her with Jane Seymour and charged Anne with incest and adultery; she was beheaded on this date.

1568

Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII, was not the only claimant to the English throne. In the person of Mary, Queen of Scots, she faced another woman of Tudor blood, untouched by the accusations of bastardy which haunted Elizabeth, and supported by the princes of Catholic Europe. On this day, Elizabeth orders the arrest of Mary who had abdicated the Scottish throne and fled over the English border from rebellious nobles.