Today's American Minute

Race Politics, Jim Crow & Black Codes - American Minute with Bill Federer

July 14, 2023

On February 5, 1866, Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens introduced legislation to give former slaves "40 acres and a mule." Democrats opposed it, led by President Andrew Johnson.

Abolitionist Poets: William Lloyd Garrison, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Ellery Channing, Theodore Parker, Henry David Thoreau & Ralph Waldo Emerson - American Minute with Bill Federer

July 12, 2023 • Abolitionist Poets: William Lloyd Garrison • Henry David Thoreau & Ralph Waldo Emerson -- "America ... a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race" • Louisa May Alcott • Nathaniel Hawthorne • Theodore Parker • William Ellery Channing

"America ... a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Virginia's George Mason - Purpose of Bill of Rights is to Limit Government! - American Minute with Bill Federer

July 12, 2023 • Virginia's George Mason - Purpose of Bill of Rights is to Limit Government!

George Mason originally suggested the wording of the First Amendment be:

"All men have an equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that no particular sect or society of Christians ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others."

"Old Ironsides" USS Constitution -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., & his dissenting son - American Minute with Bill Federer

July 12, 2023 • "Old Ironsides" USS Constitution - Oliver Wendell Holmes • & his dissenting son • Sr.

The USS Constitution was about to be decommissioned and broken into scrap when it was saved by a poem titled "Old Ironsides," written by poet, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.:

CHOLERA: Plague of 19th Century, First Global Epidemic; Day of Fasting proclaimed by President Taylor - American Minute with Bill Federer

July 11, 2023 • CHOLERA: Plague of 19th Century • First Global Epidemic; Day of Fasting proclaimed by President Taylor

By 1849, cholera killed 5,000 in New York, with a mass grave on Randall's Island in the East River. 8,000 died of cholera in Cincinnati and 3,000 killed in New Orleans. Spreading up the Mississippi, 5,000 were killed by cholera in St. Louis, which was about 6% of the city's population, among them being Pierre Chouteau, Sr., one of the St. Louis' prominent early settlers.