4.12.05
IT HAPPENED THIS DAY APRIL 12-APRIL 18

April 12
1861 The American Civil War Begins
The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General Pierre G. T. Beauregard opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Bay. Over the next thirty-four hours, fifty Confederate guns and mortars launched over four thousand rounds at the poorly supplied fort, and on April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson, commander of the Union garrison, surrendered. On April 15, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issues a proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand volunteer soldiers to help quell the Southern "insurrection." As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between the North and South over the issue of slavery had led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln's victory over the divided Democratic Party on November 7, 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On December 20, the South Carolina legislature passed the "Ordinance of Secession," which declared that "the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved." After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states had followed South Carolina's lead. On February 4, 1861, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana convened to establish a unified government, and on February 9, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected the first president of the Confederate States of America. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, seven states had seceded from the Union, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. On April 12, 1861, the American Civil War began when Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Four years later, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate dead.
April 13
1941 Japan and U.S.S.R. Sign Nonaggression Pact
During World War II, representatives from the Soviet Union and Japan signed a five-year neutrality agreement. Although traditional enemies, the nonaggression pact allowed both nations to free up large numbers of troops occupying disputed territory in Manchuria and Outer Mongolia to be used for more pressing purposes. The Soviet-Japanese pact came nearly two years after the Soviet Union signed a similar agreement with Nazi Germany, dividing much of Eastern Europe between the two countries. The Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact allowed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to move German forces to the West for his major offensives of 1939 to 1941, and bought Soviet leader Joseph Stalin time to complete his forced industrialization of the U.S.S.R. and prepare the empire for its inevitable involvement in World War II. However, on June 22, 1941, just two months after the Soviet-Japanese nonaggression pact was signed, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the U.S.S.R. Stalin was caught by surprise, and the German Wehrmacht penetrated deep into the Soviet Union, killing millions of Russians and reaching the outskirts of Moscow before the Red Army was able to begin a successful counter-offensive. Although Japanese offensives into the eastern U.S.S.R. during this time may have resulted in the defeat of the Soviet Union, Japan itself was forced to concentrate all of its resources in a resistance against the massive U.S. counter-offensive in the Pacific, underway by the fall of 1942. At the Yalta conference in early 1945, Joseph Stalin, on the urging of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, agreed to declare war against Japan within three months of Germany's defeat. On August 8, 1945, true to Stalin's promise, the Soviet Union declared war against Japan, and the next day the Red Army invaded Manchuria. The same day, the United States dropped its second atomic bomb on Japan, devastating Nagasaki as it had Hiroshima with the first atomic bomb three days earlier. Faced with the choice of destruction or surrender, Japan chose the latter. On August 15, one week after the Soviet declaration of war, Emperor Hirohito announced the Japanese surrender on national radio, urging the Japanese people to "endure the unendurable."
April 14
1918 U.S. Flyers in First Dogfight over Western Front
Six days after being assigned for the first time to the Western Front, two American pilots from the U.S. First Aero Squadron engaged in America's first aerial dogfight with enemy aircraft. In a battle fought almost directly over the Allied Squadron Aerodome at Toul, France, U.S. flyers Douglas Campbell and Alan Winslow succeed in shooting down two German two-seaters. By the end of May, Campbell has shot down five enemy aircraft, making him the first American to qualify as an "ace" in World War I. The First Aero Squadron, organized in 1914 after the outbreak of World War I, undertook its first combat mission on March 19, 1917, in support of the seven thousand U.S. troops who had invaded Mexico to capture Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. Despite numerous mechanical and navigational problems, the American flyers flew hundreds of scouting missions for U.S. Brigadier General John J. Pershing, and gained important experience that would later be used over the battlefields of Europe in World War I.
April 15
1998 Pol Pot Dies
Pol Pot, the architect of Cambodia's killing fields, died of apparently natural causes a year ago today. He was serving a life sentence imposed against him by his own Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge, organized by Pol Pot in the Cambodian jungle, advocated a radical Communist revolution that would wipe out Western influences in Cambodia and set up a solely agrarian society. In 1970, aided by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, Khmer Rouge guerrillas began a large-scale insurgency against Cambodian government forces, soon gaining control of nearly a third of the country. By 1973, secret U.S. bombings of Cambodian territory controlled by the Vietnamese Communists forced the Vietnamese out of the country, creating a power vacuum that was soon filled by Pol Pot's rapidly growing Khmer Rouge movement. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, overthrew the pro-U.S. regime, and established a new government, the Kampuchean People's Republic. As the new ruler of Cambodia, Pol Pot quickly set about transforming the country into his vision of an agrarian utopia. The cities were evacuated, factories and schools were closed, and currency and private property was abolished. Anyone thought to be an intellectual, such as someone who spoke a foreign language, was immediately killed. Skilled workers were also killed, in addition to anyone caught in possession of eyeglasses, a wristwatch, or any other modern technology. In forced marches punctuated with atrocities from the Khmer Rouge, the millions who failed to escape Cambodia were herded onto rural collective farms. Between 1975 and 1978, an estimated two million Cambodians died by execution, forced labor, and famine. In 1978, Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh in early 1979. A moderate Communist government was established, and Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge retreated back into the jungle. In 1985, Pol Pot officially retired, but remained the effective head of the Khmer Rouge. In 1997, he was put on trial by his own Khmer Rouge after an internal power struggle ousted him from his leadership position. Sentenced to life imprisonment by a "people's tribunal," which critics derided as a show trial, Pol Pot later declared in an interview, "My conscience is clear." Much of the international community hoped that his captors would extradite him to stand trial for his crimes against humanity, but he died of apparently natural causes while under house arrest in 1998.
April 16
During the Civil War
1862 President Jefferson Davis approves Confederate conscription act
1862 Slavery abolished in the District of Columbia
1862 Siege of Yorktown, Virginia continues
1863 Siege of Suffolk, Virginia by Confederates continues
1865 Capture of Columbus and West Point, Georgia
April 17
1941 Yugoslavia Surrenders
During World War II, representatives of Yugoslavia's various regions signed an armistice with Nazi Germany at Belgrade, ending eleven days of futile resistance against the invading German Wehrmacht. More than three hundred thousand Yugoslav officers and soldiers were taken prisoner. A total of only two hundred Germans died in the conquest of Yugoslavia. On March 27, 1941, two days after the Yugoslav government signed a controversial pact with the Axis powers, Yugoslav air officers, aided by the British secret services, toppled the regime of Diagisa Cvetkovich. In response, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler launched a massive invasion of the country that began on April 6 with the bombing of Belgrade. The Yugoslav defenders, made up of various politically unstable nationalities, were routed by the hordes of German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian troops invading their country. On April 17, Yugoslavia surrendered and was divided, with the exception of the puppet state of Croatia, between the four invading Axis powers. The occupying troops aggravated the traditional religious and national differences in the region, and the Serbs were especially brutalized. However, by the end of the year, two separate effective resistance movements had sprung up, one led by Colonel Dragolyub Mihailovich that was loyal to the Yugoslav government-in-exile, and another led by Josip Broz that was made up of members of the illegal Communist Party.
April 18
1775 Paul Revere and William Dawes Ride
Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes made their famous ride on this day in 1775. Learning that British troops were leaving Boston to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, and to confiscate the Patriot arsenal at Concord, Revere and Dawes set out on separate routes to warn Adams and Hancock and to rouse the Patriot minutemen. By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government had reached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from England to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against the Patriot arsenal at Concord, and to capture Adams and Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington. The Boston Patriots had been preparing for such a military action by the British for some time, and upon learning of the British plan, Revere and Dawes set off across the Massachusetts countryside. Taking separate routes in case one of them were captured, Dawes left Boston by the Boston Neck peninsula and Revere crossed the Charles River to Charlestown by boat. As the two couriers make their way, Patriots in Charlestown waited for a signal from Boston informing them of the British troop movement. As previously agreed, one lantern would be hung in the steeple of Boston's Old North Church, the highest point in the city, if the British were marching out of the city by Boston Neck, and two if they were crossing the Charles River to Cambridge. Two lanterns were hung, and the armed Patriots set out for Lexington and Concord accordingly. Hundreds of other militiamen were awakened by Revere and Dawes, and after arming themselves, set out for the towns to oppose the British. Revere arrived in Lexington shortly before Dawes, but together they warned Adams and Hancock and then set out for Concord with Samuel Prescott. Early in the morning of April 19, a British patrol captured Revere and Dawes lost his horse, forcing him to walk back to Lexington on foot. However, Prescott escaped and rode on to Concord to warn the Patriots there. After being roughly questioned for an hour or two, Revere was released when the patrol heard minutemen alarm guns being fired on their approach to Lexington. Around 5 A.M., several hundred British troops under Major John Pitcairn arrived to the town to find a colonial militia under Captain John Parker waiting for them on Lexington's common green. Pitcairn ordered the Patriots to disperse, and after a moment's hesitation, the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the "shot heard around the world" was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead and ten others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.