03.01.2006
IT HAPPENED THIS DAY MARCH 1 TO MARCH 15

History
March 1
1864 Federal cavalry raid by Judson Kilpatrick and Ulric Dahlgren on Richmond, Virginia

March 2
1865 Engagement at Waynesboro, Virginia

March 3
1863 Congress Passes Civil War Conscription Act
During the Civil War, the U.S. Congress passes a conscription act that would lead to the first wartime draft of U.S. citizens in American history. The act calls for registration of all males between the ages of twenty and forty-five years, including aliens with the intention of becoming citizens, by April 1, 1863. Exemptions from the draft could be bought for $300 or by finding a substitute draftee. The carrying out of the draft leads to riots in New York City and elsewhere, as opponents criticize the fact that exemptions are effectively granted only to the wealthiest U.S. citizens. Although the Civil War saw the first compulsory conscription of U.S. citizens for wartime service, Congress passed an act in 1793 that required that all able-bodied male citizens purchase a gun and join their local state militia. There was no penalty for non-compliance with this act. Congress also passed a constriction act during the War of 1812, but the war ended before it was enacted. During the Civil War, the government of the Confederacy also enacted a compulsory military draft.
March 4
1778 Franco-American Alliances Ratified
During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress votes to ratify the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance, signed by representatives from the United States and France in Paris one month before. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognizes the U.S. as an independent nation and encourages trade between France and the America. The Treaty of Alliance provides for a military alliance against Great Britain, stipulating that the absolute independence of the U.S. be recognized as a condition for peace and that France will be permitted to conquer the British West Indies. With the treaties, the first entered into by the U.S. government, the Bourbon monarchy of France formalizes its commitment to assist the American colonies in their struggle against France’s old rival, Great Britain. France had been secretly providing aid to the United States since the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, and in 1776, the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee to a joint diplomatic commission to secure a formal alliance with France. However, it was not until October 17, 1777, and the American victory over the British at the Battle of Saratoga, that the French were convinced that the Americans were committed to achieving a victory and thus worthy partners to a formal alliance. The eagerness of the French to help the United States was motivated both by an appreciation of the American revolutionaries’ liberal democratic ideals and by a bitterness at having lost most of their American empire to the British at the conclusion of the French and Indian Wars in 1763. On February 6, 1778, the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance were signed, and on May 4, 1778, the Continental Congress ratified these treaties. Soon after, the French formally declared war against Britain, and French armies and naval fleets proved critical in the defeat of the British, which culminated at the Battle of Yorktown in October of 1781.
March 5
1953 Joseph Stalin Dies
In Moscow, Joseph Stalin, who became the leader of the Soviet Union after Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of seventy-three. Stalin, the son of a poor cobbler, was born in Georgia in 1879 as Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. As a young man, he attended seminary school before joining a Georgian Marxist political party in 1898, and then Vladimir Lenin’s revolutionary Bolshevik Party upon its founding in 1903. In 1913, he took the adopted name of Stalin, meaning "Man of Steel" and became a leading Bolshevik. After the October Revolution of 1917, Stalin held several important posts in the Soviet Communist Party, and in 1922, became secretary to the party central committee, an office he held until his death. Although Lenin had criticized Stalin’s arbitrary leadership as secretary general, Stalin seized power upon Lenin’s death in 1924, defeating such rivals as Leon Trotsky. As Soviet leader, Stalin abandoned the Communist ideal of a rapidly diminishing state and launched the first Five-Year Plan, a brutal program of forced industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. In the early 1930s, he executed, worked to death, or starved up to ten million peasants who stood in the way of his ruthless economic plans. Beginning in 1934, he began a massive purge of the Communist Party, the Soviet government, the military, and the intelligentsia, and tens of thousands of suspected political opponents to his rule were imprisoned, exiled, or executed. Failing to achieve satisfactory alliances with the Western democracies, Stalin agreed to a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in 1939. The treaty, which divided much of Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the U.S.S.R., was only honored by Hitler for two years. On June 22, 1941, the Nazis 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, reaching the outskirts of Moscow before the Red Army was able to begin a successful counter-offensive. Despite the difficulties of Soviet life under Stalin’s tyrannical regime, Russians bitterly resisted the German invasion. By the time the triumphant Red Army entered Berlin, the German capital, some twenty-two million Soviet citizens had died in the "Great Patriotic War." At Allied conferences during and after the war, Stalin proved an astute diplomat, succeeding in dividing the world into spheres of influence and setting the stage for the Cold War. After the war, Stalin isolated the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe from the rest of the world, and grew critical of independent Communist movements, such as in China or Yugoslavia. In the last years of his life, his increasing paranoia led to new purges in the Soviet Union. After his death in 1953, his body was embalmed and displayed next to Lenin’s inside a mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square. However, just three years later, Nikita Khrushchev, the new Soviet leader, denounced Stalin and his tyrannical politics at the Twentieth Party Congress, and in 1961, Stalin’s body was disinterred from Lenin’s tomb.
March 6
1836 The Alamo Falls
During the Texas War for Independence, Mexican president and general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna orders the first assault on the fortified Alamo mission in San Antonio, Texas, held by 144 Texans and Americans under the leadership of Colonel William B. Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett. After gaining independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico welcomed foreign settlers to sparsely populated Texas, and a large group of Americans led by Stephen F. Austin settled along the Brazos River. The Americans soon outnumbered the resident Mexicans, and by the 1830s, attempts by the Mexican government to regulate these semi-autonomous communities led to rebellion. In October of 1835, residents of Gonzales, fifty miles east of San Antonio, responded to Santa Anna’s demand that they return a cannon loaned for defense against Indian attack by discharging it against the Mexican troops sent to reclaim it. Two months later, Texas volunteers commanded by Ben Milam drove Mexican troops out of San Antonio and settled in around the Alamo, a mission compound adapted to military purposes after the 1790s. In January of 1836, Santa Anna concentrated a force of several thousand men south of the Rio Grande and General Sam Houston, the commander of the Texas revolutionary troops, ordered the San Alamo abandoned. However, Colonel Jim Bowie realized that the Alamo’s twenty-five captured cannons could not be removed before Santa Anna’s arrival, so he remained entrenched with his men in order to give Houston time to raise a revolutionary army. On February 2, Bowie and his twenty-five men were joined by a small cavalry company under Colonel William Travis, bringing the total number of Alamo defenders to about one hundred and thirty. One week later, Davy Crockett arrived in command of fourteen Tennessee Mounted Volunteers. On February 23, Santa Anna and some 4,000 Mexican troops besieged the Alamo, and the Mexican leader ordered the former mission bombarded with cannon and rifle fire for twelve days. The next day, in the chaos of the siege, Colonel Travis smuggled out a letter that read: "To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World… I shall never surrender or retreat… Victory or Death!" On March 2, the last Texan reinforcements from nearby Gonzales broke through the enemy’s lines and into the Alamo, bringing the total defenders to one hundred and eighty-five. The same day, Texas’ revolutionary government formally declared its independence from Mexico. In the early morning of March 6, Santa Anna ordered the first assault on the Alamo. Travis’s artillery decimated the first and then the second Mexican charge, but within ninety minutes the Texans were overwhelmed, and the Alamo was taken. All of the Texan defenders were killed, along with some 1,500 of Santa Anna’s troops. The only survivors of the Alamo were a mother, her child, and an African-American slave. Six weeks later, a large Texan army under Sam Houston surprised Santa Anna’s army at San Jacinto. Shouting "Remember the Alamo!" the Texans defeated the Mexicans and captured Santa Anna. Texas independence was won.
March 7
1936 Hitler Reoccupies the Rhineland
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violates the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by sending German military forces into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in July of 1919, eight months after the guns fell silent in World War I, called for stiff war reparation payments and other punishing peace terms for defeated Germany. Having been forced to sign the treaty, the German delegation to the peace conference indicated its attitude by breaking the ceremonial pen. As dictated by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany’s military forces were reduced to insignificance, while the Rhineland was to be demilitarized. In 1925, at the conclusion of a European peace conference held in Switzerland, the Locarno Pact was signed, reaffirming the national boundaries decided by the Treaty of Versailles and approving the German entry into the League of Nations. The so-called "spirit of Locarno" symbolized hopes for an era of European peace and good will, and by 1930, German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann had negotiated the removal of the last Allied troops in the demilitarized Rhineland. However, just four years later, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party seized full power in Germany, promising vengeance against the Allied nations that had forced the unjust Treaty of Versailles on the German people. In 1935, Hitler unilaterally canceled the military clauses of the treaty, and in March of 1936, denounced the Locarno Pact and began the remilitarization of the Rhineland. Two years later, Nazi Germany burst out of its territories, absorbing Austria and portions of Czechoslovakia. In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, leading to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
March 8
1917 The February Revolution Begins
In Russia, the February Revolution (known as such because of Russia’s use of the Old Style Julian calendar) begins as the Russian army garrison at Petrograd refuses to suppress striking workers and defects to the cause of the socialist revolutionaries. One week later, the Petrograd insurgents have taken over the capital and Czar Nicholas II is forced to abdicate. A provisional government composed mainly of moderates is established, and the Soviet--a coalition of workers’ and soldiers’ committees--calls for an end to violent revolutionary activity. Meanwhile, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik revolutionary party, leaves his exile in Switzerland and crosses German enemy lines to arrive at Petrograd on April 16, 1917. The Bolshevik Party, founded in 1903, was a militant group of professional revolutionaries who sought to overthrow the czarist government of Russia and set up a Marxist government in its place. On November 6, 1917, the Bolsheviks seize control of the Russian state in the October Revolution, and Lenin becomes virtual dictator of the country. However, civil war and foreign intervention delay complete Bolshevik control of Russian until 1920. Lenin’s Soviet government nationalizes industry and distributes land, and on December 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) is established. In the U.S.S.R., the Communist Party controls all levels of government, and the Party’s politburo, with its increasingly powerful general secretary, effectively rules the country. Soviet industry is owned and managed by the state, and agricultural land is divided into state-run collective farms. In the decades after its establishment, the Russian-dominated Soviet Union grows into one of the world’s most powerful and influential states, and eventually encompasses fifteen republics--Russia, the Ukraine, Georgia, Byelorussia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzsatn, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
March 9
1862 Battle of the Ironclads
During the American Civil War, the C.S.S. Virginia, a captured and rebuilt Union steam frigate formerly known as the Merrimack, engages the U.S.S. Monitor in the first battle between iron-fortified naval vessels in history. The Confederate navy’s innovative addition of iron plates to the captured U.S.S. Merrimac steam frigate temporarily made it an unstoppable force in the disputed waters of the Civil War, encouraged the Union navy to construct its own ironclad, the U.S.S. Monitor. On March 8, 1862, the Virginia attacked a Union squadron of wooden-hulled vessels in Hampton Roads off the Virginia coast. The U.S.S. Congress, a frigate, and the U.S.S. Cumberland, a sailing sloop, were easily sunk by the Virginia, which suffered no noticeable damage. Late that night, the U.S.S. Monitor arrived in the area, and despite its unassuming appearance, with its deck nearly at the water level, the Monitor would prove a formidable match for the Confederate ironclad. The next day, the two vessels engaged each other, and both the Monitor and the Virginia suffered direct hits which failed to penetrate their iron shells. Finally after four hours, a cannon blast from the Virginia hit the Monitor’s pilothouse, temporarily blinding ship’s captain, Union Lieutenant John L. Worden. The Virginia was thus allowed to escape to Norfolk, Virginia, and the Battle of the Ironclads ended in a draw. Two months later, the Virginia was trapped in Norfolk by advancing Union forces, and its Confederate crew blew up the innovative vessel rather than allow it to fall into Union hands.
March 10
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Ratified
The U.S. Senate votes thirty-eight to fourteen to ratify the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, formally ending the Mexican War and extending the boundaries of the United States west to the Pacific Ocean. The Mexican-American War began with a dispute over the U.S. government’s 1845 annexation of Texas. In January of 1846, President James K. Polk, a strong advocate of westward expansion, ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. Mexican troops attacked Taylor’s forces, and on May 13, 1846, Congress approved a declaration of war against Mexico. On September 14, 1847, U.S. General Winfield Scott entered Mexico City and raised the American flag over the Hall of Montezuma, concluding a devastating advance that began with a massive amphibious landing at Vera Cruz six months earlier. On February 2, 1848, the two nations signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico agreed to recognize Texas as part of the United States, and ceded over 500,000 square miles of territory to the U.S., including all of the future states of California, Nevada, and Utah, almost all of New Mexico and Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. In return the U.S. agreed to pay Mexico $15,000,000 and to assume all the claims of American citizens against Mexico, amounting to $7,000,000, and the claims of Mexican citizens against Native-Americans from the United States, eventually amounting to some $30,000,000. One month later, with the removal of a treaty article that would have granted Mexicans living in U.S. territory unique rights, the U.S. Senate voted to ratify the treaty. In 1853, the United States and Mexico signed the Gadsden Purchase, in which the U.S. acquires approximately 30,000-square miles of land in what is now southern New Mexico and Arizona, establishing the modern border of the southern United States.
March 11
1861 Confederate Constitution Adopted
In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas adopt the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America. The constitution resembles the Constitution of the United States, even repeating much of its language, but is actually more comparable to the Articles of Confederation--the first post-Revolutionary War U.S. constitution--in its delegation of extensive power to the states. The constitution also contains substantial differences from the U.S. Constitution in its protection of the institution of American slavery, which is "recognized and protected" in slave states and territories. However, in congruence with U.S. policy since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the foreign slave trade is prohibited. The document also provides for six-year terms for the president and vice president, and the president is ineligible for successive terms. Although a presidential item veto is granted, the power of the central Confederate government is sharply limited by its constitutional dependence on state consent for the use of any funds and resources. After some initial problems, the government of Jefferson Davis, the first president of the Confederacy, grows stronger as he learns to use executive power to secure control of the armed forces and the use of manpower. However, some Southern state governments resist Davis’s centralization and deprive him of needed resources, especially after the Civil War begins to turn against the Confederacy. Although Britain and France both briefly consider entering the Civil War on the side of the South, the Confederate States of America never wins foreign recognition as an independent government.
March 12
1862 Siege of New Madrid, Missouri continues
1865 Jefferson Davis signs law authorizing black men to serve as soldiers in the Confederate Army

March 13
1863 Confederate batteries at Port Hudson, Louisiana fire on a Union squadron sinking USS Mississippi but USS Albatross and USS Hartford run the Port Hudson gantlet
March 14
1945 The Heaviest Bomb of the War
During World War II, the 617 Dambuster Squadron of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) drops the heaviest bomb of the war on the Bielefeld railway viaduct in Germany. Known as the "Grand Slam," the 22,000-pound bomb, which was designed by Sir Barnes Wallis, is dropped from an Avro Lancaster flown by RAF Squadron Leader C.C. Calder. The bomb destroys two full spans of viaduct on the busy railroad, and shock waves from its impact can be felt hundreds of miles away. In its singular destructive power, the Grand Slam is only surpassed by the two U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Japan later in the year. Although "Little Boy" and "Fat Man," as these two bombs are known, are less than half as heavy as the Grand Slam, their shear explosive power reduces the so-called "earthquake" bomb to insignificance.
March 15
1917 Czar Nicholas II Abdicates
During the February Revolution, Czar Nicholas II, ruler of Russia since 1894, is forced to abdicate the throne by the Petrograd insurgents, and a provincial government is installed in his place. Crowned on May 26, 1894, Nicholas was neither trained nor inclined to rule, which did not help the autocracy he sought to preserve in an era desperate for change. The disastrous income of the Russo-Japanese War led to the Russian Revolution of 1905, which the czar only diffused after signing a manifesto promising representative government and basic civil liberties in Russia. However, Nicholas soon retracted most of these concessions, and the Bolsheviks and other revolutionary groups won wide support. In 1914, Nicholas again led his country into another costly war, and discontent in Russia grew as food became scarce, Russians soldiers became war-weary, and devastating defeats on the Eastern Front demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the czar’s leadership. In March of 1917, the army garrison at Petrograd joined striking workers in demanding socialist reforms, and Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. Nicholas and his family were first held at the Czarskoye Selo palace, then in the Yekaterinburg palace near Tobolsk. In July of 1918, the advance of counterrevolutionary forces caused the Yekaterinburg soviet--a local coalition of workers and soldiers--to fear that Nicholas might be rescued. After a secret meeting, a death sentence was passed on the czar and his family, and on the night of July 16, three centuries of the Romanov dynasty ended when Nicholas and his entire family were shot to death.