Since the nation’s founding in the 18th century, the United States Navy has evolved from a ragtag collection of frigates into the most formidable naval force in history. But a fleet is only as effective as the minds behind it. To understand how America became a global superpower, one must look at the visionary commanders who mastered the art of naval warfare and redefined the limits of seapower.

1. David Farragut: The Man Who Damned the Torpedoes

For the first several decades after American independence, the US Navy did not have the rank of admiral at all. The highest rank an officer could receive was captain and if that captain commanded a fleet of ships, he was referred to as commodore. Officers like John Paul Jones, John Barry, Stephen Decatur, and John Rodgers held senior commands in the Continental Navy and US Navy, but did not have the rank of admiral because Congress was skeptical about the necessity of a fully fledged blue ocean navy.

The American Civil War saw major changes in the organization of the US military and one of those was the creation of the rank of admiral. A Tennessean who fought in the War of 1812 as a young boy, he became a rear admiral, vice admiral, and full admiral in the space of a few years.

In the 1840s, Farragut oversaw a squadron of ships blockading several ports in northeast Mexico. After California attained statehood in 1850, he oversaw the construction of Mare Island port, which was one of the US Navy’s most important naval ports in the Pacific.

Despite being a Virginia resident in 1861, he stood with the Union right from the start and oversaw several successful naval operations against the Confederacy, most notably capturing New Orleans in 1862 and seizing Mobile Bay in 1864. Farragut’s immortal order, “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!” at Mobile Bay exemplified his reputation for aggression and bravery which made him a navy legend. He continued serving after the war and died while on active service in 1870.

2. George Dewey and the Rise of the American Empire

“You may fire when ready, Gridley.” These orders were given to Captain Charles Gridley on board the USS Olympia by Rear Admiral George Dewey, right before the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War. Dewey, a barrel-chested veteran who eventually accrued 62 years of active service, would become the only American naval officer in history to reach the rank of Admiral of the Navy due to his competence and long service record. He was a veteran of the Civil War, reaching the rank of lieutenant commander by 1865, and was very well regarded by his peers.

When America went to war with Spain in 1898, Dewey was in command of the Asiatic Squadron, a fleet of nine ships (both warships and support vessels). He moved swiftly to destroy the Spanish fleet in the Philippines, trapping them in Manila Bay. On May 1, 1898, he won one of America’s most lopsided naval victories by overwhelming and destroying eight Spanish warships at the cost of a few casualties and no ships lost. The US Navy cleared the way for the invasion of the Philippines and established itself as a major naval power in the Pacific.

After the war, he continued to serve until his death in 1917 as a member of the Advisory Board for the US Navy. This enabled him to advise the navy on matters of equipment and recruitment. Today, he is known to be an icon for his steadfastness at sea and his vision as a naval officer at a time when the United States was beginning to play an important role on the global stage.

3. Chester Nimitz: The Architect of Victory in the Pacific

Chester Nimitz, a soft-spoken Texan who spent much of his career working with submarines, was arguably the driving force behind the Allied victory in the Pacific Theater. Before WWII, Nimitz was the Navy’s leading expert on refueling techniques at sea, which became crucial for the Allied war effort. He was also the chief of the Bureau of Navigation. His demeanor and leadership skills made him an ideal commander of the US Pacific Fleet after the shock of the Pearl Harbor attacks.

After turning the tide of the war at the Battle of Midway Island in 1942, the US Navy in the Pacific shattered the Japanese navy and merchant marine. Nimitz ordered his subordinates to wear the Japanese down by a series of coordinated thrusts in the South and Central Pacific. He oversaw a massive expansion of his headquarters and supported US submarine and intelligence collection tactics. By 1945, he was regarded as one of the most effective Allied commanders. After the war, he succeeded Admiral Ernest King as Chief of Naval Operations. He died in 1966 as a Fleet Admiral in San Francisco after a lifetime of service.

4. William Halsey: Hit Hard, Hit Fast

In contrast to his cool and collected superior, Admiral William Halsey was a ruthless and hard-driving commander of the US Third Fleet. Born in 1882 in New Jersey, Halsey once stated, “When we first started out, I held that one of our men was the equal of three Japs. I have since increased this to twenty. Japan’s next move will be to retreat; and they will keep on retreating.”

Before WWII, he served in the Great White Fleet and commanded a destroyer in WWI. By 1938, he reached the rank of rear admiral and was in command of the USS Saratoga. During the Pearl Harbor attack, he attempted to counterattack the Japanese fleet but failed to identify their location.

Throughout the rest of the war, Halsey alternated command of the US Pacific Fleet’s main striking force with Admiral Raymond Spruance. Halsey sought to use the Third Fleet’s striking power to hammer Japanese garrisons across the Pacific and aimed to finish off Japan’s carrier strike group, coining the phrase “Hit hard, hit fast, hit often.” He worked closely with General Douglas MacArthur who shared his aggressive inclinations.

While some officers criticized him for failing to anticipate the Japanese offensive in Leyte Gulf, he managed to recover his stance and he ended the war in Tokyo Bay. After the war, he made the rank of fleet admiral and retired in 1947. While the Battle of Leyte Gulf tainted his record, he still earned a reputation as a hardened, ruthless commander unafraid to take on the Japanese head-on.

5. Raymond Spruance: The Quiet Warrior

In contrast to the aggressive, impetuous Admiral Halsey, Raymond Spruance was careful, measured, and respectful, earning himself the nickname “Quiet Warrior.” During WWI, he was mostly on shipyard duty in the US and Scotland. At the start of WWII, he was stationed in Puerto Rico at a dockyard in San Juan. When the US entered the war, he was transferred to the Pacific Fleet and given command of a squadron of cruisers.

In 1942, he won one of the most consequential battles in naval history off Midway Atoll. Thanks to the work of American intelligence, the US Navy knew that Midway was a target and assembled two task forces with three aircraft carriers. Spruance was a Rear Admiral in command of Task Force 16. He oversaw the attack that sank four Japanese carriers and changed the course of the war.

Afterward, he became commander of the main naval striking force, which was called the Fifth Fleet when under his command. He again defeated the Japanese fleet in the Philippine Sea, which led to the destruction of most of Japan’s remaining carrier squadrons. He ended the war overseeing air strikes on Japan proper. After the surrender, he was appointed President of the Naval War College until his retirement in 1948 as a four-star admiral. From 1952 to 1955, he served as Ambassador to the Philippines. Today, he is considered one of the most successful commanders of a carrier group in history and is regarded as a role model for young officers aspiring to become high-ranking officers.

6. Hyman Rickover: The Father of the Nuclear Fleet

One of the biggest technological leaps the US Navy made was the transition to nuclear power. This was largely thanks to the efforts of Admiral Hyman Rickover. Born in Poland to a Jewish family, Rickover arrived in the US in 1905 and enrolled in the US Naval Academy in 1918. During his early years in the service, he became an expert in engineering and received a master’s degree from Columbia University. During the Second World War, he was given several different commands, overseeing naval supply depots or serving as the chief engineering officer on several vessels.

By the end of the war, he was the inspector general of the 19th Fleet and worked with General Electric at Schenectady, New York, to develop a nuclear propulsion plant for destroyers. When the Navy began to embrace the idea of powering its ships through nuclear propulsion, Rickover became a passionate advocate of using this technology on submarines. By 1954, he oversaw the launching of the first nuclear-powered submarine in history, the USS Nautilus.

In 1958, Rickover was promoted to vice admiral and was in charge of overseeing the expansion of the nuclear-powered fleet of ships and boats. His insistence on safety ensured that the US Navy never had a nuclear accident on any of its ships. In 1982 he was forced to retire by opponents in Congress and within the Navy who were angered by his combative demeanor. With 63 years of active duty service, Rickover holds the distinction of being the longest-serving member of the US armed forces in history. After his death in 1986, he became known as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy.”

7. Elmo Zumwalt and the Brown Water Navy

Elmo Zumwalt was born in San Francisco in 1920. He was an accomplished naval officer who gained a Bronze Star for his actions aboard the USS Phelps during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. After graduating from the US Naval Academy in 1942 he became a well-regarded officer and held various postings.

During the Vietnam War, he became a rear admiral and vice admiral, initially commanding a destroyer squadron before becoming commander of Naval Force Vietnam. His ships in this capacity were known as the “Brown Water Navy”, a collection of patrol craft and other small vessels that patrolled the Vietnamese coastline or conducted riverine raids. While the overall performance of the US military in Vietnam was poor, Zumwalt’s flotilla proved to be very effective and was considered an ideal model for riverine warfare.

In 1970, President Nixon appointed Zumwalt Chief of Naval Operations, the 19th and youngest man to hold the post. He sought to reform the Navy’s standards and reduce friction in the ranks by issuing a series of directives known as Z-grams. These included allowing sailors to have facial hair, installing vending machines with beer in barracks, and authorizing the wearing of civilian clothes on shore bases during and after the evening meal. Additionally, he began phasing out a lot of America’s old warships against the wishes of much of the Pentagon.

These steps, while causing resentment from some of the more established naval bureaucrats in Washington, helped the navy regain confidence in the aftermath of the Vietnam debacle. They also helped ease many of the significant tensions between enlisted men and junior officers, a major issue in the waning years of the war. After his term as CNO, he won the Democratic nomination for the 1976 senatorial election in Virginia but lost to the Independent incumbent Harry F. Byrd Jr. Throughout his career, he was popular among the rank-and-file, but resented by much of the senior brass.

American Admirals and Naval Supremacy

The naval commanders listed above varied in their approaches to fighting and had different styles of command. Some, like Admiral Nimitz, were calculating and analytical. Others, like Admiral Farragut, were ruthless and aggressive, seeking to fight at the first available moment. What made them alike was the fact that they helped turn America into the world’s preeminent naval power.

Dewey helped America become a Pacific power by destroying the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. Nimitz oversaw the largest fleet in history and defeated Japan’s ambitions in the Pacific Theater. Rickover helped get the navy to embrace nuclear power, one of the biggest technological upgrades in maritime history.

Throughout the Cold War and to this day, the United States is able to project force in a way that previously only Britain’s Royal Navy could do. The United States embraced Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan’s theory of naval power, enabling it to become a strong force on the seas. Without the Navy’s willingness to project force, America would have been a land power only able to influence the American continent. Today, the United States Navy remains the leading naval power in the world with eleven aircraft carriers, ensuring that it can use force against any point on the globe.

Maine’s challenging, ever-shifting weather is nothing new, but what happens when that weather leads to a chain reaction of deadly events? In 1947, natural factors combined to create a disaster of epic proportions, destroying thousands of acres. Lives were uprooted as Mainers were forced to make life-and-death decisions in the heat of the moment. Prestigious summer homes and fishing shacks alike were relegated to ashy ruin. Read on to learn how this raging inferno changed the state forever.

The 108-Day Drought: A State Turned to Tinder

Maine is not known as a particularly dry state, with regions averaging 46 inches of rain and up to 110 inches of snow annually. However, 1947 proved anomalous from the start. Spring 1947 was unusually cold and rainy across Maine, but once summer arrived in mid-July, the weather abruptly shifted into an unprecedented dry spell. The total rainfall for the summer fell by almost half. Temperatures soared, and dry conditions spread across the state.

As water began to evaporate from the soil and plants dried out, citizens grew concerned. Wells were drying as the warm summer weather continued into the fall months. To exacerbate the heat, rain seemed to have vanished, with 108 consecutive days without rainfall recorded. Officials had a new, growing worry: fire.

With the state now in a full-fledged, record-breaking drought, residents were urged to clean their chimneys and avoid creating sparks. In a state that was 90 percent forested at the time, fire towers that typically closed in the fall were reopened in October. Small fires were reported and extinguished. However, the fires kept returning, with records showing 204 separate forest fires burning in Maine in October. These fires were located throughout the state, with some of the largest noted in York County, the southernmost area of the state, and along the coast near the popular tourist destination Acadia National Park and the town of Bar Harbor.

It is unknown or unrecorded how most of the fires started. Modern biologists attribute at least some of the fires to the “duff phenomenon” based on eyewitness descriptions of “underground” fires. Duff is the underlayer of the forest floor, below the top level of leaf litter. It mostly consists of fungi and decomposing organic matter and is insulated, gathering gases as a result of the decomposition processes within it. When conditions are dry and hot, duff can combust, creating a smolder that can last for days or months. In a drought scenario, a duff smolder can easily become a mature fire, spreading quickly in a dehydrated forest.

As the fires continued, they drained resources across numerous communities, with volunteers pulling together to try to manage the blazes. By October 18, the fires were only becoming more dangerous. The Shapleigh Plains Fire in southern Maine had burned 1,200 acres of land and was moving toward the town of Waterboro, while the town of Bowdoin was also being threatened by a fire that had already burned over a thousand acres. A haze of smoke was settling over the state, and still, temperature records were set on October 19. New fires were reported the next day, including on the coast. These were exacerbated over the next few days with gale-force winds.

“Red Thursday”: The Day the Winds Changed

The disaster escalated on October 23, known as “Red Thursday,” when the winds picked up further. With the past few days of incredible winds, the fires had expanded to terrifying proportions, burning thousands of acres with fronts up to 10 miles long. By the time Red Thursday rolled around, 40 fires were actively burning statewide, in winds that blew 40 miles an hour. These unbelievable gales allowed the fires to easily jump roads and rivers; nowhere felt safe. People began evacuating, often at a moment’s notice, as firefighters struggled to protect homes and public buildings. Despite the efforts of the firefighters and volunteers, many of whom were sent fleeing as well, towns like Newfield, Brownfield, and Shapleigh were essentially burned to the ground.

The Siege of Bar Harbor & the Great Sea Evacuation

Meanwhile, on Mount Desert Island, home to parts of Acadia National Park and impressive summer homes, Bar Harbor residents found themselves cut off from the mainland by a wall of fire. Citizens fled to the town pier, where hundreds of people were evacuated from Bar Harbor by sea. Fishermen from neighboring towns, private boats, and Coast Guard and Navy vessels all arrived to ferry residents to safety. This flotilla rescue is sometimes referred to as the “Dunkirk of Bar Harbor.”

Why Were the Fires So Hard to Fight?

With thousands of volunteers, why were the fires so hard to contain?

Most Maine towns at the time (and today) lacked a centralized fire service. Some towns did have volunteer units, but even these often lacked training and operated with outdated equipment. The fires crossed town lines, and there was little central command, all of which was exacerbated by the recent drought drying out the rural water supply. Though the firefighters and volunteers from Bates, Colby, and Bowdoin Colleges, the University of Maine, the Red Cross, the military, National Park Service, and more fought courageously, the efforts were unorganized and lacked adequate resources. This, coupled with the challenging environmental conditions, led to the fires reaching their peak.

The Aftermath: How the Burn of ’47 Changed Maine Forever

By the end of October, with dying winds and minimal but welcomed rain, the fires were starting to get under control. They would smolder for months, but by mid-November, it was snowing, and the fires were declared “out” on November 14. Still, the aftermath remained. 16 people died in the fires, and over a thousand homes were destroyed. Nine towns were considered destroyed or “mostly destroyed,” and four more were considered “seriously damaged.”

200,000 acres of the state had burned, with damage estimated at $30 million. Half a million was spent fighting the fires, and the lost timber, in a state that heavily relied on the pulp and paper industry, was valued at $17 million. The Jackson Laboratory was destroyed, killing thousands of mice used in medical research, setting scientific progress back significantly, and 10,000 acres of Acadia National Park were destroyed.

Lessons From the Ashes: Maine’s Legacy of Fire Prevention

Despite all of the loss, hope arose from the fire. Perhaps most significantly were the lessons learned from the disaster. It led to innovation and an overhaul in the way fires are fought in Maine and New England. Centralized communication and oversight channels were established, and training was made the utmost priority. Public education programs were established in the years after the fire and still continue today. Evidence of the fires can still be seen in locations throughout the state in the form of new-growth forests and architectural gaps in homes and buildings.

Though it seems unlikely that an event of this magnitude could repeat itself in Maine with firefighting improvements and the rarity of the deadly chain of events that set them off, one only has to look to California or Canada to see the possibilities of modern wildfires. Despite growth and progress, 90% of Maine’s modern wildfires are caused by humans. While there is hope that the Burn of ‘47 remains a distant memory, record-breaking drought once again crossed the state in 2025, bringing with it the reminder of how quickly a spark can turn to inferno.

On August 23, 1927, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born anarchists, were electrocuted at Charlestown State Prison in Massachusetts. The same day, an international wave of mass demonstrations protested their death. Sacco and Vanzetti had been arrested in 1920 and accused of a robbery and double murder in Braintree, Massachusetts. What initially appeared to be an open-and-shut case quickly became one of the most famous trials of the 20th century. Known as the Sacco and Vanzetti case, the trial divided America, exposing the inequalities and biases of the US justice system.

A Robbery in Massachusetts: The Origins of the Sacco & Vanzetti Case

On April 15, 1920, at around 3 p.m., Frederick A. Parmenter, a clerk at the Slater and Morrill shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts, was carrying the payroll across the company’s courtyard. Alessandro Berardelli, a guard, was accompanying him. Before they could reach the factory building, they were assaulted by two armed men, who opened fire, killing both employees. After grabbing the cash, approximately $15,000, the two gunmen fled the scene in a dark Buick with some other accomplices. Some eyewitnesses later described them as “Italian-looking.”

Bridgewater Police Chief Michael E. Stewart, who was investigating a failed robbery at a shoe factory in Bridgewater, soon became convinced that local radicals had committed both crimes to fund their subversive activities. In particular, he suspected the involvement of Mario “Mike” Buda, a known Italian-born anarchist later credited with the Wall Street bombing of September 1920.

Believing that the perpetrators had used Buda’s car as a second get-away vehicle, Stewart set a trap that led to the arrest of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti on May 5. Vanzetti was also charged with the robbery attempt in Bridgewater. Upon their arrest, the two Italian-Americans were carrying guns similar to those found on the crime scene. The payroll stolen from Parmenter, however, was never found.

During their first interrogations, Sacco and Vanzetti lied to the police, fearing their arrest was politically motivated. The suspicious death of fellow anarchist Andrea Salsedo, who fell from the window of the Bureau of Investigation in New York on May 3, had alarmed other Italian-born anarchists, who feared Salsedo might have shared information on his network with the authorities.

The First Red Scare

Considering the tense political atmosphere of the few years before their arrest, Sacco and Vanzetti’s fears were not unfounded. Indeed, toward the end of 1919, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had carried out a series of mass arrests and deportations of hundreds of individuals suspected of having radical sympathies. Known as the Palmer Raids, the anti-radical measures marked the climax of the so-called First Red Scare, a period characterized by widespread hysteria and paranoia fueled by fears of an imminent communist upheaval.

In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia alarmed American authorities, creating anxiety concerning a possible communist conspiracy aiming to overthrow the government. The end of World War I and the social unrest that followed increased the general paranoia. In particular, Palmer directed his anti-radical repression against recent immigrants and foreign-born activists.

Between 1919 and 1920, the newly founded General Intelligence Division, led by a young J. Edgar Hoover, rounded up thousands of alleged radicals, labor union members, and “undesirable” aliens. Often carried out in violation of civil liberties, the raids also targeted several Italian-born immigrants, including Luigi Galleani, the charismatic editor of Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle). Galleani, the promoter of a violent “propaganda of the deed,” was deported to Italy in June 1919. Among his followers, known as Galleanists, were Sacco and Vanzetti.

Who Were Sacco and Vanzetti?

Sacco and Vanzetti emigrated to the US in 1908. However, their paths crossed only around 1916, when they were both involved with Galleani’s anarchist group. Bartolomeo Vanzetti was born in 1888 in Villafalletto, a small town in the Piedmont region, northern Italy. In his autobiography The Story of a Proletarian Life, published in 1923, Vanzetti wrote that he “loved study,” adding that “my earliest memories are of prizes won in school examinations.” After working for years in various pastry and bakery shops, Vanzetti left for the US following his mother’s death.

After he arrived at Ellis Island, Vanzetti worked several jobs. Then, he settled in Plymouth, where he joined the local anarchist group, taking part in rallies as a speaker. He also subscribed and contributed to Cronaca Sovversiva. In his biography, Vanzetti later described himself as an “anarchist-communist,” expressing his belief that “communism is the most humane form of social contract.” When he was not working, Vanzetti sought to further his education by reading a wide range of books, from political literature to Dante’s Divine Comedy.

In 1917, Vanzetti fled to Mexico to avoid being drafted into the US Army. He crossed the border with other Galleanists, including Nicola Sacco. Born in Torremaggiore, a town in the southern Italian region of Apulia, as Ferdinando, Sacco emigrated to the US in April 1908, just two months before Vanzetti.

In 1909, after doing odd jobs, Sacco trained to become a skilled craftsman in the shoe industry. In 1912, he married Rosa Zambelli. Around the same time, he joined Galleani’s anarchist group, participating in fundraisings and distributing pamphlets. Sacco would later describe anarchism as a movement promoting “equality, justice, comradeship.”

The Trial of Sacco & Vanzetti

The trial against Sacco and Vanzetti began on May 31, 1921 at the Dedham Superior Court, the courthouse of Dedham prison where the defendants were incarcerated. In June 1920, Vanzetti had already been sentenced to twelve to fifteen years in prison for the failed robbery at the shoe factory in Bridgewater.

In the same years, when the investigators were still gathering evidence against the two Italian-Americans for the Braintree’s robbery and murders, the Boston America, a newspaper owned by William Randolph Hearst, quoting the prosecutors, announced that obtaining a conviction would be “comparatively easy.” The prediction turned out to be wrong.

As Frederick G. Katzmann, the prosecutor, and Fred Moore, the chief defense counsel, started questioning eyewitnesses, they provided conflicting and confusing statements about the whereabouts of the defendants on the day of the robbery. Indeed, Katzmann built his case primarily around ballistics evidence, calling to the stand Captain William H. Proctor, who maintained that the bullet that killed the security guard was fired from Sacco’s .32 Colt pistol. However, Captain Proctor later recanted his statement.

Besides presenting evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti, the prosecution also emphasized their political affiliation. Prior to the trial, the press had already highlighted the two men’s affiliation with the Galleanists, an anarchist group suspected of having carried out a series of bombings in 1919. Many newspapers, for example, reported that the police found “alleged Bolshevik literature” in Vanzetti’s bungalow. Reporters also announced that Vanzetti “admits to being a radical of the most pronounced form.”

At a time when xenophobia was widespread in American society, the defendants’ immigrant background was also at the center of the proceedings. In his final address to the jury members, for example, Judge Webster Thayer appealed to their “supreme American loyalty.” Several eyewitnesses also stressed the fact that Sacco and Vanzetti were “foreign looking.” In the previous trial against Vanzetti, a 14-year-old boy even claimed that “the way he ran I could tell he was a foreigner.”

From the Appeals to the Execution

On July 14, 1921, Sacco and Vanzetti were found guilty of robbery and murder. Over the following years, their defense team filed several motions asking for a retrial as new evidence began to surface.

In 1923, for example, William G. Thompson, the new defense lawyer, asked for a new trial after an acquaintance of Walter Ripley, the jury foreman, reported that his friend made biased remarks before the beginning of the proceedings: “Damn them, they ought to hang anyway,” reportedly exclaimed Ripley during a conversation. Two years later, Celestino Madeiros, an inmate at Charlestown, the prison where Sacco was held, confessed to the robbery and murders in Braintree. Judge Thayer, however, refused to grant the defense’s repeated requests to reopen the trial.

In 1926 and 1927, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court supported the judge’s ruling against the defense team’s appeals. Thus, on April 9, 1927, Webster Thayer sentenced Sacco and Vanzetti to death.

“I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian,” accused Vanzetti in his statement to the court.

A month before, from the pages of Atlantic Monthly, Felix Frankfurter, a Harvard Law School professor and future Supreme Court judge, had also famously condemned Judge Thayer’s behavior, describing his written refusal of a new trial as “a farrago of misquotations, misrepresentations, suppressions, and mutilations.”

However, in the summer of 1927, a committee headed by Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell cleared Judge Thayer of any wrongdoings and biases, claiming that his alleged dislike for the defendants, expressed in conversations outside the courtroom, “did not affect his conduct at the trial or the opinions of the jury.”

In the summer of 1927, the defense’s last appeals were denied. As a result, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23.

A Global Event

“This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man as we now do by dying,” declared Vanzetti in an interview in May 1927. Indeed, at the time of their execution, Sacco and Vanzetti were already working-class heroes.

“There’s no story in it. … Just a couple of wops in a jam,” a New York Call reporter sent to cover the trial had written. He was wrong. Soon, the Sacco and Vanzetti case turned into a global event, with radicals, labor activists, workers, and intellectuals organizing rallies and demonstrations for the two Italian-Americans in the US, Italy, France, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and even China.

Various factors contributed to transforming the case into an international cause célèbre and labor movement, including the geopolitical context, the increasing visibility of the masses and labor activists, and the size of the Italian diaspora. Carlo Tresca, an Italian activist, and Fred Moore also increased the Sacco and Vanzetti case’s visibility, reaching out to their vast network of radicals and union leaders.

Over the course of the seven-year-long legal battle, several renowned intellectuals joined the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, founded by Italian-born anarchist Aldo Felicani in May 1920. Many others appealed to the American authorities. Among those who spoke in support of the two anarchists were John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Ernst Hemingway, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Diego Rivera. Even Benito Mussolini instructed the Italian ambassador to the US to negotiate the release of Sacco and Vanzetti.

During and after the trial, a wave of protests broke out in many cities and countries. In October 1921, the American ambassador in Paris received a mail bomb. Huge crowds gathered in front of American consulates and embassies in London, Rome, Le Havre, Basel, and Santiago. In Latin America, the Sacco and Vanzetti case turned into a movement against American imperialism and Wall Street. In France, it was described as a second “Dreyfus Affair.” In August 1927, as the date of the execution drew near, the protests intensified.

“Here’s to You Nicola and John”: The Sacco & Vanzetti Case’s Legacy

The resonance of the Sacco and Vanzetti case did not end with the two Italian-Americans’ execution. In the 1930s, numerous books, poems, plays, and songs were written about their trial in America, Latin America, and Europe. In 1929, Chinese writer Ba Jin, who had corresponded with Vanzetti, described him as his “mentor” in his novel Miewang (Destruction).

In the 1960s, as social and cultural movements challenged the status quo, the Sacco and Vanzetti case inspired a new generation of writers and artists. In particular, the Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, written by Joan Baez and Ennio Morricone, became an international anthem, especially after Italian director Giuliano Montaldo featured it in his 1971 movie Sacco e Vanzetti.

Over the years, the Sacco and Vanzetti case has also continued to be at the center of a heated debate among jurists, with experts trying to prove the innocence or guilt of the two men. Questioned on whether immortality was desirable, American writer Ferris Greenslet jokingly answered: “I almost think it is if only to get at the truth of the Sacco-Vanzetti case.”

Though scholars have yet to come to a consensus on whether the two men really were guilty, they agree that Sacco and Vanzetti did not receive a fair trial. In 1977, on the 50th anniversary of the execution, Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis issued a proclamation denouncing the biases of the American judicial system of the 1920s. In the late 1930s, the uproar caused by the Sacco and Vanzetti case led Massachusetts’ judicial council to introduce a series of reforms aimed at preventing miscarriages of justice.

During the era of the “Wild West” in the United States, as people expanded westward in search of opportunities and new life, many communities had to do the best they could with medical care. The results ranged from the hilariously awful to profound discoveries and methods.

Fake Degrees and Frontier Vets Were Your Only Hope

The period known as the Wild West occurred in the United States between the end of the Civil War and the “closing” of the American frontier around 1865 to 1895. This 30-year period saw rapid expansion as Americans traveled west to seek their fortunes. Such expansion limited the availability of medical care of any kind, much less access to medical doctors.  

The number of professionals was lacking, and only about 25% of people calling themselves “doctors” actually had a medical degree of some sort. What resulted was an amalgamation of different types of medical theories, most with untested practices that were more akin to folk medicine or charlatanism. Many doctors also served as veterinarians, and vice versa. Children were often born with the assistance of midwives, if available, and childbirth tended to be the domain of women rather than doctors.  

The Silent Outbreaks That Killed Settlers Faster Than Bullets

As vaccination and high sanitation standards were not yet common, diseases that are now rare often made their way through the West like wildfire, such as the cholera epidemic that spread throughout the California Gold Rush in 1849. This was the result of poor sanitation and crowded living conditions, which were also catalysts for other diseases such as diphtheria and dysentery.

Cholera was also responsible for a high number of deaths in Indian tribes, particularly among the Pawnee and Cheyenne. Tuberculosis, or “consumption,” was also a major factor in the Old West, and is known to have afflicted famous gunfighters such as Doc Holliday and a member of the Texas Rangers, Captain Leander McNelly.

How Opium Elixirs and the Rockefellers Created Snake Oil

“Snake oil” is the pejorative given to the “patent medicine” commonly sold throughout the Old West from traveling “medicine shows.”  They would draw a crowd with various entertainers, and a “professor” or “doctor” would try to sell the crowd bottles of some sort of elixir with outlandish claims of its curative effects. People would often be planted in the crowd claiming to have been cured by the medicine, which was often alcohol combined with a narcotic of some sort (often opium) and other spices or herbs.

The term “snake oil” originated from a real substance introduced by Chinese railway workers who came to America to work on the transcontinental railroad. They would extract the oil from the fat sack of a Chinese water snake, and it appears to have been a genuine remedy for inflammation. William D Rockefeller Sr, father of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, was one of the traveling salesmen who took the idea of snake oil and traveled around the West, selling it under the name “Dr. William Levingston.”  Some of the money he earned through his various businesses would help his son, John, start what would become the vast Standard Oil business empire.

Unwashed Hands Killed More Settlers Than Frontier Outlaws

The biggest problem that led to the most deaths in the Old West was the lack of cleanliness at every level. Germ theory was in its infancy, having only been formulated by 1878. Sanitation of water supplies was negligible, resulting particularly in the spread of cholera. Washing before surgery was rarely done, and sanitizing instruments was rare. However, the Old West saw the beginnings of some modern surgery practices.  

Dr. George Goodfellow was a genuine doctor who moved west around 1876 to practice medicine, and wound up involved (or nearly so) with many major characters of the Old West.  He almost joined General Custer’s 7th Cavalry, missing the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Goodfellow married Katherine Colt, a relative of Samuel Colt, inventor of the Colt revolver. He also treated two of the Earp Brothers following the Gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881 after establishing a practice in Tombstone, Arizona.

Because of his proximity to some of the wildest situations in the Old West, Dr. Goodfellow became renowned for his effective treatment of gunshot wounds—particularly the sterilization methods he used in surgery. He became renowned for several firsts in surgery, all successful due to his skill and his sterilization techniques.

In 1820, a French orphan named Martin Fugate brought his American bride, Elizabeth Smith, to the isolated banks of Troublesome Creek in eastern Kentucky. Neither could have predicted that their union would launch a medical mystery spanning nearly two centuries. Both carried an extremely rare recessive genetic mutation that turned the blood of four of their seven children a dark chocolate brown, making their skin appear blue. Known to locals as the Blue Fugates, generations of this Appalachian clan lived with skin the color of deep indigo.

The Origin of the Fugates at Troublesome Creek

The peculiar story of the Fugate family begins with a French orphan named Martin Fugate. In 1820, Fugate claimed a land grant in Eastern Kentucky on the banks of Troublesome Creek. The creek, which runs through Knott County, was so named because of its nearly impassable game trail. Even experienced hunters could not weave their way through the valley, as large trees, creeping vines, and misshapen stones guarded the creek’s pathways.

A few families settled in the surrounding valleys, including Martin Fugate, who met and married Elizabeth Smith, a redheaded American woman. The Fugates settled in the remote valleys surrounding Troublesome and Ball creeks and had seven children. Three children came out white. Pale, they said, like their mother’s skin, which was “as pale as the mountain laurel that blooms every spring around the creek hollows.” The four other children were not white. They were beyond the conceptual understanding of skin color in America at the time. Four of the Fugate children were born blue.

If legend is to be believed, Martin Fugate himself was of an indigo tint. Eastern Kentucky, like much of Appalachia, relies heavily on the tradition of oral storytelling. Many in the region were born and raised illiterate, so passing down stories relied on the narrative of mothers, fathers, grandparents, and friends. This is how the story of Martin Fugate was passed through the hill country gossip mill.

Living in an isolated area, the Fugates married other Fugates while occasionally co-mingling with Smiths, Combses, Stacys, or Ritchies. This is how the blue people spread throughout Eastern Kentucky. But no one knew why they were blue. Some thought it was heart disease or lung disorder, while others described it as a disease where the blood got “too close to the skin.”

In addition to being the subject of gossip, the blue Fugates were also the target of superstition. Appalachia is a place of isolation, with unique customs and traditions. Many hill people believed that the blue skin of the Fugates was an act of the devil or that it was a racial issue. Some just thought they looked funny. For this reason, the Fugates and their blue descendants never really left their hollers and continued to intermarry.

Understanding Hereditary Methemoglobinemia and Blue Blood

In 1960, a young hematologist named Madison Cawein began hearing rumors at the University of Kentucky. People spoke about the blue hill folks of the Cumberland Plateau. There were blue Stacys, Combses, Smiths, and Fugates at that time as a result of inbreeding and the small gene pool from which many of Eastern Kentucky’s families came.

Cawein was an accomplished doctor. He helped isolate the antidote for cholera and helped create a drug for Parkinson’s Disease. He was, however, a hematologist at heart. Cawein said that “blood cells always looked beautiful to me,” so when he began hearing about the blue people, his interest was piqued.

Cawein, along with Ruth Pendergrass, a nurse from the American Heart Association clinic in Hazard, scoured the hollers for blue people. Pendergrass was fascinated with the blue people since she gave a blood test to a woman who identified herself as a blue Combs from Ball Creek. Cawein and Pendergrass went on daily missions to find blue people until they were frustrated and near giving up. After all, Cawein was forced to drive eight hours one way, from Lexington to Hazard, when he wanted to go on a search. Then a pair of siblings, Rachel and Patrick Ritchie, walked into the heart clinic in Hazard. They were blue, and Cawein had found his white (or blue) whale.

Cawein began charting the family’s history and found no evidence of heart disease. He suspected from the start a rare condition called methemoglobinemia, a rare but toxic form of anemia that can occur due to abnormal hemoglobin in the blood. However, when Cawein tested the pair for abnormal hemoglobin, the test returned negative.

Cawein turned to medical literature, where he found a case of Native Alaskans who seemed to resemble Kentucky’s blue people. The researcher who treated the blue Alaskans found that they had methemoglobinemia based on an enzyme deficiency and that this condition can be passed down through recessive traits.

The blue Kentuckians were found to lack the enzyme diaphorase, which helps process hemoglobin and keeps the blood from producing too much methemoglobin. While most people have less than one percent methemoglobin in their blood, the Fugates likely carried a level of about 10 to 20 percent; not enough to be harmful, but too much to have a standard skin color. This abundance of blue methemoglobin overpowered the ability of the red hemoglobin to transport oxygen to the blood, thus turning the Ritchies and their ancestors blue and their blood a chocolatey brown.

It seems that the enzyme deficiency began with Martin and Elizabeth Fugate, over 150 years before Cawein’s time, and had trickled down through many hill folks due to inbreeding.  Martin and Elizabeth both carried the gene by chance, and they passed it down until the 1960s when Cawein discovered the cause.

The Later Life of the Blue Fugates and Their Descendants

The blue people of Troublesome and Ball Creeks were not happy to be blue. Even when Dr. Cawein examined the Ritchie siblings, he could tell they were embarrassed by his questions. Patrick and Rachel were hunched, almost likely to hide their color with their body language. Dr. Cawein remembered, “You could tell how much it bothered them to be blue.” This embarrassment likely stemmed from the maltreatment from their mountain neighbors.

Cawein was eager to find a solution to their situation, and he did so quite quickly. To get the body to begin turning methemoglobin back to normal, an “electron donor” had to be introduced into the body. This substance would kickstart a color change in the patient, from blue to pink, by replicating the processes of a normal level of diaphorase. Methylene Blue was the obvious solution, as it had been used successfully and safely in the past. Many of the blue folks thought Dr. Cawein was crazy; after all, how could something blue fix the blue in their skin?

Cawein went ahead with the Methylene Blue injection, traveling to the Ritchie siblings’ cabin in the former mining town of Hardburly. He injected Patrick and Rachel with 100 milligrams each of the faux enzymes, and within minutes, the pair’s skin began to turn. By the end of the process, the Ritchies were fair-skinned for the first time in their lives. Cawein gave the siblings methylene blue in tablet form to take daily to maintain their skin tone.

Cawein also wanted to chart the families’ progression with the recessive gene, beginning with Martin Fugate. The recessive blueness did seem to fade throughout the family tree as modern advancements like the railway and modern roads were laid in Eastern Kentucky. However, this did not begin until the 1910s, gaining traction by the 1930s. With the roads came the eventual migration of the Fugate descendants, who moved into neighboring towns and began marrying people outside of their traditional circles.

Thus, the descendants of the original Fugate clan began losing their blue color until Benjamin Stacy was born in 1975 at the University of Kentucky Medical Center. Benjamin, or “Benjy,” was born purple. While doctors wanted to perform a blood transfusion, Benjy’s grandmother remarked that the baby’s great-grandmother, Luna Fugate, was known for having a similar coloring.

It turns out that Benjy’s father, Alva Stacy, was a direct descendant of Martin Fugate. Stacy’s family tree showed that he was, in his words, “kin to himself.” One of Martin and Elizabeth’s blue sons, Zachariah, married his maternal aunt. One of Zachariah’s sons, Levy, married a girl from the Ritchie family, and they had eight children. Luna, one of Levy and the Ritchie girl’s daughters, was blue. She married John E. Stacy, Benjy’s great-grandfather. Benjy’s skin eventually faded to a normal color, though rumor says that his lips and fingernails still turned blue when he was angry or cold.

The Blue Fugates in Popular Culture & Modern Society

According to an ABC News article from 2012, it is unknown if Benjy is still alive or whether there are other blue descendants of the Fugate clan around today. Their relatives are spread across the country, and some of the descendants are likely like Benjy, who owes his non-blue skin color to only carrying one gene for methemoglobinemia.

Not much is known about the Blue Fugates outside of the work accomplished by Dr. Cawein, but others do carry the blue gene or have been turned blue by outside factors like exposure and ingestion of anesthetics like benzocaine or xylocaine, meat additives like benzene, and certain nitrates, or antibiotics like dapsone or chloroquine. In one case, a man named Paul Karason turned his skin blue by consuming and rubbing his skin with colloidal silver compounds to self-treat various skin conditions.

In popular culture, the blue-skinned mountain people of Kentucky are featured most prominently in two books: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson and Blue-Skinned Gods by S.J. Sindu. Both are fictionalized accounts of the Fugate lineage that don’t use the Fugate name. They’ve also been featured as stories on several TV shows focusing on strange history.

https://youtu.be/Rcn4M2vSvD4?si=0Frs4xiCaUUG5hub

No conflict in human history witnessed warfare on as many fronts or with as many advanced weapon systems as World War II. Officially beginning in 1939 after the German invasion of Poland, over 100 million uniformed personnel from 30 countries waged war via direct infantry combat, aerial bombing campaigns, naval actions, and covert espionage. While these methods helped the Allies counter Axis aggression in Europe, the Pacific, and North Africa, few assets brought as much destruction as American artillery.

Growing Axis Momentum

Prior to the United States entering World War II in late 1941, the Axis powers were off to a blistering start that worried Allied leaders. After quickly conquering Poland via blitzkrieg tactics, Germany marched west. By mid-1940, Adolf Hitler controlled Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, Norway, France, and the Netherlands. Fueled by two decades of resentment following defeat in World War I and grievances from the perceived injustices of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany continued its campaign across Western Europe. By 1941, Nazi Germany occupied much of mainland Europe.

Hitler’s counterpart in Italy, Benito Mussolini, extended the Axis front into North Africa and the Balkans with German support, gaining a foothold in Egypt and Libya. Similarly, Japan tightened its grip on key territories in the Pacific and Southeast Asia including large parts of China, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand.

Determined to dissuade the United States from joining Allied partners, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact in 1940, outwardly portraying a unified front to the sleeping giant. By late 1941, however, Japanese-American negotiations reached a stalemate, leading Japanese Prime Minister Tojo to surprise the world by attacking the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war.

America Enters the War

On December 7, 1941, Japan executed a surprise bombardment against key military installations across the island of Oahu, Hawaii, from aircraft carriers staged nearly 250 miles north of the island. Although not destined for American statehood for another 18 years, the island housed thousands of United States armed forces personnel. In addition to its devastating aerial raid on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese neutralized targets at Hickam Airfield, Wheeler Airfield, Bellows Airfield, Kāne’ohe Naval Air Station, Schofield Barracks, and Ewa Marine Corps Air Station.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was not only a surprise to American commanders who overlooked possible attack indicators, but even Hitler was unaware of the Japanese plans. After continuous torpedo strafes and precise bombardments, over 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,100 were wounded on the day which, in the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, would “live in infamy.”

Little did the United States know that its first shots of World War II would be fired against the Japanese on the otherwise calm December morning. For America’s artillerymen, Pearl Harbor represented the first chance for them to prove their worth against the foe. During the attack, the United States destroyed 29 Japanese planes, led by American anti-aircraft crews and the few fighter pilots who managed to take off amid the chaos. Allied artillery assets continued their strong showing shortly after Pearl Harbor.

North Africa

For many American service personnel, North Africa represented the first taste of fighting the enemy after Pearl Harbor. In November 1942, the Allies launched Operation Torch with landings on the beaches of Morocco and Algeria, marking the first major campaign in Africa. Artillery proved vital during the assault. From pre-landing bombardments to continued indirect fire support, field and naval artillery missions allowed the Allies to capture the beachheads, supply depots, and transportation centers.

North African terrain presented numerous challenges for effective artillery deployment. Gun crews faced extreme heat during the daytime and freezing temperatures at night which affected both the men and the howitzers they operated. Weather conditions were complicated by sandstorms and dust which demanded constant maintenance and obscured fields of vision, making effective observation, coordination, and delivery of projectiles an arduous task. Lastly, water scarcity jeopardized not only dehydrated soldiers, but also affected cooling and mixing techniques for artillery equipment, systems, and ammunition.

Despite these logistical setbacks, American artillery evolved to adapt to the harsh terrain. By adding specialized filters to howitzers, creating scheduled maintenance processes, and acclimating to the desert, the Allies countered German advances during the 1942 Tunisian Campaign and Battle of Kasserine Pass in 1943. These successes through hardship in North Africa permitted the Allies to penetrate north into Europe through the invasion of Sicily via Operation Husky in July 1943.

Europe

One of the most important contributions made by Allied artillery was during the D-Day landings in Normandy. The accumulation of months of planning, Operation Overlord delivered Allied troops into mainland Europe to liberate France and begin the final push of countering Axis fighters back into Germany. Prior to the assault, naval bombardments weakened the German artillery positions and machine gun nests as Allied infantrymen disembarked from their landing crafts. Projectile craters caused by friendly artillery also provided cover and concealment for the troops on the beaches of Normandy.

Once on land, field artillery crews immediately supported the assault. With 105mm howitzers and their larger 155mm counterparts, gun crews disrupted German defenses for hours with high-explosive munitions. Allied victories continued into the winter of 1944. During the Battle of the Bulge, Germany launched their surprise assault with tremendous artillery barrages. Prepared for counterfire operations, American gun crews quickly returned fire on German batteries. Successful defense of Axis offensives through harsh conditions in early 1945 allowed the Allies to retain key terrain in Bastogne and St. Vith.

By March 1945, the Allies were well positioned to cross the Rhine River into Germany. There, American howitzers initiated Operation Plunder with over 5,000 artillery pieces to weaken German defenses near the crossing. Indirect fire also supported the largest airborne operation of World War II, Operation Varsity, to allow safe landing for American and British troops. The Allies were now securely on German soil.

The Pacific

Although the Allies faced difficulties in emplacing artillery in North Africa and Europe, few fronts presented challenges to similar levels as the Pacific Theater. In many cases, field artillery could not be deployed in time to support Allied island-hopping campaigns. Despite its limited use, American artillery did help the Allies defend the vital airstrip at Henderson Field during the Battle of Guadalcanal, maintaining control of the key island.

As a result of dense jungle terrain and limited transportation infrastructure which impeded the operation of artillery on land, naval bombardments were far more commonly employed to support infantry operations. US naval artillery decimated Japanese defenses prior to the amphibious assault at the 1943 Battle of Tarawa and the 1944 Battle of Saipan.

American artillery was heavily exploited during the 1945 Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, two of the most significant encounters of the Pacific Theater. At Iwo Jima, the Japanese defenses took the form of underground networks of bunkers and trenches. Artillery fire from land and sea, specifically from the USS Iowa and USS New Jersey, heavily weakened these otherwise unreachable fortifications to soften the defenses prior to assault on land.

Once on shore, Marines used mobile artillery pieces including 75mm pack howitzers and 105mm guns to rain fire from above. At Okinawa, over 1,500 artillery pieces, including naval guns and field-based 105mm and 155mm howitzers, combined to overwhelm the Japanese defenders prior to the land assault. The United States military’s Tenth Army alone fired over 1.1 million rounds against Japanese defenders during the battle.

Legacy

American involvement in World War II allowed the US military to utilize fire direction centers, a method of centralizing precise calculations for indirect fire from removed operations hubs introduced in the 1930s. By receiving targeting information such as enemy locations, dispositions, sizes, and movements from forward observers on the battlefield via radio communication, fire direction centers could account for hazardous terrain, assign fire to the best-positioned batteries, and ensure gun crews were given the most accurate information possible. The successes of fire direction centers during World War II ensured their continued employment in wartime, and the method is still used by the United States today.

Although artillery was instrumental in defeating the Axis powers and restoring freedom to much of the world, its effects negatively affected soldiers mentally and physically. Known as shell shock during World War I and post-traumatic stress disorder in modern times, combat fatigue plagued troops on both sides of conflict by inflicting immense mental anguish and exhaustion.

The contribution of Allied artillery during World War II is undeniable. In fact, General Patton attributed Allied victory solely to artillery. As the deadliest weapon systems in the most destructive conflict in human history, the importance of artillery in achieving Allied victory cannot be understated. In September 1945, President Harry Truman, who served in World War I as an artillery officer, controversially authorized the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an effort to end the war. He justified his decision based on the expected loss of life on both sides during the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands.

World War I ended with an armistice, allowing Germany to avoid the humiliation of being invaded by force. In exchange, however, Germany was required to pay billions of dollars in reparations to the victorious Allies—a mind-boggling sum in 1918! Quickly, it became apparent that Germany could not hope to pay the full amount of the reparations. As war clouds loomed again due to Germany’s nonpayment, and with France and Belgium occupying territory of a disarmed Germany, a diplomatic solution was sought. American diplomat Charles G. Dawes devised a solution that temporarily eased tensions in Europe, known as the Dawes Plan. Would the peace last?

Setting the Stage: World War I

The scope and intensity of World War I was unprecedented in human history, and this included the financial cost. Between the costs of waging war and the destruction wrought on its natural resources, France was economically devastated by 1918. Germany, suffering under an Allied naval blockade, was similarly economically weakened. Britain was in better shape but also suffered from four years of intense military spending. Only the United States, a latecomer to the war in 1917, emerged from World War I financially stronger. For the first three years of the fighting, it had enjoyed profits as a weapons exporter, mostly to the Allies.

When Germany finally asked for an armistice in the autumn of 1918, exhausted from the Allies’ relentless Hundred Days Offensive, an angry France and Britain wanted payback. They also wanted to inflict financial punishment to dissuade future aggressors. The world watched cautiously the following year as diplomats met in Paris to decide the formal treaty to conclude the war. Germany had lost the conflict, but avoided being invaded and occupied. What punishments would the Allies inflict on it in retaliation?

Setting the Stage: The Treaty of Versailles

While US President Woodrow Wilson famously went to Paris to exercise diplomacy and pursue a peaceful world order, diplomats from the other Allies were not so magnanimous. Britain, France, and Italy wanted to be compensated for the costs suffered, allegedly due entirely to the aggressions of an imperialist Germany. In the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, Germany was punished harshly by the European Allies. It also had to give up its territorial gains under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Russia in 1917.

The treaty disarmed Germany, limiting it to a small army with no armor or air power, and stripped it of any colonies. Germany was also forced to accept responsibility for the war, being labeled as the aggressor despite the complex beginnings of the conflict. Finally, and most controversially, Germany was saddled with billions of dollars in war reparations to be paid to the Allies. The staggering sum was $132 billion, which equates to over half a trillion dollars in today’s money. Immediately, people questioned whether Germany could afford to pay such a figure.

The Controversy: Reparations

The greatest controversy of the Treaty of Versailles was the imposition of war reparations, which was justified by the War Guilt Clause that laid blame for the destructive conflict solely on Germany. Germany had no legal basis on which to argue against the tremendous amount of reparations owed, as they had effectively “pled guilty” to causing the damage. Many felt that the treaty would harm innocent Germans by causing an economic recession, but others felt that Germany deserved such harsh treatment due to the horrors of the four-year war. However, refusing to accept the treaty would have meant a continuation of the war, which Germany could not accept.

At that time and today, people debate the ethical implications of harsh war reparations. World War I was not begun entirely by Germany but rather was influenced by a system of complex alliances that dragged in all major European powers. Austria-Hungary, Germany’s ally and a member of the Central Powers, began the war on July 28, 1914 by declaring war on Serbia. Germany did invade the neutral nation of Belgium in early August, earning widespread condemnation. But, because Germany only invaded other states after its ally had begun the war, was Germany an undisputed aggressor?

1921-23: Germany Struggles to Pay

Not surprisingly, Germany’s government had no money after four years of intense warfare. It had borrowed heavily during the war, and few creditors would consider lending any more money. As a result, Germany took the route of floating its economy by printing currency. A popular misconception is that Germany printed the currency to pay its war reparations, but this overprinting of currency actually began during the war itself as an alternative to selling war bonds like other nations. Germany also spent heavily immediately after the war on social welfare to try and “heal” an angry and wounded public.

Both high government spending and early reparations payments to Allied nations like France and Britain made Europe awash in German marks, quickly eroding their value and causing an inflationary spiral. To maintain quality of life, individuals, businesses, and local governments continued to spend rapidly, causing further inflation. By 1923, inflation had made German currency almost worthless, reaching as high as a whopping 30,000 percent! Allegedly, the German government did try to control inflation during the first few years of the crisis, but rather used the high inflation as an arguing point that its reparation payments should be reduced.

The Ruhr Occupation Raises New War Threats

By 1923, Germany defaulted on its war reparations payments, putting the Allied Powers in a difficult position. How should they react to Germany’s refusal to pay as promised? On January 9, 1923, France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr region of western Germany to seize its resources in lieu of reparations. The Ruhr occupation was not an economic success for France and Belgium, as German workers in the region promptly went on strike. France attempted to send its own workers to the region, but this was met with violence.

The seizure of German resources only worsened the state of inflation, with prices now rising due to shortages. This not only weakened Germany’s ability to pay its reparations but made such reparation payments less valuable. Countries receiving German currency in reparations could buy little with it. Quickly, many members of Allied governments questioned the value of the Ruhr occupation, arguing that it did little to benefit France or Belgium. They said it was in the interest of all parties to allow Germany the opportunity to renegotiate its war reparation debts.

Dawes Committee Meets in Berlin

Cooler heads prevailed, and the Allies agreed that it was more sensible to let Germany renegotiate than to occupy its territory in retaliation. This was influenced by a need to renegotiate debts among all parties, including other Allies to the United States, which had lent billions during the war. The United States did not want German reparation payments to simply become debt payments from its own allies and thus created a War Debt Commission to figure out the issue. A commission headed by American banker-turned-diplomat Charles G. Dawes met in Europe to discuss Germany’s reparations.

Dawes was the former US Comptroller of the Currency and was well-versed in banking and lending. He was able to negotiate among the Europeans and created a report stating that Germany could pay its reparation debts over time, but only if it was given the ability to restore stability and credit-worthiness. Dawes recommended that Germany be allowed to get its inflation problem under control before repaying any debt. Additionally, its repayments should be linked to its economic strength, meaning they could increase over time as its gross domestic product (GDP) increased.

Dawes Plan Accepted by Germany and Allies

At the end of his report, Dawes suggested that interest on Germany’s outstanding debt be waived during the first year (1924) and increase incrementally thereafter. To manage the inflation, a new currency called the Reichsmark would be implemented. For economic stabilization and to jump-start industrial production, foreign banks would loan money to Germany. Quickly, foreign investors, especially in the United States, jumped on these loans and provided Germany with an influx of $200 million. A total of 900 million Reichsmarks were loaned under the plan to get money flowing in the economy.

The United States benefited from the Dawes Plan, as the reduced reparations payments from Germany to other Allies like France and Britain were, in turn, paid to the United States to repay wartime debts. Internationally, the plan appeared to be a resounding success, and Charles Dawes even won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925 for bolstering Germany’s economy and ending the Ruhr occupation. The Allied Powers oversaw Germany’s restructured reparations payments and met periodically to craft amendments to the initial plan. Two-thirds of the German legislature approved the Dawes Plan, making it law.

Immediate Result: A “Roaring Twenties” in Germany

Fortunately for German citizens, the Dawes Plan successfully stabilized the economy. The plan also made Germany an international contributor again in terms of economic output and finance, helping soothe away some of Germany’s status as a pariah state after World War I. Lenders had restored confidence and money began flowing again, improving Germans’ lives and reducing high unemployment. Morale in Germany also rose with the end of the Ruhr occupation, which occurred in 1925.

Economic growth helped renew confidence in Germany, and urban areas saw the rise of new arts and cultural scenes, especially in Berlin. The economic unrest of earlier in the decade, coupled with political radicalism in both Germany and abroad, created an era of intrigue and energy. The rapid increase in artistic expression and economic growth combined to create an era known as the “Golden Twenties” in Germany, similar to the Roaring Twenties experienced in the United States. However, some detected dark undertones in Germany’s new nightlife, hinting at right-wing political movements to come.

Long-Term Result: Germany Relies on Foreign Capital

Up to $25 billion was loaned to Germany by banks in the United States prior to the 1929 stock market crash. This foreign capital was helpful in rebuilding the German economy, but was also unstable. Loans could be called, or demanded to be paid back at any time. If an economic crisis struck lenders, they would call their loans in full…and Germany was not able to repay such sums. At the end of October 1929, the American stock market collapsed, taking millions of dollars in loans with it. With borrowers unable to pay their installments on time, banks were at risk of collapse and began looking at calling large loans to institutions, including governments.

In 1931, a banking crisis crossed the Atlantic Ocean from the US to Europe. Not only did Germany owe billions to foreign banks, but Germans had invested and deposited heavily in foreign banks as well, which were collapsing in 1931. Banks in New York City alone owned over a billion dollars in German debt, which was a greater amount than their cash on hand. When the Great Depression struck Europe, Germany suffered worse than other nations because so much of its wealth was wiped out by loan calls.

Aftermath: Reparations Lead to Militant Germany

The reliance on foreign capital hit Germany hard when the Great Depression struck, leading to high rates of unemployment. While the Dawes Plan had improved Germany’s economy over a five-year period beginning in 1924, those gains were wiped out by the Depression. As citizens saw a return of struggle and unrest, many flocked to the new Nazi Party, which promised to fix the situation by controlling the economy, re-arming the small military, and persecuting those whom people blamed for harming the nation’s interests. In 1933, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany.

It is debatable whether the Dawes Plan made the situation in Germany better or worse regarding the rise of Hitler. The plan did cause a five-year period of economic growth, leading to the “Golden Twenties,” but made Germany reliant on foreign loans. Without the restructuring of Germany’s reparations payments, however, the economic situation may have been even worse. Therefore, the Dawes Plan may be credited with helping many Germans recover from the post-war hyperinflation and economic quagmire. The rise of Hitler, heavily influenced by the Great Depression, would likely have still occurred without the Dawes Plan.

Global weapon capabilities skyrocketed during the 20th century; from individual machine guns capable of firing a thousand rounds per minute to city-flattening atomic bombs, the rapid development of destructive armaments can be attributed to two world wars that challenged world powers physically, emotionally, logistically, and existentially. During World War I, new advancements in chemical warfare, infantry soldier rifles, aerial bombings, and tanks threatened either side, but for the United States, battle-proven artillery remained a most crucial asset. 

Technological Advancements

Although invented centuries earlier, howitzers saw their first widespread use during World War I. Categorized by an ability to fire projectiles at both low and high angles of trajectory, howitzers made use of short barrels and a range of projectiles during the Great War. Compared to horse-drawn guns, howitzers were driven to firing points by wheeled and tracked vehicles, greatly reducing emplacement and displacement times, thereby assisting pinned down troops and avoiding enemy counterfire. Improvements in internal and external ballistics transformed artillery from a crude tool to a precise instrument of war.

Internally, scientific advancements regarding propellants gave gun crews greater control over the force that projectiles were fired through gun barrels with. Externally, modern militaries first began to understand specific details of how environmental factors affect points of impact during World War I. With more powerful and accurate indirect fire, artillery barrages from both sides contributed to the deadliest war in human history at the time.

Compared to predecessors in the Spanish-American and American Civil War, United States artillery assets deployed a more diverse array of munitions during World War I. Instead of just striking a target, for example, high explosive shells burst upon impact, delivering additional blast effects on enemy defensive positions. Specialized artillery shells additionally released mustard gas or chlorine, causing previously non-experienced horrors to soldiers during World War I, often leading to burns, respiratory struggles, and mental detriment for years after the conflict’s end.

New Observation Methods

Aside from technological innovations, artillery crews during World War I benefited from refined observation practices. As an indirect fire asset without direct line of sight towards the enemy, artillery was useless without effective targeting procedures. New sighting systems expanded hot air balloon observation during the American Civil War. Forward observers located miles away from howitzer positions improved targeting capabilities by exploiting telecommunications and panoramic telescopes, allowing artillery units to decisively engage desired targets from greater distances.

Just as target identification was crucial, militaries on either side quickly recognized the need to locate and destroy enemy artillery positions. To accomplish this objective, forces used aerial photography, flash ranging, and sound ranging. While antiaircraft artillery jeopardized the safety of aviators and observers in the air, many of whom still used balloon-based platforms, the latter two methods exploited scientific discoveries to identify the points of origin of enemy projectiles.

Flash ranging permitted troops stationed at various observation points to use survey instruments to triangulate enemy artillery positions. This required skilled operators, hardwired communications, and effective coordination. Similarly, sound ranging measured time differences in the arrival of artillery echoes to observation posts to triangulate enemy indirect fire assets. These innovations began the modern era of signature-based counterfire which remains a pressing threat to howitzer crews over a century later. When the United States entered the war in 1917, flash and sound ranging were promptly introduced to General John J. Pershing, and the American Expeditionary Force rapidly adopted these counter-artillery procedures.

Trench Warfare

The trench warfare that defined World War I frequently led to prolonged stalemates between static infantry front lines. Originally designed to serve as protection from artillery bombardment, the style of battle instead enabled the widespread use of artillery. On the first day alone of the Battle of Verdun in 1916, the German Army fired over one million shells towards the French.

Now able to fire at high angles, American howitzers could rain down projectiles vertically on their adversaries who were protected from direct fire from rifles and machine guns. While senior commanders enjoyed the safety of bunkers or concrete pillboxes, soldiers inside trenches were protected only by sandbags and wooden planks and were vulnerable to indirect fire. Outside of trenches, artillery proved highly effective in countering enemy assaults in no man’s land, where indirect fire added to the challenges of maneuvering through obstacles and bullets.

On top of artillery, mortars represented a supplementary form of indirect fire. Often placed inside trenches, mortars exclusively fired at high angles with smaller projectiles to target the enemy without exposing troops to enemy direct fire. For line troops in range of artillery and mortar shells for weeks at a time, constant bombardment provided for unprecedented levels of traumatic stress which were compounded by the horrid conditions of trench warfare including starvation, rats, mud, disease, exposure to weather, and fallen comrades.

Significant Battles

American artillery swiftly made a difference after the United States formally joined their allies on European battlefields. During the 1918 Battle of Cantigny, American and French indirect fire softened German defenses via an hour-long bombardment before the assault, offering a smokescreen to conceal friendly movement. As their infantry counterparts approached within close range, gun crews employed creeping fire tactics to maintain a constant wall of offensive artillery fire to disrupt German counterattacks. Combined with aerial effects, tanks, and engineers, the American infantry successfully captured enemy machine gun nests and artillery positions working in conjunction with French flamethrower squads. In the following days, artillery continued to play a vital role in maintaining control of the terrain against German counterattacks.

While superior artillery tactics and strategy led the United States to early successes, wisely understanding when not to use howitzers enabled a decisive victory during the Somme Offensive from August to November 1918. Prior to the initial assault, American, British, and French commanders decided to forego lengthy artillery barrages that traditionally preceded battle. They instead surprised German defenders by launching an infantry assault through abundant fog cover. Astonished to be attacked without the customary warning from artillery fire, 16,000 German prisoners surrendered. Forced to their original front line of 1915, the Germans sustained artillery bombardment by the United States’ 27th and 30th Divisions following the successful assault.

Harry Truman, Artillery Battery Commander

Despite a legacy as the president responsible for authorizing the deployment of atomic bombs against Japan to end World War II, Harry S. Truman’s wartime experiences began in World War I. As a new field artillery captain in the United States Army, Truman proved his worth at the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the largest American operation during the war. Truman’s unit, the 60th Field Artillery Brigade, fired over 40,000 rounds during the battle’s initial bombardment. The future president’s command, Battery D, specifically supported then Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton’s tank brigade as they charged towards the Germans.

In addition to its direct support to the future World War II hero, Truman’s Battery D reinforced the 35th Infantry Division’s flank. There, the young officer spotted a German artillery battery emplacing their howitzers towards American soldiers, but the enemy was in the 28th Infantry’s area of responsibility. Ignoring direct orders to focus his fire on the 35th’s specific sector, Truman fired on the German battery, destroying their guns and forcing the enemy to flee. Threatened with a court martial, Captain Truman continued to fight as he saw fit until the Army rescinded its restrictive policies on controlling indirect fire. Undoubtedly, Truman’s bravery, boldness, and experiences navigating the horrors of World War I shaped his decision-making as president.

Securing Victory

Aside from President Truman’s influential role in the final battle of World War I, American artillery overcame numerous challenges during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Namely, heavy rains turned the battlefield into mud, delaying efficient howitzer emplacement. Furthermore, issues in effective artillery and infantry coordination led many projectiles to fall short of their targets, and poor roadway quality delayed ammunition delivery times. Despite these setbacks, American artillery adapted and prevailed.

With over 2,700 howitzers, the United States overwhelmed German defensive positions, neutralized enemy obstacles, and suppressed enemy counterfire. Thanks to their part in the larger Hundred Days Offensive that broke the back of the German Army, American artillery elevated the United States military as a dominant player on the global stage.

While American gun crews celebrated their long-awaited victory, the future of German artillery was severely restricted. The Treaty of Versailles, the agreement that ended the Great War, forced Germany to give up 5,000 indirect fire assets to the Allies. While the defeated country was allowed to keep a limited number for defensive purposes, strict limits on ammunition were imposed, and many German howitzers were destroyed. Although a seemingly logical disarmament to enforce the peace, the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles were later blamed for grievances among German nationalists.

Legacy

Responsible for approximately 60% of casualties during World War I, artillery played a significant role during one of the deadliest conflicts in modern human history. The physical and mental effects of artillery bombardments led many soldiers on both sides to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, then called shell shock, a fitting name given the immense quantity of artillery shells fired at them. Injuries caused by raining projectiles inspired a slew of medical advancements.

For the United States military, however, artillery’s successes in World War I set a strong foundation for growth. The Army’s famed 82nd Division, for example, was activated just four months into conflict. The unit’s artillerymen played a decisive role in the final stages of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, setting the stage for storied military excellence in World War II and beyond.

When weighing the importance of American artillery during World War I, it is clear that technological and strategic advancements, battlefield deployments, and the experiences of artillerymen and their officers had a great impact on the United States. With World War II around the corner, it would not be long before America’s king of battle returned to combat external threats.

Regarded as a traitor and murderous rebel by the Canadian government, as a hero in Quebec, and a defender of the Métis and the Roman Catholic faith in present-day Manitoba, Louis Riel was a controversial figure in Canada for decades. He led his people, the Red River Métis, through some of the hardest and certainly most decisive years of their history, and the Canadian government hanged him for it. Today Riel is finally recognized as the “First Premier of Manitoba” and a Canadian hero.

Métis: A Controversial Term

Métis is a French word meaning “mixed” or “person of mixed descent.” However, the term and its proper use remain a controversial issue. Some scholars have argued that any person of mixed ancestry in Canada, that is, any person of European and Indigenous descent, should be considered métis (lowercase). This approach reflects early Europeans’ use of the term. As early as the 17th century, French and British fur traders used métis to refer to people of Indigenous and European (particularly French) ancestry. The problem with this approach is that across Canada there are thousands of communities of mixed ancestry with such different backgrounds, cultures, and histories that they can hardly be grouped under one single label.

Around Hudson Bay, English and Scottish employees of the Hudson Bay Company often frequented Cree camps and “took” Cree wives, despite the company’s strict policy prohibiting “any mixing of the races,” but they were not the only ones. Similar mixing also occurred between men of the North West Company and Indigenous women belonging to other First Nations. McMillan & Yellowhorn explain that “French fishermen from the Brittany coast left many descendants among the Mi’kmaw and Maliseet. However, these children were never a significant minority and they were raised as Mi’kmaq and Maliseet. No separate social group emerged.” This brings us to the second meaning of being Métis, which is also that embraced by the Métis Nation, whose members continue to proudly claim their uniqueness among First Nations in Canada.

Some scholars maintain that only people of Cree and French-Canadian descent who have a direct connection to the Red River Valley community in Manitoba, in the Winnipeg area, should be called Métis. In this case, one’s proven connection to the Red River settlement, to a specific place in Canada, is the necessary requirement to be identified as part of the Métis Nation (spelled with a capital “M”). In this sense, the term Métis “relates to a community of people who self-identify as being Métis and recognizes that their ancestors made a political decision to identify as Métis based on shared histories and culture,” as explained by the Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada. Indigenous communities in Eastern Canada, particularly in Ontario and the Atlantic Provinces, have protested what they consider a narrow and possibly discriminatory definition.

Who Are the Métis?

The Métis Nation, also known as the Red River Métis, originated largely in the Red River Valley, near the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, after French fur traders and employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company came into contact with Cree bands and decided to marry Cree women and build a life with them, despite opposition from the company they worked for.

Today, Métis homelands encompass the three Canadian Prairie Provinces, namely, Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, and extend into contiguous parts of British Columbia to the west, the Northwest Territories to the north, Ontario to the east, and the northern United States to the south, including North Dakota and Montana. Although there are some Métis in the United States as well, the largest Métis communities still live in present-day Canada.

Métis are formally recognized under the Constitution Act of 1982 as “one of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples,” along with the Inuit and First Nations. The history of the Métis is inseparable from that of the fur trade, so much so that historians sometimes call them “children of the fur trade.” Métis trappers profited from selling furs to three (competing) fur trade companies. These were the American Fur Company, the aforementioned Hudson’s Bay Company, and the North West Company (although the latter two merged in 1821 and continued to operate as a new entity under the name of Hudson’s Bay Company).

After 1821, many Métis trappers became free traders. Some began working as boatmen, paddling huge fur trade canoes and York boats up the rivers from Montreal (Québec) to Fort William (Ontario), and then into what are now the Prairie provinces, northern Alberta and southern Northwest Territories.

As steady revenues from the fur trade declined, demand for bison robes and hides increased. Riding their carefully trained horses, known as “buffalo runners,” the Métis would go on two major hunts a year. The first took place in the fall, the other in late spring (or early summer). The men would hunt, riding at full gallop alongside the bison and killing as many as ten on one single run. The women would follow in their Red River carts to bring the carcasses back to camp and start working on them.

The Pemmican Proclamation

To promote peace between First Nations and Europeans, in 1811, Saulteaux Chief Peguis (1774-1864) signed a treaty with Lord Selkirk (1771-1820) that allowed European settlers to move into southern Manitoba. The treaty led to the creation of the Selkirk Colony (also known as Assiniboia) at the confluence of the Assiniboine River and Red River. This enraged the Métis, who claimed these lands as their own through their Cree ancestors.

The colony encompassed portions of present-day southern Manitoba, small parts of eastern Saskatchewan, northwestern Ontario, and, in the United States, part of Minnesota, North and South Dakota. As the “Selkirk” settlers poured into the area, the appointed governor of Assiniboia, Scottish-born Miles Macdonnell (1767-1828), issued the so-called Pemmican Proclamation, which some historians consider the starting point of Métis nationalism. The Proclamation severely restricted, among other things, the Métis’ freedom to hunt bison and to export any provisions, mainly pemmican, for one year.

In response, the Métis continued to hunt bison herds on horseback and trade pemmican. They also ordered the deportation of the “Selkirk” settlers and arrested Macdonnell. Finally, in 1815, the Hudson Bay Company ordered settlers to leave the colony.

Tensions continued to grow between HBC and the Métis, as well as between the Hudson Bay Company and its rival, the North West Company. They culminated in the Battle of Seven Oaks, or, as the Métis called it, the Victory of the Frog Plain (in French, la Victoire de la Grenouillère, after La Grenouillière, the Métis name of Seven Oaks). It took place on June 19, 1816, near present-day Winnipeg. The Métis, led by Cuthbert Grant (1793-1854), fought alongside employees of the North West Company. To celebrate their decisive victory, they raised the flag of the Métis Nation. It was the first time they publicly asserted their sovereignty, their group identity, and their uniqueness as a new nation, la Nouvelle Nation, distinct from both the Europeans and the First Nations.

Louis Riel and the Red River Resistance

Louis Riel (1844-1885) was born in his grandparents’ one-room home in Saint-Boniface in the Red River Settlement but left at a very young age to study in Montreal, Quebec. He was an excellent student. When he was five years old, his father, Louis Riel Sr. organized a resistance group in support of Guillaume Sayer, a Métis fur trader arrested for opposing the Hudson’s Bay Company trade monopoly in the Red River region.

Louis Riel was 22 when he returned to the Red River Settlement and 25 years old when the Hudson’s Bay Company sold Rupert’s Land, a territory encompassing one-third of what is now Canada, to the Dominion of Canada. The largest land sale in the country’s history was concluded without consulting the First Nations living in the area, including the Métis.

At that point, the Dominion of Canada consisted of the Confederation of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Rupert’s Land, named after Prince Rupert, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s first governor, stretched across northern and western Canada, including present-day Manitoba in its entirety, most of Saskatchewan, southern parts of Alberta and Nunavut, and northern Ontario and Quebec. The government acquired this immense territory for CAD$ 1.5 million.

The Red River Métis soon rebelled. They formed the National Committee of the Métis and elected John Bruce as its president and Louis Riel as secretary. On October 11, 1869, the Committee managed to halt land surveys on Métis lands. On November 2, a group of 500 Métis seized Upper Fort Garry. This was a highly strategic move since the HBC had its main administrative offices at Upper Fort Garry.

One month later, on December 8, the Committee became the Provisional Government of Assiniboia, which included French and English Métis and was led by Louis Riel. The Provisional Government issued a “Declaration of the People of Rupert’s Land and the North-West” and began discussing what the Métis considered the necessary conditions for Assiniboia (which included the Red River settlement) to become part of the Dominion. Eventually, in the spring of 1870, they reached an agreement.

The Manitoba Act became law on May 12: two months later, on July 15, Manitoba became Canada’s fifth province. As part of the agreement, the Canadian Government granted 1.4 million acres of land to the children of the Métis, or, as they were called, the “children of the half-breed heads of families.”

Leading the 1885 Northwest Resistance

After Manitoba became part of the Dominion, hundreds of people from Ontario and Quebec flocked to the Red River region. Many regarded the Métis with hostility. Some openly persecuted them, particularly Protestant Ontarians, radicalized by the death of young Orangeman and anti-Métis agitator, Thomas Scott, who had been executed by a Métis tribunal on March 4, 1870.

In August 1870, the Canadian government sent more than 1,000 troops to “pacify” the region. More than half of the Métis living in Manitoba left for the North-West Territories, which included present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan. Riel was banished from “Her Majesty’s Dominions.”

The 1885 Northwest Resistance is directly connected to the Métis dispersal and dispossession of 1870. 15 years later, despite being finally granted representation by the government of the North-West Territories, the Métis desperately wanted to see their land rights formally recognized. In June 1884, a group led by Charles Nolin and Maxime Lépine managed to have Riel come back from Montana, where he had moved in 1879.

In the summer of 1884, Bishop Grandin met with Prime Minister Macdonald and presented him with a petition outlining the Métis’ grievances. In December, Louis Riel drafted a new petition reiterating the Métis’ demands. They asked the Prime Minister to be granted full title to their lands, that the North-West Territories become a province with its own government, and that Louis Riel’s leadership be fully recognized by the Canadian state. In January 1885, the Canadian government informed the Métis that it would not negotiate with Louis Riel.

In March, the Métis still living in the Batoche area established a provisional government, of which Riel was president. The Northwest Resistance, as it is now called, began with the Battle of Duck Lake on March 25, 1885, when the Métis, joined by some bands of Cree, clashed with the police and the Prince Albert volunteers. During the battle, the Métis forces lost five men. The Canadian side lost twelve men.

The second battle, known as the Battle of Tourond’s Coulee, occurred on April 24. This time the government sent Canadian troops. Most of the fighting took place at Tourond’s Coulee, a ravine on the South Saskatchewan River. Eventually, the forces led by General Middleton withdrew and the Métis rode back to Batoche. Among the Canadian troops, 10 men were killed. The Métis lost four men.

The Battle of Batoche

The Battle of Batoche lasted three days, from May 9 to May 12, 1885. At that time, Batoche was a small village of about 500 residents located between Prince Albert and Saskatoon. It was also the main Métis center in Saskatchewan. The Métis had won the first two battles of the Northwest Resistance. This time, however, government forces led by Major-General Frederick Middleton overwhelmed (and outnumbered) them.

Riel ultimately surrendered. On July 6, 1885, he was charged with treason. His trial began on July 20 in Regina. Although his lawyers defended him on the grounds of insanity, in his final speech Riel proudly reiterated what he called the legitimate demands of his people. He was sentenced to death by hanging and executed on public gallows in Regina, Saskatchewan, on November 16, 1885.

The Battle of Batoche represented the concluding battle of the North-West Resistance and a pivotal moment in the history of the Métis and the First Nations who took part in it. Among them was a group of Dakota and Cree warriors from the One Arrow’s reserve.

In the aftermath of the battle, the Métis were once again dispersed and dispossessed. Some moved to the United States, to north central Montana and North Dakota, while others migrated further north. Some began working as laborers in towns and cities, particularly Regina and Saskatoon, where they witnessed social, economic, and political marginalization. Many began hiding or even denying their identity and culture. First Nations such as the Dakota and the Cree were forced to stay on reserves and their kids were placed in residential schools.

The end of the Resistance and Louis Riel’s execution also had the effect of transforming all Métis, those who participated in the rebellion and those who didn’t, into “rebels” and, obviously, “traitors.” More than a century after his death, the Métis still consider November 16, the day of Riel’s execution, a day of national public commemoration of their leader’s life and determination to protect their rights. In 2016, the government of Manitoba finally recognized Louis Riel’s role in the foundation of Manitoba, and seven years later, in 2023, the Louis Riel Act granted him the title of “First Premier of Manitoba.”

If during his lifetime and the decades following the Battle of Batoche, Riel continued to be considered a traitor and a murderer, in recent years he has become a national hero, an emblem of those values, such as multiculturalism and multilingualism, which are regarded as the pillars of Canadian society today.

When 1776 rolled around, the British Empire was riding high. The colonial powerhouse was fresh off a victory in the Seven Years’ War and had a truly global reach. It had rich, resource-rich holdings in North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and India. Despite this apparent power, Britain would soon find itself facing a new opponent, this time from within its own empire.

As the mother country attempted to stem financial troubles resulting from the war, the thirteen American colonies were frustrated with heavy taxation and desired stronger governmental representation. War soon arrived, and despite clear British advantages, the American patriots would emerge victorious. How did a fledgling militia defeat the world’s greatest military?

1. The Long Haul: A Logistical Death Trap

The British were at an immediate disadvantage when they stepped off their ships to fight in the American Revolution—their supply lines required transportation across the Atlantic. Not only did it take months for supplies to reach their destination in the colonies, but lines of communication were also subject to this 3,000-mile separation. Orders could take weeks to reach their intended targets, leaving officers fighting blind in some cases, forced to make strategic decisions on their own.

While the British did have some local support and therefore resources, the Patriots made it a priority to break up these chains, hampering the British army’s access, particularly those branches fighting in the southern colonies. Conversely, the Americans had a “home field advantage.” Though their supplies were scarce at times, they were locally accessible.

2. The Shift to Irregular Warfare

The British “regulars” were in for a shock when it came to fighting in America. European warfare at the time was of a traditional style. Flintlock muskets were the standard weapon of the era, often fitted with bayonets. With this innovation of weaponry, infantry became the center of most armies, with men organized in mass formation, marching and firing as a cohesive unit. Two armies would face one another, firing on command at decreasing distances until reaching bayonet range.

The British Redcoats were easy targets for the colonials. Though many men of fighting age had been trained by the British army itself, fighting alongside their now-enemies in the French and Indian War, life on the American frontier lent an evolution to their fighting style. New methods were adopted, including what is now known as “guerrilla,” or irregular warfare. Later in the war, the Continental Army was put through extensive drilling under Baron von Steuben at Valley Forge, greatly increasing their shooting accuracy and efficiency.

3. Overextension & Dwindling Will

While the colonists’ sole focus was their revolution, Britain had a lot more on its plate. The American Revolution resulted in formal declarations of war from France and Spain, as those two countries lent support to the colonies. The Dutch later became involved, accused by Britain of violating neutrality. Trying to fight these battles, maintain colonies, and keep the mother country in order left much of Britain feeling war-weary. The British public and government officials alike came to view the American conflict as pricey and endless, cutting into their will to fight.

4. The Patriots’ Je ne sais quoi Leads to the French Connection

Though it took some time, the colonists eventually charmed France into lending their official support (unofficial support came even earlier). Intellectuals in France were enamored by the Americans’ plight as a result of Enlightenment ideas relating to freedom, progress, and society. In addition, England was a longstanding French enemy, and as the saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” After the impressive American win at Saratoga, French support became official and proved instrumental. The French Navy played a key role at the Battle of Yorktown, bringing the British Navy to its knees.

5. The Will to Fight: Battling for Ideals vs. a Paycheck

Many soldiers in the British army were there for the paycheck, not because they believed in subduing the Americans. Professional British soldiers, both English citizens and contracted mercenaries such as German Hessians, fought because it was their job. On the other hand, the colonists fought for their homeland. Soldier motivation is critical to combat readiness and performance. The Americans felt they had a cause worth fighting for, giving them the upper hand over the most powerful army on Earth.