Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1891 — Some November Happenings. [ARTICLE]

Some November Happenings.

Harpers Young People. \ y On November 9, 1620, the weary, wave-tossed pilgrims on board the bravo little Mayflower, caught the first glimpse of the New England coast. A year later Governor Bradford issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation, thus instituting a festival which, after being confined for more than two hundred years to New England, at length became national in its character and is now observed on the last Thursday of each November through the length and breadth of our land. Another of our national days, that on which we honor the memories of those who died for their country’s sake, was .also first observed in November. Although Memorial Day, now comes on the 30th of May the the first visiting and decoration of of our soldiers’ graves was on the occasion of the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg in November, 1863. In the same month of the same year were fought the terrible battles of Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain {“the battle above the clouds”) just outside of Chattanooga. At the same time the siege of. Knoxville was in progress and the month was filled with events of thrilling interest from its first day to its last, In one sad November during the Revolution the American army was driven from its last stronghold in the vicinity of New York city, while a joyous November seven years later witnessed the evacuation by British troops of the same city, now become their last stronghold in the land they had hoped to conquer. All the Young People readers in Ohio and Washington should know and remember that their States were admitted to the Union in November, though the eighty-seven years older as a State than the one thatonly came in two years ago. in this month, nineteen years ago, the city of Boston was the scene of a conflagration so terrible that it burned over sixty acres of massive stone, brick, and iron buildings in the very business heart of the community, and destroyed $70,000,000 of property before its awful fury was stayed. The most notable November in our history was that one in 1765, the first day of which was observed throughout the thirteen colonies as a period of mourning on account of the going into effect of the hated Stamp Act. It increased the burden of taxation Upon those who had no voice in their own government, and aroused them to such a sense of injustice that ten year’s later they rebelled. and the war of the Revolution was begun. On the first day of November, therefore, the church bells were solemnly tolled, flags floated at half-mast, and business was everywhere suspended. All over the .land such men as Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, James Otis, and John Adams addressed patriotic speeches to throngs of their countrymen, and fired their hearts with thoughts of a glorious independence.

The November of 1861 will ever be famous in our political history because in that month, for the first and only time, two presidents were olected within these United States — Abraham Lincolu to rule in Washington, and Jefferson Davis in Rich,mond. To our neighbors across the Rio Grande November is as dear a month as July is to us, for on its sixth day, in 1813, the Mexicans proclaimed their independence of the crown of Spain, ana formed the second greatest republic of the Western hemisphere.