Category: Today

On January 29, 1850, Henry Clay introduced the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress — which was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, designed to defuse tensions between slave and free states during the years leading up to the American Civil War. Produced by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, the compromise centered on how to handle slavery in recently acquired territories from the Mexican – American War (1846 – 1848).

The compromise included a provision approving California’s request to enter the Union as a free state; it also strengthened fugitive slave laws with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In addition, the compromise

• banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C. (while still allowing slavery itself to exist),
• defined northern and western borders for Texas 
• while establishing a territorial government for the Territory of New Mexico, with no restrictions on whether any future state from this territory would be a free or slave state and established a territorial government for the Territory of Utah also with no restrictions on whether the territory would become a slave or free state.

On January 28, 1981, President Ronald Reagan lifted the federal government’s remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States, helping to end the 1970s energy crisis and begin the 1980s’ oil glut.

The deregulatory move had been begun by Democrats in Congress, but had been placed on a gradual schedule, and the whole effort clouded with President Jimmy Carter’s talk of taxing the “windfall profits” that would immediately result from lifting the regulations.

On January 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, announced an end to the military draft in favor of a system of voluntary enlistment. Since 1973, the United States armed forces have been known as the All-​Volunteer Force.

On January 26, 1992, Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia would stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.

On January 25, 1787, Shays’ Rebellion experienced its largest confrontation, outside the Springfield Armory, with four of the rebels dead, 20 wounded.

The rebellion was a key moment in United States history. Daniel Shays and his followers objected to Massachusetts’s high taxes and rampant cronyism. The revolt, which was completely suppressed, led to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, drawing George Washington from his retirement to serve as the new union’s president.

On January 24, 1984, Apple Computer placed the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States.

On January 23, 1860, the Cobden-​Chevalier Treaty was signed between France and Great Britain. The treaty was named after the two main proponents of the agreement, Richard Cobden (in England) and economist Michel Chevalier (in France). The treaty had been suggested the year earlier, in British Parliament, by Cobden’s colleague John Bright, who looked upon the policy as a peace measure, an alternate to a military build-up.

On January 22, 1863, the January Uprising broke out in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. The aim of this nationalist movement was to regain the Polish-​Lithuanian-​Ruthenian Commonwealth from occupation by Russia. The uprising was not a success, completely crushed the next year.

On January 21, 1950, Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury, with Whittaker Chambers being the main witness in Hiss’s prosecution. Chambers confessed to having been a Soviet spy, and accused Hiss as an accomplice, which Hiss denied to his dying day. Chambers gave a fascinating account of all this in his bestselling 1952 memoir, Witness.

On January 20, 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union was founded.