Author: Redactor

On May 22, 1807, a grand jury indicted former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr on a charge of treason.

At issue in the trial was Burr’s dealings in Louisiana, including leasing 40,000 acres and forming “an army.” President Thomas Jefferson issued an order for Burr’s arrest, and, after a chase, Burr was captured and charged with treason, though the case was always shaky. His defense lawyers included Edmund Randolph, John Wickham, Luther Martin, and Benjamin Gaines Botts. Jefferson’s distant cousin, Chief Justice John Marshall — who hated Jefferson — presided over the trial, which began on August 3. Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution requires that treason either be admitted in open court or proven by an overt act witnessed by two people. No witnesses came forward; Burr was acquitted on the first of September. He was ten immediately tried on a misdemeanor charge and was again acquitted.

Other May 22 events include:

• 1848: Slavery was abolished in Martinique.
• 1856: South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in the halls of Congress as tensions rise over the expansion of slavery. Sumner did not return to the Senate for the three years of his recovery period.
• 1995: In U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Arkansas’s congressional term limits law, 5-4, overturning the congressional term limits then the law in 23 states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

On May 21, 1851, the Colombian Congress passed a law to free the country’s slaves as of January 1, 1852, compensating slave masters with bonds. The decree itself was insufficient to abolish the practice, however, with masters refusing, in many locales, to let the slaves go in a peaceful way. This led to the Civil War of 1851, which began with an insurrection in Cauca and Pasto headed by Manuel Ibáñez and Julio Arboleda — with the support of the Ecuadorian government. In Antioquia the rebellion broke out led by Eusebio Berrero. The war would end in four months with a liberal victory and the final liberation of the slaves.

French economist and co-winner of the first (1901) Nobel Prize for Peace, Frédéric Passy, was born on May 20, 1822.

English economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill was born exactly 16 years earlier.

On May 19, 1897, Irish author, playwright, and poet Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was released from Reading Prison, where he had finished, in ill health, his hard labor sentence for “gross indecency.” His “Ballad of Reading Gaol,” first published pseudonymously in a periodical with wide circulation amongst criminals, quickly achieved the status of a classic.

He died less than three years later, in exile in Europe. His most famous works include the play The Importance of Being Earnest, the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the fascinating essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.”