Either the USSR was not the country of socialism, in which case socialism didn’t exist anywhere and doubtless, wasn’t possible: or else, socialism was that, this abominable monster, this police state, the power of beasts of prey.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Temps modernes, 1961.
On October 21, 1921, President Warren G. Harding delivered the first speech by a sitting U.S. President against lynching in the deep South.
He who has failed three times sets up as an instructor.
Ernest Bramah, Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, “The Story of Lin Ho and the Treasure of Fang-Tso” (1928)
On October 20, 1803, the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.
Exactly 15 years later, the Convention of 1818 signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settled the Canada-United States border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.
On October 19, 1781, representatives of British commander Lord Cornwallis handed over Cornwallis’s sword and formally surrendered to George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, at Yorktown, Virginia. The Revolutionary War (or War for Independence, or Colonial Rebellion, or whatever you wish to call it) was over.
In 1918 on this date, conservative writer Russell Kirk was born.
I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things.
William J. Locke, Simon the Jester (1910)
William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), preface.
[W]e judge of a man’s character, after long frequenting his society, not by one speech, or by one mood or opinion, or by one day’s talk, but by the tenor of his general bearing and conversation….
On October 18, 1775, African-American poet Phillis Wheatley was freed from slavery, upon the death of her master. Widely appreciated in her day, she was the first African-American to publish a book.
On October 17, 1933, Albert Einstein fled Nazi Germany for the United States.
No more, America, in mournful strain
Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain,
No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain,
Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand
Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land.
Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d
That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?
Phillis Wheatley, from “To The Rt. Hon. William, Earl Of Dartmouth”