Category: Today

On January 16, 1786, Virginia enacted the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson.

On January 15, 1777, New Connecticut declared independence from the crown of Great Britain and the colony of New York.

Delegates first named the independent state New Connecticut and, in June 1777, finally settled on the name Vermaont, an imperfect translation of the French for Green Mountain.

This new “Vermont Republic” minted copper coins (see above), first struck in 1785. The people of Vermont took part in the American Revolution although the Continental Congress did not recognize the jurisdiction, because of vehement objections from New York, which had conflicting property claims.

In 1791, Vermont was admitted to the United States as the 14th state, upon which its minting of coins ceased.

On January 14, 1514, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull against slavery.

On the same date in 1639, the first written constitution to create a government, the “Fundamental Orders,” was adopted in Connecticut.

On January 13, 1833, United States President Andrew Jackson (pictured, top left) wrote to Vice President Martin Van Buren (pictured, top right) expressing his opposition to South Carolina’s defiance of federal authority in the Nullification Crisis. Jackson insisted that “the crisis must be now met with firmness” and “the modern doctrine of nullification & succession put down forever.”

South Carolina had blamed protectionist high tariffs for the severity of the economic slump of the time, and Andrew Jackson’s compromise Tariff of 1832 was still too much special-interest “protectionism” for South Carolina, which threatened to nullify the law as unconstitutional. Jackson, a nationalist at heart, had no sympathy for dissidents in the southern states. (The tariffs were designed by northern politicians to encourage the growth of industry. The belief among most economists of that time was that such high “protective” tariffs favored certain businesses at the expense of the general consumer, particularly farmers and agricultural producers.) After the crisis subsided, tariffs were further reduced from the 1832 level, much lower than of 1828’s “Tariff of Abominations,” which had been signed into law by President John Quincy Adams — and written mainly by Martin Van Buren as a way to precipitate the election of Jackson.

Since the somewhat ambiguous end to the Nullification Crisis, the doctrine of state prerogatives — “states’ rights” — has been asserted by opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, proponents of California’s Specific Contract Act of 1863 (which nullified the Legal Tender Act of 1862), opponents of Federal acts prohibiting the sale and possession of marijuana in the first decade of the 21st century, and opponents of implementation of laws and regulations pertaining to firearms from the late 1900s up to 2013. State opposition to ObamaCare has also recently conjured up the issue.

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On January 13, 1898, Émile Zola’s J’accuse exposed the Dreyfus affair.

On January 12, 1904, Henry Ford set a land-speed record of 91.37 mph on the frozen surface of Lake St. Clair in Michigan, driving a four-wheel vehicle, dubbed the “999,” with a wooden chassis but no body or hood. Ford’s record was broken within a month, but the publicity from Ford’s achievement was valuable to the auto pioneer, who had incorporated the Ford Motor Company the previous year.

On January 11, 1571, the freedom of religion was granted to Austrian nobility.

Two years earlier, the first recorded lottery in England was held.

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the eleventh day of the first month of 1759, the first American life insurance company was incorporated.

On January 11, 1935, Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California.

On this date in 2003, Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted the death sentences of 167 prisoners on Illinois’s death row based on the Jon Burge scandal.