OCR Text |
Show 'Peace on Earth . . .' 'DEACE on earlh, good will to men!" There seems to be precious little of either on this Christmas day. Yet that's not so unusual. Glance through the pages of'American history his-tory and you'll find plenty ol examples ex-amples of Christmas days given over to war, instead of peace, and to ill will, instead of good will. It has been true since this republic repub-lic was founded. The first Christmas Christ-mas after the signing of the Declaration Decla-ration of Independence saw George Washington and his Continentals struggling to keep alive the fight for liberty. On the evening of December Decem-ber 25 he crossed the Delaware, attacked at-tacked Trenton and spoiled the Christmas celebration of Colonel Hall and his force of 1,000 Hessians, killing 22, wounding 84 and capturing captur-ing 8C8. The American casualty li3t was only four wounded. But if Christmas, 1776, was bright with victory, Christmas, 1777 was correspondingly dark with despair. For it was spent at Valley Forge and that fact speaks for itself. Christmas, 1786, was scarcely a time of good will among the men of the new nation, especially in western Massachusetts where armed men were marching over the hills and through the valleys, ready to plunge their state into the horrors of a civil war. For on that Christmas Christ-mas day the incident, which has come down in history as "Shays' Rebellion," was mounting to a climax cli-max because a people, driven to DANIEL SHAYS despair by poverty, high taxes and a loss of faith in their government, had resorted to armed force to right their wrongs. Their leader was Daniel Shays, who had served with distinction for five years in the Continental army and came out of the Revolution Revolu-tion a captain. But the "Patriot" of 1776 became a "rebel" in 1786, was driven out of his native state when the governor of Massachusetts called out the militia to suppress the "rebellion" and died a poverty-stricken poverty-stricken exile in 1825. In 1836 the Texans won their independence in-dependence from Mexico and for a time there was peace between the two bountries. Then the Mexicans began making raids on Texan territory terri-tory and the Texans, under Gdn. Thomas Jefferson Green, deter-j deter-j mined to retaliate. Over the protest pro-test of Sam Houston, an army of 304 men invaded Mexico. On Christmas Christ-mas day, 1842, they met a force of more than 2,000 Mexicans under General Ampudia at Mier and after killing nearly half of the enemy were induced by false promises to surrender. Thus the famous "Mier expedition" ended in disaster, for later, by order of Gen. Santa Anna, every tenth Texan was executed. Four years later the Americans and Mexicans were at war again this time a formally declared war and on December 25, 1846, Col. Alexander Doniphan of the First Regiment of Missouri Mounted Volunteers Vol-unteers was fighting a battle with 1,200 Mexicans at Bracito river. The Mexican loss was 63 killed and 150 wounded; the American, seven wounded. December 25, 1860, was a fateful Christmas in American history. On that night a little force of soldiers, commanded by Maj. Robert Anderson, Ander-son, stole quietly out of Fort Moultrie Moul-trie and occupied Fort Sumter in the middle ol the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, S. C. Four months later the commander of the Confederate forces in Charleston called upon him to surrender; he refused and when a shell went screaming across the waters to strike Sumter's brick walls it set 2,000,000 Americans against each other in the greatest civil war in history. Happily, not all Christmas days in American history have been dedicated dedi-cated to war. On Christmas Eve, 1814, John Quincy Adams, Albert Gallatin, James Bayard, Jonathan Russell, and Henry Clay, American commissioners, met with representatives represen-tatives from Great Britain in the city of Ghent in Belgium, to try to end the long-drawn-out negotiations which had kept them there since the preceding August. Perhaps the spirit of Christmas filled them. At any rate the wrangling ceased and they signed the treaty which ended the War of 1812. |