Military History Anniversaries 01 thru 14 Feb Events in History over the next 14 day period that had U.S. military involvement or impacted in some way on U.S military operations or American interests Feb 01 1781 – American Revolutionary War: Davidson College Namesake Killed at Cowan’s Ford » American Brigadier General William Lee Davidson dies in combat attempting to prevent General Charles Cornwallis’ army from crossing the Catawba River in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Davidson’s North Carolina militia, numbering between 600 and 800 men, set up camp on the far side of the river, hoping to thwart or at least slow Cornwallis’ crossing. The Patriots stayed back from the banks of the river in order to prevent Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tartleton’s forces from fording the river at a different point and surprising the Patriots with a rear attack. At 1 a.m., Cornwallis began to move his troops toward the ford; by daybreak, they were crossing in a double-pronged formation–one prong for horses, the other for wagons. The noise of the rough crossing, during which the horses were forced to plunge in over their heads in the storm-swollen stream, woke the sleeping Patriot guard. The Patriots fired upon the Britons as they crossed and received heavy fire in return. Almost immediately upon his arrival at the river bank, General Davidson took a rifle ball to the heart and fell from his horse; his soaked corpse was found late that evening. Although Cornwallis’ troops took heavy casualties, the combat did little to slow their progress north toward Virginia. General Davidson was the son of Ulster-Scot Presbyterian immigrants to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The family moved in 1748, two years after William’s birth, to what was then known as Rowan (now Iredell) County, North Carolina. In 1835, Davidson’s son, William Lee Davidson II, gave the Concord Presbytery land on which to build a college in his father’s honor. The school was named Davidson College. Feb 01 1861 – Civil War: Texas Secedes » Texas becomes the seventh state to secede from the Union when a state convention votes 166 to 8 in favor of the measure. The Texans who voted to leave the Union did so over the objections of their governor, Sam Houston. A staunch Unionist, Houston’s 1 election in 1859 as governor seemed to indicate that Texas did not share the rising secessionist sentiments of the other Southern states. However, events swayed many Texans to the secessionist cause. John Brown’s raid on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in October 1859 had raised the specter of a major slave insurrection, and the ascendant Republican Party made many Texans uneasy about continuing in the Union. After Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency in November 1860, pressure mounted on Houston to call a convention so that Texas could consider secession. He did so reluctantly in January 1861, and sat in silence on 1 FEB as the convention voted overwhelmingly in favor of secession. Houston grumbled that Texans were “stilling the voice of reason,” and he predicted an “ignoble defeat” for the South. Houston refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy and was replaced in March 1861 by his lieutenant governor. Texas’ move completed the first round of secession. Seven states–South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas–left the Union before Lincoln took office. Four more states–Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas– waited until the formal start of the Civil War, with the April 1861 firing on Fort Sumter at Charleston, South Carolina, before deciding to leave the Union. The remaining slave states–Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri–never mustered the necessary majority for secession. Feb 01 1864 – Civil War: Battle of New Bern (1-3 Feb) » Union forces had captured New Bern during Ambrose Burnside's North Carolina Expedition in March 1862 and had been under Union control ever since. In 1864 the Union garrison was a brigade-sized force commanded by Brig. Gen. Innis N. Palmer. Major General George E. Pickett commanded the Confederate ground forces coordinating against New Bern with a detachment of Confederate Marines and sailors led by Commander John T. Wood. Pickett organized a three-prong attack against the town. Brigadier General Robert F. Hoke’s brigade first made contact on 1 FEB along Bachelor's Creek where he hoped to surprise the Union outpost under Col. Peter Claassen of the 132nd New York Infantry. Both sides brought forward artillery as the fight began to grow and Claassen ordered his men back into New Bern. In the darkness and fog Union reinforcements bound for the fighting became cut off and were captured. Hoke then halted his brigade outside New Bern and waited to hear from the rest of the Confederate attacks. The second Confederate attack was led by Brig. Gen. Seth Barton which moved across the Trent River against the 17th Massachusetts Infantry under Col. Thomas I. C. Amory supported by the 3rd New York Light Artillery. Amory's artillery opened against Barton causing him to believe the Union defenses he faced were far too strong and withdrew from range of the artillery. Pickett's third attack 2 was led by Col. James Dearing against Fort Anderson across the Neuse River. When Dearing came within sight of the fort, like Barton, he too believed the defenses facing him were too formidable to attack. By nightfall Palmer's Union defenses maintained their position and Pickett gave up hope of renewing the assault. On 2 FEB Commander Wood and his naval contingent surprised the crew of the USS Underwriter anchored in the Neuse River. The majority of the Underwriter’s crew escaped but Wood's Confederates seized the ship and set about to sail her downriver and attack the Union Navy Yard. Union artillery from Fort Stevenson opened fire on the Underwriter setting it on fire and forcing the recent captors to flee. Pickett called off the offensive and retreated on 4 FEB. Feb 01 1909 – Cuba: U.S. troops leave Cuba after installing Jose Miguel Gomez as president. Feb 01 1915 – WWI Era: The Turks begin forced deportations of Armenians. Over the next two years, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians will either starve to death, die of thirst in the Syrian Desert, or be murdered by Turkish troops and bandits, during the Armenian Genocide. Feb 01 1917 – WWI Era: Germany Resumes Unrestricted Submarine Warfare » The lethal threat of the German U-boat submarine raises its head again, as Germany returns to the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare it had previously suspended in response to pressure from the United States and other neutral countries. Unrestricted submarine warfare was first introduced in World War I in early 1915, when Germany declared the area around the British Isles a war zone, in which all merchant ships, including those from neutral countries, would be attacked by the German navy. A string of attacks on merchant ships followed, culminating in the sinking of the British ship Lusitania by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915. Although the Lusitania was a British ship and it was carrying a supply of munitions—Germany used these two facts to justify the attack—it was principally a passenger ship, and the 1,201 people who drowned in its sinking included 128 Americans. The incident prompted U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to send a strongly worded note to the German government demanding an end to German attacks against unarmed merchant ships. By September 1915, the German government had imposed such strict constraints on the operation of the nation’s submarines that the German navy was persuaded to suspend U-boat warfare altogether. German navy commanders, however, were ultimately not prepared to accept this degree of passivity, and continued to push for a more aggressive use of the submarine, convincing first the army and eventually the government, most importantly Kaiser Wilhelm, that the U-boat was an essential component of German war strategy. Planning to remain on the defensive on the Western Front in 1917, the supreme army command endorsed the navy’s opinion that unrestricted U-boat warfare against the British at sea could result in a German victory by the fall of 1917. In a joint audience with the Kaiser on January 8, 1917, army and naval leaders presented their arguments to Wilhelm, who supported them in spite of the opposition of the German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, who was not at the meeting. Though he feared antagonizing the U.S., Hollweg accepted the Kaiser’s decision, pressured as he was by the armed forces and the hungry and frustrated German public, which was angered by the continuing Allied naval blockade and which supported aggressive action towards Germany’s enemies. 3 On January 31, 1917, Bethmann Hollweg went before the German Reichstag government and made the announcement that unrestricted submarine warfare would resume the next day, 1 FEB. The destructive designs of our opponents cannot be expressed more strongly. We have been challenged to fight to the end. We accept the challenge. We stake everything, and we shall be victorious. Feb 01 1941 – WW2 Era: US Navy authorized to gradually increase crews of warships to full wartime strength. Feb 01 1942 – WW2: U.S. Navy conducts Marshalls–Gilberts raids, the first offensive action by the United States against Japanese forces in the Pacific Theater. Feb 01 1943 – WW2: Japanese Begin Evacuation of Guadalcanal » Defeated by Marines the Japanese forces on Guadalcanal Island, start to withdraw after the Japanese emperor finally gives them permission. On July 6, 1942, the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal Island, part of the Solomon Islands chain, and began constructing an airfield.