December 15

Today is Bill of Rights Day.

1791     The Bill of Rights took effect following ratification by Virginia.

1887  The Burlington Northern commences operation on its freight line to Cheyenne.

1890 Sioux Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, S.D., during a clash with Indian police.  This event would be one of a series which lead to the tragedy of Wounded Knee.

1890  Burlington Northern commences passenger service between Douglas and Cheyenne.  The Douglas depot is now a train museum (a photo of which will later appear on our Railhead site).

1903  USS Wyoming anchored at the Bay of San Miguel Panama, during the period of Panamanian separation from Columbia.

1909  The six masted schooner Wyoming, the largest wooden schooner ever built, launched in Bath, Maine.  The huge schooner was the last one launched on the East Coast of the United States.

1910  Bishop James A. Keane approved of the parish of St. James in Douglas, together with
several missions.

1910  Wills Van Devanter confirmed as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

1913  The cornerstone of the Newcastle National Guard Armory laid. The building is a museum today.

1913  George Saban, who had plead guilty to second degree murder in connection with the Spring Creek Raid, escaped while being transported as part of a work detail and was never heard from again.

1918  December 15, 1918. Returning Home, Not Making It Over, Wilson In France, Silly Cinema

The Philadelphia Public Ledger printed a poster as a supplement.  The troops were already returning home in appreciable numbers so that celebrations were occurring.

And Sunday movie releases were a thing.  Wives and Other Wives was released on this date in 1918.

The plot synopsis, involving newlyweds, looks absurd, but then it's no more absurd than the piles of slop that television offers now.  Compared to Below Deck, it was likely downright intellectual.

This was a five reel film, fwiw.

The Cheyenne paper features a full slate of recent post war news in its Sunday edition, including the news that Ireland was going for Sinn Fein in the British parliamentary election held the day prior, and Lloyd George had apparently called Labor to be Bolshevik.  France was celebrating Wilson's arrival and the paper was reporting that German efforts to woo African American troops had failed.

And at least in Chicago, the Sunday paper had cartoons, including one that was aimed at low grade coal used to heat homes during World War One as the better grades were devoted to other more pressing concerns.

Hardly anyone heats a house with coal now (I know some do, and I've been in at least a couple of structures heated by coal), so the soot and smell of it is something sort of lost on a modern audience.  But it would have done both of those.  I.e, coal smells even if its a good grade, and the lower grades would have been quite smokey and sooty.

If we take cartoons as a reflection back on contemporary life, and really we ought to, there's some other interesting things to glean in these cartoons.  For one thing, cars were obviously still a novelty, given the way that they were treated in Gasoline Alley.  The protagonists are basically a group of car owners in these early issues experimenting on their cars.  Note that steam cars were still a thing, as there's a reference to them in the cartoon.

And it must have already been the case that those who didn't make it "Over There" were a bit embarrassed by it, as that was the subject of one of the cartoons.

1933   The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially becomes effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol.

1939     "Gone With the Wind" premiered in Atlanta.

1963  The statue of Ester Morris at the state capitol was dedicated.

2008  Wyoming's presidential electors met at the State Capitol Building at noon to cast their votes for President.

2011 Conclusion of three days of oral arguments at the Wyoming Supreme Court.

2011 Governor Mead meets carolers from Jessup Elementary School.

April 2

 1792   Congress passed the Coinage Act, which authorized establishment of the U.S. Mint.

1866   U.S. President Andrew Johnson declares the Civil War to be over.

1870  An Indian attack on the Sweetwater killed six settlers.

1881  Big Nose George Parrot sentenced to death.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1890  Mail service, on a three times a week basis, established between Laramie and Keystone.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1892  George Dunning, an intimate of the conspirators associated with the invasion of Johnson County, returned from Idaho to Cheyenne at the behest of H. B. Ijams, secretary of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, to participate in the raid, although he professed disapproval.  He drew a .45-90 Winchester from a Cheyenne store where accounts had been set up to arm the invaders. While the plot did not yet have the endorsement of the WSGA, it was well advanced by WSGA officials at the time.

1902  Ester Hobart Morris died in Cheyenne.

1909.  The Spring Creek Raid marks the last open attack in a long running range war in Wyoming, and concludes the era of private warfare in the state.  In the Spring  Creek Raid a collection of Big Horn County cattleman attacked sheepman Joe Allemand and killed him, and then burned his sheepwagon.  This was one of a series of such raids that had occurred since sheep were introduced into Wyoming in the 1890s.  The brutality of the assault shocked area residents, who for the first time supported legal efforts to prosecute the perpetrators in the Big Horn Basin, which previously had not been the case.  The tide had effectively shifted some years earlier in much of the state, as the willingness to prosecute and execute assassin Tom Horn in 1903 had demonstrated.

News traveling more slowly in those days, news of the attack was first published in Natrona County Wyoming on April 6, 1909.

The Spring Creek Raid.

Students of Wyoming's history are well familiar with the story of the Spring Creek Raid, which occurred on April 2, 1909, on the Nowood River outside of Tensleep, Wyoming.  The tragedy has been the subject of at least three well known books, including the excellent A Vast Amount of Trouble, Goodbye Judge Lynch, and Tensleep and No Rest, the first two by lawyer and historian John W. Davis and the third, and earlier work, by Jack Gage, a former Governor of Wyoming.

The raid is justifiably famous for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it may be the sheepman murder that most closely fits the way that we imagine the cattlemen v. sheepmen war of the late 19th and early 20th Century being.  Of course, the fact that it was an outright cold blooded killing no doubt causes it to be well remembered as well.  And then that the killings actually resulted in a trial which convicted the assassins is also worth remembering, as it demonstrated the turn of the tide of the public view on such matters.

The Wyoming historical marker sign that describes the killings does a good job of it, with perhaps the only thing omitted is that one of the ambushing party was armed with a semi automatic Remington Model 8 in .35 Remington, a very distinct arm for the time.  In basic terms, the raid occurred as several men connected with cattle raising in the area decided to enforce the "Deadline", a topographic feature of the Big Horn Mountains which meant it was a literal dead line.

The .35 Remington turned out to be critical in the story of the raid as it was an unusual cartridge for what was, at the time, an unusual arm.  The Remington 08 had only been introduced in 1905 and was a semi automatic rifle in an era in which the lever action predominated.  A lot of .35 Remington cartridges were left at the scene of the murders and investigation very rapidly revealed that a Farney Cole had left his Remington 08 at the home of Bill Keyes, which was quite near the location of the assault.  One of the assailants, George Saban, was known to not carry a gun and was also known to have been at the Saban residence the day of the assault.  Subsequent investigation matched other cartridges found on the location to rifles and pistols known to have been carried by the attackers.

Arrests soon followed and five of the assailants were ultimately charged with murder.  Two turned states' evidence.  The trials were not consolidated and only Herbert Brink's case went to trial.  To the surprise of some, he was convicted by the jury.  Due to prior trials for the killing of sheepmen being both unsuccessful and unpopular, Wyoming took the step of deploying National Guardsmen to Basin to provide security for the trial, which proved unnecessary.  The conviction was the first one in the area for a cattleman v. sheepman murder( Tom Horn had earlier been convicted for the 1903 killing of Willie Nickell, but that killing took place in southern Wyoming.

The killings were, quite rankly, uniquely cold blooded and gruesome, involving shooting into the wagons and setting them on fire.  Because of that, and the Brink conviction, the remaining four charged men plead guilty, rather than face trial.  Two plead guilty to arson, and two to second degree murder.

All were sentenced together, and Brink was sentenced to death.  His sentence was commuted, however, and he was released from prison, together with another one of the party, in 1914.  Another, George Saban, who was deeply affected by his conviction, escaped while out of the penitentiary and under guard, after being allowed to stay over in Basin in order to allegedly conduct some of his affairs.  His escape was successful and he disappeared from the face of the earth.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

1916   The Punitive Expedition: Sunday State Leader. April 2, 1916
 

1917  President Wilson asks Congress for a Declaration of War against Germany.

 Woodrow Wilson addresses a Joint Session of Congress and ask for a Declaration of War Against Germany
 

Woodrow Wilson went before a special joint session of Congress on this day in 1917 to ask for a Declaration of War against Germany.

Gentlemen of the Congress:

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.

On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the 1st day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe-conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the at tempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meagre enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people can not be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.

It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.

When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last, I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavour to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we can not make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the Navy in all respects but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well conceived taxation....

While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their Government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs.

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.

Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of honour.

One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without our industries and our commerce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States. Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people towards us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted [Zimmermann] note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence.

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

Just because we fight without rancour and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.

I have said nothing of the governments allied with the Imperial Government of Germany because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honour. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified endorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights.

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early reestablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us -- however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present government through all these bitter months because of that friendship -- exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy, who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to their neighbours and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few.

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts -- for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.

Congress did not vote on the matter on that day.

The Wyoming Tribune: Prelude to The Declaration of War. April 2, 1917

 

1948  A fire destroys 30 Laramie businesses.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

February 20

1792     President George Washington signed an act creating the U.S. Post Office.The Constitution requires the Federal Government to deliver the mail, and this was a vital government service in the much of the nation's history.  Now, with UPS and FedEx, it's easy to forget the extent to which this service mattered more to many people than any other governmental service at one time, and for many people, it was likely the only contact with the Federal Government that they ever had.

Since writing the paragraph immediately above, the impacts of other services, and most particularly of the internet, have made the Post Office's position sufficiently precarious that Saturday mail delivery is scheduled to be eliminated.

1911  Gov. Carey signed bill carving Lincoln County out of Uinta County.:  Attribution:  On This Day.

1917   The Cheyenne State Leader for February 20, 1917: The news about Gen. Funston hits the headlines and Colorado protests a Wyoming demobilization.
 

The news of Gen. Funston's death hit the front page of the paper the day after.

And Colorado was upset about Colorado National Guardsmen being sent to Ft. D. A. Russell for demobilization, rather than a location in their home state.

Dogs were barred entry into the state by Governor Kendrick due to concerns over rabies.

1919  The  Legislature appropriated $2,500 for placing markers along the Oregon Trail.  A good example of these very first markers can be seen in the bottom photograph here.  The top example, featuring a bronze medallion, is a somewhat later one which was placed by a commission.  The monument itself in the top photo is not original, but the 1914 State of Wyoming one is fully original.

1923  The Legislature experienced a 56 hour "day" in a questionable legislature trick designed to keep the clock from winding up on the session. This trick has been repeated since then, but this one was the record.

1949  The last day of the Blizzard of 1949, which was actually a series of blizzards that occurred in rapid succession.

1957  Gov. Milward Simposn signs a state Civil Rights act.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1980 Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the first child of Theodore Roosevelt, his only child by his first wife Alice, and the last of his living children, died.

1982  The University of Wyoming's Arena Auditorium opened.

February 1

Today is National Freedom Day, a date celebrating the 13th Amendment.

1790  The Supreme Court of the United States convenes for the first time.

1859  The Eldorado opens in Denver.  That city's first hotel.

1876  The Secretary of the Interior reports that Sitting Bull's band has not reported to the reservation and the matter is turned over to the Department of the Army.

1889  Running water supplied to Buffalo for the first time.  Attribution. Wyoming State Historical Society.

1919  Friday Farming. February 1, 1919. Wyoming Stockman Farmer

1921  Elias Homstand, a Norwegian citizen living in Casper, received a patent for a reciprocating saw.

1929  Carl Sandburg gave a lecture at the University of Wyoming. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1943  A bill requiring pre marital tests for women signed by Gov. Hunt.  Such a bill would be regarded as an unconscionable sexist act today, but in the medical context of the time it was a rational attempt at controlling the spread of certain diseases.   Attribution:  Wyoming State Archives.

1944 Mike Enzie born in Bermerton Washington.  His father was in the service at the time, and the family returned to Thermopolis after his father's discharge following World War Two.  He has served as a Senator for Wyoming since 1997.

Enzi was been a very popular Wyoming politician.  He was a successful businessman in Gillette, first in his family's shoe store business, and then as an accountant, prior to entering politics locally.

1947  The Plains Cottonwood adopted as the State Tree.

2003  A 3.7 magnitude earthquake occurs near Casper.

2007  Montana filed suit against Wyoming and North Dakota, in the Supreme Court, which has original jurisdiction over suits between states, concerning water appropriations from the Tongue and Powder Rivers.  Oral arguments were heard on January 10, 2011, in the cause.  The Court issued its decision on May 2, 2011.

January 13

1794     President George Washington approved a measure adding two stars and two stripes to the American flag, following the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the union.

1846  President Taylor dispatches U.S. troops to Texas in anticipation of trouble with Mexico.

1877   Corporal  Charles A. Bessey, Company A, 3d U.S. Cavalry wins the Congressional Medal of Honor for an action near Elkhorn Creek, Wyo., 13 January 1877. Citation. While scouting with 4 men and attacked in ambush by 14 hostile Indians, held his ground, 2 of his men being wounded, and kept up the fight until himself wounded in the side, and then went to the assistance of his wounded comrades.

"Elkhorn" is a common  name for creeks in Wyoming, so exactly where this occurred I do not know.

1885  Wyoming Territorial Governor William Hale died.

1888.  The post office at Ft. D. A. Russel re-established.

1890  Union Pacific carpenters went on strike in Cheyenne.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1899  US Senator F.E. Warren introduced a bill for the erection of an Army post near Sheridan, Wyoming.

1899  Wyoming Governor  Jack R. Gage born.

1918  Cold Snap
 

We haven't been putting up that many newspapers recently, but if we had, you'd have noticed this occurring.  The early winter of 1917-1918 was really cold.

Brutal Winter Weather Of December 1917 and January 1918

December 1917 through January 1918 still stands today as the coldest and snowiest December-January period ever recorded in Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green, and several other locations across southern Indiana and central Kentucky. The 49 inches of snow that buried Louisville during those two months beats the 2nd snowiest December-January by more than a foot and a half!

And I mean cold everywhere.  From the Mexico Es Cultura Site:

The hurricane season that hit the Gulf of Mexico usually starts between April and May and ends in November. Rarely there were extreme weather events of this magnitude outside of those months. However, according to the chronicles, in the coasts of Texas and Tamaulipas was recorded a strong hurricane at the beginning of January 1918.

The hurricane destroyed the poor houses of Tampico and flooded the city, as well as the towns of Nuevo Laredo and Laredo, Texas. The traditional neighborhood of Doña Cecilia was practically destroyed. On the other hand, a cold front from the glaciers of the North Pole caused severe snowfall in the cities of Monterrey, Saltillo, Ciudad Victoria, and San Luis Potosí, among other towns, mostly on the border side.

Local governments requested the help of President Venustiano Carranza to send medicine, food and blankets to help the most population in need.

Cold in Wyoming too.

The Wyoming newspapers, or at least one Cheyenne one, had been making fun of the cold in Nebraska earlier in the week, noting how much warmer it was in Wyoming, when of course the weather changed, as it will, and the mercury dropped. For the second half of the week of January 8, 1918, temperatures were down in the negative range.  Finally around this time of the week, after having been down that low the day prior, it looked like some relief was on the way.

The Cheyenne newspaper was noting temperatures were anticipated to go back up to above 35F, which shared placement with rifle practice being introduced to colleges.  Bad weather got more notice however.

This sort of temperature would be brutal at any point, but it's easy to forget looking back a century at 1918, which shares mental familiarity with us today, that houses were heated much differently.  We've dealt with this before, but today, most Wyoming houses are heated with natural gas, a clean burning efficient heating fuel.  Some houses (like mine) are heated with electrical heating elements.  In 1918, most houses in this area would have burned coal. Some houses would have been heated with wood fires, particularly rural ones.  Indeed, even houses heated by coal would have been partially heated by wood cook stoves for a lot of the day.

By this period, I should note, major buildings started having boilers.  And some, indeed a lot of, homes also had radiant steam heat as well.  I'm really far from an expert on these even though they exist everywhere to this day, but generally they require a boiler and that requires a fuel.  Around here, today,  the fuel is natural gas.  In other places it remains heating oil.  At that time it would have meant coal.  So when we speak of a house being heated by coal, we don't mean simply burning coal for heat, although I've been in modern houses where residents did just that, or in shops where the owners did just that.

A World War One vintage poster of the United States Fuel Administration.  This period poster nicely illustrates how coal fit in.  Homeowners were being urged to buy coal early in the year.  That coal wasn't delivered, in this poster, by a truck, but rather by a dump wagon drawn by heavy draft horses.  Given the light dress of the laborer and the depiction of foliage the poster must have been released during the summer.

 

Burning coal for heat entails some factors that we don't consider here in the West much, but those who still use heating oil in the East probably do.  For one thing, you have to order it and store it.  The poster above from World War One shows that this was a concern pretty far in advance of winter.  And at least according to my mother, who recalled their coal furnace in Montreal, fleas came with the coal for some reason.

 

 Coal furnace.  I've never seen one.

 

And of course, coal smells when it burns.  Almost any town would have been smoky in the winter.  Here in Wyoming people often lament the winds during winter, but I have to wonder if some wind (not enough to blow the furnace out, which can happen, weren't welcome as they'd blow the smoke out of town.

 

That would have meant, fwiw, that most towns would have had a smokey haze above them all winter.  Indeed, one thing I didn't like about Laramie when I lived there was all the wood smoke, as so many students burned wood at the time, and I still don't like that.  It's one of the reasons why I've resisted a wood burning insert in my own house for so many years, while my wife, who grew up with them in rural conditions, would like one.

 

"African American schoolgirls with teacher, learning to cook on a wood stove in classroom."  This is an odd photo put up here only to illustrate a wood burning cook stove.  Using these is much different than using a modern electric or gas oven, but I have to suspect that most of these girls learned as much about cooking at home as they did in the classroom.  Having said that, Home Economics remained a class a lot of girls took when I was in junior high in the 1970s.

For a lot of the day, in almost every home occupied by a family, or in every boarding house, the kitchen was putting out heat via a cook stove.  Cooking with a wood burning stove is generally fairly slow, so what this meant is that the stove generally burned for hours.  Chances are that in a lot of homes the fire was stoked right around 4:00 am or so, or certainly not later than 5:00, in contemplation of cooking a meal about an hour later.  The heavy cast iron stove would put out heat for at least 30 minutes if not an hour after it was last stoked, so kitchens started likely heating up around 4:15 and stayed that way until at least 7:00, if not until 9:00.  In many homes the heating process would start again around 11:00, if children were at home or if a male occupant returned to his house at noon. Most men likely didn't, so the stove may have remained cold or lukewarm during the mid day but get stoked back up around 3:00 in anticipation of serving around 6:00.  Cooking was slow.  Some such stoves on many days would have been fired back up much earlier, depending upon what was being cooked for that evening.  And the stove likely burned to a degree until 7:00 and started getting cold around 7:30.

A lot of business establishments of various types would have had a stove as well that they kept running basically all day long.

So, lots of wood smoke to add to the coal smoke.  Neat.

1929   Wyatt Earp died in Los Angeles.

1943  It is reported that 2,600 school teachers are employed in Wyoming.  Attribution.  Wyoming State Historical Society.

2015  Legislature commences general session.

Elsewhere:

1929   Wyatt Earp died in Los Angeles.

1937   The United States bars US citizens from serving in the Spanish Civil War.   This occurred a the same time that left wing American volunteers were forming the Lincoln Battalion/Brigade, which would first see action in February, 1937.  Foreign volunteers, in addition to outright foreign military missions, saw some action on both sides of the war, with some countries actually seeing volunteers on both sides of the war.

1950  The Soviet Union boycotts the UN Security Council over the issue of which government is the legitimate Chinese government, a move that will ultimately allow the UN to intervene in the Korean War.

January 8

1790  George Washington delivered the first state of the union address.  The address follows:

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:

I embrace with great satisfaction the opportunity which now presents itself of congratulating you on the present favorable prospects of our public affairs. The recent accession of the important state of north Carolina to the Constitution of the United States (of which official information has been received), the rising credit and respectability of our country, the general and increasing good will toward the government of the Union, and the concord, peace, and plenty with which we are blessed are circumstances auspicious in an eminent degree to our national prosperity.

In resuming your consultations for the general good you can not but derive encouragement from the reflection that the measures of the last session have been as satisfactory to your constituents as the novelty and difficulty of the work allowed you to hope. Still further to realize their expectations and to secure the blessings which a gracious Providence has placed within our reach will in the course of the present important session call for the cool and deliberate exertion of your patriotism, firmness, and wisdom.

Among the many interesting objects which will engage your attention that of providing for the common defense will merit particular regard. To be prepared for war is on e of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.

The proper establishment of the troops which may be deemed indispensable will be entitled to mature consideration. In the arrangements which may be made respecting it it will be of importance to conciliate the comfortable support of the officers and soldiers with a due regard to economy.

There was reason to hope that the pacific measures adopted with regard to certain hostile tribes of Indians would have relieved the inhabitants of our southern and western frontiers from their depredations, but you will perceive from the information contained in the papers which I shall direct to be laid before you (comprehending a communication from the Commonwealth of Virginia) that we ought to be prepared to afford protection to those parts of the Union, and, if necessary, to punish aggressors.

The interests of the United States require that our intercourse with other nations should be facilitated by such provisions as will enable me to fulfill my duty in that respect in the manner which circumstances may render most conducive to the public good, and to this end that the compensation to be made to the persons who may be employed should, according to the nature of their appointments, be defined by law, and a competent fund designated for defraying the expenses incident to the conduct of foreign affairs.

Various considerations also render it expedient that the terms on which foreigners may be admitted to the rights of citizens should be speedily ascertained by a uniform rule of naturalization.

Uniformity in the currency, weights, and measures of the United States is an object of great importance, and will, I am persuaded, be duly attended to.

The advancement of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures by all proper means will not, I trust, need recommendation; but I can not forbear intimating to you the expediency of giving effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad as to the exertions of skill and genius in producing them at home, and of facilitating the intercourse between the distant parts of our country by a due attention to the post-office and post-roads.

Nor am I less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours it is proportionably essential.

To the security of a free constitution it contributes in various ways - by convincing those who are intrusted with the public administration that every valuable end of government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people, and by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness - cherishing the first, avoiding the last - and uniting a speedy but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws.

Whether this desirable object will be best promoted by affording aids to seminaries of learning already established, by the institution of a national university, or by any other expedients will be well worthy of a place in the deliberations of the legislature.

Gentlemen of the House of Representatives:

I saw with peculiar pleasure at the close of the last session the resolution entered into by you expressive of your opinion that an adequate provision for the support of the public credit is a matter of high importance to the national honor and prosperity. In this sentiment I entirely concur; and to a perfect confidence in your best endeavors to devise such a provision as will be truly with the end I add an equal reliance on the cheerful cooperation of the other branch of the legislature.

It would be superfluous to specify inducements to a measure in which the character and interests of the United States are so obviously so deeply concerned, and which has received so explicit a sanction from your declaration.

Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Representatives:

I have directed the proper officers to lay before you, respectively, such papers and estimates as regard the affairs particularly recommended to your consideration, and necessary to convey to you that information of the state of the Union which it is my duty to afford.

The welfare of our country is the great object to which our cares and efforts ought to be directed, and I shall derive great satisfaction from a cooperation with you in the pleasing though arduous task of insuring to our fellow citizens the blessings which they have a right to expect from a free, efficient, and equal government.
GEORGE WASHINGTON

1815     U.S. forces led by Gen. Andrew Jackson defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans.  The battle was fought after the war was actually over, the peace treaty having been negotiated and signed, but the combatants did not know this in distant Louisiana.

Celebrating the 8th of January was once pretty common in the US, noting the second time the US had defeated the UK.  The celebration fell away over time, and certainly later events, like the Civil War, crowed out attention on the War of 1812.  However, prior to that, the event was celebrated somewhat like the 4th of July, with gatherings, speeches, songs, and the like.

1877  Troops under Nelson Miles attack Crazy Horse and his followers on the Tongue River in Montana, in what is known as the Battle of Wolf Mountains.  The battle started nearly by happenstance, as the encamped troops of Miles command, which had been in the field trying to chase down Crazy Horse, became aware of his nearby presence when Crazy Horse's part was sighted, moving, very early in the morning.  The Sioux hold off the army sufficiently long for their families to escape before they withdraw.  This would be the last battle commanded by Crazy Horse, who would surrender in May.  By the end of the Tongue River battle the Sioux were resorting to bows and arrows due to ammunition shortages.

Of note, this battle is often shorthanded to claim that "U.S. Cavalry" engaged Crazy Horse.  This is not correct.  Miles' command included infantry and artillery, but no cavalry, on this occasion.  There were mounted soldiers involved in this action, but they were provisional mounted infantry, not cavalry.  Creating mounted infantry out of infantry formations was not uncommon in the Indian Wars.

1884  Territorial legislature convenes in Cheyenne.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1891  The Board of Charities and Reform created by the Legislature.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1918 Woodrow Wilson Delivers his "Fourteen Points" to Congress in a Joint Session. January 8, 1918.
 

Woodrow Wilson delivered his Fourteen Points to Congress on this day, in which he defined American war aims.

 

 

 The text of the address:

Gentlemen of the Congress:

Once more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of the Central Empires have indicated their desire to discuss the objects of the war and the possible basis of a general peace. Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between Russsian representatives and representatives of the Central Powers to which the attention of all the belligerents have been invited for the purpose of ascertaining whether it may be possible to extend these parleys into a general conference with regard to terms of peace and settlement.

The Russian representatives presented not only a perfectly definite statement of the principles upon which they would be willing to conclude peace but also an equally definite program of the concrete application of those principles. The representatives of the Central Powers, on their part, presented an outline of settlement which, if much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal interpretation until their specific program of practical terms was added. That program proposed no concessions at all either to the sovereignty of Russia or to the preferences of the populations with whose fortunes it dealt, but meant, in a word, that the Central Empires were to keep every foot of territory their armed forces had occupied -- every province, every city, every point of vantage -- as a permanent addition to their territories and their power.

It is a reasonable conjecture that the general principles of settlement which they at first suggested originated with the more liberal statesmen of Germany and Austria, the men who have begun to feel the force of their own people's thought and purpose, while the concrete terms of actual settlement came from the military leaders who have no thought but to keep what they have got. The negotiations have been broken off. The Russian representatives were sincere and in earnest. They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and domination.

The whole incident is full of significances. It is also full of perplexity. With whom are the Russian representatives dealing? For whom are the representatives of the Central Empires speaking? Are they speaking for the majorities of their respective parliaments or for the minority parties, that military and imperialistic minority which has so far dominated their whole policy and controlled the affairs of Turkey and of the Balkan states which have felt obliged to become their associates in this war?

The Russian representatives have insisted, very justly, very wisely, and in the true spirit of modern democracy, that the conferences they have been holding with the Teutonic and Turkish statesmen should be held within open, not closed, doors, and all the world has been audience, as was desired. To whom have we been listening, then? To those who speak the spirit and intention of the resolutions of the German Reichstag of the 9th of July last, the spirit and intention of the Liberal leaders and parties of Germany, or to those who resist and defy that spirit and intention and insist upon conquest and subjugation? Or are we listening, in fact, to both, unreconciled and in open and hopeless contradiction? These are very serious and pregnant questions. Upon the answer to them depends the peace of the world.

But, whatever the results of the parleys at Brest-Litovsk, whatever the confusions of counsel and of purpose in the utterances of the spokesmen of the Central Empires, they have again attempted to acquaint the world with their objects in the war and have again challenged their adversaries to say what their objects are and what sort of settlement they would deem just and satisfactory. There is no good reason why that challenge should not be responded to, and responded to with the utmost candor. We did not wait for it. Not once, but again and again, we have laid our whole thought and purpose before the world, not in general terms only, but each time with sufficient definition to make it clear what sort of definite terms of settlement must necessarily spring out of them. Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George has spoken with admirable candor and in admirable spirit for the people and Government of Great Britain.

There is no confusion of counsel among the adversaries of the Central Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vagueness of detail. The only secrecy of counsel, the only lack of fearless frankness, the only failure to make definite statement of the objects of the war, lies with Germany and her allies. The issues of life and death hang upon these definitions. No statesman who has the least conception of his responsibility ought for a moment to permit himself to continue this tragical and appalling outpouring of blood and treasure unless he is sure beyond a peradventure that the objects of the vital sacrifice are part and parcel of the very life of Society and that the people for whom he speaks think them right and imperative as he does.

There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and more compelling than any of the many moving voices with which the troubled air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian people. They are prostrate and all but hopeless, it would seem, before the grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their power, apparently, is shattered. And yet their soul is not subservient. They will not yield either in principle or in action. Their conception of what is right, of what is humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit, and a universal human sympathy which must challenge the admiration of every friend of mankind; and they have refused to compound their ideals or desert others that they themselves may be safe.

They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, if in anything, our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs; and I believe that the people of the United States would wish me to respond, with utter simplicity and frankness. Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace.

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow nor or at any other time the objects it has in view.

We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secure once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this:

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end. For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this program does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace- loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world, -- the new world in which we now live, -- instead of a place of mastery.

Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial domination.

We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.

Unless this principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test.

 

Whatever the merits of the Fourteen Points may have been, Wilson hadn't run them past the Allies at the time he delivered them, which was a rather curious thing to do in light of the vast amount of blood that they'd already shed in the war, and in light of the fact that, as noted in one of the newspapers set out above, the Russians were surrendering at the time and victory was far from assured.  It would take the US ten months to secure Allied approval of the Fourteen Points although the British did not accept the freedom of the seas portion.  Nonetheless the Allies widely disseminated them as propaganda.  They did prove to be an incitement to the Central Powers to surrender.

In the US the speech was positively received for the most part except that leaders of the Republican Party immediately renounced the provisions for a League of Nations.

 

1926  Wyoming Pioneer Association incorporated.

1933  700 rabbits killed in rabbit hunt at Thermopolis.

1943  Wyoming announces its first winter antelope season.  Attribution. Wyoming State Historical Society.