Good Morning & God Bless To Every One !
Today is May 10, the 130th day of 2014 and there are 235 days left this year where it is another Blessed Day in the pleasure of our service for our Lord here at:
For God’s Glory Alone Ministries !!!
My first history item is dedicated to my precious Mother, Harriet Stambaugh, who resides in Dallas, Texas. It was a GLORIOUS day some 19 or 20 years ago she was born and continues to share her joy with everyone she knows every day ever since!!! – – – Love You Mom – – – Happy Birthday !!!!!!
Today, I Have To Wonder Why?
Did you notice that first lady Michelle Obama gave the presidents weekly address this week? Did you know that in that address, she labeled the group who took the girls in Nigeria ‘Terrorists’? Did you know that the Obama administration and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in particular, refused to place this al Qaeda-linked militant group, Boko Haram, on the official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years now? Clinton said on Wednesday, abduction of the girls by Boko Haram was ‘abominable, it’s criminal, it’s an act of terrorism and it really merits the fullest response possible’. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA and over a dozen Senators and Congressmen. Have to wonder if the use of the term ‘terrorist organization’ has anything to do with Michelle making the weekly address instead of Barack conducting it as normal? I’m sure a heavily worded ‘tweet’ will resolve this issue though!!!
That’ll teach ’em!!!
So, What Happened Today In 1863?
Confederate General Thomas J. “STONEWALL” Jackson dies
During the American Civil War, the South loses one of its boldest and most colorful generals on this day, when 39-year-old Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson dies of pneumonia a week after his own troops accidentally fired on him during the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia. In the first two years of the war, Jackson terrorized Union commanders and led his army corps on bold and daring marches. He was the perfect complement to Robert E. Lee.
A native Virginian, Jackson grew up in poverty in Clarksburg, in the mountains of what is now West Virginia. Orphaned at an early age, Jackson was raised by relatives and became a shy, lonely young man. He had only a rudimentary education but secured an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point after another young man from the same congressional district turned down his appointment. Despite poor preparation, Jackson worked hard and graduated 17th in a class of 59 cadets.
Jackson went on to serve as an artillery officer during the Mexican War (1846-48), seeing action at Vera Cruz and Chapultepec. He earned three brevets for bravery in just six months and left the service in 1850 to teach at Virginia Military Institute (VMI). He was known as a difficult and eccentric classroom instructor, prone to strange and impromptu gestures in class. He was also a devout Presbyterian who refused to even talk of secular matters on the Sabbath. In 1859, Jackson led a group of VMI cadets to serve as gallows guards for the hanging of abolitionist John Brown.
When war broke out in 1861, Jackson became a brigadier general in command of five regiments raised in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. At the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, Jackson earned distinction by leading the attack that secured an advantage for the Confederates. Confederate General Barnard Bee, trying to inspire his troops, exclaimed “there stands Jackson like a stone wall,” and provided one of the most enduring monikers in history.
By 1862, Jackson was recognized as one of the most effective commanders in the Confederate army. Leading his force on one of the most brilliant campaigns in military history during the summer of 1862, Jackson marched around the Shenandoah Valley and held off three Union armies while providing relief for Confederates pinned down on the James Peninsula by George McClellan’s army. He later rejoined the Army of Northern Virginia for the Seven Days battles, and his leadership was stellar at Second Bull Run in August 1862. He soon became Lee’s most trusted corps commander.
The Battle of Chancellorsville was Lee’s and Jackson’s shining moment. Despite the fact that they faced an army twice the size of theirs, Lee daringly split his force and sent Jackson around the Union flank—a move that resulted in perhaps the Army of the Potomac’s most stunning defeat of the war. When nightfall halted the attack, Jackson rode forward to reconnoiter the territory for another assault. But as he and his aides rode back to the lines, a group of Rebels opened fire. Jackson was hit three times, and a Southern bullet shattered his left arm, which had to be amputated the next day. Soon, pneumonia set in, and Jackson began to fade. He died, as he had wished, on the Sabbath, May 10, 1863, with these last words: “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”
Other Memorable Or Interesting Events Occurring On May 10 In History:
1775 – During the American Revolution, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold lead a successful attack on Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York while the Second Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Congress faced the task of conducting a war already in progress. Fighting had begun with the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, and Congress needed to create an official army out of the untrained assemblage of militia laying siege on Boston. The transformation of these rebels into the Continental Army was assisted by the victory of the Vermont and Massachusetts militia under the joint command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold at the British garrison at Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. Their major achievement was to confiscate enough British cannon to make the Patriot militias into an army capable of an artillery barrage. Allen and more than 100 of his Green Mountain Boys had already decided to take the fort when Arnold arrived with formal military commissions from Massachusetts and Connecticut and a militia of his own. Ironically, both Allen and Arnold would eventually be accused of treason against the Patriot cause they had served so well in its earliest and neediest moments. Allen avoided conviction for his attempt to reattach Vermont to the British empire in the unstable days of the new republic. Arnold’s name, however, became synonymous with traitor for his attempt to sell the fort at West Point, New York, to the British in 1780;
1865 – At the end of the American Civil War, Confederate President of the fallen Confederate government, Jefferson Davis, is captured with his wife and entourage near Irwinville, Georgia by a detachment of Union General James H. Wilson’s cavalry. On April 2, 1865, with the Confederate defeat at Petersburg, Virginia imminent, General Robert E. Lee informed President Davis that he could no longer protect Richmond and advised the Confederate government to evacuate its capital. Davis and his cabinet fled to Danville, Virginia, and with Robert E. Lee’s surrender on April 9, deep into the South. Lee’s surrender of his massive Army of Northern Virginia effectively ended the war and during the next few weeks the remaining Confederate armies surrendered one by one. Davis was devastated by the fall of the Confederacy. Refusing to admit defeat, he hoped to flee to a sympathetic foreign nation such as Britain or France, and was weighing the merits of forming a government in exile when he was arrested by a detachment of the 4th Michigan Cavalry. Imprisoned for two years at Fort Monroe, Virginia, Davis was indicted for treason, but was never tried as the federal government feared that Davis would be able prove to a jury that the Southern secession of 1860 to 1861 was legal. After a number of unsuccessful business ventures, he retired to Beauvoir, his home near Biloxi, Mississippi. He died in 1889 and was buried at New Orleans; four years later, his body was moved to its permanent resting spot in Richmond, Virginia;
1869 – The presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah as California Governor Leland Stanford pounds in a ceremonial golden spike that completes the nation’s first transcontinental railway. After failing to hit the spike on his first attempt, Stanford raised the heavy sledgehammer again and struck a solid square blow on the ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads. This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history. No longer would western-bound travelers need to take the long and dangerous journey by wagon train, and the West would surely lose some of its wild charm with the new connection to the civilized East. For all the adversity they suffered, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific workers were able to finish the railroad, laying nearly 2,000 miles of track, ahead of schedule and under budget. Journeys that had taken months by wagon train or weeks by boat now took only days. Their work had an immediate impact; the years following the construction of the railway were years of rapid growth and expansion for the United States, due in large part to the speed and ease of travel that the railroad provided;
1871 – The humiliating defeat of Louis Napoleon’s Second Empire of France is made complete on May 10, 1871, when the Treaty of Frankfurt am Main is signed, ending the Franco-Prussian War and marking the decisive entry of a newly unified German state on the stage of European power politics, so long dominated by the great empires of England and France;
1877 – President Rutherford B. Hayes has the White House’s first telephone installed in the mansion s telegraph room. President Hayes embraced the new technology, though he rarely received phone calls. In fact, the Treasury Department possessed the only other direct phone line to the White House at that time. The White House phone number was “1.” Phone service throughout the country was in its infancy in 1877. It was not until a year later that the first telephone exchange was set up in Connecticut and it would be 50 more years until President Herbert Hoover had the first telephone line installed at the president’s desk in the Oval Office;
1924 – J. Edgar Hoover is named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI) on this day in 1924. By the end of the year he was officially promoted to director. This began his 48-year tenure in power, during which time he personally shaped American criminal justice in the 20th century. After taking over the FBI in 1924, Hoover began secretly monitoring any activities that did not conform to his American ideal. Hoover approved of illegally infiltrating and spying on the American Civil Liberties Union. His spies could be found throughout the government, even in the Supreme Court. He also collected damaging information on the personal lives of civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr. While Hoover’s success at legitimate crime fighting was modest, his hold over many powerful people and organizations earned him respect and kept him in power. He was extremely successful at attracting attention and favorable press to the FBI. It wasn’t until after his death in 1972, right before the beginning of the Watergate scandal that much of Hoover’s corruption became known;
1933 – The Nazi Germans staged massive public book burnings in Germany in its early stages of censorship;
1939 – The Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South and the Methodist Protestant Church merged into one organization to form the Methodist Church;
1940 – During World War II, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, is called to replace Neville Chamberlain as British prime minister following the latter’s resignation after losing a confidence vote in the House of Commons. In 1938, Prime Minister Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, giving Czechoslovakia over to German conquest but bringing, as Chamberlain promised, “peace in our time.” In September 1939, that peace was shattered by Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Chamberlain declared war against Germany but during the next eight months showed himself to be ill-equipped for the daunting task of saving Europe from Nazi conquest. Churchill, who was known for his military leadership ability, was appointed British prime minister in his place. He formed an all-party coalition and quickly won the popular support of Britons. On May 13, in his first speech before the House of Commons, Prime Minister Churchill declared that “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat” and offered an outline of his bold plans for British resistance. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany but Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would “never surrender” and they never did;
1941 – During World War II, Deputy Fuhrer, Rudolf Hess, considered to be the #3 man behind Nazi Germany’s Goring, parachutes into Scotland in an attempt to negotiate a truce between Britain and Germany on the day Hitler planned to invade Russia, and German bombs dropped on London in a spring “blitz,” Hess parachuted into Scotland, hoping to negotiate peace with Britain, in the person of the Duke of Hamilton, whom Hess claimed to have met at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Such a peace would have prevented Germany from fighting on two fronts and greatly increased Hess’s own prestige within the Nazi regime. He did, in fact, find peace—in the Tower of London, where the British imprisoned him, the last man ever to be held there under lock and key;
1960 – The nuclear-powered submarine USS Triton (SSN-586) completed the first submerged navigation of the globe;
1969 – In the Vietnam War, the U.S. 9th Marine Regiment and the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, along with South Vietnamese forces, commence Operation Apache Snow in the A Shau Valley in western Thua Thien Province. The purpose of the operation was to cut off the North Vietnamese and prevent them from mounting an attack on the coastal provinces. The operation began with a heliborne assault along the Laotian border and then a sweep back to the east. First contact with the enemy was made by a rifle company from the 101st Airborne on the slopes of Hill 937, known to the Vietnamese as Ap Bia Mountain. The communist stronghold was finally captured in the 11th attack, when the American and South Vietnamese soldiers fought their way up to the summit of the mountain. In the face of the four-battalion attack, the North Vietnamese retreated to sanctuary areas in Laos. During the intense fighting, 597 North Vietnamese were reported killed and U.S. casualties were 56 killed and 420 wounded. Due to the bitter fighting and the high loss of life, the battle for Ap Bia Mountain received widespread unfavorable publicity in the United States and American media dubbed it “Hamburger Hill,” a name evidently derived from the fact that the battle turned into a “meat grinder.” Because of Hamburger Hill, and other battles like it, the U.S. started to shift its policy towards Vietnamization, wherein primary responsibility for the fighting would be handed over to the South Vietnamese;
1972 – During the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon’s decision to mine North Vietnamese harbors is condemned by the Soviet Union, China, and their Eastern European allies, and receives only lukewarm support from Western Europe. The mining was meant to halt the massive North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam that had begun on March 30. In the continuing air war over North Vietnam, the United States lost at least three planes and the North Vietnamese 10, as 150 to 175 American planes struck targets over Hanoi, Haiphong, and along rail lines leading from China. Lt. Randy Cunningham and Lt. Willie Driscoll, flying a Navy F-4J Phantom from the USS Constellation knocked down three MiGs in one combat mission. Added to two previous victories, this made Cunningham and Driscoll the first American aces of the Vietnam War and were the only U.S. Navy aces of the war;
1980 – United States Secretary of the Treasury G. William Miller announces the approval of nearly $1.5 billion dollars in federal loan guarantees for the nearly bankrupt Chrysler Corporation. At the time, it was the largest rescue package ever granted by the U.S. government to an American corporation. Founded as the Maxwell Motor Company Inc. in 1913, Chrysler grew into the Chrysler Corporation after 1925, when Walter P. Chrysler took over control of the company;
1990 – Around the time of the end of the (first) Cold War, the government of the People’s Republic of China announces that it is releasing 211 people arrested during the massive protests held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in June 1989. Most observers viewed the prisoner release as an attempt by the communist government of China to dispel much of the terrible publicity it received for its brutal suppression of the 1989 protests;
1994 – In South Africa, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is sworn in as the first black president of South Africa. In his inaugural address, Mandela, who spent 27 years of his life as a political prisoner of the South African government, declared that “the time for the healing of the wounds has come.” Two weeks earlier, more than 22 million South Africans had turned out to cast ballots in the country’s first-ever multiracial parliamentary elections. An overwhelming majority chose Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC) party to lead the country;
1996 – Eight climbers die on Mount Everest during a storm on this day in 1996. It was the worst loss of life ever on the mountain on a single day. Author Jon Krakauer, who himself attempted to climb the peak that year, wrote a best-selling book about the incident, Into Thin Air, which was published in 1997. A total of 15 people perished during the spring 1996 climbing season. Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, in 1953. Ninety-eight other climbers made it to the peak of Everest in the spring of 1996;
2009 – Pope Benedict XVI urged Middle East Christians to persevere in their faith as 20,000 people filled a Jordanian sports stadium where the pontiff celebrated the first open-air Mass of his Holy Land pilgrimage;
2013 – Savar, Bangladesh celebrates a woman found alive in the rubble 17 days after a garment factory building collapsed and killed over 1,042 people;
2013 – The Internal Revenue Service apologized for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. (Despite this apology, IRS official Lois Learner still claims her innocence in the matter and President Obama claims there is “not a smidgen of corruption” in the scandal));
2013 – It was one year ago TODAY!!!
Number 5 of 50 beautiful pictures from 50 beautiful states
Yosemite National Park, California
As I close today, I
And a thought
The right thing is so hard to do sometimes. It seems so much easier to gossip about someone who has wronged us, or to mention them in a group prayer as needing help, or to pass around an innuendo when talking about struggling Christians. But, only one thing is the right thing when we have been wounded by the action of another brother or sister in Christ! Go to the person who has wronged you, try to keep the damage contained to just the two of you, and work on being reconciled. This is God’s desire, and should be our goal as his children.
Leads to a verse
If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.
– Matthew 18:15
That brings a prayer
Lord God Almighty, forgive my foolish and selfish ways. Give me courage to lovingly confront those who have sinned against me, but if I cannot bring reconciliation, help me through the power of your Holy Spirit to forgive as you have forgiven me. In Jesus’ name, and because of his atoning sacrifice for sin I pray. Amen
Until the next time – America, Bless GOD!!!
