William Wilberforce
Toussant L’Ouvreture
August 21, 1680, The Pueblo Indians recaptured Santa Fe, N.M., after driving out the Spanish.
August 22, Two Historic Slavery Revolts began on this date.
1791 On August 22, 1791, slaves in the northern region of the French colony of Saint Dominique staged a revolt that began the Haitian Revolution. In 1789 the revolutionary government of France voted to apply the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" to all Frenchmen, including free blacks and persons of mixed race. Plantation owners in the colonies were furious and fought the measure. The revolutionaries gave in and retracted the measure in 1791. The news of this betrayal triggered mass slave revolts in Saint Dominique, and François-Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture a literate, propertied freed slave became the leader of the slave rebellion. Slaves worked in collusion with fugitive maroons to coordinate a mass uprising that within ten days had succeeded in capturing an entire province of the colony. In February 1794, the French revolutionary government proclaimed the abolition of slavery, but after Napoleon took power in France he reinstated slavery in Haiti. L’Ouvreture was betrayed and captured by Napolean’s emissaries in 1802. The Haitian Revolution continued under his lieutenant, Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Haiti gained independence in 1804 and is the oldest Black republic in the world. http://people.hofstra.edu/alan_j_singer/CoursePacks/ToussaintLOuvertureandtheHaitianRevolution.pdf, http://www.historywiz.com/toussaint.htm, C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 1938.
1831. At midnight the Nat Turner-led slave rebellion began in Virginia. Turner is widely regarded as one of the most complex figures in American history and American literature. The rebellion involved only 70 slaves from plantations in Virginia, but as many as 65 white civilians were killed by the insurgency, making it the bloodiest slave revolt in U.S. history. Over the course of two days, dozens of whites were killed as Turner’s band of insurrectionists, which eventually numbered over fifty, moved systematically from plantation to plantation in Southampton County. Although the rebellion was put down in a matter of days, most of the rebels were executed along with countless other African Americans who were suspected, often without cause, of participating in the conspiracy. Nat Turner, though, eluded capture for over two months. The revolt caused widespread panic among slave holders throughout the south and prompted state governments to prohibit slaves from education and restrict their movements. Sources: http://docsouth.unc.edu/highlights/turner.html, http://thisiswarblog.wordpress.com/tag/nat-turner-rebellion/, http://suite101.com/article/nat-turners-slave-rebellion-a143678
August 24, 1759. William Wilberforce, British Abolitionist born.
Wilberforce was elected Member of Parliament at the age of twenty-one and while still a student at Cambridge for Kingston upon Hull, At the age of 24 he became MP for Yorkshire. After undergoing a religious conversion while traveling through Europe, Wilberforce became commited to the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. He introduced his first anti-slavery motion in the House of Commons in 1788, in a three-and-a-half hour oration. The motion was defeated. Wilberforce brought it up again every year for 18 years In 1806, Wilberforce published A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, an influential 400 page tract advocating abolition. On February 1807, Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of abolition of the slave trade. He continued the campaign against slavery itself, and the bill for the abolition of all slavery in British territories passed its crucial vote just four days before his death on July 29, 1833. A year later, on July 31, 1834, 800,000 slaves, chiefly in the British West Indies, were set free. Wilberforce University in Ohio is named to honor this British Abolitionist. More information is available at http://www.brycchancarey.com/abolition/wilberforce.htm
August 25, 1916, National Park Service Organic Act, creating the National Park Service signed into law, by President Wilson. “The service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations hereinafter specified by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” 16 U.S.C. 1,3,9a,460 1-6a(e), 462(k)
The National Park Service currently administers 58 national parks and 78 national monuments covering 84,000,000 acres of land and 4,500,000 acres of oceans, lakes and reservoirs.To learn more visit, http://www.nps.gov/index.htm.
