Date | December 7, 1909 |
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Venue | House Chamber, United States Capitol |
Location | Washington, D.C. [1] |
Coordinates | 38°53′23″N77°00′32″W / 38.88972°N 77.00889°W |
Type | State of the Union Address |
Participants | William Taft |
Previous | 1908 State of the Union Address |
Next | 1910 State of the Union Address |
The 1909 State of the Union Address was written on December 7, 1909, by William Taft, the 27th president of the United States. It was the first address by Taft
In the speech, Taft discussed the success of the recent Hague Conference. It also touched on various foreign policy topics of the time, including the peaceful transfer of power in the Ottoman Empire. The President also noted that the fourth Pan-American Conference would soon be held.
The President also notably mentioned the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation in this address, by saying: [2]
The year 1913 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation granting freedom to the negroes. It seems fitting that this event should be properly celebrated. Already a movement has been started by prominent Negroes, encouraged by prominent white people and the press. The South especially is manifesting its interest in this movement. It is suggested that a proper form of celebration would be an exposition to show the progress the Negroes have made, not only during their period of freedom, but also from the time of their coming to this country. I heartily indorse this proposal, and request that the Executive be authorized to appoint a preliminary commission of not more than seven persons to consider carefully whether or not it is wise to hold such an exposition, and if so, to outline a plan for the enterprise. I further recommend that such preliminary commission serve without salary, except as to their actual expenses, and that an appropriation be made to meet such expenses.
The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War. The Proclamation had the effect of changing the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free. As soon as slaves escaped the control of their enslavers, either by fleeing to Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, they were permanently free. In addition, the Proclamation allowed for former slaves to "be received into the armed service of the United States". The Emancipation Proclamation played a significant part in the end of slavery in the United States.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world.
The Lincoln Memorial is a U.S. national memorial that honors the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. An example of neoclassicism, it is in the form of a classical temple and is located at the western end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Henry Bacon is the memorial's architect and Daniel Chester French designed the large interior statue of a seated Abraham Lincoln (1920), which was carved in marble by the Piccirilli brothers. Jules Guerin painted the interior murals, and the epitaph above the statue was written by Royal Cortissoz. Dedicated on May 30, 1922, it is one of several memorials built to honor an American president. It has been a major tourist attraction since its opening, and over the years, has occasionally been used as a symbolic center focused on race relations and civil rights.
Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. The holiday's name is a portmanteau of the words "June" and "nineteenth", as it was on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War. In the Civil War period, slavery came to an end in various areas of the United States at different times. Many enslaved Southerners escaped, demanded wages, stopped work, or took up arms against the Confederacy of slave states. In January 1865, Congress finally proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for national abolition of slavery. By June 1865, almost all enslaved were freed by the victorious Union Army, or abolition laws in some of the remaining U.S. states. When the national abolition amendment was ratified in December, the remaining enslaved in Delaware and in Kentucky were freed.
The Jamestown Exposition, also known as the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition of 1907, was one of the many world's fairs and expositions that were popular in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Commemorating the 300th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in the Virginia Colony, it was held from April 26 to December 1, 1907, at Sewell's Point on Hampton Roads, in Norfolk, Virginia. It celebrated the first permanent English settlement in the present United States. In 1975, the 20 remaining exposition buildings were included on the National Register of Historic Places as a national historic district.
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, also known as simply the March on Washington or the Great March on Washington, was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. At the march, final speaker Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in which he called for an end to racism and racial segregation.
In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states to be politically imperative that the number of free states not exceed the number of slave states, so new states were admitted in slave–free pairs. There were, nonetheless, some slaves in most free states up to the 1840 census, and the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as implemented by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, provided that a slave did not become free by entering a free state and must be returned to their owner. Enforcement of these laws became one of the controversies which arose between slave and free states.
Emancipation Day is observed in many former European colonies in the Caribbean and areas of the United States on various dates to commemorate the emancipation of slaves of African descent.
Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery in the United States is one of the most discussed aspects of his life. Lincoln frequently expressed his moral opposition to slavery in public and private. "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," he stated. "I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel." However, the question of what to do about it and how to end it, given that it was so firmly embedded in the nation's constitutional framework and in the economy of much of the country, even though concentrated in only the Southern United States, was complex and politically challenging. In addition, there was the unanswered question, which Lincoln had to deal with, of what would become of the four million slaves if liberated: how they would earn a living in a society that had almost always rejected them or looked down on their very presence. And to add Abraham Lincoln wanted the slaves to be send back to Africa but the people who financed him blackmailed him and others threatening to stop financial supporting them if they did not adjust their opinion on the topic, so the Africans could stay in America.
The Hampton Roads Conference was a peace conference held between the United States and representatives of the unrecognized breakaway Confederate States on February 3, 1865, aboard the steamboat River Queen in Hampton Roads, Virginia, to discuss terms to end the American Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward, representing the Union, met with three commissioners from the Confederacy: Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, and Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell.
The Loyal War Governors' Conference was an important political event of the American Civil War. It was held at the Logan House Hotel in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on September 24 and 25, 1862. Thirteen governors of Union states came together to discuss the war effort, state troop quotas, and the ultimate support of President Abraham Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation. The leaders also suggested the removal of General George B. McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac. The meeting was established and hosted by Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin, who was a staunch defender of the war effort and Lincoln Administration policies. Ultimately, the event provided Lincoln much-needed support from the Northern states.
The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial or the Emancipation Group is a monument in Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Memorial" before the more prominent national memorial was dedicated in 1922.
"I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In the speech, King called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was one of the most famous moments of the civil rights movement and among the most iconic speeches in American history.
Clarence Benjamin Jones is an American lawyer and the former personal counsel, advisor, draft speech writer and close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. He is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Jones is a scholar in residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Institute at Stanford University. He is the author of What Would Martin Say? and Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation. His book Last of the Lions was released on August 1, 2023. Jones currently serves as Chairman of the non-profit Spill the Honey Foundation.
The 140th Anniversary Celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation was a national campaign to honor, celebrate, and commemorate January 1, 2003, as the 140th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, by United States President Abraham Lincoln.
First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln is an 1864 oil-on-canvas painting by Francis Bicknell Carpenter. In the painting, Carpenter depicts Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, and his Cabinet members reading over the Emancipation Proclamation, which proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states in rebellion against the Union in the American Civil War on January 1, 1863. Lincoln presented the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet on July 22, 1862 and issued it on September 22, 1862. The final Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863.
The Second Emancipation Proclamation is the term applied to an envisioned executive order that Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement called on President John F. Kennedy to issue. As the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln to free all slaves being held in states at war with the Union, the envisioned "Second Emancipation Proclamation" was to use the powers of the executive office to strike a severe blow to segregation.
Lafayette M. Hershaw was a journalist, lawyer, and a clerk and law examiner for the United States General Land Office of the United States Department of the Interior. He was a key intellectual figure among African Americans in Atlanta in the 1880s and in Washington, D.C., from 1890 until his death. He was a leader of the intellectual social groups in the capital such as Bethel Literary and Historical Society and the Pen and Pencil Club. He was a strong supporter of W. E. B. Du Bois and was one of the thirteen organizers of the Niagara Movement, the forerunner to the NAACP. He was an officer of the D.C. Branch of the NAACP from its inception until 1928. He was also a founder of the Robert H. Terrell Law School and served as the school's president.
The National Half Century Exposition and Lincoln Jubilee, was a festival from August 22 to September 16, 1915 held in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It celebrated the 50th anniversary of the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Held at the Chicago Coliseum near Bronzeville the exhibition was also known as the National Half Century Anniversary Exposition and The Lincoln Jubilee: 50th Anniversary Celebration.
The 1911 State of the Union Address was written on December 7, 1911, by William Taft, the 27th president of the United States. It was the third address by Taft.