Reading 3 of 7 free1776 Club · all 7 storiesWednesday, July 15
From the desk
Start with 1870: Georgia's readmission closed the books on Reconstruction's legal side, five years after Appomattox, and its congressmen still had to wait until February 1871 to take their seats in Washington. Worth a longer look: the CSS Arkansas in 1862, a single ironclad running straight through two combined Union fleets on the Mississippi, trading broadsides with the Carondelet and the Lancaster before limping under Vicksburg's guns with 30 casualties. Carter's 1979 speech rounds out the day, a president diagnosing a national mood rather than announcing a policy.
— The Patriot Compass desk
1870Featured · This day in history
Georgia Becomes the Last Confederate State Readmitted to the Union
Five years after Appomattox, one Confederate state still stood outside the Union in every legal sense. On July 15, 1870, Georgia was formally readmitted to the Union as the last former Confederate state to complete the process, though its congressional delegation was not actually seated in Washington until February 24, 1871. The requirement was steep: ratify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, rewrite state constitutions, and seat Black legislators elected under the new rules. Georgia met the terms and became the last former Confederate state formally restored to the Union.
Georgia's readmission finished a constitutional experiment no nation had attempted before: rebuilding full citizenship for millions of formerly enslaved people through federal law rather than battlefield victory alone. The same year, Hiram Rhodes Revels took a Senate seat from Mississippi, and Congress passed the Enforcement Act to guard the ballot box. That machinery would collapse within a decade, as Reconstruction is generally considered to have ended in 1877 with the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.
Did you know
QWhat technicality did Georgia legislators use to justify expelling black members in 1868?
They argued the state's 1868 constitution guaranteed black men the right to vote but never explicitly stated they could hold elected office. On that thin reading, the white majority voted out 25 representatives and three senators who had won their seats fair and square just months earlier. Congress and the War Department rejected the reasoning outright, which is precisely why Georgia found itself back under military rule within a year of its first readmission.
QHow many times was Georgia formally readmitted to the Union?
Georgia went through the readmission process twice. It was first readmitted in 1868 after ratifying its Reconstruction-era constitution, only to be placed back under federal military district status in 1869 once it expelled its black legislators. The second, final readmission came on July 15, 1870, after Grant's formal acceptance of the state on July 9. That double readmission made Georgia unique among the former Confederate states, none of which had to repeat the entire process.
QWhy did Grant personally sign off on Georgia's readmission days before Congress finalized it?
President Grant's formal acceptance on July 9, 1870, functioned as executive certification that Georgia had met the conditions set after its return to military rule, chiefly ratifying the Fifteenth Amendment and reseating its black legislators. Congress then took the additional six days to finalize the paperwork on July 15. The short gap between presidential acceptance and congressional closure reflects how tightly the executive and legislative branches were coordinating the last steps of Reconstruction enforcement by 1870.
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1979government
Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" Speech
By the summer of 1979, Americans were waiting in gas lines for hours, inflation was eating paychecks, and a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island had shaken faith in the nation's energy future. On July 15, President Jimmy Carter went on live television, not to announce a policy but to diagnose a mood: a national crisis of confidence. He never said the word "malaise" in the speech, though it came to be known by that name.
The speech marked the moment a sitting president told the country its problem wasn't policy but spirit, a gamble that backfired when Carter fired half his cabinet days later and looked less like a healer than a man in crisis himself. It reshaped how Americans judge presidential leadership during hard times, and Reagan's 1980 campaign capitalized on economic troubles and the Iran hostage crisis to portray Carter as a weak and ineffectual leader.
Did you know
QWhy did Carter cancel his original energy speech to write this one instead?
Carter had been expected to deliver a conventional energy address, but he was persuaded by pollster Pat Caddell that the country's problem ran deeper than oil imports. Instead of delivering the planned remarks, Carter met over several days with a series of business, government, labor, academic, and religious leaders to diagnose what was actually wrong with the country. The speech that resulted was less a policy address than a group therapy session distilled into 33 minutes of prime time.
QWhat happened just two days after the speech that undid its positive reception?
The overnight reaction to the speech was genuinely good, but Carter followed it by demanding resignations from his entire cabinet. He accepted several, including Energy Secretary James Schlesinger's, in a purge that made a president who had just called for unity look instead like one presiding over collapse. The contrast between the speech's message of shared confidence and the sight of a gutted cabinet did more damage than the speech itself ever could have undone on its own.
QHow long did it take before Carter's presidency pivoted almost entirely to foreign affairs?
Less than four months. The speech aired July 15, and by November 4 the Iran hostage crisis had begun, pulling Carter's attention and his public image away from the domestic confidence campaign entirely. The synthetic fuels and import-limit proposals from the speech got overshadowed almost immediately, and the presidency that had just tried to talk about national spirit spent its final year consumed by hostages in Tehran instead.
1862military
CSS Arkansas Runs the Union Gauntlet from the Yazoo River to Vicksburg
By July 1862, Union naval forces under Flag Officer Charles H. Davis controlled the Mississippi River north of Vicksburg, and after Farragut's fleet united with Davis' ships there, the Confederacy had almost no navy left to stop them. On July 15, the ironclad CSS Arkansas, under Lieutenant Isaac N. Brown, fought her way down the Yazoo River past Union gunboats and then steamed through Farragut's and Davis' combined fleet on the Mississippi toward Vicksburg, trading fire at close range. She battered the ironclad Carondelet, the ram Lancaster, and the gunboat Pinola before reaching safety under Vicksburg's guns, but took 30 casualties of her own.
The Arkansas bought Vicksburg time in a river campaign that would decide whether the Confederacy stayed connected to Texas and the western theater. Her destruction three weeks later at Baton Rouge removed the South's best answer to Union naval power, pushing Farragut and the Union closer to splitting the Confederacy along the Mississippi.
Did you know
QWhy couldn't the Arkansas simply ram the Carondelet when she had the chance?
Arkansas closed to within 50 yards of the Union ironclad Carondelet during the fight, close enough that a ramming strike seemed certain. But Commander Henry Walke read the approach in time and worked the Carondelet's helm and engines to slide clear, turning what could have been a fatal collision into another exchange of gunfire at close range. The near-miss became one of the tensest moments of the whole running battle, decided by seconds of maneuvering rather than firepower.
QHow hot did it get inside the Arkansas during the battle?
Conditions in the fire room reached roughly 130 degrees Fahrenheit as the ship's boilers were pushed to their limit under fire. Brown's engineers rotated crews every fifteen minutes just to keep men functioning at their stations, since sustained exposure at that temperature risked collapse. It was a battle fought as much against heat exhaustion below deck as against Union shells above it.
QWhat finally ended the Arkansas's career after she survived the Vicksburg fight?
Arkansas escaped Farragut's fleet in July only to lose a mechanical fight three weeks later. On August 6, during a second sortie meant to support the Confederate attack on Baton Rouge, her damaged engines failed completely, leaving her dead in the water as the Union ironclad Essex approached. Rather than let the Union capture the ship intact, her own crew set her on fire and abandoned her, ending the career of the vessel that had briefly outfought an entire Union squadron.
