February 25 · This Day in America
Five years after Appomattox, a minister from Natchez, Mississippi, walks the marble floor of the United States Senate. Three senators rise to stop him, citing the Dred Scott decision: they say Hiram Rhodes Revels has not been a citizen long enough, because for most of his life the law did not count him as a citizen at all. The Senate hears them out and votes anyway — 48 to 8 — to seat him. Senator Henry Wilson takes Revels by the arm and escorts him to the well to take the oath. The galleries are packed and silent. Charles Sumner has just told the chamber what the moment means: all men are created equal, the great Declaration says, and today a great act attests to that verity. A man the Constitution once erased now helps write its laws. The promise of 1776, ninety-four years late, takes a seat.
Source: www.senate.gov
Also on this day · 1836
A restless 21-year-old from Connecticut wins U.S. Patent No. 138 for a pistol with a revolving cylinder — five or six shots before a reload, in an age when one shot was all a man got. Sales are shaky for years. Then reviews drift back from the Mexican-American War, demand explodes, and Colt builds a vast factory on the Connecticut River. A single idea, turning, remakes American industry and the American century alike.
Source: connecticuthistory.org
“All men are created equal, says the great Declaration, and now a great act attests to this verity. Today we make the Declaration a reality.”Senator Charles Sumner, 1870