May 26 · This Day in America
Two hours before dawn, English soldiers under Captain John Mason and their Mohegan and Narragansett allies surround a palisaded Pequot village near the Mystic River. The Pequot fighting men are away. Inside are mostly the old, women, and children. Mason orders the village set ablaze and both exits blocked. In less than an hour, hundreds are dead — burned where they slept or shot as they tried to climb the wall. Estimates run from five hundred to seven hundred. It is remembered as the first use of total war against Native people on this continent, a war that made no distinction between a warrior and a child. The Treaty of Hartford the next year would forbid survivors from speaking the name Pequot at all. The name survived anyway. The people are still here, and they tell this story themselves.
Source: www.mptn-nsn.gov
Also on this day · 1868
The first impeachment trial of an American president ends. On the final articles, the Senate votes 35 to 19 to convict Andrew Johnson — one vote short of the two-thirds the Constitution requires. Seven Republicans break with their party, judging the case too weak and the precedent too dangerous. Johnson stays in office, diminished. The lesson holds: removing a president is meant to be hard, and the bar held even when the country wanted otherwise.
Source: www.senate.gov