This Week in People’s History, Apr 15–21, 2026
_**Going to War Without Declaring It**_
**APRIL 15 IS THE 165TH ANNIVERSARY** of the U.S. government’s first formal response to the opening shots in the Civil War, which had been fired three days earlier when South Carolina’s militia attacked and captured the U.S. Army’s Fort Sumter in Charleston.
The government’s response was a Presidential Proclamation, calling upon the states to enlist an army of 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion in the Confederate states. The 1861 proclamation also called Congress to convene on July 4, much earlier than had been planned.
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Considering that the northern army grew to more than a million men before the Civil War ended, the call for 75,000 volunteers might seem like a miscalculation, but Lincoln was simply obeying a 1795 law that capped the size of a federal militia at 75,000. To call for a larger military force, Lincoln needed the authorization of Congress. Congress could, and did pass laws increasing the size of the militia, and it also appropriated the funds needed to pay the cost of a larger army, but in the (good old) days before the imperial presidency, Lincoln didn’t take the law into his own hands.
Of course, Lincoln’s proclamation did not include a declaration of war, because the Constitution was clear that only Congress could declare war.
Even after Congress returned to Washington, no war declaration was produced because neither Lincoln nor most members of Congress wanted to declare war on the Confederacy. To do so would be treating the Confederate States of America as if it were a nation; Lincoln and almost all of his supporters insisted the confederate states could not be a nation because they were part of the United States, secession or no secession. The U.S. government never abandoned that position, with the result that the entire Civil War was fought without any declaration of war.
Lincoln’s proclamation was met with nearly universal enthusiastic approval in the North. Within days, huge public meetings took place in cities and towns, where tens of thousands pledged support for the Union. Every state enlisted an excess of volunteers for the militia.
One of the few somewhat critical responses to Lincoln came from leading abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who noted that the proclamation omitted any reference to slavery, leading Douglass to say (correctly) that the only ways the war could end would be with the destruction of slavery or the destruction of the Union. Douglass also called for the immediate inclusion of Blacks in the volunteer army, which did not come to pass until January 1863. _https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11234_
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_**Support Our Troops. Bring Them Home.**_
**APRIL 16 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY** of a demonstration against the Vietnam war by more than 5,000 people in Manhattan’s Times Square.
The 1966 protest was one of many organized on short notice all around the U.S. in support of huge anti-government protests that had shaken the military government of South Vietnam during the previous week.
Leaders of the New York Parade Committee, which organized the Times Square protest, expressed satisfaction at the size of the demonstration, which had been organized very quickly in response to a sudden burst of protest activity in Saigon and other South Vietnamese cities. _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_Uprising_
_**Sore Loser France Bullies Haiti into the Poorhouse for More Than a Century**_
**APRIL 17 IS THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY** of a French financial victory over the successful Haitian revolution. Thanks to France's naval superiority and the vampire squid of imperialism, Haiti received a financial setback from which it has never recovered.
On this day in 1826, France agreed to recognize Haiti in exchange for Haiti’s promise to pay France 150 million francs. France literally had a gun to Haiti’s head when the Black republic agreed to pay that sum, the equivalent of about 1.5 billion of today’s dollars.
If Haiti had refused, the French navy was ready to restore the yoke of French imperialism that Haiti had thrown off in 1801.
Haiti had to borrow huge sums at high interest rates to make its debt payments on time, so in 1922 Haiti had yet to pay France the entire nut. France then sold the debt to National City Bank (now Citibank), putting U.S. banks in charge of continuing to turn the screws. After 25 years of additional payments, the ransom was finally paid off in 1947. _https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/10/05/1042518732/-the-greatest-heist-in-history-how-haiti-was-forced-to-pay-reparations-for-freed_
_**When Socialist Mayors Weren’t So Unusual**_
**APRIL 18 IS THE 110TH ANNIVERSARY** of Socialist Daniel Hoan taking office as Mayor of Milwaukee. He later won nine consecutive elections and remained Mayor for 24 years, making his administration the longest serving U.S. Socialist administration on record.
Even though the U.S. Socialist Party was generally considered a revolutionary party when Hoan became Milwaukee’s Mayor in 1916, Hoan was part of a growing reformist faction in the party.
In 1917, when the Socialist Party was totally against U.S. participation in World War I, Mayor Hoan ignored the party program and supported the war effort. Nevertheless, he remained a Socialist Party member for as long as he was mayor.
Hoan led an administration that strongly defended civil liberties, public health, public housing, and honest government. He was a leading exponent of what was called “sewer socialism,” an advocate of exemplary public schools and municipal ownership of water and power systems. _https://socialistcurrents.org/?p=4032_
_**‘We Have Our Freedom; Give Us the Vote!’**_
**APRIL 19 IS THE 160TH ANNIVERSARY** of a giant celebration of the abolition of slavery by a tremendous throng in Washington, D.C., the vast majority of whom were African-Americans.
The occasion was the fourth anniversary of signing the District of Columbia Emancipation Act, which freed more than 3,000 people who were the property of Washington residents. The former “owners” of the enslaved received $300 (the equivalent of about $10,000 today) for each of them. While the law was being debated in Congress, enslavers in Washington sold approximately two thousand slaves to slave-owners in nearby Maryland and Delaware, where slavery remained legal.
The celebrants of the anniversary in 1866, who made “a dense mass of colored faces, relieved here and there by a few white ones,” according to a report in Harper’s Weekly, first gathered outside the White House to hear brief and patronizing remarks by President Andrew Johnson.
Then “the swarthy column,” including two regiments of Black troops and six brass bands, filled Pennsylvania Avenue as they marched “with flashing bayonets and fluttering flags and waving banners” a mile-and-a-half to the Capitol, where they exchanged salutes with members of Congress who were standing on the Capitol’s steps.
Next the “vast multitude” proceeded another two miles to Franklin Park, where a wooden seating area for dignitaries supported a banner reading, “Lincoln, the Liberator of millions: His great work is done, and he sleeps in peace in the great prairies of the West. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”
Another banner: “We have received our civil rights. Give us the right of suffrage, and the work is done.”
The District of Columbia celebrated Emancipation Day with a parade each year until 1901, when the tradition was abandoned due to the tide of racism that swept over the U.S. during the first part of the 20th century. In 2005 Emancipation Day became an official holiday in the District. _https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/emancipation-in-washington-dc.htm_
_**A Megalomaniac’s Birthday Party**_
**APRIL 20 IS THE 93RD ANNIVERSARY** of the 36-hour-long celebration of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday, which was marked with major events throughout Germany.
In Berlin, the 1939 events included a 4-hour-long military parade of some 50,000 German soldiers, sailors and SS troops goose-stepping down “Via Triumphalis,” a brand-new 100-yard-wide avenue, past 20,000 official guests.
Via Triumphalis, which didn’t live up to its name, is now Ost-West-Achse. _https://immermodern.de/en/strassen-von-heute/westachse_
_**Sipping-In Vindicates LGBTQ+ Rights**_
**APRIL 21 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY** of a successful act of civil disobedience against New York State’s anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. At issue the State Liquor Authority’s rule that a bar could refuse service to gays because they were “disorderly” _**by definition.**_
In 1966, after Julius’s Bar in Greenwich Village refused to serve three members of the Mattachine Society, a leading LGBTQ+ organization, because they were gay, they sued the Liquor Authority.
When the Liquor Authority declined to take action, the New York City Commission on Human Rights announced that refusing service to a gay customer was sex discrimination, which was a violation of city law. In order to avoid violating the city law henceforth, bars were required to stop regarding gay customers as disorderly by definition. _https://www.npr.org/2008/06/28/91993823/remembering-a-1966-sip-in-for-gay-rights_
For more People's History, visit
https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.bennett.7771/
* The Civil War
* Vietnam antiwar movement
* Haitian Revolution
* municipal socialism
* Emancipation
* Adolf Hitler
* LGBT Rights
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