It was a day like today.
On November 20, 1925 was born Robert Francis Kennedy, famed Attorney General, Senator, and assassinated presidential candidate. On this date in 1917 was born West Virginia Senator, and former Ku Klux Klan member, Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia. As of 2009, he was still serving in the U.S. Senate and is the longest serving member in Congressional history. At the age of 24 in 1942, young Byrd joined the Klan and was immediately named Exalted Cyclops in recognition of his admirable leadership abilities.
The Chicago Times ran an editorial on this date in 1863 that commented on President Abraham Lincoln’s address at a battlefield cemetery in Pennsylvania. Said the Republican-owned newspaper “The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwashery utterances of the man who had to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.” It was at Gettyburg where Lincoln spoke, the scene of a terrific battle in July 1863 that broke the back of the Army of Virginia and turned the tide of the butchery that was the Civil War. It was in commemorating the fallen at that battleground that Lincoln uttered what has become known as the Gettysburg Address: “…we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in van; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Lincoln’s two-minute utterance still resounds today.
The Christian church today remembers Saint Edmund the Martyr, King of the East Angles. Born in 841 AD, Edmund was elected king of his people at the tender age of 14 and became king of Suffolk the following year. He was to rule wisely and did not pale when foreign invaders came to his land. In 867, ravaging Danes arrived who pillaged, burned, and raped as they sought to capture the king. Finally, in 870 he was captured by the marauders under the command of Ingvar at Hoxne, Suffolk. Some accounts of his martyrdom say that he was tied to a tree by the Danes who then used him for target practice with their bows. Elsewhere, it is said that he was beheaded after torture. The place where he fell, and where he was later buried, is now called Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk.
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