Thread by @WestWingReport

13 years after the end of the Revolutionary War, a second war was averted when the Jay Treaty - on this day in 1794 - was signed with Britain. It was named for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, who was sent to London by President Washington to negotiate w/the Britis

Arguably the most important words ever spoken by an American President: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address - on this day in 1863. Here: a rare photo of Mr. Lincoln - who was ill that day - in the crowd
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Lincoln's speech, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg—site of a pivotal Civil War battle four months before—took just over two minutes to deliver but summed up, in Lincoln's characteristic eloquence and brevity, why the war was being waged

Lincoln emphasized the principles of human equality and said the Union would be preserved with "a new birth of freedom." "Four score and seven years ago," he began, referring to the 87 years since the Declaration of Independence was signed during the Revolutionary War.
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A crushing blow to Woodrow Wilson on this day in 1919: the Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty. The key part of the treaty—negotiated in Europe by the president after the end of World War I—was the League of Nations (a precursor to today’s United Nations)

The League of Nations was designed to defuse geopolitical tensions and make the world "safe for democracy.” But Republicans, led by Majority Leader and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Henry Cabot Lodge, voted not to ratify the pact
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President Wilson by this time was gravely ill, having suffered a near fatal - and paralyzing - stroke after making a grueling cross-country trip to sell the Treaty to the American people

A fatal mistake: on this day in 1963, the motorcade route for President Kennedy's trip to Dallas - scheduled for Friday Nov. 22 - was published in that city's newspapers. An employee of the Texas School Book Depository, Lee Harvey Oswald, saw it

A moment of high drama: Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev held their first summit meeting. The Geneva gathering was the first meeting between U.S and Soviet heads of state since 1979