On This Day. 1802. Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city. The U.S. capital—home to an estimated 14,093 people, including President Thomas Jefferson and the newly relocated federal government—wasn’t much /1
Hogs and cattle ran free in the filthy streets. Historian David McCullough, in his biography of John Adams, noted that in 1800, there was no city as yet-only a rather shabby village and great stretches of tree stumps, stubble and swamp. There were no schools, not a single church"
On This Day. 1861: With the Civil War underway, Abraham Lincoln—president for just two months—issued an urgent call for 42,034 Army volunteers to serve for three years, and another 18,000 seamen to serve for “not less than one or more than three years.” /1
Lincoln said war volunteers were urgently needed because “existing exigencies demand immediate and adequate measures for the protection of the National Constitution and the preservation of the National Union by the suppression of the insurrectionary combinations now existing..."
On This Day. 1982: President and Mrs. Reagan visited a Maryland home owned by a black couple, who had been the victim of a cross-burning on their lawn (Photo: Barry Thumma/AP) /1 
Reagan, who had been criticized for being insensitive to the concerns of blacks, said something as evil as a cross-burning was ''not something that should have ever happened in America;'' he added that racism still existed but did not reflect the nation as a whole
On This Day. 1994: Two Republican Presidents - Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford - joined forces with a Democratic one - Jimmy Carter - to ask Congress to ban assault weapons:
On This Day. 1995. An outraged George H.W. Bush quit the National Rifle Association - telling its leaders he was disgusted with the NRA's attacks on federal officers - who were branded, by the NRA, as "jack-booted thugs" and "Nazi storm troopers." Excerpt: /1
Bush was angry that the NRA's attacks on federal officers came in the aftermath of the 4/19/95 terror attack on the Oklahoma City federal building (the terrorist was a young white man who hated the govt.) that killed 168 people, including one of his best friends - a federal agent
Don’t think that anti-gun control measures are unusually strong today. In the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination - which revealed flaws in the way in which long guns could be purchased - a series of bills were introduced in Congress. None succeeded
One law that did change: Americans were shocked, after President Kennedy’s murder, to learn that killing a president was not a federal crime - no such law was on the books. That changed. Oswald would have been tried by the state of Texas for a state crime
