Unit 2: Vocabulary from Readings 3

In this Bicentennial Year, we are commemorating the anniversary dates of many of the great events in American history.

Learning from our mistakes is not pleasant, but as a great philosopher once admonished, we must do so if we want to avoid repeating them.

February 19th is the anniversary of a sad day in American history. It was on that date in 1942, in the midst of the response to the hostilities that began on December 7, 1941, that Executive Order No. 9066 was issued, subsequently enforced by the criminal penalties of a statute enacted March 21, 1942, resulting in the uprooting of loyal Americans.

Fortunately, the Japanese-American community in Hawaii was spared the indignities suffered by those on our mainland.

The Executive Order that was issued on February 19, 1942, was for the sole purpose of prosecuting the war with the Axis Powers, and ceased to be effective with the end of those hostilities.

Because there was no formal statement of its termination, however, there is concern among many Japanese Americans that there may yet be some life in that obsolete document.

Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim that all the authority conferred by Executive Order No. 9066 terminated upon the issuance of Proclamation No. 2714, which formally proclaimed cessation of the hostilities of World War II on December 31, 1946.

Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim that all the authority conferred by Executive Order No. 9066 terminated upon the issuance of Proclamation No. 2714, which formally proclaimed cessation of the hostilities of World War II on December 31, 1946.

Harriet continued to let him believe this. Meanwhile, she prayed God to deliver her from bondage.

The strength or the courage to continue was always forthcoming when her faltering companions looked into the muzzle of Harriet’s gun.

In appearance “a more ordinary specimen of humanity could hardly be found,” but there was no one with a greater capacity for leadership than she had.

And at the great public meetings of the North, as the Negro historian William Wells Brown wrote in 1854, “all who frequented antislavery conventions, lectures, picnics, and fairs, could not fail to have seen a black woman of medium size, upper front teeth gone, smiling countenance, attired in coarse but neat apparel, with an old-fashioned reticule or bag suspended by her side..."

But when the War between the States began and she became a nurse for the Union Armies, and then a military scout and an invaluable intelligence agent behind the Rebel lines, she was promised some compensation.

Petitions were sent to the War Department and to Congress to try to get the $1800 due her. But it was never granted.

She organized a group of nine Negro scouts and river pilots and, with Colonel Montgomery, led a Union raiding contingent of three gunboats and about 150 Negro troops up the Combahee River.

I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scared and footsore bondsmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt, God bless you, has been your only reward.