On July 2

On this day in ...
... 1839 (170 years ago today), more than 4 dozen persons held in slavery revolted 4 days after the ship transporting them, La Amistad, had set sail from Havana, Cuba. Leading the revolt was Sengbe Pieh, or Cinque, as he was called in the United States. A member of Africa's Mende people, he'd been seized and sold into slavery in West Africa in January of the same year. The ship would drift about the Atlantic until August, when, on arrival in New London, Connecticut, the ship, its remaining crew, and the rebellious slaves became the source of an epic legal dispute. As depicted in the film Amistad (1997), former U.S. President John Quincy Adams would argue on behalf of Cinque and comrades (above right) (image credit), resulting in the Supreme Court's favorable 1841 decision.
... 1976, 3 years after the departure of U.S. troops and 1 year after the fall of Saigon, the National Assembly of Vietnam met for the 1st time and officially reunified the country, naming it the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, establishing the capital at Hanoi, and adopting the flag at left. The aftermath, as described at this Belgian website:

Many people who supported the Saigon regime are sent to 're-education camps'. Over the next years more than one million of Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese ('boat people') flee the country.

(Prior July 2 posts are here and here.)

On this day

On February 22, ...

... 1819, in Washington, D.C, U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and his Spanish counterpart, Luis de Onís, signed the "Treaty of Amity, Settlement and Limits Between the United States of America, and His Catholic Majesty," a pact better known by its signers' names. In the Adams-Onís Treaty (right), which helped to define what is now the U.S.-Mexico border, the United States purchased Florida, renounced any claim to Texas, and agreed to a fixed western boundary for lands it had obtained from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Spain kept not only Texas, but western territories that today comprise much of the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

... 1774, in London, England, at the conclusion of 2-1/2 weeks of proceedings in the case captioned Donaldson v. Beckett but frequently known as The Question of Literary Property Case, the House of Lords "ended perpetual copyright, and established a limited copyright of fourteen years."

'Remember the Ladies'

As the United States celebrates the Declaration of Independence proclaimed 231 years ago, we pay homage to a Revolutionary woman, Abigail Adams (left). She managed the household in Braintree, Massachusetts, while her husband John, who would become the United States' 2d President, worked at politics and diplomacy; indeed, she accompanied him abroad to diplomatic posts in Paris and London. In 1825 she gave birth to their son, John Quincy, who would be the United States' 8th Secretary of State and 6th President.

Abigail is renowned for urging her husband, in a letter written March 31, 1776, just months before the Declaration, "Remember the Ladies":

...-I long to hear that you have declared an independancy-and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex.
Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in immitation of the Supreem Being make use of that power only for our happiness.
....
Adieu. I need not say how much I am Your ever faithfull Friend.

Alas, John replied as if she'd written in jest. It would require the work of generations before the equality Abigail Adams sought could be realized.