John W. Johnston (1818–89) was an American lawyer and Democratic politician from Abingdon, Virginia. He served in the Virginia State Senate, and represented Virginia for 13 years in the U.S. Senate after the American Civil War. He had been ineligible to serve in Congress because of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbade anyone from holding public office who had sworn allegiance to the United States and then sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. However, his restrictions were removed at the suggestion of the Freedmen's Bureau when he aided a dying former slave after the War. He was the first person who had sided with the Confederacy to serve in the U.S. Senate. Issues in his senatorial career included the Arlington Memorial debate, as he found the initial proposal to relocate the dead distasteful, yet wanted to defend the memory of Robert E. Lee. He was also an outspoken Funder during Virginia's heated debate as to how much of its pre-War debt the state ought to have been obliged to pay back. The controversy culminated in the formation of the Readjuster Party and the appointment of William Mahone as its leader, ending Johnston's Senate career.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Johnston
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1398:
The Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights Konrad von Jungingen signed the Treaty of Salynas, the third attempt after the 1384 Treaty of Königsberg and the 1390 Treaty of Lyck to cede Samogitia to the Knights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Salynas
1492:
Believing he had reached the East Indies, Christopher Columbus made landfall on an island in the Caribbean, sparking a series of events that led to the European colonization of the Americas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus
1871:
The Criminal Tribes Act entered into force in British India, giving law enforcement sweeping powers to arrest, control, and monitor the movements of the members of 160 specific ethnic or social communities that were defined as "habitually criminal". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Tribes_Act
1928:
An "iron lung" medical ventilator (example from the 1950s pictured), designed by Philip Drinker and colleagues at Children's Hospital, Boston, was used for the first time to treat poliomyelitis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_pressure_ventilator
1988:
Sri Lankan Civil War: Indian troops mounted a failed assault on Jaffna University, which served as the Tamil Tigers' military headquarters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffna_University_Helidrop
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
jawan: (India) An (Indian) infantryman; a soldier. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jawan
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
The motive, principle, and end of the religious life is to make an absolute gift of self to God in a self-forgetting love, to end one's own life in order to make room for God's life. --Edith Stein https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edith_Stein