John Smith @Angl0Sphere

This is Conrad Heyer, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, and centenarian who is notable for possibly being the earliest-born American to have been photographed. Taken in 1852 at age 103, Heyer was born in 1749.

One of the richest men in all of America signed the Declaration of Independence knowing it could cost him everything. Then he left home to serve, died far away in a borrowed town, and never came back. Meet Philip Livingston. This guy was not a scrappy underdog. Just the opposite. He was born in 1716 into the Livingston family, one of the wealthiest, most powerful dynasties in colonial New York. Manor lands, a Yale education, and a shipping empire he built into one of the biggest merchant fortunes in New York City. He had everything the British system was designed to reward. And he spent that fortune building things that still exist. He helped found King's College, which you know today as Columbia University. He helped start the New York Society Library. He helped create the New York Chamber of Commerce. The man was basically constructing the civic backbone of New York with his own money and time. Here's the thing though. He was not some hothead revolutionary. He actually feared independence. He worried it would bring chaos and disorder, and he was cautious about the whole idea for a long time. This wasn't a man itching to burn it all down. But when New York finally gave its delegates the go-ahead, Livingston signed. He put the name of one of the great fortunes in America onto a document the crown treated as treason. A rich man betting his wealth against the empire that made him rich. And the war came straight for him. When the British took New York, they seized and used his properties. He started selling off his holdings to help fund the fight, watching the empire he'd defied pick apart the life he'd built. Then comes the ending that gets me. His health was failing, and he knew it. Congress had been driven out of Philadelphia and was meeting in the small town of York, Pennsylvania. Livingston could have gone home to rest. Instead he told his family he probably wouldn't see them again, and he went to York to keep serving anyway. He died there in June 1778, in the middle of a session of Congress, far from home. He's buried in York, Pennsylvania to this day. He never made it back to the New York he spent his whole life building. A man who had every reason to stay comfortable and loyal, who gave his fortune and his final months to a country he wasn't even sure would work. Philip Livingston. He died at his post, a long way from home.

This man was born into one of the largest fortunes in all of colonial America. He could have sat the whole revolution out in luxury. Instead he ended up a prisoner of war in a British cell. Meet Arthur Middleton. Picture the life he was handed. Born in 1742 at Middleton Place, a stunning estate on the Ashley River in South Carolina. His family was staggeringly wealthy, sprawling plantations and one of the great fortunes of the colonies. He was shipped off to England for the finest education money could buy, Harrow, Westminster, Cambridge, and then studied law at the Middle Temple in London. He toured Europe soaking up art, music, and literature. He came home a cultured aristocrat with the world at his feet. Everything about his position told him to stay loyal. The British system had made his family one of the richest in America. Rocking the boat could only cost him. He rocked it anyway. And here's the twist, he was actually more radical than his own cautious father. Arthur threw himself into the independence movement, joined South Carolina's boldest revolutionary circles, and helped push the colony toward the break. He helped draft South Carolina's first constitution and even designed the state's official seal, a design tied to the state to this day. Then he signed the Declaration of Independence, putting one of the great names of the South on a treason document. The bill came due in 1780. When the British captured Charleston, they rounded up the signers they could find. Arthur Middleton, along with fellow signers Edward Rutledge and Thomas Heyward, was seized and shipped off to a prison in St. Augustine, where he was held for nearly a year as a rebel. While he sat in that cell, the British went to work on his beloved Middleton Place. They looted it, stripped it of everything valuable, and wrecked what they couldn't carry off. The aristocrat's paradise was torn apart as punishment. He was eventually freed in a prisoner exchange and went right back to serving the cause. But the war and the imprisonment had taken their toll. Arthur Middleton died young, on New Year's Day 1787, at just 44, and was laid to rest in the family tomb at the same Middleton Place the British had tried to destroy. A man who was born with everything the empire could give, and bet all of it, his home, his freedom, his comfort, on a country that didn't yet exist. Arthur Middleton. He had the most to lose, and risked it anyway.

Oath of amnesty submitted by Robert E. Lee in 1865

Since we gutted USAID, the left hasn’t won a single presidential election in Latin America. Billions in taxpayer cash were funding NGOs, “democracy” programs, and activist networks that conveniently always backed the same side. They called it aid but it was election interference. Thank you @elonmusk for dragging this into the light. The grift is over.

saila @sailaunderscore

a week ago

Since USAID was dismantled, the left has not won a single election in Latin America, by the way.

514 4K 22K 2.8M 3K

“The peace which Grant and Lee made at Appomattox has been kept, not by law or restraint, but by love and fraternal regard; and the Union to-day rests, not in force, which might fail, but in the hearts of the people, which cannot fail— a union that can never be severed. If I have been permitted in the slightest degree to help in the work of reconciliation and unification, I shall hold it the greatest honor of my life." -President McKinley 10/11/1899 #Onthisday

United China Relief propaganda poster, 10 Oct 1942

Built by Mary’s father in 1818, Arlington House was home to Robert and Mary from 1831 to 1864. It was taken over by Union forces in 1861 after a provision was made to seize and confiscate the property of persons engaged in armed rebellion against the United States, and in 1864 the property was officially turned into a national cemetery.

Oct 11, 1781. Yorktown, Virginia. The night the allies dig their way to within a few hundred yards of Cornwallis's lines, and run into the two redoubts that would decide the siege. The first trench, the first parallel, had been dug on the night of Oct 6. Since Oct 9 the guns had been hammering the British. Now it was time to move closer and finish it. On the night of Oct 11, troops under Baron von Steuben, the Prussian drillmaster who had turned the Continental Army into a real army at Valley Forge, began digging a second parallel. Steuben was one of the few officers on the American side who'd actually seen a European siege before, and he made sure everyone knew it. The new trench was roughly 400 yards from the British works. Close enough that the allied guns could now hit almost anything inside Yorktown. Close enough that British gunners could see it being built at dawn and blast away at it. There's a story that during the work, a British shell landed nearby and Steuben dove into the trench. Gen. Anthony Wayne jumped in right after him and landed on top of him. Steuben reportedly looked up and joked that he always knew Wayne was brave, but he didn't know he was so good at covering his general's retreat. Nobody can confirm it, but it gets told a lot. There was one big problem. The second parallel couldn't reach the river. Two British fortifications, Redoubt 9 and Redoubt 10, stood in the way near the York River, about 400 yards in front of the main British lines. As long as the British held them, the trench couldn't be finished, and the British could fire straight down the line. Washington decided they'd have to be taken by assault. At night. With bayonets. The French would take Redoubt 9. The Americans would take Redoubt 10, and the man who talked his way into leading the charge was a 26 year old lieutenant colonel named Alexander Hamilton. That attack came three nights later, on Oct 14. Five days after that, Cornwallis surrendered.

U.S. fighter jet strikes a cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman after its crew ignored repeated warnings and attempts to break America's naval blockade against Iran. U.S. Central Command says the precision strike hits the stern of the Panama-flagged vessel, disabling its propulsion without injuring anyone aboard. The military says enforcement is intensifying, with four commercial vessels disabled, 135 ships turned around and 10 tankers linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard destroyed over the past three months.