December 19 in History

"These are the times that try men's souls." With those words, Thomas Paine rallied a revolution on the verge of collapse. On December 19, 1776, The Pennsylvania Journal published the first installment of The American Crisis, a pamphlet that reached George Washington's demoralized army days before its most desperate gamble at Trenton. The Continental Army was disintegrating. After defeats in New York that autumn, Washington had retreated across New Jersey with barely 3,000 troops, many barefoot and starving. British forces occupied much of New Jersey, and public support for independence was evaporating. Many Americans assumed the rebellion was finished. Paine, who had helped ignite the revolution with Common Sense in January 1776, composed The American Crisis during the retreat, reportedly writing by firelight on a drumhead. His language was direct and electric. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." The pamphlet attacked loyalists, mocked British overconfidence, and framed the struggle as a moral cause worth any sacrifice. Washington ordered it read aloud to his troops on December 23, two days before the crossing of the Delaware and the surprise attack on the Hessian garrison at Trenton. Whether Paine's words directly inspired the soldiers who climbed into boats on that freezing Christmas night is impossible to prove, but the timing was precise. The victory at Trenton, followed by Princeton, saved the revolution from extinction. Paine wrote fifteen more Crisis pamphlets over the next seven years, sustaining morale through the war's darkest stretches. The series ended in April 1783: "the times that tried men's souls are over." No other writer did more to keep the American cause alive through rhetoric alone.

Eugene Cernan climbed the ladder of the lunar module for the last time, and no human has returned to the Moon since. On December 19, 1972, the Apollo 17 command module Amercia splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the final crewed mission to the lunar surface and closing a chapter of exploration that had consumed a decade, $25 billion, and the efforts of 400,000 workers. Apollo 17 had launched on December 7 as the only nighttime launch of the Apollo program, its Saturn V rocket turning the Florida night into artificial daylight visible for hundreds of miles. Commander Cernan, lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt, and command module pilot Ron Evans carried the heaviest scientific payload of any Apollo mission. Schmitt, a geologist, was the first and only trained scientist to walk on the Moon. Cernan and Schmitt spent over seventy-five hours on the lunar surface at the Taurus-Littrow valley, a site chosen for its geological diversity. They drove the Lunar Roving Vehicle for over twenty-two miles, collected 243 pounds of rock and soil samples, and deployed a suite of scientific instruments. Among their discoveries was orange soil near Shorty Crater, volcanic glass beads that provided evidence of ancient lunar volcanic activity billions of years old. Before climbing back into the lunar module Challenger for the last time, Cernan spoke into his radio: "As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come, I'd like to just say what I believe history will record, that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow." The splashdown on December 19 was the final act of an era. Budget cuts had already canceled Apollos 18, 19, and 20. NASA pivoted to the Space Shuttle program and the Skylab space station. More than fifty years later, Cernan's footprints in the lunar dust remain undisturbed, the last human traces on another world.

Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping signed away 150 years of colonial rule with a handshake and a promise. On December 19, 1984, the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in Beijing, stipulating that the United Kingdom would transfer sovereignty over Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997. The agreement guaranteed that Hong Kong's capitalist system would remain unchanged for fifty years under "one country, two systems." Britain had controlled Hong Kong since the First Opium War. Hong Kong Island was ceded in 1842, Kowloon in 1860, and the New Territories leased for ninety-nine years in 1898. By the 1980s, the approaching expiration of the New Territories lease forced negotiations, since the leased land comprised over ninety percent of the territory. Thatcher initially hoped to negotiate continued British administration, but Deng made sovereignty non-negotiable. China would take Hong Kong back; the only question was whether the transition would be orderly or chaotic. Two years of negotiations produced the Joint Declaration, which promised a high degree of autonomy, an independent judiciary, freedom of speech, and continuation of common-law governance. The agreement was registered as a UN treaty. Hong Kong's business community, initially fearful, was reassured by the detailed protections. Emigration spiked nonetheless, with hundreds of thousands obtaining foreign passports as insurance. The handover proceeded on July 1, 1997, in a ceremony attended by Prince Charles and Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Whether Beijing has honored the declaration's spirit has been fiercely contested, particularly after the 2020 National Security Law curtailed many of the freedoms the agreement was designed to protect.

The House of Representatives voted to impeach a president for only the second time in American history, and the country barely flinched. On December 19, 1998, the House approved two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, charging him with perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with his efforts to conceal a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The Senate acquitted him on both charges two months later. The scandal had roots in a civil lawsuit filed by Paula Jones, who accused Clinton of sexual harassment. During a deposition in January 1998, Clinton denied under oath having "sexual relations" with Lewinsky. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, originally investigating the Whitewater real estate dealings, expanded his probe after receiving taped phone conversations between Lewinsky and colleague Linda Tripp. Starr's 445-page report, delivered to Congress in September, detailed the relationship in explicit terms. Clinton initially denied the affair publicly, declaring "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." He later admitted to an "inappropriate relationship" in a televised address. The House Judiciary Committee approved four articles along party lines. The full House passed two on December 19: perjury (228-206) and obstruction of justice (221-212). Two other articles failed. The Senate trial began in January 1999. Conviction required sixty-seven votes. On perjury, forty-five senators voted guilty. On obstruction, fifty voted guilty. No Democrat voted to convict on either count. Clinton served out his remaining two years with approval ratings above sixty percent, a paradox reflecting public fatigue with the investigation more than endorsement of his conduct.

Charles Dickens wrote a ghost story to pay his debts and accidentally reinvented Christmas. On December 19, 1843, A Christmas Carol was published in London, selling out its first edition of 6,000 copies within a week. The slim novella about a miser's supernatural redemption transformed the holiday from a fading religious observance into the season of generosity, family, and goodwill that the English-speaking world celebrates today. Dickens was in financial trouble when he began writing in October 1843. Sales of his serialized novel Martin Chuzzlewit were disappointing, and he had a growing family to support. A visit to a Manchester ragged school, where he saw impoverished children receiving their only education, sharpened his desire to write something that would move the public conscience. He chose the Christmas season as his vehicle and wrote the entire book in six weeks. The story of Ebenezer Scrooge, visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his dead partner Jacob Marley and three spirits representing Christmases past, present, and future, drew on Dickens's lifelong preoccupation with poverty, childhood suffering, and social responsibility. The character of Tiny Tim embodied the vulnerability of the poor in industrial England. Scrooge's transformation from heartless skinflint to generous benefactor offered a moral template that resonated with Victorian readers. The book's commercial success was complicated by Dickens's insistence on expensive production values, including hand-colored illustrations and gilt edges. The high costs left him with a profit of only 230 pounds, far less than the thousand he expected. Pirated editions appeared almost immediately. A Christmas Carol's cultural impact far exceeded its financial returns. The book popularized traditions now associated with the holiday, from the Christmas turkey to the greeting "Merry Christmas." "Bah! Humbug!" entered the language permanently, and Scrooge became a universal symbol of miserliness redeemed.