February 23 in History

J. S. Bach performed his secular Shepherd Cantata as Tafel-Music to celebrate the birthday of Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, blending pastoral charm with the complex vocal writing that defined his genius. The piece demonstrated Bach's ability to craft music equally at home in court entertainment and sacred worship, showcasing the range that made him the supreme composer of the Baroque era. The Shepherd Cantata, likely "Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd" (BWV 208), was Bach's first surviving secular cantata, composed around 1713 during his time as court organist at Weimar. The work was written for an outdoor celebration and features characters from classical mythology, including Diana the huntress, Endymion, Pan, and Pales, who sing in praise of the Duke's birthday. The aria "Schafe konnen sicher weiden" (Sheep May Safely Graze) became one of Bach's most famous melodies, frequently performed as a standalone piece at weddings and ceremonial occasions. The cantata's Tafel-Music designation meant it was performed during or after a banquet, a setting that required music both sophisticated enough for courtly taste and accessible enough to serve as background entertainment. Bach composed secular cantatas throughout his career as a practical necessity: maintaining relationships with aristocratic patrons who could provide employment, commissions, and political protection was essential for any musician of the era. The Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels was a passionate music lover who maintained his own court orchestra and opera, and his patronage helped secure Bach's subsequent appointment as Kapellmeister at Cothen.

Diocletian's soldiers arrived at the church in Nicomedia on February 23, 303, stripped the building, and burned every manuscript they could find. No bloodshed that day — just erasure. The emperor wanted Christianity gone without making martyrs. It backfired spectacularly. The persecution lasted eight years, killed thousands, and created so many martyrs that Christianity spread faster than before. Within a decade of Diocletian's retirement, Constantine legalized it. Twenty years after that, it was the empire's dominant religion.

Justinian ordered the Hagia Sophia built after rioters burned down the previous church during the Nika riots — the same riots where he nearly fled the city until his wife Theodora, a former actress, convinced him to stay and crush the rebellion. Thirty thousand died. He used the rubble as foundation for the new basilica. It took five years, ten thousand workers, and the empire's entire annual revenue. The dome was so massive engineers didn't think it would stand. It did. For 900 years, it was the largest cathedral in the world.

Lautaro had been a Spanish stable boy. He'd fed their horses, watched their drills, learned how they fought. At Marihueñu, he used that knowledge. He let the Spanish cavalry charge into swampland where their horses couldn't maneuver. Then he attacked from three sides. The Spanish commander died in the mud. Spain lost control of southern Chile for three centuries. The Mapuche remained independent longer than any indigenous group in the Americas.

Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge on February 23, 1778, and found an army that could barely march in a straight line. The Continental Army's soldiers loaded their muskets differently in every regiment. They had no standardized drill, no consistent manual of arms, and no understanding of how to use bayonets in combat, which was a significant tactical liability because British soldiers were highly proficient with bayonets and used them aggressively. Steuben was a Prussian military officer whose credentials had been significantly embellished. He was introduced to Washington as a former lieutenant general on Frederick the Great's staff. He was actually a former captain. Benjamin Franklin, who had facilitated the introduction from Paris, understood that an inflated resume would secure Steuben the authority he needed to be effective. Steuben wrote a drill manual in French because he spoke no English. His aide, Alexander Hamilton, translated it. Steuben trained a model company of soldiers personally, demonstrating each movement himself and swearing in a mixture of French and German when they made mistakes. He was theatrical, profane, and effective. The trained model company then dispersed to train their own regiments. Within two months, the Continental Army had transformed from a collection of armed civilians into a force capable of fighting British regulars in open terrain. At the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778, Washington's troops stood their ground against a British counterattack for the first time in the war. Steuben's drill manual remained the standard for the United States Army until the War of 1812.

Arthur Thistlewood and twenty-two co-conspirators planned to murder the entire British cabinet at a dinner party hosted by Lord Harrowby on Grosvenor Square on the evening of February 23, 1820. They would storm the house, kill every minister present, seize the heads of Lord Castlereagh and Lord Sidmouth as trophies, and then march on the Bank of England, the Tower of London, and army barracks across London to spark a national revolution. Thistlewood had acquired grenades, pistols, swords, and a scaling ladder for the assault. The plan was operationally detailed and might have succeeded except for one problem: one of the twenty-three conspirators, George Edwards, was a government agent provocateur who had been reporting every meeting to the Home Office. The dinner party the conspirators planned to attack was fictitious. The government had planted a notice of the event in a newspaper specifically to create an opportunity for the plotters to incriminate themselves. On the evening of February 23, Bow Street Runners and soldiers raided the conspirators' meeting place at a stable on Cato Street, near the Edgware Road. Thistlewood killed a Runner with a sword thrust before escaping through a window. He was captured the following day. Five conspirators, including Thistlewood, were hanged and then beheaded at Newgate Prison on May 1, 1820. Five others were transported to Australia for life. The Cato Street Conspiracy became a defining moment in the government's campaign to suppress radical political movements in post-Napoleonic Britain.

President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington on February 23, 1861, after detective Allan Pinkerton's agents uncovered an assassination plot in Baltimore. The original travel plan called for Lincoln to pass through Baltimore on a scheduled train, changing stations by open carriage through streets controlled by pro-Confederate sympathizers. Pinkerton's investigation, corroborated by separate intelligence from General Winfield Scott's network, identified a group planning to attack Lincoln during the transfer. The conspirators intended to create a disturbance in the crowd, then use the confusion to shoot or stab the president-elect. Lincoln initially resisted changing his itinerary, viewing any alteration as cowardice. His advisors, including Pinkerton and Ward Hill Lamon, eventually convinced him that the threat was credible. Lincoln left Harrisburg on a special overnight train, wearing a soft felt hat and a long overcoat instead of his signature stovepipe hat. He passed through Baltimore in the early hours of the morning while the city slept and arrived in Washington at dawn. Political opponents mocked the secret arrival mercilessly. Cartoons depicted Lincoln disguised in a Scottish tam and military cloak, though these exaggerations were fabricated. The episode embarrassed Lincoln but the underlying threat was real. Baltimore would become a hotbed of Confederate sympathy throughout the war, and the first blood of the conflict was shed there on April 19, 1861, when a pro-Confederate mob attacked Massachusetts troops marching through the city.

Mississippi rejoined the Union on February 23, 1870, the last former Confederate state to be readmitted after the Civil War. The delay was deliberate on both sides. Mississippi's white political establishment refused to ratify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, which guaranteed citizenship and voting rights to formerly enslaved people. Congress required ratification as a condition of readmission. Mississippi's legislature refused twice. Then they calculated the cost of remaining outside the Union: no representation in Congress, continued military occupation, and no access to federal patronage. They chose to ratify and rejoin. The readmission brought a brief period of biracial democracy. Mississippi elected Hiram Revels to the United States Senate in 1870, the first African American to serve in either chamber of Congress. He took the seat that had been vacated by Jefferson Davis when Mississippi seceded. Black men served in the state legislature, held county offices, and voted in large numbers under the protection of federal troops. The experiment lasted approximately five years. White supremacist paramilitary organizations, including the Red Shirts and the White League, used coordinated violence and intimidation to suppress Black voter turnout. The Mississippi Plan of 1875 systematically drove Republican officeholders from power through fraud, threats, and murder. By 1877, federal troops withdrew. The constitutional amendments Mississippi had been forced to ratify remained law. The state ignored them for the next ninety years.

French forces took Đồng Đăng on February 23, 1885, pushing China out of northern Vietnam for good. The battle lasted three days. Chinese troops abandoned artillery, supply depots, and their main defensive line near the border. France lost 80 men. China lost its claim to Vietnam as a tributary state. The treaty came four months later: China recognized French control of Tonkin, ending centuries of influence over its southern neighbor. Vietnam wouldn't be independent again for seventy years, but it wouldn't be Chinese either. One battle settled what diplomacy couldn't — who controlled Southeast Asia's northern coast.

Charles Martin Hall was 22 when he figured out how to make aluminum cheap. Before 1886, aluminum cost more than gold — $15 per pound. It was so rare Napoleon III served his most important dinner guests with aluminum forks while everyone else got silver. Hall's process used electricity to extract pure aluminum from bauxite ore. Within a decade, the price dropped to 50 cents per pound. His sister Julia ran hundreds of experiments with him in their woodshed laboratory, mixing compounds and testing voltages. She never got credit in the patent. Today we wrap sandwiches in what emperors couldn't afford.