May 31 in History

Fourteen years after declaring independence, the United States finally gave its authors something to own. On May 31, 1790, President George Washington signed the Copyright Act of 1790, the first federal law protecting the rights of American creators, granting authors and mapmakers exclusive control over their works for 14 years with the option to renew for another 14. The law was a direct response to chaos. Under the Articles of Confederation, individual states had passed their own copyright statutes, creating a patchwork of protections that varied wildly and were unenforceable across state lines. Noah Webster, who would later compile the first American dictionary, personally lobbied state legislatures for copyright protection of his spelling textbook and became one of the most vocal advocates for a federal law. The Constitutional authority came from Article I, Section 8, which empowers Congress to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." James Madison championed the clause at the Constitutional Convention, arguing that the rights of authors and the rights of the public could be balanced through limited-term monopolies. The 1790 Act was modeled on Britain's Statute of Anne (1710), widely considered the first modern copyright law. Protection was limited to books, maps, and charts. Registration required depositing a copy with the local district court. The first work registered under the new law was John Barry's Philadelphia Spelling Book, on June 9, 1790. The Act has been revised extensively: in 1831 (extending the initial term to 28 years), 1909 (adding musical compositions and other forms), 1976 (shifting to life-of-author-plus-50-years), and 1998 (extending to life-plus-70-years under the controversial Sonny Bono Act). Each revision reflected the tension Madison anticipated between protecting creators and serving the public interest, a balance that remains contested in the digital age.

A prince barely into his twenties inherited the most powerful throne on Earth and held it for 66 years. Ramesses II ascended as pharaoh of Egypt around 1279 BC and proceeded to build, conquer, and procreate on a scale that no ruler before or since has matched, earning the title "Ramesses the Great" and becoming the standard against which all subsequent pharaohs were measured. Ramesses was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty, son of Seti I, and he had been groomed for power from childhood, accompanying his father on military campaigns in Libya and Nubia. He took the throne confident and ambitious, immediately launching construction projects across Egypt and asserting military dominance over neighboring kingdoms. His most famous military engagement was the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC against the Hittite Empire, fought in present-day Syria. Ramesses nearly lost the battle when Hittite chariots ambushed his camp, but he rallied his personal guard and fought his way out. Egyptian inscriptions portray the battle as a great victory. Hittite records suggest otherwise. The resulting stalemate led to the earliest known peace treaty between major powers, signed around 1258 BC, a copy of which hangs in the United Nations headquarters. Ramesses built obsessively. Abu Simbel, the rock-cut temple complex in southern Egypt, features four colossal seated statues of the pharaoh, each 66 feet tall. The Ramesseum, his mortuary temple at Thebes, and massive additions to the temples at Karnak and Luxor advertised his power across the kingdom. He fathered an estimated 100 children with multiple wives and outlived many of them. He died around age 90, an extraordinary lifespan for the ancient world, and was buried in the Valley of the Kings. His mummy, discovered in 1881, was issued a modern Egyptian passport in 1974 for transport to Paris, listing his occupation as "King (deceased)." Ramesses' reign defined Egypt's last great imperial age. Within a century of his death, the New Kingdom began its long decline.

Citizens of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, allegedly adopted resolutions on May 31, 1775, declaring British authority null and void, one of the earliest colonial assertions of independence. The Mecklenburg Resolves, sometimes called the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, purportedly stated that all laws and commissions derived from royal authority were "annulled and vacated" and that the colonial government was dissolved. If authentic, the document would predate the Declaration of Independence by more than a year. The authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration has been debated by historians for over two centuries. The original document was reportedly destroyed in a fire in 1800, and the text was reconstructed from memory by participants decades later. John Adams expressed skepticism when he learned of it. Thomas Jefferson dismissed it as a fabrication. Supporters of the document's authenticity point to contemporary newspaper accounts and the testimony of the men who claimed to have been present at the meeting. Critics note that the reconstructed text bears suspicious similarities to the actual Declaration of Independence, suggesting that the recollections were contaminated by later events. A separate set of resolutions, the Mecklenburg Resolves of May 31, 1775, are generally accepted as authentic. These resolves declared the authority of Parliament to be suspended but did not go as far as declaring independence from the Crown. The distinction matters because it determines whether North Carolina or Virginia was first to formally repudiate British authority. Regardless of the historical debate, the Mecklenburg Declaration became a point of deep state pride. The date May 20, 1775, appears on the North Carolina state flag and state seal, and North Carolina celebrates "Meck Dec Day" annually.

Confederate General Joseph Johnston rode to the front at Seven Pines and was shot off his horse, and the command decision that followed changed the course of the Civil War. On May 31, 1862, Johnston attacked the Union Army of the Potomac east of Richmond in a battle that produced 11,000 casualties, accomplished almost nothing tactically, and created the opening for Robert E. Lee to take charge of the most famous army in American military history. Union General George McClellan had brought over 100,000 troops up the Virginia Peninsula to within six miles of the Confederate capital. Richmond was in a panic. Johnston, commanding the Confederate defenses, planned a complicated attack on the two Union corps isolated south of the rain-swollen Chickahominy River. The plan required precise coordination among multiple divisions. Almost nothing went right. Generals arrived late, took wrong roads, and attacked piecemeal instead of in concert. Longstreet's division ended up on the wrong road entirely, delaying the assault for hours. When the fighting finally began on the afternoon of May 31, it was fierce but chaotic. Union forces at Fair Oaks Station and the nearby crossroads of Seven Pines were pushed back but held their ground by evening. Johnston was wounded twice while observing the fighting: first by a bullet in the shoulder, then by a shell fragment in the chest. He was carried from the field, and Jefferson Davis, watching the battle from nearby, appointed Robert E. Lee to replace him on June 1, 1862. Lee's appointment was received poorly. His only previous field command had been a failed campaign in western Virginia. Richmond newspapers called him "Granny Lee" for his cautious reputation. Within three weeks, Lee launched the Seven Days Battles, drove McClellan away from Richmond, and began the aggressive campaign that made him the Confederacy's greatest general. Seven Pines was a muddled, indecisive battle. Its only lasting consequence was putting the right Confederate general in command at exactly the moment the war demanded boldness.

Irish-American veterans of the Civil War loaded their rifles, crossed the Niagara River into Canada, and declared war on the British Empire. On May 31, 1866, approximately 850 Fenian raiders under Colonel John O'Neill launched an invasion of Canada from Buffalo, New York, in one of the most audacious and improbable military operations of the nineteenth century. The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish-American organization dedicated to freeing Ireland from British rule. Their strategy for accomplishing this from North America was creative, if desperate: invade British Canada, seize territory, and use it as leverage to force Britain to negotiate Irish independence. Many of the raiders were combat-hardened Union Army veterans who knew how to fight and had nothing to lose. O'Neill's force crossed the Niagara River overnight and established a position at the village of Fort Erie. On June 2, they engaged Canadian militia at the Battle of Ridgeway, defeating a force of roughly 900 inexperienced volunteers in a sharp fight that killed nine Canadians and wounded thirty more. The Fenians suffered similar casualties. The victory at Ridgeway was the high-water mark. O'Neill had expected reinforcements and supplies from other Fenian columns that never materialized. The U.S. government, which had tacitly tolerated Fenian organizing, sent a gunboat to cut off the raiders' retreat. O'Neill pulled his men back across the river, where they were arrested by U.S. authorities and quickly released. Further Fenian raids followed in 1870 and 1871, equally unsuccessful. But the political impact was substantial. The raids terrified Canadians and demonstrated that the collection of British colonies in North America was vulnerable without unified defense. The threat of further Fenian incursions accelerated the Confederation movement, and on July 1, 1867, the Dominion of Canada was born, partly because Irish-American revolutionaries had demonstrated that the existing colonial arrangement could not protect itself. The Fenians failed to free Ireland. They accidentally helped create Canada.