A First Draft of History: Week of Jan. 30 – Feb. 6

here are a few important events from this week in history:

1649 - King Charles I of England was beheaded for treason in London. Charles ascended to the English throne in 1625 following the death of his father, King James I. In the first year of his reign, Charles offended his Protestant subjects by marrying Henrietta Maria, a Catholic French princess. He later responded to political opposition to his rule by dissolving Parliament on several occasions and in 1629 decided to rule entirely without Parliament. Like his father, he adhered to the theory of the “divine right of kings,” which held that since the king’s power came from God, only God could restrict him.  In 1642, the bitter struggle between king and Parliament for supremacy led to the outbreak of the first English civil war.

The Parliamentarians were led by Oliver Cromwell, and by 1646 their military supremacy compelled Charles to surrender. In 1648, Charles was forced to appear before a high court controlled by his enemies, where he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. Early in the next year, he was beheaded.

After Charles’ death, the monarchy was abolished, and Cromwell assumed control of the new English Commonwealth. As in many revolutions though, the new regime turned out to be even worse than the old, as Cromwell soon showed himself to be a brutal dictator.  In 1658, Cromwell died and was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard, an even worse ruler. Things got so bad that the English aristocracy decided they wanted the king back after all, so they forced Richard to flee to France and restored the monarchy, crowing Charles’ son, Charles II, king. Oliver Cromwell was posthumously convicted of treason, and his body was disinterred from its tomb in Westminster Abbey and hanged from the gallows at Tyburn.

1781 - American Brigadier General William Lee Davidson died in combat attempting to prevent British General Charles Cornwallis's army from crossing the Catawba River in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. A few weeks ago, I talked about the Battle of Cowpens, in upstate South Carolina, where a Patriot army inflicted a heavy defeat on the British. In the aftermath of that battle, Cornwallis abandoned SC, and instead moved into NC. It was there that Davidson and the Patriot army met him.

Davidson's North Carolina militia, numbering between 600 and 800 men, set up camp on the far side of the river, hoping to thwart or at least slow Cornwallis' crossing.

At 1 a.m., Cornwallis began to move his troops toward the ford; by daybreak, they were crossing the storm-swollen stream.

The Patriots fired upon the British as they crossed and received heavy fire in return. Almost immediately upon his arrival at the riverbank, General Davidson took a rifle ball to the heart and fell from his horse; his soaked corpse was found late that evening. Although Cornwallis's troops took heavy casualties, the combat did little to slow their progress north. Soon, they would fight the Patriots again at Guilford Courthouse, a battle that would so weaken the British army that Cornwallis would be forced to withdraw to Yorktown, VA, where he would eventually be trapped and forced to surrender.

General Davidson was the son of Ulster-Scot Presbyterian immigrants to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The family moved in 1748, two years after William's birth, to what was then known as Rowan (now Iredell) County, North Carolina.

In 1835, Davidson's son, William Lee Davidson II, gave the Concord Presbytery land on which to build a college in his father's honor. The school was named Davidson College. [Editor’s note: Ocracoke may have the highest density of Davidson graduates in the universe.]

1790 - In the Royal Exchange Building on New York City's Broad Street, the Supreme Court of the United States met for the first time, with Chief Justice John Jay of New York presiding.

The U.S. Supreme Court was established by Article Three of the Constitution, which took effect in March 1789. The Constitution granted the Supreme Court ultimate jurisdiction over all laws, especially those in which constitutionality was at issue. The court was also designated to rule on cases concerning treaties of the United States, foreign diplomats, admiralty practice, and maritime jurisdiction.

In September 1789, the Judiciary Act was passed, implementing Article Three by providing for six justices who would serve on the court for life. The same day, President George Washington appointed John Jay to preside as chief justice, and John Rutledge of South Carolina, William Cushing of Massachusetts, John Blair of Virginia, Robert Harrison of Maryland, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania to serve as associate justices. Two days later, all six appointments were confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The Supreme Court later grew into arguably the most powerful judicial body in the world in terms of its central place in U.S. politics, especially after the 1803 case of Marbury vs. Madison, in which the court established the principal of judicial review, and, for the first time in western history, invalidated a law by declaring it unconstitutional.

1913 – And speaking of the Constitution, on this week in 1913 the 16th Amendment, which provides for a federal income tax, was ratified. The Amendment reads: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

The first American income tax was levied in 1861, due to the financial needs of the Civil War. At first, Congress placed a flat 3-percent tax on all incomes over $800 and later modified this principle to include a graduated tax. Congress repealed the income tax in 1872, but the concept lived on. After the Civil War, the growing industrial and financial markets of the eastern United States generally prospered. But the farmers of the south and west suffered from low prices for their farm products, while they were forced to pay high prices for manufactured goods. Throughout the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s, farmers formed political organizations to advocate for reforms, including a graduated income tax. So, if you resent having to pay income tax, blame a farmer.

In 1894, as part of a tariff bill, Congress enacted a 2-percent tax on income over $4,000. The tax was almost immediately struck down by a five-to-four decision of the Supreme Court (Article 1, section 9) The court rules in an 1895 case Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. that income taxes on rents, dividends, and interest were direct taxes and thus unconstitutional under Article 1, section 9 of the Constitution.

In 1909 progressives in Congress again attached a provision for an income tax to a tariff bill. Conservatives, hoping to kill the idea for good, proposed a constitutional amendment enacting such a tax, believing the amendment would never received ratification by three-fourths of the states. Essentially, they proposed the idea, even though they didn’t like it, because they assumed it would fail so miserably that the issue would be dead forever. Much to their surprise though, the amendment was ratified by one state legislature after another, and on February 25, 1913, with the certification by Secretary of State Philander C. Knox, the 16th amendment took effect. The federal government now had the right to levy income taxes, but as it happened, in 1913, due to generous exemptions and deductions, less than 1 percent of the population paid income taxes, and they paid at the rate of only 1 percent of net income.

1952 - On this day in 1952, after a long illness, King George VI of Great Britain died in his sleep at the royal estate at Sandringham. Princess Elizabeth, the oldest of the king's two daughters and next in line to succeed him, was in Kenya at the time of her father's death; she was crowned Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953, at age 27.

King George VI, the second son of King George V, ascended to the throne in 1936 after his older brother, King Edward VIII, voluntarily abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. During World War II, George worked to rally the spirits of the British people by touring war zones, making a series of morale-boosting radio broadcasts (for which he overcame a speech impediment), and shunning the safety of the countryside to remain with his wife in bomb-damaged Buckingham Palace. The king's health deteriorated in 1949, but he continued to perform state duties until his death in 1952.

Queen Elizabeth, born on April 21, 1926, was groomed to succeed her father. She married a distant cousin, Philip Mountbatten, on November 20, 1947, at London's Westminster Abbey. The first of Elizabeth's four children, Prince Charles, was born in 1948.

From the start of her reign, Elizabeth understood the value of public relations and allowed her 1953 coronation to be televised, despite objections from Prime Minister Winston Churchill and others who felt it would cheapen the ceremony. Elizabeth, the 40th British monarch since William the Conqueror, has been, by virtually all accounts, a conscious, sympathetic, and hard-working sovereign and has become a popular figure around the world. In 2003, she celebrated 50 years on the throne, only the fifth British monarch to do so. In fact, she is now the 2nd-longest-reigning British monarch, trailing only Queen Victoria, who she will overtake on September 10th, 2015 (assuming you date her reign from her actual coronation, rather than her father’s death). Incidentally, there’s been a spate of excellent movies about the British monarchy in recent years – The Queen, Young Victoria, and The King’s Speech all come to mind – indicating perhaps a nostalgia for the institution of the monarchy. No doubt Charles I would take comfort in that.

International News:

Violence in Syria raged again this week. Opposition groups said more than 320 civilians were killed and hundreds wounded in the city of Homs in the past two days, adding to the hundreds who were killed there last week.

In response to this brutality and bloodshed, the international community has done…virtually nothing. This week, Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad stop the killing and answer calls aimed at finding a Syrian-led solution to the 11-month crisis.

Thirteen Security Council members voted in favor of the resolution.

Ambassadors from the other permanent members of the council -- the United States, France and the United Kingdom -- said they were furious at Russia and China for failing to halt the violence that has consumed Syria.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said, "Those that have blocked potentially the last effort to resolve this peacefully ... will have any future blood spill on their hands," adding, "The people of Syria have yet again been abandoned by this Council and by the international community." In even stronger language, Rice said the United States was "disgusted" at the veto by Russia and China. She noted that Russia’s behavior was particularly appalling in that it continues to supply weapons to the Assad regime.

British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant echoed Rice’s sentiments, saying the United Kingdom was "appalled" at the veto, which he said means Russia and China "support tyranny rather than the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people," he said.

This failure again raises the question of what exactly the UN is good for. If the Security Council can’t even pass a resolution denouncing the slaughter of innocent civilians – and it’s worth noting that this resolution would not have imposed sanctions or authorized military action or even demanded a unity government or anything like that – if even this very mild resolution couldn’t pass, what’s the point of having a Security Council? Even the Arab League has denounced the Syrian government. The Arab League is hardly a beacon of individual liberty or human rights, but even its members are ahead of the UN on this issue.

China and Russia vetoed another Security Council resolution in October that would have called for an immediate halt to the crackdown, which United Nations officials have said has resulted in an estimated 6,000 deaths since protests began nearly a year ago. Other organizations estimate that at least 7,339 people have been killed. Ambassador Rice noted this week that since Russia and Chine vetoed the October resolution, an estimated 3,000 more civilians have been killed.

Of course it’s not surprising that Russia and China support tyranny in Syria, given that their leaders are also tyrants – I guess one can at least say they’re being consistent in their opposition to human rights - but again, what’s the point of an international body that can be held hostage by such oppressive regimes?

Well, there may not be much hope of progress in China, at least in the near future, but there are positive developments afoot in Russia. This week, tens of thousands of Russians flooded downtown Moscow, demanding an end to Vladimir Putin’s increasingly autocratic rule. The march - which drew 120,000 people, according to organizers - was the third mass demonstration since Mr Putin's party won a parliamentary election on December 4 with the help of what appeared to be widespread fraud. The anti-Putin rallies - which have brought together liberals, leftists and nationalists - are the biggest in Russia since the demonstrations that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago.

It’s impressive enough that over 100,000 people would turn out to protest a regime that has shown no qualms about using violence to quash dissent, but it’s even more impressive when you consider that marching outside in Moscow in February is not much fun. The crowds in Moscow this week faced temperatures hovering around -4 degrees.

It may be hard to believe, given how mild our winter has been, but much of Europe in stuck in the grasp of a brutal cold spell. Eastern Europe has been particularly hard-hit by snow and freezing temperatures. In Bosnia, which has seen the heaviest snow fall in recorded history, more than 100 remote villages are cut off by snow over six feet high in the mountains. Transportation hubs across Central and Eastern Europe have been forced to close amid the biggest freeze in decades, which has claimed up to 260 lives. Ukraine has suffered the heaviest toll with 122 deaths, including many who froze to death in the streets as temperatures plunged to as low as -30 degrees.

One final piece of international news – I always find it interesting to speculate about which stories will turn out to be most significant in the long-term. For example, if the regime change in Libya that we talked about so much last year leads to that country becoming a stable, prosperous democracy, it certainly will have been worth all the attention. If, however, Libya descends into another form of dictatorship, then that revolt won’t really have been that significant. As I was thinking about the question of which stories really matter, I concluded that the stories about demography may turn out to have the most long-term significance. It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen politically or economically, but demographic facts like the stagnant population of Western Europe, immigration to the US, or the absence of young women in India due to selective abortions are bound to have serious consequences. So here’s another story along those lines:

A report released Monday by Japan's Health and Welfare Ministry estimates that the country’s population of 128 million will shrink by one-third and seniors will account for 40 percent of people by 2060. In other words, for every three Japanese alive today, there will be only 2 in 2060, a trend that will place an enormous burden on the smaller working-age population as it tries to support the social security and tax systems.

In year 2060, Japan will have 87 million people. The number of people 65 or older will nearly double to 40 percent, while the national work force of people between ages 15 and 65 will shrink to about half of the total population, according to the estimate, made by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

The total fertility rate in Japan, or the expected number of children born per woman during lifetime, stood at just 1.39 in 2010 -- well below the more than 2 needed to keep the country's population from declining. So there will be fewer young people, but at the same time the average Japanese will continue to live longer according to projections.

The institute says Japan has been the world's fastest aging country, and with its birthrate among the lowest, its population decline would be among the deepest globally in coming decades. Experts say that Japan's population will keep losing 1 million every year in coming decades and the country urgently needs to overhaul its social security and tax system to reflect the demographic shift. In fact, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has pledged to push for social security and tax reforms this year.

Of course there are very practical issues raised by a shrinking population, but there are also philosophical questions. What does it say about a culture, about a nation’s psyche, when its people are no longer interested in having children? Is it just that people are focusing on careers or that the cost of living is too high, or does it point to some deep-seated ennui? Children are of course irritating and obnoxious, but having them is, at its root, an expression of a fundamental optimism. So what does it mean when people stop? Frankly, I have no idea.

National News:

The war of attrition known as the Republican primary campaign dragged on this week, with the candidates competing in Florida and Nevada. Mitt Romney, who has long been the presumed front-runner, but who has been facing an unexpectedly tough challenge from Newt Gingrich, came away with two big but not quite decisive victories.

In Florida, which drew more voters than the first three contests combined, Romney won 46% of the vote, compared to 32% for Gingrich, 13% for Rick Santorum, and 7% for Ron Paul. The Florida primary was the first contest of the year where only registered Republicans could participate, with independents and crossover Democrats restricted from casting ballots in the primary. (Each state has its own rules regarding primary voting.) Romney built a broad coalition of Republicans who found him to be the strongest candidate to take on President Obama, with exit polls showing that nearly half of the primary voters say the most important quality was someone who could defeat the president. Romney no doubt also benefitted from a much larger organization and war chest than Gingrich’s. He and his allies spent at least $15.4 million, compared to about $3.7 million by Mr. Gingrich and his boosters. It was a big win for Romney. Florida is a winner-take-all state, so Romney gets all 50 delegates, although the Gingrich campaign is contesting that. More importantly, the win for Romney came only 10 days ago after a stinging loss to Gingrich in the South Carolina primary. It stripped Gingrich of the momentum he had gained in SC and raised questions about his effort to persuade Republicans of his electability 

Later in the week, Romney followed up his Florida triumph with a win the Nevada caucuses, where he captured about 50% of the vote. Gingrich came in second with about ½ that. Still, despite these setback, neither Gingrich nor Santorum are conceding the race. After all the excitement of the past week, we’re thankfully coming up on a lull in the campaign: there are no debates scheduled until Feb. 20, and a 17-day break after the caucuses next Tuesday in Colorado and Minnesot 

It looks like the fight will drag on, but with each passing contest Romney looks stronger and stronger. As a sign of his front-runner status, the Secret Service placed him under its protection this week, the only Republican candidate to warrant it.

State News 

It was a quiet week in the cosmos – no doubt the entire cosmos was riveted by the Nevada caucuses – so I’ll end this week with a piece of state news:

I mentioned last week that NC governor Bev Purdue shocked the political established when she announced that she will not run for reelection, setting off a scramble among Democrats hoping to assume the mantle of party leadership. This week, former Congressman Bob Etheridge announced that he will seek the Democratic Party nomination for governor.

He joins Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton and state Rep. Bill Faison in the party's primary. Three others are considering whether to enter the race. One prominent politician who will not be in the race is Erskine Bowles, the former White House Chief of Staff, two-time U.S. Senate candidate and past University of North Carolina system president 

State Democratic leaders sought to recruit Bowles for a run, and a poll released early this week showed Bowles would be the most competitive Democratic contender against the likely Republican nominee Pat McCrory. But Bowles announced this week that he’s not interested.

U.S. Reps. Brad Miller of Raleigh and Mike McIntyre of Lumberton and former State Treasurer Richard Moore each said after Bowles' decision they were still considering getting in the race.

Either way, Bob Etheridge is definitely in. At age 70, he would be the oldest candidate in the race, but also the one with the longest resume in state politics. He joined the Harnett County commission in the early 1970s, followed by the state House before being elected state superintendent in 1988. His last run at elected office ended in 2010 when as the 2nd District incumbent he narrowly lost to Republican Renee Ellmers. A video showing him grabbing a man who was taping him on a Washington street didn't help his effort. Since then, Perdue chose him to run the state's office for managing federal stimulus dollars and to advise her on the response to Hurricane Irene.

Democrats have occupied the governor's mansion in North Carolina since 1993. Only two Republicans have been governor in the past 100 years.

Andrew Stern is, among other things, an historian, an Ocracoke resident, and a board member at Ocracoke’s community radio station, WOVV 90.1FM where you can hear his weekly broadcast of “A First Draft of History” every Monday morning at 9am.