100 Documents That Changed the World Read online

  In 1854, he authored a major research report that ascribed much of the city’s overcrowding to poor traffic control of the growing ‘migratory population’. Besides helping to gain Royal Assent to the North Metropolitan Railway Act on 7 August 1854, he also devised the financing scheme for the construction of the Metropolitan Railway heading northwest from the city’s financial heart, at an estimated cost of £1 million.

  A variety of approaches were employed to build the railway underground. Some sections involved tunneling beneath the city; others were done by levelling the existing structures, digging a deep trench for the rail bed and later covering it to accommodate future buildings over the railway. Despite a number of accidents, collapses, floods, and other mishaps that occurred during the excavation, the engineering feat was largely accomplished by 1861, when the first of many trial runs were conducted. The first trial trip over the entire line was staged in May 1862 with a party of prominent passengers including William Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, aboard.

  After a grand opening ceremony on 9 January 1863, the Metropolitan Railway opened to the public the following day, when its steam locomotives hauled gas-lit wooden carriages carrying 38,000 passengers between Paddington and Farringdon Street.

  The world’s first underground railway was a resounding success, carrying 9.5 million passengers in its first 12 months and 12 million in its second year.

  An engraving showing the construction of the Metropolitan Railway around King’s Cross.

  Fort Sumter Telegram

  (1861)

  The commander of a bombarded Army fort in Charleston Harbor sends a hurried message to the Secretary of War in Washington, informing him of his garrison’s surrender. It means that the Confederacy has staged an attack against the United States. The War Between the States has begun.

  Following South Carolina’s secession from the United States and Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration as President, on 10 April 1861 Brig. Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard of the provisional Confederate forces demanded the surrender of the besieged US garrison of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

  The rebel forces numbered 10,000 well-equipped men while the defenders had only 68 soldiers with inferior armaments and scant food and supplies. But the fort’s commander, US Army Major Robert Anderson, refused to concede.

  On Friday 12 April at 4:30 AM, Confederate Lieutenant Henry S. Farley, commanding a battery of two 10-inch siege mortars on James Island, fired the first shot at the US fort, beginning a long cannonade. At about 7:00 AM, Captain Abner Doubleday, Sumter’s second in command, fired the first salvo in response, aware that his guns weren’t capable of reaching their target. The Confederates’ bombardment continued for 34 hours.

  Realizing that resistance was futile and lacking hope of immediate reinforcements, Anderson raised a white flag of surrender on 13 April at 2:30 PM. He was allowed to evacuate the following day and escaped to the North.

  As soon as he was able to do so, on 18 April at 10:30 AM Anderson telegraphed from the steamship Baltic off Sandy Hook to US Secretary of War Simon Cameron in Washington, informing him of what had transpired. ‘HAVING DEFENDED FORT SUMTER FOR THIRTY FOUR HOURS,’ he reported, ‘UNTIL THE QUARTERS WERE ENTIRELY BURNED THE MAIN GATES DESTROYED BY FIRE. THE GORGE WALLS SERIOUSLY INJURED. THE MAGAZINE SURROUNDED BY FLAMES AND ITS DOOR CLOSED FROM THE EFFECTS OF HEAT.’

  The document’s import was immediately clear. Robert Toombs, the Confederate Secretary of State, said at the time, ‘The firing upon that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen…’ Upon receiving the telegram, President Lincoln ordered 75,000 volunteers and called Congress into session. The assault became a rallying cry for the Union cause.

  Although the attack resulted in just two Union soldiers killed and two wounded, with no casualties on the other side, the incident marked the opening engagement of the exceptionally bloody Civil War.

  The original Fort Sumter telegram is kept in the National Archives in Washington, DC.

  Fort Sumter on 15 April 1861, 48 hours after Major Robert Anderson’s surrender. The Stars and Bars flag of the Confederate States flies high above one of the gutted structures inside the fort.

  The Fort Sumter telegram documented the first battle of the Civil War. After receiving the telegram, President Lincoln ordered 75,000 volunteers and called Congress into session.

  The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1 January 1863 is held in the National Archives in Washington, DC.

  Emancipation Proclamation

  (1863)

  From 1 January 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declares free all slaves residing in territory that is in rebellion against the federal government. The Emancipation Proclamation doesn’t outlaw slavery, but it shows that the Civil War is being fought over slavery and the Confederates will have to pay a price for their assaults against the Union.

  The problem of slavery had plagued the United States since its founding, yet the nation had generally skirted the issue, leaving it to individual states to decide. But the Civil War had brought the conflict to a head. After a Union victory at Antietam in September 1862, and for reasons that were largely part of his military strategy against the Southern rebels, President Abraham Lincoln decided to issue an ultimatum declaring that unless the rebel states returned to the Union by 1 January 1863, ‘all persons held as slaves’ within the rebellious states ‘are, and henceforward shall be free.’

  Despite its expansive wording, which lacked constitutional authority and superseded more than a century’s worth of law and tradition, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, ignoring 425,000 slaves in the loyal border-states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control. Most importantly, the freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory.

  The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t end slavery in the United States, but it provided a moral rationale for the Union cause and fundamentally transformed the character of the war, declaring freedom for 3.5 million slaves. When the Confederate states refused to comply, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. The Proclamation also encouraged the acceptance of African-American men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

  By insisting that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom, the Emancipation Proclamation defined both the Civil War and Lincoln’s presidency.

  With the text covering five pages, the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons. The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation of 1 January 1863 was transferred in 1936 to the National Archives of the United States.

  After the Union won the Civil War, the passage of the 13th Amendment finally ended the practice of chattel slavery throughout the United States. As a key precursor to slavery’s final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among America’s greatest documents of human freedom.

  Printed editions of the Proclamation were reproduced widely in broadsides and pamphlets. Colourful commemorative prints appeared in Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

  Alaska Purchase Cheque

  (1868)

  After many years of negotiations with the Tsar, the United States buys Russia’s huge frozen chunk of North America for two cents per acre, leaving some Americans to question if Alaska is worth that much. But the cheque is, as they say, in the mail – for more than a year.

  Imperial Russia was in desperate need of cash, due in part to its costly Crimean War (1853–56) with Britain. The Tsar’s brother also feared that Russia would not be able to defend one of his colonies – the frigid expanse now known as Alaska, from future British invasion via
Canada. Therefore, in 1857 Russia started trying to sell the 600,000-square-mile territory to the United States.

  The Americans were especially attracted by the place’s lucrative sealskin industry – and they liked the idea of gaining another piece of North America.

  Nothing happened for several years, however, until the aftermath of the American Civil War, when Russia’s foreign minister to the United States, Eduard de Stoeckl, resumed negotiations with Secretary of State William Seward. After an all-night session, the talks ended at 4 AM on 30 March 1867. The US and Russia had struck a deal.

  The purchase price was set at $7.2 million, or about two cents per acre. The Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 37–2 on 9 April 1867.

  In October 1867, Russian and American dignitaries gathered at the governor’s house in Sitka for the formal transfer ceremony. Soldiers paraded, cannons were fired, and the Russian flag was lowered and replaced by the Stars and Stripes.

  But the appropriation still had to be approved by the House of Representatives, and that didn’t occur until 14 July 1868, by a vote of 113–48.

  The $7.2-million cheque, payable to de Stoeckl, wasn’t issued until 1 August 1868.

  The Americans chose an Aleut name that the Russians had used: Alyaska. With the purchase, the US added 586,412 square miles of virgin territory – an area twice the size of Texas, with a population estimated at about 70,000 persons, most of them Inuit and Alaska natives as well as a few thousand Russian fur traders.

  Reaction to the deal was mixed. Opponents called it ‘Seward’s Folly’ or ‘Seward’s Icebox’ until 1896, when the great Klondike Gold Strike convinced most critics that Alaska was worth the money. Suddenly Seward seemed smarter.

  Alaska became a United States territory in 1912 and a state on 3 January 1959. Its strategic importance was first recognized in World War II, when Japanese forces invaded the Aleutians, and that military value was later reinforced during the Cold War when US–Soviet relations were tense.

  The Alaska purchase cheque and receipt for $7.2 million. Alaska had been owned by Russia from the early 1700s until its transfer to the United States in 1868. Critics of the purchase initially referred to it as ‘Seward’s Folly’, but the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896–99 made Alaska a valuable addition to the American territory.

  A manuscript page from War and Peace. It was Tolstoy’s wife Sophia who painstakingly transcribed his handwritten drafts.

  War and Peace

  (1869)

  A Russian count pens what may be the largest book manuscript ever created, but his wife is the only one capable of deciphering the furiously written script, and she helps him transcribe as many as seven drafts until they reach the final version that is more than half a million words long. Many critics call it the greatest epic novel in world literature.

  Count Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) laboured for years on a literary work set in the days before he was born, starting during the reign of Tsar Alexander I in 1805 and ending in 1813, shortly after Napoléon’s disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812.

  The Russian master conducted painstaking research in archives and other sources and incorporated details from his own military experience in the Crimean War to make the actions as realistic as possible. He also created an elaborate fictional narrative about five aristocratic Russian families who become engulfed in actual events of the bloody Napoléonic war.

  The work put the author’s large cast of invented characters into interaction with as many as 160 real ones, including Napoléon. Part historical chronicle and part novel, his fine poetic writing also included discussions of his own unique philosophy with some passages in French as well as Russian.

  But Tolstoy’s atrocious handwriting was often so illegible that even he couldn’t read it. The only person who could was his inexhaustible wife, Sophia Tolstaya (1844–1919), who served as his copyist and editor. The biographer Henri Troyat later described her ‘labour of Hercules’ as she struggled to ‘decipher this sorcerer’s spellbook covered with lines furiously scratched out, corrections colliding with each other, sibylline balloons floating in the margins, prickly afterthoughts sprawled over the pages.’ It was she who transcribed each page of the manuscript into draft, working with him along the way to incorporate countless changes.

  The first draft was completed in 1863 and the first excerpt appeared two years later in a periodical under the title ‘1805’. More instalments followed, but Tolstoy was not satisfied with the story and he wanted an uninterrupted version, so he and Sophia rewrote the entire novel several times between 1866 and 1869 – a monumental task.

  At last the final version was published in 1869 as War and Peace. Its appearance was hailed as a masterpiece by Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo and other major writers of the day, although some critics didn’t like it at first. Its stature grew with age.

  Upon his death in 1910, Tolstoy left behind a gargantuan cornucopia of papers, including 165,000 sheets of manuscripts and 10,000 letters. His greatest masterpiece, War and Peace remains one of literature’s grandest tomes and it has been brought to stage and screen numerous times.

  Anton Chekhov (left) with Tolstoy. Chekhov was in awe of Tolstoy’s achievements: ‘When literature has a Tolstoy, it is easy and gratifying to be a writer ... [he] accomplishes enough for everyone.’ The sentiment was not returned. Tolstoy once told Chekhov, ‘You know, I hate your plays. Shakespeare was a bad writer, and I consider your plays even worse than his.’

  Phonograph

  (1878)

  A prolific young tinkerer, who had lost most of his hearing as a child, conducts countless experiments on an invention he calls his ‘speaking-machine’. His patent application describes the new device ‘to record in permanent characters the human voice and other sounds, from which characters such sounds may be reproduced and rendered audible again at a future time.’

  In 1877, the frenetic inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) had been conducting endless experiments aimed at improving sound communication via the telegraph and telephone in his laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey.

  This gave him the idea of trying to build a machine that would record the sound of the human voice on tinfoil-coated cylinders. The concept was that when someone spoke into a mouthpiece and turned a handle of the machine, the sound vibrations of his voice would make a needle shake and the vibrations would then be indented onto the cylinder by a recording needle to make unique impressions, and the reproduced sound could later be played back.

  Edison worked with his mechanic, John Kruesi, to develop the device. When it was assembled, the inventor recorded some words that had popped into his head, while cranking the new machine. He was amazed to hear it repeat the recording of his distinctive voice saying, ‘Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow…’

  ‘I was never so taken aback in my life,’ Edison later said. ‘Everybody was astonished.’

  After demonstrating the device to the public, on 24 December 1877, he filed an application with the US Patent Office for the invention he called the ‘phonograph’, from the Greek words meaning ‘sound writing’. In the application, he stated: ‘I have discovered, after a long series of experiments that a diaphragm or other body capable of being set in motion by the human voice does not give, except in rare instances, superimposed vibrations, as has heretofore been supposed, but that each vibration is separate and distinct, and therefore it becomes possible to record and reproduce the sounds of the human voice.’

  Edison was awarded US Patent No. 200,521 for the phonograph on 19 February 1878. The patent specified a particular method – embossing – for capturing sound on tinfoil-covered cylinders. The phonograph went through many changes and refinements after that, including the use of wax instead of tinfoil cylinders, but Edison’s basic idea quickly gave rise to the modern music recording industry.

  At the end of his long career, in which he was credited with more than 1,000 US patents for devices that included the incandescent
light bulb, the motion picture camera and many other major inventions, Edison called the phonograph his favourite, his ‘baby’. Having lost the ability, since he was 12 years old, to hear the birds sing, he said it was particularly satisfying for him to have become the first person in the world to successfully record and reproduce sound.

  Edison proudly presents his latest invention in this photograph from 1878.

  Edison was awarded US Patent No. 200,521 for his ‘Phonograph or Speaking Machine’ on 19 February 1878.

  The Interpretation of Dreams

  (1899)

  An Austrian neurologist makes an original study of dreams that takes him deep into the human unconscious. After sending the publisher the corrected page proofs, the author discards his handwritten manuscript and notes, leaving behind precious few documents to shed light on an insight that ‘falls to one’s lot but once in a lifetime.’

  Doctor Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) had a longstanding interest in dreams as a gateway to one’s innermost thoughts and desires. In 1889, for instance, he jotted down a note describing his recent dream following the death of his father. ‘The dream,’ he wrote, ‘thus stems from the inclination to self-reproach that regularly sets in among survivors.’ The Viennese physician also asked his patients to reveal their dreams to him, which he would then analyse.