The Brooklyn Bridge - A Historic Site

The Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, is a suspension bridge that connects Brooklyn and Manhattan. It has stood, towering over New York City’s East River for more than a century. The Brooklyn Bridge is considered a great accomplishment of 19th-century engineering, one which has become an important icon for New York City and a National Historic Landmark. Even after 125 years, it still transports thousands of cars and people every day.

It took 14 years and $15 million (about $320 million today) to build the bridge. Many of the bridge workers suffered from decompression sickness, and at least 20 people lost their lives in the construction, including the project creator, John Augustus Roebling. Roebling invented a unique process for weaving wire cables, the most important structural element of the bridge designs.

Born in Germany, 1806, Roebling studied industrial engineering in Berlin before immigrating to Pennsylvania at 25. After that, he tried a career in farming but failed. Then he relocated to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a civil engineer.

John A. Roebling was the forerunner of cable suspension bridges. He also built the Cincinnati-Covington bridge, one of his many suspension bridges, subsequently called the John A. Roebling Bridge.

Roebling died at the start of the Brooklyn Bridge’s construction when he tried to obtain a few last compass readings at the river in 1869. After removing the foot, he broke one of his toes in a boat accident and died of tetanus. This death left his son, Washington A. Roebling to take over as head engineer.

Work on the structure began on January 3, 1870. The workers laid sturdy foundations then dug with riverbed “caissons.” These caissons were sealed wooden containers with compressed air submerged in water. However, the caissons caused decompression sickness, affecting people when they exit compressed space too quickly and enter normal air.

Washington Roebling was one of the first to suffer the illness, crippled by decompression sickness; his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, ended up supervising the project for the next 11 years. Roebling, bedridden, managed operations from his apartment in Columbia Heights. He would monitor the construction with field glasses and transmit his instructions to the construction site.

The project met with many problems that made progress sluggish. One time a compressed-air explosion destroyed a pneumatic caisson. There were also reports of a serious fire in a caisson which smoldered for weeks. An incident of cable that broke free from its attachment point on the side of the bridge near Manhattan occurred. And a steel-wire contractor defrauded the operation, resulting in many replacing cables.

The Brooklyn Bridge opened to the general public on May 24, 1883. There was a large inaugural ceremony to mark the opening of the bridge. Emily Warren Roebling was the first person to cross the bridge. The event saw Mayor Franklin Edson of New York and President Chester A. Arthur cross from the New York end to the Brooklyn end, welcomed by celebratory cannon fire. Unable to attend the event, President Chester A. Arthur visited Washington Roebling at his house and congratulated him. The bridge was traversed by 1,800 cars and 150,000 passengers on its first day of operation.

History of the Louisiana Purchase

Before 1803, the United States did not extend past the borders of Illinois, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The territory beyond this range and up until the Rocky Mountain was owned by France. Since the 1500s, French explorers had claimed large swaths of the New World. By the 1700s, France held the most North American territory out of all European nations.

In 1762, France allied with Native tribes fought against the English for control of their territories. Following a defeat, France ceded its territory to Spain under the promise that the Spanish monarchy would support France in the war against Britain.

For the few decades that Spain held the territory, its presence in North America was waning. A British naval blockade prevented the Spanish from traveling to the New World. Unable to defend or develop the territory, Spain allowed Americans to travel on the Mississippi for trade purposes. This friendly relationship led then-President Thomas Jefferson to believe that acquiring the territory would be a simple process. However, In 1801, Spain returned the territory to the French.

When news of this reached the newly formed American government, officials feared their hopes for westward expansion would be thwarted by the then-French emperor Napoleon. He had previously shown his ambition to strengthen France's colonial presence. The Americans' fears were further confirmed when the Spanish invalidated the trade treaty with the United States.

President Thomas Jefferson chose a diplomatic route to ending the uncertainty. In 1803, the United States ambassador to France Robert Livingston and the then Governor of Virginia, future president James Monroe, traveled to France to negotiate a deal.

Jefferson instructed them to bargain for the purchase of a few territories around Florida and New Orleans. Surprisingly when the envoys arrived in Paris, they found that Napoleon was selling the entire Lousiana territory. Within a few weeks, France and the United States signed a deal to trade the 828,000 square mile territory for around 15 million U.S. dollars.

Historians attribute the success of the Louisiana Purchase to several factors. Ongoing wars with Britain had left France with massive debt and the need for a surplus of cash. Further, thousands of French soldiers died trying to end the slave rebellion in Haiti.

Napoleon believed if Haiti declared independence, the Louisiana territory would be strategically challenging to maintain. Faced with the potential of guarding Lousiana against British and American attacks from the Northern border to the Gulf of Mississippi while also fighting the British on the European front, Napolean decided selling the territory would be the best course of action.

The Louisiana Purchase was finalized on December 20th, 1803. The acquisition caused the United States to double in size virtually overnight. Explorers Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea navigated the territory on behalf of the president. Over the next few decades, the United States gained more than a dozen states from the new territory, including the Dakotas, Louisiana, and Missouri.

Many historians consider the Lousiana purchase one of the most pivotal events in American history. Due to the wealth and influence, the United States gained from possessing the territory, the country was able to develop into a regional and eventually global power.