On October 19, 1864, Confederate troops launched a surprise attack on Union camps at Cedar Creek, Virginia. The battle became the final major engagement of the Shenandoah Valley Campaign and the last major Confederate attempt to break Sheridan’s hold on the Valley.
On October 5, 1813, future president William Henry Harrison defeated a British force and its Indigenous allies at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada. The victory restored US control of Detroit and the Michigan Territory, weakened Britain’s position in the western Great Lakes region, and brought the death of Shawnee leader Tecumseh.
On October 2, 1835, a dispute over a small cannon brought armed Texian settlers and Mexican soldiers into conflict near Gonzales. The brief Battle of Gonzales caused few casualties, but it marked the open break that became the Texas Revolution.
On September 21, 1866, the US Army organized six new Black regiments: the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 38th, 39th, 40th, and 41st Infantry. Created during Reconstruction, they gave African American soldiers a continuing place in the peacetime Regular Army and began the history of the troops later known as the Buffalo Soldiers.
On September 17, 1730, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben was born in Magdeburg, Prussia, long before he became the drillmaster who brought order and consistency to the Continental Army at Valley Forge. His training methods did not win the American Revolution by themselves, but they gave inexperienced troops a clearer system for fighting, marching, camping, and working as an army.
On September 15, 1916, strange armored machines lumbered across the shell-torn ground near Flers, France, as British forces introduced tanks to combat for the first time. Their debut at the Battle of the Somme did not break the stalemate, but it revealed the potential of a weapon that would reshape warfare.
Businessman and philanthropist Milton Snavely Hershey was born on September 13, 1857, in Derry Township, Pennsylvania. After several failed attempts at business, he built a profitable caramel company, then used its sale to pursue a larger goal: making milk chocolate affordable for ordinary Americans.
Marguerite Higgins Hall was born on September 3, 1920, in Hong Kong, China. A war correspondent for World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, she was the first woman awarded a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.
On August 16, 1777, American troops won the Battle of Bennington—even though most of the fighting took place across the border near Walloomsac, New York. The victory denied British General John Burgoyne badly needed supplies and cost his army hundreds of men at a critical point in the Saratoga campaign.