Oct 20, 1803: The Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase. The president who made the deal wasn't sure it was constitutional. Napoleon had offered to sell all of Louisiana, about 828,000 square miles, for $15 million. It doubled the size of the United States overnight. Thomas Jefferson was thrilled, and also uneasy. He had always argued the federal government could only do what the Constitution specifically allowed, and it said nothing about buying land from foreign countries. He drafted a constitutional amendment to make the purchase legal. Then his diplomats warned him that Napoleon was unpredictable and might change his mind if the US took too long. Jefferson dropped the amendment and sent the treaty to the Senate. Federalists in New England hated the deal. They feared new western states would shrink their power, and a few even talked about breaking away from the Union. It didn't matter. The Senate approved it 24 to 7. The US didn't have $15 million on hand. It paid largely with bonds sold through British and Dutch banks. That meant British bankers were helping finance a deal that put money in the pocket of Napoleon, Britain's worst enemy. Two months later the American flag went up in New Orleans. The next spring, Lewis and Clark set out to see what the country had bought.

Garret Hobart was America's 24th Vice President, and his death is the reason Theodore Roosevelt became President. He was a wealthy New Jersey corporate lawyer who had never held federal office. He'd run both houses of the New Jersey legislature and sat on the boards of dozens of companies, banks, and railroads. In 1896 Republicans put him on the ticket with William McKinley largely because he was rich, well connected, and solid on the gold standard. Then he did something almost no Vice President had done before. He became powerful. McKinley and Hobart became close friends. Hobart rented a mansion right across Lafayette Square from the White House, and it got so busy with politicians and dinners that people called it the "Little White House." McKinley's wife Ida had epilepsy and was often too ill to host, so Hobart's wife Jennie frequently stepped in. Washington started calling Hobart the "Assistant President." He used the job too. In 1899, the Senate tied on a measure that would have promised the Philippines eventual independence after the Spanish-American War. Hobart broke the tie and killed it. When McKinley needed his embattled Secretary of War to resign but didn't want to fire him, it was Hobart who quietly delivered the message. In November 1899, Hobart died of heart disease at 55 while still in office. That left an open spot on the 1900 ticket. In New York, Republican boss Thomas Platt badly wanted to get Governor Theodore Roosevelt out of his state, so he helped push Roosevelt into the vice presidency, a job that was supposed to bury him. Ten months into the new term, McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo. Roosevelt became President at 42. If Garret Hobart had lived, Teddy Roosevelt might never have been President.

In the middle of the great afternoon charge at Cedar Creek, a young cavalryman came upon four armed Confederate infantrymen. He had a saber. They had rifles. And yet it was the four of them who ended up surrendering, handing over their weapons and their regiment's flag to one determined man on horseback. Eri Woodbury was not a career soldier. He was a scholarly young New Englander, a student who had left his studies to enlist in the 1st Vermont Cavalry, part of the hard-riding Union mounted forces that Phil Sheridan was using to such devastating effect in the Shenandoah Valley. By October 19, 1864, Woodbury was a seasoned trooper, and he was about to be in the thick of one of the most dramatic reversals of the war. The morning at Cedar Creek had been a Union disaster, the army surprised and routed. But after Sheridan's famous ride rallied the beaten soldiers, the afternoon belonged to the Union. Sheridan launched a massive counterattack, and his cavalry swept forward on the flanks to turn the Confederate retreat into a rout. Woodbury and the 1st Vermont charged into the collapsing enemy, and in the chaos and dust of that pursuit, individual troopers found themselves among knots of fleeing Confederate soldiers. That is when Woodbury came upon four Confederate infantrymen falling back, still armed with their rifles. In the swirling confusion of a broken army, with Union cavalry everywhere and panic spreading, Woodbury did not wait to count the odds. He drew his saber, rode straight at the four men, and ordered them to surrender. The sheer boldness and the hopelessness of their situation did the rest. The four soldiers gave up, handing over their rifles, and, crucially, their regimental colors, the battle flag of the 12th North Carolina. Capturing an enemy battle flag, as we have seen again and again, was considered one of the supreme acts of valor a soldier could perform, the tangible proof of fighting into the heart of the enemy. Woodbury had done it almost single-handedly, bluffing four armed men into surrender with a blade. He was sent to Washington to personally present the captured flag, one of the many trophies the Union cavalry brought off that triumphant field. For his gallantry at Cedar Creek, Eri Woodbury received the Medal of Honor. He was one of more than twenty men, officers and enlisted, decorated for that single battle, a reflection of just how much desperate, close-quarters heroism filled the Union counterattack that destroyed Early's army. After the war, true to his roots, Woodbury returned to the life of the mind, becoming an educator. But for one afternoon in the Shenandoah, a student-turned-trooper rode down four armed men with a saber and came away carrying their flag.