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Events of the World: September 1864
Posted By Brian Tomlin on September 30, 2014
September 5-6. As the culmination of the Shimonoseki Campaign, a series of military engagements in 1863 and 1864, fought to control Shimonoseki Straits of Japan by 
joint naval forces from Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States, against the Japanese feudal domain of Chōshū. In this battle, the Bomabardment, destroyed the Prince of Nagato’s ability to wage war. Unable to match the firepower of the international fleet, and amid mounting casualties, the rebel Chōshū forces finally surrendered two days later on September 8, 1864. Allied casualties included seventy-two killed or wounded and two severely damaged British ships. The stringent accord drawn up in the wake of the ceasefire, and negotiated by U.S. Minister Pruyn, included an indemnity of $3,000,000 from the Japanese, an amount equivalent to the purchase of about 30 steamships at that time. The Bakufu proved unable to pay such an amount, and this failure became the basis of further foreign pressure to have the Treaties ratified by the Emperor, the harbor of Hyōgo opened to foreign trade, and the customs tariffs lowered uniformly to 5%. In 1883, twenty years after the first battle to reopen the strait, the United States quietly returned $750,000 to Japan, which represented its share of the reparation payment extracted under the rain of multi-national shells.
September 8. Delegates from the Canadian colonies meet at the Charlottetown Conference to discuss the Canadian Confederation. The Charlottetown Conference was held in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island for representatives from the colonies of British North America to discuss Canadian Confederation. The conference took place between 1 and 9 Septembe
r 1864. This process would culminate on July 1, 1867, with the creation of the federal Dominion of Canada.
September 18. Smoky Hill Council. By late summer 1864, Union troops finally began to mount a defense against Indian attacks against settlements on the Plains. In early September, Cheyenne principal chief Black Kettle held a council with other chiefs of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes to discuss a peace proposal with military troops in the vicinity of southeastern Colorado and southwestern Kansas. The chiefs present at the council wanted to disassociate their respective clans from the hostile Cheyenne Dog Soldier and Sioux warrior clans on a collision course with the Union Army due to their brutal summer raids on white settlements throughout Kansas,
Nebraska and Colorado. Among the peace chiefs present at the council were Arapaho Chief Left Hand and his cousin Neva, who had negotiated a trade with several renegade warrior clans for four children kidnapped in raids on the Little Blue River in Nebraska. Black Kettle proposed that they offer the hostages to the Army to demonstrate their willingness to negotiate a peace treaty. At the Smoky Hill Council, Black Kettle and Left Hand turned over the four white children and promised to return the other three as soon as they were found.
September 28. The International Workingmen’s Association (IWA, 1864–1876), often called the First International, was an international organization which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchistpolitical groups and trade union organizations that were based on the working class and class struggle. It was founded in 1864 in a workmen’s meeting held in Saint Martin’s Hall, London. It was an early effort at combining a number of smaller, local trade union groups into one more powerful voice.
This is really interesting! I had no idea these other things were going on at the height of our civil war. Thank you to this contribution to understanding the greater context of the time.