Events

The Battle of Westport on October 23, 1864, was the largest Civil War engagement west of the Mississippi River, with roughly 30,000 soldiers involved. Confederate General Sterling Price had led a raid into Missouri hoping to capture the state capital and swing the upcoming presidential election against Lincoln. Union forces under Samuel Curtis and Alfred Pleasonton caught Price's army near Kansas City and routed it over two days of fighting along Brush Creek. Price's defeated column retreated south through Kansas, losing men to constant cavalry pursuit. The battle ended the last serious Confederate attempt to reclaim Missouri. Price fled into Mexico after the war. The engagement is sometimes called 'the Gettysburg of the West' for its decisive impact on the Trans-Mississippi theater.

Between 25,000 and 33,000 women marched down Fifth Avenue in New York City on October 23, 1915, in the largest suffrage parade the nation had ever seen. They carried banners, wore white dresses, and stretched for blocks. Male supporters, including several prominent politicians, marched alongside them. The parade was organized to build momentum for a New York state referendum on women's suffrage scheduled for November 2. That referendum failed. But the scale of the march stunned the political establishment. New York held another referendum in 1917 and passed it, making it the first large Eastern state to grant women full voting rights. The New York victory proved decisive for the national movement: Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment two years later, and it was ratified in 1920.