November 2 in Military History

President Lincoln removed Major General John C. Frémont from command of the Department of the West after Frémont issued an unauthorized emancipation proclamation freeing slaves of Confederate sympathizers in Missouri. Lincoln feared the order would push border states toward secession. The incident highlighted the tension between military authority and civilian control that would define the war.

Presidential proclamations admitted North Dakota and South Dakota to the Union. The new states brought with them organized territorial militias that became the state National Guards of today, military organizations that continue to serve federally mobilized missions more than a century later.

A German squadron under Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee destroyed a weaker British force under Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock off the coast of Chile, sinking HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth with the loss of over 1,600 lives. The defeat was the Royal Navy's worst setback since the eighteenth century and shocked a nation accustomed to naval supremacy.

British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued a letter declaring British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine, setting in motion a century of conflict in the Middle East.

Senator Warren Harding won the US presidential election on a return to normalcy platform, beginning the disarmament diplomacy that produced the Washington Naval Conference. His administration negotiated the first major arms control treaty of the twentieth century, reshaping naval force structures globally.

While the Second Battle of El Alamein raged nearby, Montgomery's forces completed the breakout that would drive Rommel from Egypt forever. The Eighth Army's pursuit began in earnest, though Rommel's skillful rearguard actions prevented the complete destruction of the Afrika Korps. The victory at El Alamein was the first major British land victory of the war and prompted Churchill's famous remark: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Howard Hughes piloted the H-4 Hercules, the largest flying boat ever built, on its only flight, a one-mile hop at 70 feet altitude across Long Beach Harbor. Built of laminated birch wood due to wartime aluminum restrictions, the massive aircraft was designed to transport 750 troops across the Atlantic. Though it never flew again, it demonstrated the feasibility of super-heavy airlift that would later transform military logistics.

Quaker antiwar activist Norman Morrison set himself on fire beneath Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's Pentagon office in protest against the Vietnam War. The act shocked the US military establishment and was cited by McNamara decades later as an event that deepened his doubts about the war.

President Reagan signed legislation creating a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader who served as a powerful voice against militarism as well as racial injustice. King's 1967 speech at Riverside Church opposing the Vietnam War remains one of the most significant anti-war addresses by a civilian leader, connecting the struggle for civil rights with opposition to American military intervention abroad.

Expedition 1 commander William Shepherd, a former Navy SEAL, and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev docked at the International Space Station, beginning continuous human presence in orbit. The multinational crew operated military-derived life-support systems and launched from Baikonur aboard a Soyuz rocket, a fusion of Cold War rival space programs.