Rochester, August 29, 1868

Dear Harriet: I am glad to know that the story of your eventful life has been written by a kind lady, and that the same is soon to be published. You ask for what you do not need when you call upon me for a word of commendation. I need such words from you far more than you can need them from me, especially where your superior labors and devotion to the cause of the lately enslaved of our land are known as I know them. The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day – you in the night. I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scarred, and foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt, “God bless you,” has been your only reward. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism. Excepting John Brown – of sacred memory – I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have. Much that you have done would seem improbable to those who do not know you as I know you. It is to me a great pleasure and a great privilege to bear testimony for your character and your works, and to say to those to whom you may come, that I regard you in every way truthful and trustworthy.

Your friend,

Frederick Douglass.

Peter Cooper built the “Tom Thumb” a small locomotive engine which weighed about a ton, to demonstrate the practicality of steam locomotion pulling railcars. Baltimore was losing trade to the Erie Canal, and Cooper hoped that the B&O Railroad to the Ohio Valley would help save its fortunes.

The wheels of the “Tom Thumb” were two and a half feet in diameter. An anthracite furnace heated a boiler the size
of a large kitchen pot. A pulley attached to the wheels drove a bellows which blew on the coals so a three-and-a half inch steam cylinder could power the car. The “Tom Thumb” had been out a number of times, and although starting off with much puffing and leaking of steam from its joints, had answered all the expectations of its inventor.

Cooper decided to show off his invention with a trip from Baltimore to Ellicott’s Mills. An open car was attached to the “Tom Thumb” and the B & O directors and friends were invited aboard to enjoy the first journey by steam in America.

The day was fine and the company in high spirits. The “Tom Thumb” negotiated curves without difficulty at speeds up to fifteen miles an hour, and the grades were ascended with comparative ease. Some excited gentlemen on board pulled out memorandum books, and when the train reached its highest speed (eighteen miles an hour) wrote out their names and sentences to prove that it was possible even at that great velocity. The return trip from the Mills – a distance of thirteen miles – was made in fifty-seven minutes.

On the return trip the local stage proprietors, hearing the noise of the engine, “brought down a gallant gray of great beauty and power, and attached him to a car on the second track, and met the returning engine at the Relay House—so called because relays of horses were generally procured there. From this point they determined to have a race back, and away went horse and engine—the snort of the one keeping time to the puff of the other.

The gray had the best of it at first, getting a quarter of a mile ahead while the engine was getting up its steam. The blower whistled, the steam blew off in vapory clouds, the pace increased, the passengers shouted, the engine gained on the horse, lapped him, the silk was applied, the race was neck-and-neck, nose-to-nose; then the engine passed the horse, and a great hurrah hailed the victory.

But just at this moment, when the gray’s master was about giving up, the band which turned the pulley that moved the blower slipped from the drum, the safety valve ceased to scream, and the engine, for want of breath, began to wheeze and pant.

In vain Mr. Cooper, who was his own engineer and fireman, lacerated his hands in attempting to replace the band on the wheel; the horse gained on the machine, and passed it, to his great chagrin; and, although the band was presently replaced, and steam again did its best, the horse was too far ahead to be overtaken, and came in winner of the race.”

In 1918, International Street ran right down the center of Ambos (“Both”) Nogales.

Arizona lay to the north; Sonora to the south. The railroad depot, stores and saloons straddled the border. If one lived in Nogales, Arizona or Nogales, Sonora it made little difference socially – the residents from either side occasionally brawled over women or too much mescal, but for the most part they enjoyed friendly relations and shared the benefits from the local economy based on smuggling cigars, liquor, firearms and cattle.

There had been a few skirmishes in the past (as when Pancho Villa had ridden into town), but still there was no fence down the middle of International Street. The residents understood the protocol – they were expected to cross at one of two entry points, either at Morley Avenue or farther west at Grand Avenue. When trains arrived at the border, First Class passengers could ride across in the cars, while those in coach got off the train, walked and then re-boarded after passing through customs.

On August 27 a carpenter named Gil Lamadrid was walking back into Mexico. As he crossed the border, a U.S. Customs Inspector ordered him to halt, curious about the large parcel he was carrying. Only a few feet away, Mexican customs officers directed him to ignore the summons and continue into Mexico. Gil Lamadrid became confused and hesitated as the two competing groups of customs agents shouted instructions to him. At this point, a U.S. Infantryman raised his Springfield rifle to encourage his return. In the midst of the ensuing commotion a shot was fired, and the carpenter dropped to the ground.

Thinking that the man had been shot, a Mexican Customs Officer grabbed his pistol and opened fire on the U.S. guards, wounding an army private in the face. A U.S. Inspector drew his revolver and returned fire, killing two Mexican Customs Officers. Shaken but unhurt, Gil Lamadrid jumped up and sprinted down a nearby street. As the sound of gunfire rattled the neighborhood, citizens on the Mexican side of the border ran to their homes and picked up rifles to join the Mexican troops.

The U.S. border authorities panicked – World War I was being fought in Europe and the Germans had been urging the Mexicans to abandon their neutrality. Was another front in the war now open? A troop of Buffalo Soldiers was called into town. Under heavy fire, the 10th Cavalry dismounted and crossed the border into the streets and buildings of Nogales, Sonora. Looking for a tactical advantage the troops mounted an assault on the heights immediately to the east of the towns, while militia on the Arizona side started firing their weapons from the windows and rooftops of their houses. Late in the fighting, members of the 35th Infantry placed a machine gun on top of a stone building and fired into the Mexican positions.

As the violence escalated, the Mayor of Nogales, Sonora, took a white handkerchief, tied it to his cane, and ran into the streets of his city in an attempt to quell the violence. As U.S. troops crossed to the Mexican side of International Street he pleaded with the angry crowd to put down their weapons. A shot from the Arizona side felled the Mexican mayor. About 7:45 PM, the Mexicans waved a large white flag of surrender over their customs building.

After the battle was over and the dead were buried and peace restored, the U.S. and Mexico authorities agreed to divide the two border communities with a chain-link border fence, the first border wall put in place between the two countries.