On this date in 1730…

With both sides running low of ammunition, the French and Natchez Indians agreed on a peace settlement in which the Natchez released all of their prisoners and the French withdrew to the Mississippi River.

• 1836 – Colonel William Travis issued a call for help on behalf of the Texan troops defending the Alamo.
• 1863 – Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry raided Brentwood, Tennessee.
• 1863 – Arizona organized as a separate territory from New Mexico.
• 1868 – The U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson following his attempted dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Johnson was later acquitted by one vote in the Senate.
• 1868 – The Mardi Gras celebration at Mobile, Alabama became the first U.S. parade to feature floats.
• 1921 – The first transcontinental flight of more than 24 hours flight time arrived in Florida. 
• 1943 – The Texas League announced it would suspend baseball for the duration of WWII.
• 1949 – A V-2/WAC-Corporal became the first rocket to travel five times the speed of sound at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.
• 1979 – The highest price ever, $42,500, was paid for a prize-winning pig in Stamford, Texas.
• 1999 – The State of Arizona executed Karl LaGrand, a German national involved in an armed robbery, despite Germany’s legal attempts to save him.
• 1986 – Texas Air bought Eastern Airlines for $676 million.

On this date in 1847…

Jefferson Davis became a national hero at the head of his Mississippi troops in the Mexican War Battle of Buena Vista.

• 1836 – A large Mexican force commanded by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna arrived suddenly at San Antonio to begin the siege of Texas patriots in the Alamo.
• 1838 – Confederate General Gilbert Moxley Sorrel was born in Savanah, Georgia.
• 1861 – Texas became the 7th state to secede from the Union.
• 1869 – The Louisiana reconstruction governor signed the public accommodations law.
• 1870 – Mississippi was readmitted to the union.
• 1883 – Alabama became the first U.S. state to enact an antitrust law.
• 1983 – The United States Environmental Protection Agency announced its intent to buy out and evacuate the dioxin-contaminated community of Times Beach, Missouri.
• 1998 – Tornadoes struck Florida killing at least 31 people.

On this date in 1862…

The second and permanent Confederate Congress officially adopted this date for formation of the CSA to honor the 130th anniversary of George Washington’s birthday. (Washington is prominently featured on the Great Seal of the Confederate States)

• 1732 – First U.S. President and Revelotionary War Commander George Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia.
• 1819 – The U.S. and Spain signed the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, ceding Florida to the U.S. and setting a boundary between the U.S. and New Spain. (Mexico including Texas)
• 1821 – Spain officially ceded East Florida to the United States for $5 million.
• 1862 – President Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the official  President of the Confederate States of America. 
• 1865 – Wilmington, North Carolina fell to federal troops.
• 1865 – Occupied Tennessee adopted its reconstruction constitution and abolished slavery
• 1944 – Cherokee First Lieutenant Jack C. Montgomery, with the Forty-fifth Infantry, Oklahoma National Guard near Padiglione, Italy, Montgomery single-handedly attacked German positions, killing eleven enemy soldiers and taking dozens of prisoners for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
• 1946 – The first attack of the still-unsolved “Phantom” serial-murders occurred in Texarkana on the Arkansas-Texas border.
• 1959 – Lee Petty won the first Daytona 500.
• 2010 – Arkansas-based Walmart announced it was acquiring the video streaming company Vudu, Inc. 

On this date in 1911…The “last Comanche Chief” and founder of the Native American Church, Quanah Parker, died at age sixty-four and was buried at Post Oak Mission Cemetery near Cache, Oklahoma.

• 1861 – Camp Cooper, a post established on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River to keep watch over the nearby Comanche Reservation, was abandoned by federal troops.
• 1863 – The Battle of Valverde, New Mexico.
• 1922 – The Italian Airship Roma exploded at Hampton Roads, Virginia killing 34 people.
• 1988 – In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, evangelist Jimmy Swaggart confessed to his congregation that he was guilty of an unspecified sin and that he was leaving the pulpit temporarily.

On this date in 1832…

After suffering floods, cold weather, and mud, Choctaw Chief, Peter Pitchlynn, and his surviving followers, arrived in Fort Smith, Arkansas on the Trail of Tears. 

• 1792 – U.S. President George Washington signed the Postal Service Act that created the U.S. Post Office. 
• 1809 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the power of the federal government was greater than that of any individual state.
• 1839 – The U.S. Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia. 
• 1861 – The provisional Confederate Congress founded the Confederate States Navy.
• 1864 – Confederate forces fought back a federal invasion force at the Battle of Olustee, Florida.
• 1877 – The first cantilever bridge in the U.S. was completed at Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
• 1933 – The U.S. House of Representatives completed congressional action on the amendment to repeal Prohibition. 

On this date in 1807…

U.S. Vice-President Aaron Burr was arrested in Alabama for treason in a plot to steal and become dictator of a large swath of the Louisiana Purchase.

• 1778 – Virginia Governor Patrick Henry wrote a letter to Colonel William Fleming suggesting that the murderers of Shawnee Chief Cornstalk were British agents trying to instigate a fight with the Indians to divert Virginia troops away from the Revolutionary War.
• 1846 – Texas formally installed a state government in Austin, Texas.
• 1917 – Novelist Carson McCullers was born in Columbus, Georgia.
• 1942 – President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order that resulted in the internment of Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. Thousands were relocated to concentration camps built in the rural South and West.
• 1950 – A ground-breaking ceremony was held for Mississippi Vocational College, which later became Mississippi Valley State University.
• 1953 – Georgia approved the first literature censorship board in the U.S.
• 1966 – Janis Joplin debuted as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company.
• 1968 – The first U.S. teachers strike started in Florida.
• 1998 – Grand Old Opry star, Louis Marshal “Grandpa” Jones died at the age of 84 from the effects of a stroke in Nashville, Tennessee.

On this date in 1861…

Jefferson Davis took the oath as provisional president of the Confederate States of America at his inauguration in Montgomery, Alabama.