On this date in 1899…

A series of gunfights broke out over political differences and gambling profits between city police and the county sheriff’s officers in Hot Springs, Arkansas.  When the smoke cleared four lawmen and a bartender lay dead, several officers and bystanders were wounded. At the time, the gunfight garnered more publicity than the better known (today) and less bloody Gunfight at the OK Corral.

• 1830 – After a shady election and a rump council, Greenwood le Flore is elected as Chief of the Choctaw Nation. Le Flore favors selling Choctaw lands and moving to Indian Territory.
• 1836 – The Republic of Texas approved its first constitution.
• 1861 – Edward Clark became Governor of Texas, replacing Sam Houston, who was impeached for refusing to support the Confederate States.
• 1861 – Arizona Territory voted to cease relations with the U.S. and become a Confederate Territory.
• 1918 – Tallulah Bankhead of Huntsille, Alabama made her New York acting debut with a role in “The Squab Farm.”
• 1995 – The Mississippi House of Representatives formally abolished slavery and ratified the 13th Amendment.
• 1995 – NASA astronaut Norman Thagard  of Florida became the first American to visit the Russian space station Mir.

On this date in 1781…

A 2,100-man British force under the command of Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis defeated Major General Nathanael Greene’s 4,500 Americans at the Battle of Guilford Court House in what is now Greensboro, North Carolina. The British Army lost as much as 27% of its strength, contributing to the ultimate failure of the British Southern strategy and leading to Cornwallis’s defeat at Yorktown.

• 1767 – U.S. President and General Andrew Jackson was born in the Waxhaws, North Carolina.
• 1818 – General Andrew Jackson invaded Florida to begin the First Seminole War with a force of 800 U.S. Army regulars, 2,000 Georgia and Tennessee volunteers, and about 1,400 Creek warriors.
• 1855 – Louisiana established the first health board in the U.S to regulate quarantine.
• 1858 – After fighting the Americans for almost 25 years, Seminole leader Billy Bowlegs surrendered with 163 of his followers and were shipped west to Indian Territory.
• 1863 – The British ship H.M.S. Britannia ran the Federal blockade and arrived in Wilmington, North Carolina.
• 1869 – Col. George Armstrong Custer discovered several large Cheyenne villages on Sweetwater Creek near the Texas-Indian Territory border. Custer captures four Cheyenne Chiefs and threatens to hang them until the Cheyenne surrender.
• 1922 – The first Southern radio station, WSB in Atlanta, Georgia began broadcasting.
• 1960 – The National Observatory at Kitt Peak, Arizona was dedicated.
• 1965 – Addressing a joint session of Congress, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson called for new legislation to guarantee every American’s right to vote.

On this date in 1964…

Jack Ruby was found guilty and sentenced him to death for Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder in Dallas, Texas. Ruby died in prison before the sentence was carried out.

• 1780 – Spanish troops captured the British outpost of Fort Charlotte in Mobile, Alabama.
• 1794 – Eli Whitney patented his cotton gin.
• 1833 – The Secretary of War had the Bureau of Indian Affairs issue orders to U.S. Marshals to remove whites from Creek lands.
• 1864 – Federal troops stormed and occupied Fort de Russy at Alexandria, Louisiana.
• 1940 – A truck full of migrant workers collided with a train outside McAllen, Texas killing 27 and injuring 15.
• 1995 – Norman Thagard of Marianna, Florida  became the first “out-sourced” American astronaut to enter space aboard a Russian rocket. 

On this date in 1861…

U.S. President Lincoln forbade Secretary of State Seward from meeting with the Confederate peace commission.

• 1862 – U.S. Major General Henry Halleck, Commander of the Department of the West, issued his notorious “Order Number Two.” This order labeled all Confederate guerrillas as outlaws and required that they be executed immediately upon capture.
• 1864 – The first group of Navajos finished the “Long Walk” to Fort Sumner on the Bosque Redondo Reservation, in New Mexico. During the march, 13 of the 1,430 who started the trip were kidnapped by Mexicans several others died.
• 1868 – The impeachment trial of U.S. President Andrew Johnson began in the United States Senate.
• 1869 – The Arkansas reconstruction legislature passed an anti-Ku Klux Klan law.
• 1925 – Tennessee passed a law against the teaching of evolution in public schools.
• 1997 – The Phoenix lights were seen over Phoenix, Arizona by hundreds of people, and by millions on television. They are still a hotly-debated UFO controversy.

On this date in 1956…

Eighty-two Southern Representatives and nineteen Southern Senators issued the Southern Manifesto in Congress to admonish the U.S. Supreme Court for “clear abuse of judicial power,” and to protest federal meddling in local matters.

• 1848 – Cherokee Chief Tahchee, one of the original Cherokee settlers to move west, died in Indian Territory.
• 1863 – President Jefferson Davis delivered his State of the Confederacy address. 
• 1865 – The Battle of Lone Jack, Missouri.
• 1884 – Mississippi established the first state-owned womens’ college in the U.S., the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College.
• 1894 – Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time at the Biedenharn Candy Company in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
• 1912 – Juliet Gordon Low founded the Girl Guides (now the Girl Scouts of America) in Savannah, Georgia.
• 1981 – Walter Witschey installed the world’s largest analemmatic sundial at Richmond, Virginia.
• 1993 – Janet Reno of Florid was sworn in as the first female U.S. attorney general.