22 June 1839
On this date in 1839…
In Indian Territory, Chief Major Ridge was shot and killed. His son, John Ridge was dragged from his bed, and stabbed to death. Elias Boudinot, first editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, was stabbed and hacked to death by Cherokee partisans for their part in the treaty accepting Cherokee removal from their eastern land. The deaths were considered the execution of a Cherokee law Chief Ridge helped to make that gave the death penalty to any Cherokee who sold or gave away Cherokee land without the tribe’s permission.
Chief Stand Watie, brother to Elias, and nephew to Major Ridge avoided the assassins sent to kill him.
Other Years:
- 1864 – Confederate General A.P. Hill’s troops stopped federal troops from seizing the Weldon Railroad near Petersburg, Virginia.
- 1868 – Arkansas’s reconstruction government was re-admitted to the United States.
- 1977 – Former Nixon administration Attorney General John Mitchell started serving 19 months in Alabama prison for his part in the Watergate cover-up.
- 1990 – Florida passed a law that prohibited wearing a throng bathing suit in public. In most cases, that was a well-reasoned law.
Read: Why Know Southern History?
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