1818 – During the course of Florida’s First Seminole War, General Andrew Jackson sends a letter through Tennessee congressman John Rhea to President Monroe suggesting that he can capture Spanish Florida for the United States in a 60-day military campaign. President Monroe’s failure to respond to the letter will be taken by Jackson as tacit approval for his proposed plan.
1827 – Confederate General John Calvin Brown is born in Giles City, Tennessee. Brown served in the Army of Tennessee during the war, was wounded three times, and captured once. Brown was a prominent attorney in Pulaski, Tennessee, prior to the war. He opposed secession and was an elector for the Constitutional Union Party during the election of 1860; the Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell for president and tried to steer a middle road between North and South. When Tennessee seceded in April 1861, Brown enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army. His time as an enlisted man was brief, however, as he was made a colonel in the 3rd Tennessee within a month. Brown’s unit was stationed at Fort Donelson on the CumberlandRiver when it was captured by General Ulysses S. Grant in February 1862. Brown was a prisoner for six months. After he was exchanged, he was promoted to brigadier general and was wounded at the Battle of Perryville in October 1862. He recovered in time to fight at Stones River two months later, but he was wounded again at Chickamauga in September 1863. He was back at his post for the siege of Chattanooga in October and November 1863. Brown served the next year with the army through the Atlanta campaign, and he was part of the General John Bell Hood force that invaded Tennessee that fall. Brown was wounded for a third time at the Battle of Franklin on November 30. This battle was a disaster for the Confederates, as five other Rebel generals were wounded and six more killed during the engagement. Brown recovered in time to join General Joseph Johnston’s surviving force as it surrendered to General William T. Sherman in North Carolina at the end of the war. After the war, Brown served two terms as governor of Tennessee and was a railroad president. He died in 1889 at Boiling Springs, Tennessee.
1838 – Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph system using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code). Vail was central, with Samuel F. B. Morse, in developing and commercializing the telegraph between 1837 and 1844. Vail and Morse were the first two telegraph operators on Morse’s first experimental line between Washington, DC, and Baltimore, and Vail took charge of building and managing several early telegraph lines between 1845 and 1848. He was also responsible for several technical innovations of Morse’s system, particularly the sending key and improved recording registers and relay magnets. Vail left the telegraph industry in 1848 because he believed that the managers of Morse’s lines did not fully value his contributions. His last assignment, superintendent of the Washington and New Orleans Telegraph Company, paid him only $900 a year, leading Vail to write to Morse, “I have made up my mind to leave the Telegraph to take care of itself, since it cannot take care of me. I shall, in a few months, leave Washington for New Jersey, … and bid adieu to the subject of the Telegraph for some more profitable business.”
1853 – President-elect of the United States Franklin Pierce and his family are involved in a train wreck near Andover, Massachusetts. Pierce’s 11-year-old son Benjamin is killed in the crash.
1861 – Florida troops seize the Federal arsenal at Apalachicola.
1895 – Former Hawaiian Queen Liluokalani is arrested after a failed coup attempt against the republican government of Sanford Dole.
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