1800 – Essex becomes first U.S. Navy vessel to pass Cape of Good Hope.
1814 – HMS Phoebe and Cherub capture USS Essex off Valparaiso, Chile. Before capture, Essex had captured 24 British prizes during the War of 1812. Two-thirds of Essex’s crew is killed but 13-year old Midshipman David Farragut survives.
1818 – Wade Hampton, Confederate general in the American Civil War, is born in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a member of one of the richest families in the antebellum South. He owned and operated many plantations in Mississippi and South Carolina. Hampton served in the General Assembly as a Representative from 1852-1857 and a Senator from 1858-1861. He resigned from the Senate to accept a colonel’s commission in the Confederate Army. He received many promotions, rising to Lieutenant General in 1865. Hampton evacuated Columbia in 1865 when General Sherman entered the city. In the 1876 elections for Governor, Hampton defeated Daniel Chamberlain by 1,134 votes. However, a conflict arose between the Democrats and the Republicans and Chamberlain protested the results. Chamberlain took the oath of office but the State Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hampton. Hampton was barred from the Statehouse by federal troops until April 10, 1877. Hampton was reelected in 1878 as Governor. He resigned to become a United States Senator and served two terms. Hampton married Frances Smith Preston and they had 5 children. When she died, he married Mary Singleton McDuffie and had 4 more children.1834 – The nasty battle over the Second Bank of the United States took another turn on this day in 1834, as the Senate voted to censure President Andrew Jackson for abusing his authority and meddling with the bank’s finances. In particular, the resolution, introduced by Jackson’s archenemy Henry Clay, took the President to task for removing funds from the bank in the fall of 1833. An ardent supporter of states’ rights, Jackson, along with help from Treasury Secretary Robert Taney, who was also censured by the Senate, transferred chunks of the money from the national bank to state institutions. Though Jackson claimed that the transfer was a response to the bank’s putatively partisan position during the 1832 elections, he was seemingly making a bald-faced play to kill the bank. Following the censure, the pugnacious president marshaled his forces and attempted to overturn the Senate’s ruling. Though his initial efforts were rebuffed, Jackson eventually won the day. Thanks in large part to Senator Thomas Hart Benton, the censure was stripped from the Senate records in early 1837. More importantly, Jackson successfully blocked the bank from renewing its charter. Defeated bank leader Nelson Biddle instead opted to obtain a state banking license from Pennsylvania.
1845 – Mexico dropped diplomatic relations with US.
1846 – US troops commanded by General Zachary Taylor move onto the left bank of the Rio Grande River, considered Mexican territory.
1848 – USS Supply reaches the Bay of Acre, anchoring under Mount Carmel near the village of Haifa, during expedition to explore the Dead Sea and the River Jordan.
1862 – Union forces stop the Confederate invasion of New Mexico territory when they turn the Rebels back at Glorieta Pass. This action was part of the broader movement by the Confederates to capture New Mexico and other parts of the West. This would secure territory that the Rebels thought was rightfully theirs but had been denied them by political compromises made before the Civil War. Furthermore, the cash-strapped Confederacy could use western mines to fill their treasury. From San Antonio, the Rebels moved into southern New Mexico (which included Arizona) and captured the towns of Mesilla, Doýa Ana, and Tucson. General Henry H. Sibley, with 3,000 troops, now moved north against the Federal stronghold at Fort Craig on the Rio Grande. Sibley’s force collided with Union troops at Val Verde near Fort Craig on February 21, but the Yankees were unable to stop the invasion. Sibley left parts of his army to occupy Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and the rest of the troops headed east of Santa Fe along the Pecos River. Their next target was the Union garrison at Fort Union, an outpost on the other side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. At Pigeon’s Ranch near Glorieta Pass, they encountered a Yankee force of 1,300 Colorado volunteers under Colonel John Slough. The battle began at 11:00 a.m., and the Federal force was thrown back before taking cover among the adobe buildings of Pigeon’s Ranch. A Confederate attack late in the afternoon pushed the Union troops further down the pass, but nightfall halted the advance. Union troops snatched victory from the jaws of defeat when Major John Chivington led an attack on the Confederate supply train, burning 90 wagons and killing 800 animals. With their supplies destroyed, the Confederates had to withdraw to Santa Fe. They lost 36 men killed, 70 wounded, and 25 captured. The Union army lost 38 killed, 64 wounded, and 20 captured. After a week in Santa Fe, the Rebels withdrew down the Rio Grande. By June, the Yankees controlled New Mexico again. The Confederates did not return for the rest of the war.
1863 – U.S.S. Diana, Acting Master Thomas L. Peterson, reconnoitering the Atchafalaya River, Louisiana, with troops embarked, was attacked by Confederate sharpshooters and fieldpieces. In action that lasted almost 3 hours, casualties were heavy, Diana’s ”tiller ropes were shot away, the engines disabled, and she finally drifted ashore when it was impossible to fight or defend her longer, and she ultimately surrendered to the enemy.”
1864 – A gunfight erupted in Charleston, Illinois between Union soldiers and Civil War opponents known as ‘Copperheads.’ In easterm Illinois, many Democrats were pro-southern while the Republicans were uniformly pro-Union. Disturbances had occurred earlier in the area, and Copperheads had been killed in Mattoon and Paris. In March, 1863, at Charleston there had been a highly controversial trial of Union deserters. On the day of the riot a large crowd had gathered here for a Democratic rally. Union soldiers were in town on leave. Drinking and fighting led to gunfire. Nine men killed and twelve wounded before troops arrived from Mattoon and quelled the disturbance. Five are killed and twenty wounded.
1870 – 129 Marines seized and destroyed illicit distilleries in “Irishtown” (Brooklyn), New York.
1885 – The Salvation Army was officially organized in the U.S.
1898 – The Supreme Court ruled that a child born in the United States to Chinese immigrants was a U.S. citizen, and therefore could not be deported under the Chinese Exclusion Act.
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