This Day…

1890-Conngress passes the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which supplants the Bland-Alison act of 1878.  The Sherman Act calls for government purchase of 4,500,000 ounces of silver each month.  The steady decline in the price of silver bullion, coupled with the economic recession, has strengthened the political weight of silver and pro-inflation forces.

1882-Ben Thompson and Jack Harris had been arguing for two years over a gambling debt.  It finally came to head in the vaudeville saloon in San Antonio, Texas when Harris attempted to ambush Thompson with a shotgun.  Thompson shot Harris through the chest and Harris died that night.  Thompson surrendered his weapon and had to resign as Marshall in Austin.

1865 – Although it has been three years since passage of the Pacific Railway Act, the Union Pacific Company only now lays its first rail out of Omaha, Nebraska.  Progress is extremely slow at first, averaging only one mile per week.

1846 – Commodore John Sloat lands at Monterey and claims possession of California for the United States as he hoists the Stars and Stripes.

1899 – Black Jack Ketchum got into an argument over a card game with two miners in a saloon near Camp Verde, Arizona and killed them both.

1882 – Prominent Coloradoans, notably Horace Tabor and William Loveland,  builder of the Colorado Central Rail Road and owner of the Rocky Mountain News, organize the National Mining and Industrial Exposition in Denver.  Its purpose is to advertise and promote the state of Colorado, its resources, and its potential for future growth.

1845- Mexican War Approaches; Texas is formally guaranteed protection by US troops if the Republic consents to the terms of the treaty.

1873 – Horace French’s horse was killed in the Sutton-Taylor feud near Clinton, Texas.  John Meador was wounded in the leg, but the Taylors once again missed Bill Sutton.

In celebration of the nation’s centennial, a special Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco from New York in a record-breaking 83 hours and 39 minutes.  It will be 50 more years before such service is instituted on a daily basis.

The first two volumes of Theodore Roosevelt’s The Winning of the West are published.  Roosevelt’s action-packed drama traces the spread of the United States across the continent, from the day Daniel Boone first pierced the Cumberland Gap in 1765 to the day Davy Crockett died at the Alamo in 1836.  He will complete two additional volumes in 1896.