This Day…

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He’s been gone ten years.  His murderers live on without a care.   

1804-The Lewis and Clark Expedition reaches the Mandan Indian towns on the Missouri River – the explorers have traveled 1600 miles in 23 weeks.  They set up winter quarters near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota.

1802-Livingston writes to Jefferson that Joseph Bonaparte, brother of France’s First Consul, has casually inquired whether the United States would rather purchase East and West Florida – present day Florida and the southern parts of Alabama and Mississippi or Louisiana.  Livingston writes that, ‘I told him that there was no comparison in their value, but that we had no wish to extend our boundary across the Mississippi.’  However, Jefferson now begins to envision a continental United States.

1870-Hardscrabble rancher Andy McConnell caught his neighbor, John Shea, trespassing on his property near Abilene, Kansas.  Words were spoken and Shea pulled his pistol and fired twice at McConnell.  As he was thumbing back the hammer for a third try, McConnell calmly shouldered his rifle and shot Shea through the heart.  McConnell turned himself in and was released on testimony of an eye witness.

1867-Four boisterous cowboys in Laramie, Wyoming decided to roust some immigrants from Illinois.  The immigrants were not intimated though and a fearful brawl erupted.  Deputy Marshal Big Steve Long commanded a halt to the proceedings which was ignored, or course.  He then pulled both 44s and fired into the pugilists.  Five of them were killed, three from Illinois and two of the cowboys.

1753-Governor Dinwiddle of Virginia sends the 21-year-old George Washington, an excellent surveyor, into the Ohio territory with a guide and frontiersman Christopher Gist to get a sense of French intentions in the region held by the Virginia-controlled Ohio Company. 

1867-Four boisterous cowboys in Laramie, Wyoming decided to roust some immigrants from Illinois.  The immigrants were not intimated though and a fearful brawl erupted.  Deputy Marshal Steve Long commanded a halt to the proceedings which was ignored, of course.  He then pulled both 44’s and fired into the pugilists.  Five of them were killed, three from Illinois and two of the cowboys.

1853-US Minister James Gadsden, in Mexico City, receives instructions to negotiate the purchase of a thin strip of land extending south of the Gila River, west to the 37th parallel boundary of California, and east to the Rio Grande border of Texas.