Fort Sumter Surrendered – Today In Southern History
13 April 1861
On this date in 1861…
Major Robert Anderson’s Federal garrison surrendered Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. Confederate and South Carolina state troops allowed them to leave peacefully. The only federal casualty of the Fort Sumter incident occurred when a federal soldier was killed when a cannon exploded firing a salute at the lowering of the fort’s flag.
Other Years:
1743 - Thomas Jefferson was born in Shadwell, Virginia.
1846 – President James Polk asked Congress to approve the creation of separate reservations for the old settler and new emigrant factions of the Cherokee Nation, since the two sides were engaged in a heated dispute over control of the tribal government.
1865 – Federal troops occupied Raleigh, North Carolina.
1873 – Approximately 60 black Louisianans are killed in the Colfax riots in Grant Parish.
1918 – An electrical fire killed 38 mental patients at the Oklahoma State Hospital.
1943 - The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth
1944 – South Carolina rejected black suffrage.
1970 - An oxygen tank exploded aboard the Apollo 13 and crippled the spacecraft enroute to the Moon. Houston engineers, astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haisebrainstormed solutions to get the crew safely home.
1997 - Tiger Woods won the Masters Tournament in Augusta, becoming the youngest and the first African American winner.
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