Gone to Texas – Today In Southern History
3 March 1835
On this date in 1835…
David “Davy” Crockett left his post as congressman from Tennessee proclaiming, “You all can go to hell. I’m gone to Texas.”
Other Years:
1513 – Ponce de Leon left Puerto Rico for Florida and his search for the fountain of youth. De Leon subsequently claimed Florida for Spain.
1801 – The first Jewish governor of a U.S. State, David Emanuel, took office in Georgia.
1805 – Louisiana-Missouri Territory was formed.
1817 – Mississippi Territory was divided into Alabama Territory & Mississippi Territory.
1819 – The United States government started its Indian “civilization” program.
1820 – The Missouri Compromise passed, allowing Missouri to join the United States as a slave state.
1835 – Congress authorized a U.S. mint at New Orleans, Louisiana.
1837 – The U.S. Congress and President Andrew Jackson recognized the independence of the Republic of Texas.
1845 – Florida became the 27th U.S. state.
1861 – Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard took command of Confederate forces in Charleston, South Carolina.
1863 - The US Congress enacted the Enrollment Act, the first federal conscription law in American history in an effort to force reluctant citizens to fight against the Confederate States
1869 – The University of South Carolina opened to all races.
1903 – North Carolina became the first state to require registration of nurses.
1911 – The first federal cemetery with both Union and Confederate graves opened in Missouri.
1931 - Congress adopted Marylander Francis Scott Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner” as the official national anthem of the United States
1955 – Elvis Presley made his first television appearance on a TV broadcast of the”Louisiana Hayride” radio show.
1972 – The sculpted memorial figures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson were completed at Stone Mountain, Georgia.
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Davy Crockett and I share the same birthday, although different years!
When I enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, as sophomore, in 1976, the first required course I had to take was a History of Texas where the Professor explained the signs that Tennesseean’s left on their abandoned homesteads which were shortened to “ GTT”, which means Gone To Texas (probably the first ever acronym)