The Iron Curtain – Today In Southern History

Mar 05, 2026

1623 – The first American temperance law enacted in Virginia colony.
1766 – Spaniard Don Antonio de Ulloa took possession of Louisiana Territory from the French.
1831 – In the case of the Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Indian tribes are a distinct political society capable of governing themselves, and managing their own affairs. However, the court rules that the Cherokee are not a “foreign state”, and therefore the court has no jurisdiction in the dispute.
1842 – More than 500 Mexican troops led by Rafael Vasquez invaded Texas, briefly occupying San Antonio before then heading back to the Rio Grande.
1856 – Georgia became the first U.S. state to regulate railroads.
1861 – The Confederate government appointed Albert Pike of Arkansas as Indian Commissioner to negotiate treaties. Pike established the “United Nations of the Indian Territory.”
1865 – President Jefferson Davis signed the law adopting the Third National Pattern Flag as the official Confederate States Flag.
1868 - The US Senate opened the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson over his resistance the Reconstruction Acts.
1887 - Anne Sullivan began teaching the blind and deaf daughter of a Confederate captain, Helen Keller in Alabama.
1963 - Country singers Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Cowboy Copas were killed in a plane crash near Camden, Tennessee.

Today In Southern History