The Treaty Reprisals – Today In Southern History
22 June 1839
On this date in 1839…
In Indian Territory, Chief Major Ridge was shot and killed. His son, John Ridge was dragged from his bed, and stabbed to death. Elias Boudinot, first editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, was stabbed and hacked to death by Cherokee partisans for their part in the treaty accepting Cherokee removal from their eastern land. The deaths were considered the execution of a Cherokee law Chief Ridge helped to make that gave the death penalty to any Cherokee who sold or gave away Cherokee land without the tribe’s permission.
Chief Stand Watie, brother to Elias, and nephew to Major Ridge avoided the assassins sent to kill him.
Other Years:
1807 - The British frigate HMS Leopard encountered and boarded the American frigate USS Chesapeake off Norfolk, Virginia, one of the incidents that led to the War of 1812
1864 – Confederate General A.P. Hill’s troops stopped federal troops from seizing the Weldon Railroad near Petersburg, Virginia.
1865 - The CSS Shenandoah fired the last shot of the War of Northern Aggression in the Bering Strait to indicate its surrender
1868 – Arkansas’s reconstruction government was re-admitted to the United States.
1937 - Joe Louis of Lafayette, Alabama knocked out James J. Braddock in the 8th round to win the world heavyweight boxing title
1977 – Former Nixon administration Attorney General John Mitchell started serving 19 months in Alabama prison for his part in the Watergate cover-up.
1990 – Florida passed a law that prohibited wearing a throng bathing suit in public. In most cases, that was a well-reasoned law.
1992 - The US Supreme Court ruled that “hate crime” laws violated free-speech rights
2015 - Political opportunist & South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley called for the removal of the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds after killings in Charleston church
Read ‘Why Know Southern History?’
There’s Plenty More to See At Our Sister Site ‘Southern Nation News’ for the best Southern News from Dixie Drudge
Copyright 2026, KnowSouthernHistory.Org