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Jefferson Davis dies
On this day in 1889, Jefferson Davis, former president of the
Confederate States of America, died in New Orleans. Davis, born in
Kentucky in 1808 but later a senator from Mississippi, was first in
Texas as an army officer during the Mexican War in 1847 with Zachary
Taylor's force on the Rio Grande. In 1854, while Davis was United States
secretary of war, he recommended the Texas or thirty-second-parallel
route for construction of a railroad to the Pacific Ocean, and in 1856
he sent camels to Camp Verde to test the animals' suitability as
military transportation. After Reconstruction a movement was launched in
Dallas to purchase a homestead for Davis and invite him to move to
Texas. In 1875 he was offered the presidency of the newly established
Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. In declining the
appointment, he wrote of his hopes of revisiting Texas, but he never did
so.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- DAVIS, JEFFERSON
- MEXICAN WAR
- CAMELS
- CIVIL WAR
- TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- U.S. government okays the building of the Port Isabel lighthouse (1851)
- Leadbelly dies (1949)
- San Antonio hosts two observing expeditions for transit of Venus (1882)
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