W hen the Reconstruction constitutional convention reconvened on Dec. 4, 1868, Radical Republicans sharpened their knives in eager anticipation of carving up Texas like a Christmas turkey. Any Texan, who passed the required courses in junior high, knows that as a condition of admission to the Union ...

The presidential emissary arrived at Mexico City on Nov. 26, 1845 prepared to pay top dollar to keep the peace south of the Rio Grande. James K. Polk beat Henry Clay by a whisker in the election of 1844 on the popular appeal of his campaign promises to bring the Republic of Texas into the national f...

In a solemn ceremony on Nov. 13, 1940, the Alamo Cenotaph was formally dedicated as a symbolic final resting place for those immortal martyrs denied a decent burial 104 years earlier. As part of the Texas Centennial celebration, a hundred thousand dollars in federal funds were appropriated for the c...

“How fatal that man will be to France!” a Spanish general predicted in a Nov. 9, 1862 letter to a friend in Paris. It did not take a seer to see that Alphonse Dubois would make a mess of things in Mexico like he had two decades earlier in Texas. He was, after all, the devious diplomat responsible fo...

W ith the publication of this column, “This Week in Texas History” is officially 35 years old making it the longest running feature of its kind ever.   And for that I am indebted to the many newspapers that have carried it all these years and to you, my loyal readers. As the sun slowly set in the pi...

inutes after the fatal shooting of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, Dallas police found a trio of unusually well-dressed tramps in a boxcar behind the “grassy knoll” and marched them single-file through Dealey Plaza. Photographers snapped several pictures of the passing parade.   In the ensuing y...

ames Wiley Magoffin and four traveling companions were arrested as spies in New Mexico on Sep. 27, 1846 and detained for the duration of the Mexican War. Why the oldest of ten children left Kentucky in the early 1820’s is unclear.   The most logical explanation is that he wanted to make his own way ...

Texan for three years and a Ranger for less than one, Jeff Milton survived his baptism of gunfire on Apr. 25, 1881 just as he would many other brushes with death in the years to come. When the wife of Florida governor John Milton gave birth soon after secession, the pleased papa named the baby Jeff ...

dmiral James Otto Richardson met with Franklin Delano Roosevelt on Jan. 5, 1941 and for the second time in three months tried to convince the President that the Pacific Fleet was a sitting duck at Pearl Harbor. Joe Richardson was born in Paris in 1879, and that northeast Texas town was where he grew...

T he four-month run of The Frontier Centennial, Fort Worth’s answer to the official celebration of Texas independence in Dallas, came to an end on Nov. 14, 1936. The first prominent Texan to suggest a grand party for Texas’ hundredth birthday was former governor Jim Hogg in 1900. Other individuals a...