This Date In Texas History - December 30

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1835 - A decree was issued by General Santa Anna stating that all foreigners taking up arms against the Mexican government would be treated as pirates and shot.

1844 - President Anson Jones expelled Duff Green from the Republic of Texas. Green, a native of Kentucky and a political ally of John C. Calhoun, was appointed United States consul at Galveston in 1844, with additional duties of carrying messages to Mexico in the interest of acquiring Texas, New Mexico, and California for the United States. During the absence of U.S. chargé d'affaires Andrew J. Donelson, Green tried to secure passage of a bill by the Texas Congress establishing the Texas Land Company and the Del Norte Company. These companies, aided by a Texas army and Indians from the United States, were to occupy and claim for Texas the northern provinces of Mexico. Green offered Jones stock in the proposed companies. When Jones refused, Green allegedly threatened to start a revolution and overthrow the Jones administration. Jones gave Green his passport and barred him from Texas as a consular official.

1880 - The infamous "Diamond Bessie" case concluded when a Jefferson, Texas, jury acquitted Abraham Rothschild of murder. Abraham Rothschild, the son of Meyer Rothschild, a Cincinnati jeweler, and the woman posing as his wife was a prostitute named Bessie Moore. "Diamond Bessie" was found murdered in the woods near Jefferson several weeks later, and Rothschild was arrested for the crime. After two and a half years and two sensational trials that involved most of the prominent lawyers in East Texas, including future governor Charles A. Culberson and future congressman David B. Culberson, Rothschild was finally acquitted in 1880.

1896 - Homer Norton is born in Alabama. He becomes the leading football coach in Texas A&M history.

1938 - San Antonio mayor Charles K. Quin was indicted for misapplication of funds. Quin, born in Louisiana in 1877, opened a law practice in San Antonio in 1923. The Bexar County grand jury indicted Quin and two other city officials for allegedly using city funds to pay a day's wage of four dollars to more than 400 "precinct workers" in the previous July's primary election. The indictments were later quashed.

1982 - Herbert P. Gambrell died. This native of Tyler, Texas, was the first managing editor of Southwest Review. In 1932 he co-wrote his first book with Lewis W. Newton, A Social and Political History of Texas. His book Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar: Troubadour and Crusader (1934) foreshadowed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Texas, which was published as Anson Jones: The Last President of Texas in 1948. This book, which J. Frank Dobie called "high art," made the New York Times best-seller list.