March 6 in Military History

President James Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise, admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state while prohibiting slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase territory north of the 36°30' parallel. The compromise postponed the crisis over slavery for three decades but, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, tolled "a fire bell in the night" for the Union.

After a 13-day siege, Mexican President-General Antonio López de Santa Anna ordered a pre-dawn assault on the Alamo mission in San Antonio, Texas. All of the roughly 200 Texan and Tejano defenders were killed, including William Barret Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett. Santa Anna's order of no quarter transformed the Alamo from a military defeat into a rallying cry that fueled the Texan victory at San Jacinto six weeks later.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, ruling that African Americans were not citizens and had no standing to sue in federal court, and that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion inflamed sectional tensions and pushed the nation closer to civil war.

Confederate General Earl Van Dorn attacked Union forces under Brigadier General Samuel Curtis at Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern) in northwestern Arkansas. The two-day battle, the largest engagement west of the Mississippi, resulted in a decisive Union victory that secured Missouri for the Union and ensured Confederate forces could not threaten the Northern heartland from the Trans-Mississippi Theater.

Confederate militia and reserve forces, including teenage cadets from the West Florida Seminary, defeated a Union force attempting to capture Tallahassee, making it one of only two Confederate state capitals east of the Mississippi that never fell to Union forces during the Civil War. The battle came just five weeks before Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launched his last offensive in North Africa, attacking the British Eighth Army at Medenine in Tunisia. Forewarned by Ultra intelligence intercepts, General Bernard Montgomery had positioned his forces in prepared defenses with massed anti-tank guns. The attack was a costly failure, Rommel lost 52 tanks and achieved nothing. He left Africa on March 9, never to return.

The U.S. Eighth Air Force launched its first major daylight bombing raid on Berlin, sending 660 B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators against targets in the German capital. The raiders lost 69 bombers and 11 fighters, the heaviest single-day loss in the Eighth Air Force's history, but the raid demonstrated that no target in Germany was beyond the reach of Allied air power.

Lead elements of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division, part of VII Corps, entered the outskirts of Cologne, Germany's fourth-largest city, as part of Operation Lumberjack. The advance to the Rhine continued through fierce street fighting over the next two days, culminating in the famous tank duel near the Cologne Cathedral between an M26 Pershing and a German Panther.

Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh signed an accord with France recognizing Vietnam as a "free state" within the French Union, with French troops permitted to return to northern Vietnam. The agreement was a pragmatic compromise, Ho famously said "It is better to sniff French dung for a while than eat China's all our lives", but it merely delayed the First Indochina War, which erupted later that year.

President George H.W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress to declare victory in the Gulf War, announcing that Kuwait had been liberated and Iraq's military machine had been devastated. Bush declared a "new world order" and enjoyed a 90% approval rating, the highest ever recorded for an American president.