1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830
Greece gains her independence from the Ottoman Empire after 4 centuries of Ottoman rule, and Russia brings the empire to the verge of collapse. The London Protocol signed March 22 has made Greece an autonomous tributary state, Russia's German-born Count Ivan Ivanovich Dibich-Zabalanski (Hans Karl Friedrich Anton von Diebitsch), 44, has won the Battle of Kulevcha June 11, and he has crossed the Balkan mountains to take Adrianople. Disease makes the Russian Army too weak to proceed, but the Treaty of Adrianople signed at Edirne September 14 gives the Russians control of the mouth of the Danube plus the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Constantinople recognizes Russia's title to Georgia and other Caucasian principalities and opens the Dardanelles to Russian shipping, with Moscow agreeing to pay an indemnity of 15 million ducats over the next 10 years for rights to occupy the Danubian principalities. Romania gains autonomy from the Ottoman Empire, with Moldavia and Wallachia to be under Russian occupation (see 1866). Serbia gains autonomy with guarantees of religious liberty (see 1817; 1839). The Turks acknowledge Greece as an autonomous but tributary state.
The London Conference November 30 decides that Greece should have complete independence, but her frontier is moved back almost to the Gulf of Corinth (see 1828). Sir Richard Church resigns his command because he opposes the government of patriot Ioánnis Antónios, Count Kapodistrías, now 53, who rules as president-dictator from the Greek capital of Návplion (Nauplia), working to organize an effective government in which the power of semiautonomous local leaders will be subordinated to a central authority (but see 1831).
President Andrew Jackson takes the oath of office in the East Room of the White House March 4 amidst rumors about the new wife of Sen. John Eaton (D. Tenn.), Jackson's choice for secretary of war. Margaret "Peggy" Eaton (née O'Neale), 28, has been the center of gossip for years. She was first married in 1816, at age 16, to John Timberlake, a naval purser by whom she bore three children, but he proved unreliable, lost several jobs, and began drinking heavily. Sen. Eaton was a rich young widower when he took a room at the boarding house run by Peggy's father in 1818, helped Timberlake obtain a navy commission, and began escorting Peggy to Washington parties. Timberlake died last year in the Mediterranean, Eaton has married Peggy January 1 in a ceremony performed by the Senate chaplain, and Tennessee's entire congressional delegation has called on the White House to urge that Jackson name someone other than Eaton as secretary of war; Jackson defies them (his own wife, Rachel, has died of heart failure a few weeks before the inauguration), most of official Washington snubs the Eatons, Peggy forbids her new husband to accept an ambassadorship that would remove them from the country, and Jackson calls a cabinet meeting in September specifically to discuss the Eaton affair (see 1831).
Former secretary of state Timothy Pickering has died at his native Salem January 29 at age 83; diplomat John Jay dies at his farm near Bedford, New York, May 17 at age 83; former U.S. Army general Henry Dearborn at Roxbury, Massachusetts, June 6 at age 78.
A resolution offered in the U.S. Senate December 29 instructs the committee on public lands to investigate the expediency of limiting the sales of such lands. Anti-Federalist senator Samuel A. (Augustus) Foot, 49, of Connecticut has proposed the resolution and produces a furious controversy (see Hayne-Webster debate, 1830).
Mexicans revolt in March against their first elected president Guadelupe Victoria, who has established relations with all the major powers since 1824 but has been unable to deal effectively with political rivalries in his administration. His critics install General Vicente Guerrero, now 46, as president, but although he tries to bring racial equality to Mexico Guerrero proves to be inept at political administration. Spain makes a final attempt to regain Mexico, forces landed from Cuba take Tampico August 18, but General Santa Anna's Mexicans retake the city September 11; Santa Anna will hereafter call himself the Victor of Tampico and the Savior of the Fatherland (see 1830).
Hungarian-born Serbian Texas settler George Fisher (originally Djordje Ribar), 34, contracts with the Mexican government to settle 500 families on lands formerly held by settler Haden Edwards, now 50 (see 1824; Fisher, 1831).
Liberal forces under the command of Honduran politician Francisco Morazán, 36, defeat the Federated Republic of Central America's Conservative Army at Guatemala City and overthrow President Manuel Arce (see 1824). Morazán will be elected president next year and limit the power of the Roman Catholic Church, but although he will be reelected and retain office until 1840, his two terms will be occupied mostly with putting down Conservative revolts (see 1838).
Venezuela secedes from Simón Bolívar's Gran Colombia and will become an independent republic next year (see 1826).
Argentinian provincial leader Juan Manuel de Rosas, 36, ends his country's anarchy in April by defeating Buenos Aires provincial forces in the field, reconvening the former legislature, and having it elect him governor of Buenos Aires December 5 (see 1835).
Mexico abolishes slavery September 15, but President Vicente Guerrero acts December 2 to exempt Mexico's Tejas province from the antislavery decree (see 1830).
The British Slave Trade Commission takes over the administration of the African island of Fernando Po with Spanish consent.
"Slavery is not a national evil; on the contrary, it is a national benefit," says South Carolina's governor Stephen D. Miller in a message to the state legislature.
Charleston reformers Sarah Moore Grimké, 36, and her sister Angelina Emily, 24, leave for the North. Members of a slaveholding family, they will become convinced Quakers and take active roles in the antislavery movement while writing and lecturing also on women's rights (see 1836).
Robert Dale Owen and Fanny Wright move their newspaper the Free Enquirer (formerly the New Harmony Gazette) to New York and use it to condemn capital punishment and demand improvements in women's rights, including liberal divorce laws, legal rights for married women, and equal educational opportunities. English-born reformer George Henry Evans, 24, has started a paper under the name Working Man's Advocate and joins with Owen and Wright to found the Workingmen's Party, which will endeavor to elevate working conditions by agitating for free homesteads (see Homestead Act, 1862; Nonfiction, 1840).
British authorities in India abolish the practice of suttee whereby Hindu women burn themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres (see Bentinck, 1827). While the practice varies from one part of the country to another, in some places it is considered a noble act while in Bengal it is rarely voluntary: widows are dragged screaming to the pyres by sons wishing to avoid the burden of having to support aged relatives.
Fur trader Auguste Chouteau dies at St. Louis February 24 at age 79, having made himself the richest man in town and its largest landowner.
Navigator Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d'Urville returns to France March 25, having charted parts of New Zealand and visited the Fiji and Loyalty islands, New Caledonia, New Guinea, Amboina, Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania), the Caroline Islands, and the Celebes (see 1828). He brings with him some 1,600 plant specimens, 900 rock samples, information about the languages of Oceania, and data that will result in far-reaching revisions in the charts of waters in the South Pacific and redesignation of island groups in Malaysia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
London's Baring Brothers finances the Planters Association in Louisiana—the first state loan in America to be underwritten by a London firm (see 1803; Trans-Siberian Railway, 1891).
The new Jackson administration at Washington, D.C., sets about systematically to dismantle the 30-year-old Bank of the United States and other centralized institutions that were created and championed by Federalists.
At least 75,000 Americans go to prison for debt each year, says the U.S. Prison Discipline Society. More than half owe less than $20.
The Stourbridge Lion made by England's Stephenson Engine Works is tested August 8 on the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company's 16-mile rail line between Carbondale and Honesdale, Pennsylvania. (see 1828). One of three such engines from the Stephenson works, it is the first steam locomotive on any U.S. railroad, but it proves too heavy for the line's wooden trestles. Horses and mules are brought in to take its place, and these will be replaced by steam and gravity engines (see Cooper's Tom Thumb, 1830). The canal itself is initially 20 wide at its bottom and 28-feet wide at water-line, four feet deep, reaches a maximum elevation of 585 feet above tide level, has 108 locks with chambers measuring 76 feet by nine feet, and can accommodate vessels up to 70 feet in length pulled by one horse and carrying up to 30,000 tons of coal each. It will have hundreds of boats and barges on its waters at any given moment by 1850, will provide jobs for thousands of boatmen, locktenders, and laborers, will continue in operation until 1898 despite competition from railroads, and will not be completely abandoned until 1904.
The Rocket wins a competition sponsored by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Built by England's George Stephenson and his son Robert, the tubular steam boiler locomotive sets a pattern for future railroad locomotive development.
The first French railway line opens with an English-built locomotive. Designed by Marc Séguin, the Saint Etienne-Lyons line (Ligne de chemin de fer de Saint-Etienne à Lyons) will be completed in 1833 at a cost of 14.5 million francs. Séguin's Vienne suspension bridge is completed across the Rhône; a flood will destroy the footbridge in 1840 but it will be rebuilt.
A horse-drawn omnibus goes into service at London to provide public transportation (see New York, 1827).
English surgeon-turned-inventor Goldsworthy Gurney, 36, devises a steam-powered carriage, drives it from London to Bath and back at a speed of 15 miles per hour, but draws bitter opposition from stagecoach interests, who claim that his vehicles (which weigh 3,000 to 5,000 pounds each) are too heavy for the roads (see Rivaz, 1807). Gurney proceeds nevertheless to build several more and opens a passenger service that will continue until high taxes on the vehicles force him to stop (see Locomotives on Highways Act, 1865; Daimler motorcar, 1887).
New York sailing captain Cornelius van Derbilt, now 33, begins building steamboats with $30,000 which he has amassed skippering for Thomas Gibbons and in his own coastal schooner ventures (see 1834; Gibbons, 1824).
The Welland Sea Canal opens to connect Lakes Erie and Ontario via a tortuous waterway that has 25 locks to permit ships to circumnavigate Niagara Falls (see 1932).
French inventor Barthélemy Thimmonier, 36, develops the world's first practical sewing machine. He will obtain a contract to produce French army uniforms, but a mob will destroy one of his new machines out of fear that French tailors will be deprived of their livelihoods (see Luddites, 1811; Hunt, 1832).
Scottish chemist Thomas Graham, 23, pioneers colloidal chemistry with a paper on the diffusion of gases. He will find that the relative rates of gas effusion are comparable to their rates of diffusion and develop what will be called "Graham's Law"; by observing the diffusion of one liquid into another he will divide particles into two classes—crystalloids (e.g., common salt, which has a high diffusibility) and colloids (e.g., gum arabic, which has a low diffusibility); and by devising dialysis he will separate the two classes, proving also that the process of liquid diffusion causes partial decomposition of certain chemical compounds (see 1833).
"New Foundations of the Theory of Elliptic Functions" ("Fundamenta Nova Theoriae Functionum Ellipticarum") by Prussian mathematician Karl (Gustav Jacob) Jacobi, 24, at the University of Königsberg formulates a theory based on four theta functions. Jacobi is unfamiliar with similar work done by Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel, who has fallen ill while on a sled trip to visit his fiancée at Froland and has died there of tuberculosis April 6 at age 26 (see Galois, 1832).
Physicist and physician Thomas Young dies at his London home May 10 at age 55; chemist Sir Humphrey Davy of a heart attack at Geneva May 29 at age 50; chemist-physicist James Smithson at Genoa June 26 at age 64. Illegitimate son of the late Hugh Smithson Percy, duke of Northumberland, who died in 1786, Smithson was a chemist-mineralogist. Calamine (carbonate of zinc) will be renamed smithsonite because of his paper on calamines (see education [Smithsonian], 1846); chemist Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin dies on a visit to his native Saint-André-d'Hébertot in Normandy November 14 at age 66; naturalist J.-B.-P.-A. de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck, at Paris December 28 at age 85, blind and impoverished, having brought the issue of evolution to prominence in biological science with his mistaken ideas that acquired characteristics can be inherited (see Darwin, 1859).
William Burke goes to the gallows at Edinburgh January 28 at age 36 after being convicted of smothering people whose bodies he has sold to physicians (see 1828). Burke has confessed, exonerating the surgeon to whom he sold the bodies; his erstwhile companion, William Hare, has turned king's evidence and will be released (see Anatomy Act, 1832).
The Chelsea Water Works at London installs a slow-sand filter on the Thames to produce drinking water free of cholera and typhoid pathogens, but drinking water in most places remains unfiltered, and many if not most Londoners continue to pump (and drink) well water (see 1842).
Cholera breaks out at Astrachan in a more serious epidemic than the one in 1823 (see 1830).
Pope Leo XII dies at Rome February 10 at age 68 after a 6-year reign in which he confined Rome's Jews to the city ghetto and restored the Gregorian University of the Jesuits. He is succeeded March 31 by the Ancona-born Francesco Saverio Cardinal Castiglioni, 67, who will reign until his death next year as Pius VIII.
The Catholic Emancipation Bill gives British Catholics voting rights, the right to sit in Parliament, and the right to hold any public office except those of lord chancellor and lord lieutenant of Ireland. Pushed through Parliament by the duke of Wellington over Tory opposition, it grants the right to hold office only on condition that the officeholder swear an oath denying papal power to intervene in British domestic affairs, that he recognize the Protestant succession, and that he repudiate any intent to upset the established Church. Irish lawyer and political leader Daniel O'Connell, now 54, was elected to Parliament last year from County Clare but prevented as a Catholic from taking his seat (see Catholic Association, 1823); he will be reelected next year and form a new society for repeal of the union with Britain.
The Perkins Institution for the Blind is founded at Boston under the name New England Asylum for the Blind (see Haüy, 1784). Local benefactors include merchant Thomas Handasyd Perkins, now 64, who has prospered in the Chinese opium trade and will deed his home to the asylum in 1833; Boston-born physician Samuel Gridley Howe, 27, will become the school's first paid director in 1832 after having taken part in the Greek revolution and a Polish revolution; its name will be changed subsequently to the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind (see Braille, 1834; Bridgman, 1837).
Harvard College elects former congressman Josiah Quincy, now 57, as its president, a position he will retain until 1845, upholding the college's liberal tradition in the face of strong conservative opposition. Elected mayor of Boston 6 years ago and reelected five times, Quincy was defeated in last year's election.
A Napier cylinder press made in England arrives at New York, its importer cannot pay for it, customs agents hold it, and the surveyor of the port calls in English-born printing-press manufacturer Robert Hoe, 44, to assemble it. Hoe recognizes that it is far superior to any press known in America, the surveyor lets him make models and drawings of the machine, Hoe begins building presses based on the English machine, he will send an employee to England to study the Napier press, and with his son Richard will make so many improvements that their press will soon displace the English machines in America (see 1833).
The Providence Journal begins publication at Providence, Rhode Island.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has its beginnings in the Pennsylvania Inquirer founded June 1. It will survive as the third-oldest U.S. daily paper (see 1830).
A guide to Coblenz issued by German publisher Karl Baedeker, 28, is the first Baedeker travel handbook. Similar books in German, French, and English will describe the sights, foods, and accommodations to be found in cities of Europe, North America, and the Orient, which Baedeker will in many cases visit incognito. Baedeker will award stars to indicate particularly interesting sights, even ranking the Old Masters in London museums (see restaurants [Michelin], 1900).
Nonfiction: The New Industrial World (Le Nouveau Monde industriel et sociétaire) by Charles Fourier expands on the ideas in his 1822 work, stating that marriage in his utopian socialist communities will be radically redesigned, but some of Fourier's ideas (e.g., chickens 20 times their present size) will undermine his credibility; the Edinburgh Review carries an essay entitled "The Philosophy of the Unconditioned" by Glasgow-born metaphysical philosopher Sir William Hamilton, 41, who has been professor of civil history at the University of Edinburgh since 1821 but in 1836 will be elected to its chair of logic and metaphysics. His efforts to combine the ideas of the late Immanuel Kant with common-sense Scottish philosophy will introduce Kant's thinking to the British public; The Frugal Housewife by Lydia Maria Francis will go through 21 editions in the next decade.
Fiction: Les Derniers Chouons by French novelist Honoré de Balzac, 30, who enjoys his first popular success; The Misfortunes of Elphin by Thomas Love Peacock satirizes the Welsh.
Poetry: Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems by Boston poet Edgar Allan Poe, 20, whose Tamerlane appeared in a 40-page book 2 years ago but gained little attention, leaving Poe in dire financial straits. Orphaned before age 3, Poe has been raised by John Allan of Richmond, Virginia, with whom he has had fallings out and reconciliations and whose wife has just died. Allan helps Poe secure a discharge from the army, in which he has enlisted under the name Edgar A. Perry, and to apply for an appointment to West Point; Joseph Delorme by French poet-critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, 25, whose Poesies et Pensées purport to be the work of an imaginary poet who has died young; Casablanca by Liverpool-born poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans (née Brown), 36, whose narrative poem begins, "The boy stood on the burning deck/ Whence all but him had fled" (she has based her work on a story about 12-year-old Giocante Casabianca, who remained on watch until he and his father were killed in the explosion of the French flagship L'Orient at the Battle of the Nile in 1798; The Sorrows of Rosalie by Irish poet Caroline (Elizabeth Sarah) Norton (née Sheridan), 21, who 2 years ago married a 27-year-old member of Parliament, has borne three sons, took up writing because her dissolute barrister husband did not provide for them, and gains some measure of economic independence (see human rights, 1836).
Painting: Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus by J. M. W. Turner; Hadleigh Castle by John Constable; In a Shoreham Garden by Samuel Palmer; Oak Tree in the Snow by Caspar David Friedrich; Girl with a Pitcher by Setaukut, Long Island, genre painter William Sidney Mount, 21.
Photographer Louis Daguerre goes into partnership with Nicéphore Niepce and accidentally discovers the light-sensitivity of silver iodide (see 1826). Daguerre finds that an iodized silver plate exposed to light in a camera will produce an image if the plate is fumed with mercury vapor (see Talbot, 1839).
Theater: Faust (Part I) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1/19 at Brunswick (see 1854); Black-Eyed Susan by London-born journalist-melodramatist Douglas (William) Jerrold, 26, 6/8 at London's Royal Surrey Theatre (based on an 18th century ballad by John Gay, the nautical melodrama enjoys huge success). English actress Fanny (Frances Anne) Kemble, 19, makes her debut in October at London's Royal Theatre in Covent Garden playing the role of Juliet with the company headed by her father, Charles, and mother, Maria Theresa De Camp Kemble; an immediate success, Fanny Kemble is soon able to recoup her family's failing fortunes and revive the popularity of the Royal Theatre; Metamoro by John H. Stone 12/15 at New York's Park Theater, with Edwin Forrest in a drama of Indian life (Forrest has offered a prize for plays with American themes).
Playwright Aleksandr Griboyedov is killed in an anti-Russian demonstration at Teheran February 11 at age 34. He was appointed Russian ambassador to Persia last year; former actress Elizabeth Farren, countess of Derby, dies at Knowsley Park, Lancashire, April 29 at age 69.
Opera: William Tell (Guillaume Tell) 8/3 at the Paris Opéra, with dramatic tenor Adolphe Nourrit, 27, creating the role of Arnold, music by Gioacchino Rossini.
First performances: Passion According to St. Matthew by Felix Mendelssohn 3/11 at Berlin; Symphony No. 1 in C minor by Mendelssohn 5/25 at London's Argyll Rooms (with the scherzo from an octet Mendelssohn wrote in 1824 replacing the minuet); Variations on "La Co Darem La Mano" for Piano with Orchestral Accompaniment by Polish composer Frédéric François Chopin, 19, 8/11 at Vienna.
The accordion patented (and named) by Viennese engineer Cyril Demian is a modification of the Handäoline patented at Berlin 7 years ago by C. Friedrich L. Buschmann. It has a small manual bellows and five keys with provision for additional keys in the design; depressing the keys admits air which vibrates reeds to create different notes.
The concertina patented by Gloucestershire-born English physicist Charles Wheatstone, 27, is a free-reed musical instrument with hexagonal hand bellows fastened between two sets of boards that carry reeds in fraised sockets. The player admits air selectively to the reeds by using finger buttons that depress pallet valves. The concertina will largely give way in popularity to the accordion, but not until the early 20th century (see communications, 1837; Autoharp, 1881).
The Henley Regatta has its beginnings in the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race held June 10 over a two-mile course 57.5 miles upriver from London at Henley-on-Thames. It will be called the Henley Regatta in 1839, the Henley Royal Regatta in 1851 (see 1876).
The "Siamese twins" Chang and Eng, 18, arrive at Boston on the U.S. ship Sachem and sail in October for England, where they attract wide attention among physicians and the general public. Joined at the chest since birth, the young men have been discovered by British merchant Robert Hunter and will be exhibited by U.S. showman P. T. Barnum, now 19; having totally different temperaments despite their common genetic makeup, the twins will marry two North Carolina women, sire 22 children between them, maintain two separate households, and amass a fortune of $60,000 (see Barnum, 1835).
Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary admits its first inmate May 22 as construction continues at suburban Cherry Hill on the largest public structure in America—an 11-acre facility with walls 30 feet high and eight feet thick at their base. Each cell measures 12 feet by seven-and-a-half, it holds just one prisoner (most have been convicted of larceny, burglary, or horse stealing), and has running water, a flush toilet, and a tiny skylight; each prisoner is given a Bible to help him become properly penitent but receives no other reading matter, permitted no letters or visitors, forbidden to speak or to communicate in any way with other prisoners, and allowed just 1 hour of exercise per day in a small outdoor yard adjoining his cell (see Dickens visit, 1842).
London "Bobbies" are introduced September 29 by order of Home Secretary Robert Peel of 1817 "Peeler" fame (and nicknamed after him) to make the streets safer after dark (see politics [Cato Street conspiracy], 1820). The city has one footpad, highwayman, or thief for every 22 inhabitants, and although such criminals thrive in the absence of good streetlighting they must now contend with London's first metropolitan police force, whose 1,000 uniformed constables patrol the streets on regular beats from headquarters at 40 Whitehall Place, which backs up on a piece of land called Scotland Yard. The constables wear reinforced silk hats but carry no weapons other than night sticks; the force will have no plainclothesmen until 1842 (see CID, 1877).
Architecture is "frozen music," says Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, now 79, in a conversation March 23: "I have found a paper of mine in which I call architecture frozen music (erstarrte Musik). Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music."
Boston's Tremont House opens October 16 with 170 rooms. It is the first modern hotel, and while lodgers at other hotels continue in many cases to sleep with strangers "spoon fashion," three and four to a bed, with women sometimes rooming with men, each guest or couple at the Tremont House receives a private room with a key. For $2 per day a guest receives four meals a day and is given a free cake of soap, but while the new gaslighted hotel has baths they are all in the basement and must be entered from a separate street entrance. No hotel will have private baths until 1853.
The Philadelphia Horticultural Society holds its first flower show, beginning a tradition that will continue into the 21st century.
Massachusetts Presbyterian clergyman Sylvester W. Graham, 35, attacks meats, fats, mustard, ketchup, pepper, and, most especially, white bread. Graham was called a "mad enthusiast" in his student days at Amherst College, was expelled on trumped-up charges, suffered a nervous breakdown, became a New Jersey minister, won appointment as general agent of the Pennsylvania State Society for Suppression of the Use of Ardent Spirits, met members of a vegetarian religious group in Philadelphia, and has become convinced that many Americans abuse their bodies with alcohol, bad food, and other excesses. He calls meats, condiments, and white bread injurious to the health or stimulating to carnal appetites (see 1839).
The D. G. Yuengling brewery has its beginnings in the Eagle Brewery founded at Pottsville, Pennsylvania, by David Yuengling, who will change the company's name when his son Frederick joins him in 1873. The family will mature its beers in limestone caves dug into the side of a Delaware Valley hill (beer will soon spoil if not kept cool). Yuengling will remain in family hands into the 21st century and survive as the oldest U.S. brewing company.
Fanny Wright urges easier access to safe methods of contraception; opponents call her "the great red harlot of infidelity."
1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830
