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The kingdom of Belgium comes into being in January at the London Conference, which removes Dutch control of what has been a Flemish province of the Netherlands and establishes a new state with a constitution based on the French Constitution of 1791 (see 1830; 1839). Britain, France, and Prussia have set up the "middle state" to keep it from coming under the sway of any one of them, the first king of the Belgians assumes the throne at age 40, and he will reign until 1865 as Leopold I. Widower of Britain's late Princess Charlotte, the prince of Saxe-Coburg is elected to the Belgian throne June 4, a large Dutch army invades his country in August, but French forces sent by Louis Philippe force the Dutch to withdraw and Britain signs a treaty guaranteeing military support of the new Belgian kingdom (see 1914).
Italians at Modena and Parma rise in February to demand freedom for northern Italy, and there are widespread revolts in the Papal States as a reactionary cardinal is elected pope. Inspired by last year's Paris Revolution, the insurrections are put down in March with help from Austrian troops under the command of Joseph W. Radetzky, now 54, who is appointed commander in chief in Lombardy, but fresh revolts break out by year's end (see Mazzini, 1832).
The French Foreign Legion created March 9 will serve largely in North Africa, the Middle East, and Indochina. Designed to employ Louis Philippe's Swiss and German mercenaries, the Legion will attract renegades and fugitives from justice for more than 160 years.
India's Mysore State comes under British control as Lord William Bentinck uses the excuse of domestic misgovernment to increase the power of the raj in the subcontinent.
The Battle of Ostrolenka May 26 gives Russian forces under Count Dibich-Zabalanski a victory over Polish troops as internal disputes divide the Poles between moderates and radicals (see 1830). Playwright-poet-novelist Julian Niemcewicz, now in his 70s, travels to England and tries to persuade the Western powers to intervene in behalf of the Polish rebels, but he has no success; Field Marshal Ivan Fyodorovich Paskevich, 49, is transferred to Poland in June and takes command of Russian forces; most of the revolutionary leadership escapes to Paris, Prince Adam Czartoryski is sentenced to death, his lands are confiscated, he goes into exile August 15, he takes up residence at the Hôtel Lambert in Paris, and he is unofficially acknowledged as the "Polish king in exile." Warsaw falls to the Russians September 8, the insurrection that began last year collapses, Paskevich is given the title prince of Warsaw, and the russification of Poland begins in provinces not occupied by Prussia or Austria (see 1772). Knyaz (Prince) Paskevich will be appointed viceroy next year and rule dictatorially until his death in 1856 (see 1863; Hungary, 1848).
Former Prussian chancellor H. F. Karl, Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Stein, dies at his ancestral castle Schloss Cappenberg in Westphalia, June 29 at age 73; former Prussian field marshal August, Graf Neidhardt von Gneisenau, at Posen August 23 at age 70.
Greece's president Count Ioánnis Antónios Kapodístrias is assassinated October 9 at age 55 as he is about to enter a church at Návplion (Nauplia) (see 1828). His political enemies Konstantinos and Giorgios Mavromikhalis, have eliminated him, and the Greeks make his 53-year-old brother Avgoustinos provisional president (see monarchy, 1832).
Former Mexican president Vicente Guerrero is executed at Chilapa February 14 at age 48, having been tracked down in a mountainous area by the new president Anastasio Bustamante, lured aboard an Italian ship, turned over to authorities, and shot by a firing squad (see 1830). The Mexican government gives Texas settlers at Gonzalez a small cannon to protect themselves against Native Americans. Colonel Juan Davis Bradham and his men try to stop smuggling on the Trinity and San Jacinto rivers, but George Fisher sets up a customhouse at Anahuac on Galveston Bay in November and declares that all goods leaving Mexico's Tejas province must clear through Anahuac (see 1832; Fisher, 1829).
The Brazilian emperor Pedro I abdicates April 7 at age 33 and returns to Europe. His 5-year-old son by his first wife will be crowned in 1841 and reign until 1889 as Pedro II.
U.S. Secretary of War John Eaton submits his resignation in April (see 1829). Secretary of State Martin Van Buren resigns as well (a widower, he has been kind to Eaton's wife, Peggy, when others were not), and President Jackson then demands the resignations of three cabinet members whose wives have snubbed Mrs. Eaton, thus leaving all Cabinet posts empty except one. Jackson appoints his former aide-de-camp and translator Edward Livingston to succeed Van Buren as secretary of state, and Livingston will serve until 1833.
Former president James Monroe dies at New York July 4 at age 73. He has been living with his daughter and son-in-law in the city.
The Liberator begins publication January 1 at Boston, where local abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, now 26, advocates emancipation of the slaves who account for nearly one third of the U.S. population. "I will be as harsh as truth," Garrison promises, "and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! . . . I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD."
African Methodist Episcopal Church bishop Richard Allen dies at his native Philadelphia March 26 at age 71.
Nat Turner's rebellion brings panic to the South as whites learn that the Virginia slave has murdered his master and all his master's family in their sleep on the night of August 21. Turner, 30, is a religious zealot who has convinced other slaves that he has received divine guidance, the seven companions who have helped him murder the Joseph Travis family quickly grow to a mob of more than six dozen, state militia and armed townspeople intercept the rebels three miles outside Jerusalem, Virginia, and many slaves are killed, including some who took no part in Turner's rebellion, which has killed 60 whites in 48 hours. Turner himself escapes and remains at large for 6 weeks before he is finally apprehended, tried, and convicted; he is hanged November 11 at Jerusalem along with 16 accomplices.
Boston orator Maria W. Stewart (née Miller), 28, addresses a crowd at Franklin Hall and becomes the first U.S. woman to deliver a political speech in public before a mixed audience that comprises blacks and whites of both sexes. She will lecture at the meeting house for the next 2 years, mostly on the rights of her fellow black Americans, and her talks to the African-American Female Intelligence Society of America will be published, first in the Liberator and then in pamphlets.
The Supreme Court rules March 18 that an Indian tribe may not sue in federal courts since the tribes are not foreign nations but, as "domestic dependent nations," are entitled to sovereign immunity (Cherokee Nation v. Georgia) (see 1832). Gold was found on Cherokee lands in Georgia more than a decade ago, and the tribes have been trying to keep whites out, refusing all inducements to sell their highly fertile land. "John Marshall has made his decision," says President Jackson; "Let him enforce it." Jackson sends in federal troops to clear the Cherokee out of Georgia (see 1832; "Trail of Tears," 1838).
Chief Black Hawk agrees to withdraw his Sac tribespeople to lands west of the Mississippi (see 1830; 1832).
British troops in Bengal suppress an uprising against oppressive Hindu rule, killing the Muslim leader Titu Mir November 19.
Samuel Sharp's rebellion begins in Jamaica December 27; no whites are killed, but the slaves force sugar estate owners at gunpoint to draw up documents freeing all their workers, they burn cane fields and other property, British authorities retaliate by burning the slave shacks, they hang Sharp and hundreds of others, and slaves who have joined in Sharp's refusal to work without compensation are flogged, but a fall in the price of sugar since the end of the Napoleonic wars and the high cost of slave labor since the abolition of slave imports in 1807 have combined to make slavery unprofitable to many planters (see 1833).
Scottish polar explorer James Clark Ross, 31, and his uncle John Ross, now 54, determine the position of the north magnetic pole June 1 while on a sledge journey (see 1818; Franklin, 1819). The Ross party left 2 years ago on a second Royal Navy expedition in search of a Northwest Passage. It has discovered and surveyed Boothia Peninsula, King William Island, and the Gulf of Boothia, but its ship will be crushed in the ice next year. A whaler will rescue the party in the summer of 1833 and return it to England.
Naval officer and explorer Vasily Mikhailovich Golovnin dies at St. Petersburg July 11 (June 29 Old Style) at age 55, having served as commissary of the Russian Navy and commissioned some 200 new warships, including the first Russian-built steamships.
Comanche tribesmen on the Cimarron River in the Southwest kill explorer and fur trader Jedediah Strong Smith May 27 (see 1830). Smith was 32.
The Bent & St. Vrain Company is founded by Charles and William Bent, Ceran de St. Vrain, and other fur traders, who next year will complete Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River near what later will be La Junta, Colorado (see 1824). St. Vrain has settled at Taos and remains there, building a flour mill and supply station for trappers. By 1840 the new company will be rivaled only by the American Fur Company, whose founder, John Jacob Astor, will exit the fur business in 1834 (see exploration [Pueblo attack], 1847).
The French government agrees in a treaty signed July 4 to pay claims by U.S. citizens for spoliation suffered during the Napoleonic wars. The agreement calls for 25 million francs to be paid in six annual installments, but the Chamber of Deputies will fail to make the necessary appropriations (see politics, 1833).
Britain's Whig government prosecutes journalist William Cobbett for having defended the farm workers who rioted last year to protest against their low wages; acting as his own counsel, Cobbett wins acquittal and is set free, but the threat of another prison term leads him to support the prosecutors in advocating parliamentary reform. Now 68, he will be elected to Parliament next year as a member from Oldham, but few of the other members will respect him and he will find the routine of the House of Commons tiresome.
The Union of Northumberland and Durham Coalminers is founded by English miner Thomas Hepburn and demands shorter hours for coal workers (see 1841).
Welsh patriot Richard "Dic Pendryn" Lewis, 23, is accused of having wounded a soldier during the Merthyr Tydfil riots; he is tried, found guilty, and hanged publicly at Cardiff August 31, although many are convinced of his innocence. He will become a folk hero throughout South Wales.
Yorkshire industrialist Richard Oastler begins agitating for a 10-hour day, calling the factory system inconsistent with the "natural right to live well" (see child labor, 1830; Factory Act, 1833).
The Bristol Riots October 29 to 31 raise fears in London that the unrest may spread to other towns and begin a revolution. The newly appointed recorder of Bristol, Sir Charles Wetherall, is an outspoken critic of the Parliamentary Reform Bill that passed the Commons in September but has been rejected by the House of Lords; supporters of the measure wreck Bristol's Mansion House and set the Bishop's Palace afire, other public buildings are attacked, the city magistrates call in troops, a bloody cavalry charge restores order, four of the rioters are executed, and 22 are transported (see Reform Act, 1832).
French workers revolt at Lyons. The insurrection is put down in November but only with great difficulty as secret societies proliferate among the workers.
New York has its first labor demonstrations as stone cutters riot in protest against the use of stone cut at Sing Sing Prison for buildings of the new University of the City of New York (see crime [Sing Sing], 1826; General Trades Union, 1833).
The National Bank of the City of New York opens for business with banker Albert Gallatin, now 70, as its first president. John Jacob Astor is the bank's chief source of funding, and Gallatin is a close associate of the fur trader. Gallatin has served as secretary of the treasury under Presidents Jefferson and Madison, his diplomatic efforts abroad have won acclaim, and Astor has persuaded him to head the new bank, which received its charter 2 years ago.
Banker Stephen Girard dies childless at Philadelphia December 26 at age 81, having made himself the richest man in America through money lending. His wife was committed to a mental asylum some years ago, he has lived alone in a modest, ill-kept house, and he leaves most of his $7.5 million estate to a school for orphaned boys.
Japan's Takashimaya retail store empire has its beginnings in a dry goods shop opened at Edo.
Michael Faraday discovers the basic principle of the electric dynamo (see 1821; Sturgeon, 1823). His electromagnetic current generator consists simply of a cylindrical coil (solenoid) and a bar magnet that can be slipped into the coil, but Faraday succeeds in generating electrical current October 17 and discovers electromagnetic induction. He finds by using his galvanometer that a current is registered while the magnet is being inserted and that the current starts again in the opposite direction when the magnet is withdrawn but that no current is registered while the magnet is stationary (see galvanometer, 1825; Gramme, 1872). Faraday finds that if the current in a wire wrapped around an iron rod is interrupted, a current will be generated in a second wire wrapped around the rod; he is excited by the discovery that electrical energy is transferred between two circuits but does not see the potential for stepping down power from a high-voltage line for use with alternating current that regularly reverses its direction (see 1888; science, 1834).
Physicist Joseph Henry discovers a method for producing induced current much like that of Michael Faraday's (see 1827). He devises an electromagnet that by some accounts is strong enough to lift an iron anvil (see Davenport, 1834); the unit of induction will be called a henry.
The first Baldwin locomotives go into service. New Jersey industrialist Matthias William Baldwin, 35, will soon produce a steam locomotive that can go 62 miles per hour (see 1830).
The disassembled locomotive John Bull arrives by ship at Philadelphia from Liverpool and is transported to Bordentown, New Jersey, where Belfast-born mechanic Isaac Dripps, 21, and his crew assembles it in 11 days, although it has come without instructions and Dripps has never before seen a locomotive (see Camden and Amboy Railroad, 1833).
The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad begins regular service August 9; replacing horses, the locomotive De Witt Clinton built by the West Point Foundry pulls a train of five or six coaches carrying 117 passengers between Albany and Schenectady in the first link of a road that will become the New York Central in 1853.
The 102-mile Morris Canal opens between Newark, New Jersey, and Easton, Pennsylvania, to carry anthracite coal to New York (see energy, 1813). The canal will be handling 889,000 tons of coal per year by 1861 (see Delaware-Raritan, 1834).
A feeder canal to the Ohio River and the Erie Canal spurs development of Columbus, Ohio, which will be chartered as a city in 1834.
John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company steamboat S.S. Yellowstone makes the first steamboat voyage on the upper Missouri.
A new London Bridge made of multiple masonry arches opens across the Thames to replace the 10th-century structure now being demolished (see 1971; Rennie, 1817).
Engineer-inventor Henry Maudslay dies at London February 14 at age 61, having invented the metal machine lathe, new methods for printing calico cloth, a way to desalt seawater for ships' boilers, a measuring machine that is accurate to within 0.0001 of an inch, and a variety of precision machines and machine tools essential to the Industrial Revolution.
A patent for making malleable cast iron is issued to Foxborough, Massachusetts-born mechanic Seth Boyden, 42, who created his process 5 years ago. Boyden invented a process in 1809 for making patent leather, a machine for cutting brads in 1815, one for making harness and horse blinds in 1824, and one for spinning wool and cotton in 1826; he will go on to create a process for making sheet iron, a hat-shaping machine, and improvements in railroad locomotives and stationary steam engines.
The Deringer pistol designed by Philadelphia gunsmith Henry Deringer, 44, is a short, pocket-size, single-shot percussion weapon deadly only at short range.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) is founded along lines of the earlier Gesellschaft deutscher Naturalforscher (see 1848).
Treatise on Optics by physicist David Brewster, now 49, elaborates on his earlier observations (see 1811). Brewster is knighted for his efforts and will be instrumental in persuading the British to use the new Fresnel lenses (see 1820) in lighthouses.
English naturalist Charles Darwin, 22, embarks on a voyage to South America and the Galápagos Islands as ship's naturalist aboard H.M.S. Beagle. A grandson of the late physician and botanist Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin will become far better known than his famous grandfather or his successful physician father (see 1840).
Physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck dies at Berlin December 20 at age 61.
What later will be called chloroform is invented independently by German chemist Justus von Liebig, 28, and Brimfield, Massachusetts-born chemist Samuel Guthrie, 49, whose chloric ether will be widely employed as an anesthetic (see 1847; "laughing gas," 1799; Long's sulfuric ether, 1842).
The vacancy that has existed in the papacy at Rome since the death last year of Pope Pius VII ends February 2 with the consecration of Bartolomeo Alberto Cardinal Cappellari, 65, who will reign until 1846 as Gregory XVI.
Irish Catholics resort to violence in an armed protest against enforcement of tithes to support the established Episcopal Church.
New York University (NYU) has its beginnings in the University of the City of New York, founded by some eminent private citizens in response to the example set 3 years ago with the founding of London University. Banker Albert Gallatin serves as president of the new university's governing council, whose members declare that theirs will be a "national university" offering a "rational and practical education for all" (see 1896).
Physicist Joseph Henry pioneers electromagnetic telegraphy (see Nollet, 1746; Ronalds, 1823). Having seen that an electromagnet can be used to send messages over great distances by wiring the magnet to a switch, turning it on and off to attract and release a piece of iron, and thus producing a pattern of clicks, Henry exhibits his 14-inch-long device at Albany, New York, transmitting signals over more than a mile of wire, but although he publishes his findings he does not patent the device or put it to any practical use (see Morse, 1832).
The Sydney Morning Herald has its beginnings in a weekly published in New South Wales starting April 18 by printers who include John Fairfax. It will become a daily in October 1840, acquire the name Sydney Morning Herald in 1842, carry only classified advertisements on its front page until 1944, and survive as Australia's oldest newspaper.
Former Massachussets Spy publisher Isaiah Thomas dies at Worcester April 4 at age 82, having founded the American Antiquarian Society.
The Detroit Free Press has its beginnings in the four-page Democratic Free Press and Michigan Intelligencer published May 5. The frontier town has a population of only 2,500, but black printer Sheldon McKnight has set up a crude hand press in a wooden office at the corner of Bates and Woodridge streets, acquired a stock of paper, and says in his first editorial, "The Democratic citizens of this territory, having found the two newspapers already established here completely under the control of the city aristocracy, we have been compelled to set up an independent press." First daily paper in the territory, the paper champions statehood for Michigan (see Storey, 1851).
The Poor Man's Guardian begins publication July 9 at the Kingsgate Street, London, home of printer Henry Hetherington, whose penny Weekly Paper for the People bears on its front page the words, "Published in defiance of the 'law' to try the power of 'right' against 'might.'" (see commerce, 1830). Working people need knowledge, Hetherington says; he urges repeal of the newspaper tax, refuses to pay the tax, and next year will serve 6 months in Clerkenwell Gaol (see 1833).
The Boston Post begins publication December 3 and will continue until October 4, 1956, becoming at one time the largest-circulation paper in America.
Nonfiction: "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" by Oliver Wendell Holmes appears as an essay in the New England Magazine. Another such essay will appear next year (seeAtlantic Monthly, 1857).
Philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel dies in the cholera epidemic at Berlin November 14 at age 61, having written, "Peoples and government have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducible from it" (see Schopenhauer, 1841).
Fiction: Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo, who has become depressed over the failure of last year's Paris Revolution and the intimacies that his wife, Adèle, has begun with the poet-critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve; Peau de Chagrin by Honoré de Balzac; The Young Duke by Benjamin Disraeli; Crotchet Castle by Thomas Love Peacock.
Poetry: Autumn Leaves (Les feuilles d'automne) by Victor Hugo; Boris Godunov by Aleksandr Pushkin, whose liberal views have cost him his government post but who will regain his position in the ministry of foreign affairs next year; Legends of New England in Prose and Verse by New England Weekly Review editor John Greenleaf Whittier, 23; "To Helen" by Edgar Allan Poe: "Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,/ Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home/ To the glory that was Greece/ And the grandeur that was Rome."
Painting: Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows by John Constable; Cottage and Mill by a Torrent by French painter Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, 37; Le 28 Juillet 1830 by Eugène Delacroix; Dancing on the Barn Floor by William Sidney Mount.
The Barbizon school of French painters holds its first exhibition at Paris. The painters take their name from a village near Fontainebleau, their rural genre scenes are based on direct observation of nature, and they will soon be joined by Théodore Rousseau, now 19.
Theater: Hero and Leander (Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen) by Franz Grillparzer 4/5 at Vienna's Burgtheater; The Gladiator by New Castle, Delaware-born playwright Robert Montgomery Bird, 25, 9/26 at New York's Park Theater, with Edwin Forrest as Spartacus.
Playwright Friedrich von Klinger dies at Dorpat, Estonia, March 9 at age 79 (most of his plays were published but never produced); actress Sarah Siddons dies at London June 8 at age 74.
Opera: La Sonnambula 3/6 at Milan's Teatro Carano, with Giuditta Pasta creating the role of Amina, Romano-born tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini, 36, music by Vincenzo Bellini; Robert le Diable 11/21 at the Academie Royale de Musique, Paris, with music by German-born composer Giacomo Meyerbeer (Jakob Liebmann Beer), 40. Meyerbeer's work establishes French grand opera style with spectacular scenic effects, florid arias designed to show off the virtuosity of the singers, dramatic recitative, and romantic plot material; Norma 12/26 at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, with Giuditta Pasta in the title role and soprano Giulia Grisi, 20, younger sister of Giuditta, music by Bellini.
Violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini, now 48, winds up a European tour March 9 with a gala recital at Paris, tickets cost twice their normal price, and those who attend marvel at Paganini's genius (see 1801); he leaves for London April 28, but English critics call him selfish and arrogant, some say he is in league with the devil, a premium-priced recital scheduled for June 1 is canceled, but he appears June 3 at the King's Theatre (tickets are sold at normal prices), and the critics are unstinting in their praise. Accompanied by his illegitimate 5-year-old son Achillino, Paganini will continue to travel constantly for the next 3 years despite declining health, giving recitals to sold-out houses and making so much money that he will be able to acquire an estate outside Parma (see 1834).
First performances: Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor by Felix Mendelssohn 10/17 at Munich.
Architect James Hoban dies at Washington, D.C., December 8 at age 69 (approximate).
The McCormick reaper demonstrated by Virginia farmer Cyrus (Hall) McCormick, 22, enables one man to do the work of five. Young McCormick's father tills some 1,200 acres near Lexington with nine slaves and 18 horses; the crude but effective horse-drawn reaper is so devised that the horse is hitched alongside it rather than behind as in the case of the 1826 Bell reaper. The reaper's knife vibrates in a line at right angles to the direction in which the machine is moving, a divider moves ahead to separate a swath from the field and turn the grain toward the blade, and a row of mechanical fingers ahead of the blade holds the straw straight to be cut. Severed stalks are deposited neatly on a platform, and the reaper permits horsepower to replace human power (see 1834; Hussey, 1833). Growing and harvesting a bushel of U.S. wheat takes 3 man-hours of work, a figure that will begin to drop through use of the McCormick reaper.
The English biscuit firm Carr's of Carlisle is founded by baker Jonathan Dodgson Carr.
Gorham table silver is introduced by Gorham and Webster Company of Providence, Rhode Island, headed by local jeweler-silversmith Jabez Gorham, 39. Spoons, forks, and other items are hand forged and hand fabricated so that two men can produce only two dozen pieces per day.
The U.S. population reaches 13 million; Britain has 12.2 million, Ireland 7.7 million.
Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question by Robert Dale Owen is published at New York. Son of the English socialist factory owner, Owen tries to popularize contraceptive measures more effective than the widely employed coitus interruptus method. He favors using a small, damp sponge tied to a ribbon, because it gives the woman some control, but warns that it is not always effective. French women douche or use a bidet in addition to the sponge (but see Edmonds, Knowlton, 1832).
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