1834
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The U.S. Senate votes March 28 to censure President Jackson, who vetoed a bill in 1832 rechartering the Second Bank of the United States and last year ordered the removal of government funds from that corrupt institution. He claimed executive privilege late last year in refusing to cooperate with a Senate inquiry that was led by Henry Clay; former president John Quincy Adams has noted in his diary that the president's messages to Congress have contained "a tone of insolence and insult," Sen. Clay's censure resolution passes the Senate by a vote of 28 to 18, but Jackson enters a formal protest April 15, and the resolution will be expunged from the Senate journal in January 1837.
Former British prime minister William Wyndham Grenville, Baron Granville, dies at Dropmore Lodge, Buckinghamshire, January 12 at age 74. A paralytic stroke ended his political career in 1823, but he has been chancellor of Oxford University since 1810 and remains such at his death. He is succeeded briefly by William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, 54, who will serve longer beginning next year.
Spain's Carlist civil war gains intensity as Don Carlos claims the throne of his niece Isabella II (see 1833). The pretender faces opposition from Portugal, Britain, France, and supporters of Isabella, who form a quadruple alliance. London suspends the Foreign Enlistment Act, enabling Sir George de Lacy Evans, 47, who served in the Peninsular campaign and in the War of 1812, to form a foreign legion that will support Isabella, but the Carlist army led by Tomás de Zumalacárregui y de Imaz uses brutal means to counter the brutality of his enemy (see 1835).
Portugal's 6-year civil war ends May 26 with the defeat of Dom Miguel, who leaves the country (see 1828). Pedro IV (Pedro I of Brazil) dies at Lisbon August 24 at age 35.
Brazil has civil war in Maranhão and Mato Grosso provinces (see 1833). The constitution adopted 10 years ago is amended with an Acto Adicional that abolishes some of its more extreme authoritarian and centralist aspects, eliminating the reactionary Council of State and creating a single regent in place of the three-man regency that ruled for the unpopular emperor Pedro I during his minority. The amendment provides for provincial legislatures and makes other reforms, but opposition to the central government continues (see slave revolt, 1835).
Giuseppe Mazzini founds the Young Europe movement, expanding his Young Italy movement of 1832 by organizing Young Germany, Young Poland, and similar groups from headquarters at London, but peasants in Savoy thwart his efforts to gain control there (see 1831; 1844).
Persia's Fath Ali Shah dies at Isfahan October 20 at age 63 after a 37-year reign in which he subdued a rebellion in Khorasan but has depended on British subsidies and lost Persian Armenia and the Caucasus to Russia. He is succeeded by Hajji Mirza Aghasi, who will reign until 1848.
French forces in Algeria yield the entire interior region extending south from Oran to resistance leader Abdul-Qadir (Abdukader) under terms of the Desmichels Treaty (see 1832). Given the title commander of the believers, the new emir uses the treaty as an excuse to impose his authority on all the tribes of the Chelif, occupies Miliana, takes Médéa, and defeats General Camille Trézel at Macta (see 1836).
Sikh forces from the Punjab take Peshawar May 6. Their ruler Ranjit Singh has led the assault on the Muslim city.
South Africa has a Kaffir War as Xhosa tribesmen invade eastern regions in irritation at the steady encroachment of Dutch cattlemen and farmers. The Xhosa (called kaffir by the Dutch, who use it in the same sense that some Americans use the word nigger) are driven back, but only with difficulty (see 1877; Great Trek, 1835).
Some 35,000 slaves go free in South Africa August 1 as slavery is abolished throughout the British Empire amid complaints about the inadequacy of compensation to former slaveholders (see 1833). Former slaves in many parts of the empire remain tied to their old masters through a system of wage advances and company stores that induce indebtedness and dependency.
Unskilled U.S. workers demonstrate against abolitionists in fear that they will be displaced by black freedmen. Rioters break up a New York antislavery society meeting at the Chatham Street Chapel July 4, protesting the presence of some blacks in the audience. The rioting continues for more than a week, and churches and houses are destroyed.
Anti-abolitionists at Philadelphia destroy the homes of 40 blacks in October.
A Department of Indian Affairs established by Congress June 30 sets up Indian territory west of the Mississippi. Florida Seminole are ordered to move west October 28 in accordance with the treaty signed May 9, 1832 (see Osceola, 1835).
South Australia is founded by followers of British colonial theorist Edward Gibbon Wakefield, 38, who obtain a charter August 2 for their South Australia Association with support from the duke of Wellington and historian George Grote, 38. The first settlers will be landed in 1836 at Kangaroo Island.
The Australian colony that will be called Victoria is settled for the first time by West Australia rancher Edward Henty and his brothers at Portland Bay (see Batman, 1835).
Toronto is incorporated under that name (see 1793). Its population has risen to about 9,000, up from 720 in 1816.
Explorer Richard L. Lander goes up the Niger River on a trading expedition, tribesmen attack his canoe, and they inflict wounds from which he succumbs on the island of Fernando Po February 6 at age 29.
Antarctic explorer-seal hunter James Weddell dies at London September 9 at age 47.
Quebec-born missionary and pioneer Jason Lee, 31, reaches the 9-year-old Hudson's Bay Company outpost at Fort Vancouver in September with the first U.S. settlers to arrive in the Oregon region and receives a hearty welcome from John McLoughlin, who comes under criticism from his superiors for extending aid to the newcomers. Lee and his three assistants have been joined by an expedition led by former Boston ice harvester Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, now 32, and together they establish a settlement in Flathead country in the Willamette Valley. McLoughlin discourages the arrivals from settling north of the Columbia River.
Britain's new Grand National Consolidated Trades Union pledges its members to strike for an 8-hour day. Organized in January by Robert Owen and John Doherty, 36, the union has half a million members within a few weeks, but its avowed purpose of fomenting a general strike alarms the government; six workers led by George Loveless have formed a lodge at Tolpuddle outside Dorchester and are sentenced in March to be transported to New South Wales or Tasmania for 7 years. Their conviction produces demonstrations throughout the country, physician Thomas Wakley has been elected to Parliament and makes his maiden speech in their defense, but Prime Minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, refuses to receive a petition of protest bearing 250,000 signatures; a series of strikes meets with no success; Owen is intimidated; and the Grand National dissolves in October, but the "Tolpuddle martyrs" will be brought home in 1836 to appease the public outcry.
Workers along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal that was started in 1828 stage a riot January 29. President Jackson orders Secretary of War Lewis Cass, 51, to send in the army, using federal troops for the first time in a U.S. labor conflict.
Women cotton-mill workers organize a strike at Lowell, Massachusetts, in February after the owners announce a 15 percent wage cut; some 800 women at Dover, New Hampshire, join the walk-out (see 1828).
New York's General Trades Union organizes a National Trades Union that takes in all crafts.
A new British Poor Law enacted by the reformed Parliament August 14 limits the payment of charitable doles to sick and aged paupers (see 1832). The new law establishes oppressive workhouses, where the sexes are segregated to discourage procreation (but even elderly couples are separated) and where able-bodied paupers are put to work (no able-bodied man may receive help unless he enters a workhouse), and the system that has provided a dole to supplement low wages is ended. The disappointment felt by working-class Britons at being denied voting rights 2 years ago in the Reform Act turns to anger (see Chartist Movement, 1839).
English textile manufacturer Titus Salt, 30, expands the wool-stapling factory at Bradford that he took over from his father, Daniel, last year and will be the first in the country to spin alpaca wool for mohair worsted. By next year he will be the milltown's largest employer, but Bradford has gained the dubious reputation of being the most polluted town in the country, and Salt will become increasingly concerned about the health of his employees. The air they breath is contaminated by black, sulfurous chimney smoke; the water they drink comes from the Aire River, whose sewage content leads to serious outbreaks of cholera and typhoid fever, only 30 percent of their children reach age 15, and average life expectancy is just over 18 (see 1842).
John Jacob Astor sells his fur interests as pelts threaten to become scarce. Beaver pelts have sold for $6 apiece in peak years, enabling trappers to make $1,000 per season, but the fur companies have charged enormous prices for supplies hauled from St. Louis to summer rendezvous points, so while the beaver has been nearly exterminated, none of the trappers has made a fortune. Astor has monopolized the upper Missouri Valley fur trade, made himself the richest man in America, and will now devote his efforts to administering his fortune, much of which he will invest in New York real estate (see Juneau, 1818; Astor House, 1836).
Lowell, Massachusetts, has six corporations operating 19 mills, with 4,000 looms and more than 100,000 spindles (see 1814).
Loom inventor Joseph-Marie Jacquard dies at Oullins August 7 at age 82, having been awarded a gold medal and the Cross of the Légion d'Honneur (see calculating machine, 1842); gunpowder manufacturer Eleuthère Irènée du Pont collapses on a trip to Philadelphia and dies of cholera October 31 at age 63 (his associate Antoine Bidermann will run the company for the next 3 years, after which his French-born eldest son, Alfred Victor du Pont, now 36, will take over; see 1850).
President Jackson sends a message to Congress in December suggesting reprisals on French property if France does not make good on the agreement made in July 1831 to pay U.S. claims (see 1833). News of the message raises alarms at Paris, but U.S. Minister to Frence Edward Livingston exerts further pressure and the Chamber of Deputies will vote in April of next year to appropriate the necessary funds.
A new law of electricity formulated by Russian physicist Heinrich Emil Lenz, 30, states that the direction of an electric current induced in a circuit by moving it in a magnetic field produces an effect tending to oppose the circuit's motion.
Vermont blacksmith Thomas Davenport, 32, at Brandon constructs the first successful electric motor. He heard in the spring of last year that the Penfield & Hammond Iron Works across Lake Champlain at Crown Point, New York, was using a new method for separating crushed ore, using magnetized spikes mounted on a rotating wooden drum to attract the millings with highest iron content (see Joseph Henry, 1831). He traveled 25 miles to witness this first use of electricity for commercial purposes, performed experiments, and has come up with a motor powered by a galvanic battery: two spokes of its single wheel are electromagnets connected to a commutator switch, the wheel is located between two stationary electromagnets, and when current is applied it rotates rapidly. Davenport will use a direct-current (DC) electric motor next year to propel a small car around a circular track, receive a patent in 1837 for "Improvements in propelling machinery by magnetism and electromagnetism," establish a workshop at New York, publish a short-lived journal that he will produce on a printing press operated by an electric motor of his own invention, but fail to obtain enough financial backing to persevere.
The Delaware and Raritan Canal opens between New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Bordentown, Pennsylvania. The 43-mile canal will be extended 21 miles to Trenton on the Delaware River and will be the state's chief transportation corridor. Mule-drawn barges will be hauling 1.2 million tons of coal and 12 million board-feet of lumber per year from Philadelphia to New York by 1860, and the canal will remain in operation until 1933 (see Morris Canal, 1831). Engineer Canvass White has worked to build the new canal but suffers a physical collapse, goes to St. Augustine, Florida, to recover, and dies there December 18 at age 44.
The Portage Railroad opens to connect Philadelphia with Pittsburgh via rail and canal.
The New York and Harlem Railroad of 1832 extends its horsecar route up Fourth Avenue to 84th Street (see 1837).
Ireland's first railway line opens between Dublin and Kingston (Dun Laoghaire). It will be extended to Dalkey, Killiny, and Bray.
London gets its first hansom cabs. The two-wheeled, two-passenger safety cabs have been patented by architect Joseph Aloysius Hansom, 31, who last year designed the Birmingham town hall. The driver occupies an elevated seat outside the cabs that Londoners call gondolas.
London's Baring Brothers acquires two ships and enters the China trade with the Alexander Baring and the Falcon. The merchant banking house competes with the East India Company (see commerce, 1833).
Weekly steamboat service begins between Buffalo and Fort Dearborn (see 1832; Chicago, 1830; railroad, 1852).
Cornelius van Derbilt begins to multiply the $500,000 he has amassed in the steamboat trade (see 1829; 1850).
Civil engineer Thomas Telford dies at London September 2 at age 77, having built bridges that will survive into the 21st century (he has also designed Sweden's Göta Canal, London's St. Katharine Docks, and numerous British canals and roads).
Chemist-physicist Michael Faraday discovers that it takes 96,500 coulombs (one faraday) of electricity to plate out one gram atom of a monovalent element (see energy, 1831). It will be found that dividing this charge by the charge of one electron will yield the number of electrons involved, i.e. Avogadro's number (see 1811; electron, 1917).
Recherches sur les poissons fossiles by Swiss naturalist (Jean) Louis (Rodolphe) Agassiz, 27, is a five-volume work based on studies of glacial phenomena in the Alps. Agassiz was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel 2 years ago.
A partial skeleton unearthed at Maidstone, near Brighton, England, corresponds to the fossil Iguanadon fragments from Tilgate Forest discovered 9 years ago by Gideon A. Mantell (see 1832). Giving paleontologists a better idea of what prehistoric dinosaurs may have looked like, it will become known as the Maidstone Iguanodon. Many such fossil bones will turn up over the course of the next few years in Britain and on the Continent and will be given names such as Thecodontosaurus, Palaeosaurus, and Cetiosaurus (see Owen, 1841).
The Spanish Inquisition instituted in the 13th century is finally abolished (see 1492; 1820).
Sufi Muslims in Dagestan assassinate their second imam (political-religious leader) Gamzat Bek, who has ruled since 1832. They elect in his place the fiery leader Shamil, 37, who has acquired a reputation as a logician and orator; he establishes an independent state, reorganizes and enlarges Chechen and Dagestan forces, and will raid Russian positions for the next 25 years as he works to frustrate St. Petersburg's efforts to control the Caucasus (see 1838).
Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher delivers his last sermon February 2, gives his last lecture February 6, and dies of a lung inflammation at Berlin February 12 at age 65; Presbyterian minister Robert Morrison dies at Guangzhou (Canton) August 1 at age 52, having pioneered Protestant missionary work in China. He has baptized only 10 converts in his 27 years in the country, but all will prove faithful, and the new Morrison Education Society will open a school for Chinese youth at Macao in 1838 (it will move to Hong Kong in 1842).
Tulane University has its beginnings at New Orleans. Local merchant Paul Tulane, 33, opened a dry-goods and clothing store 12 years ago, he will make large gifts to the school beginning in 1882, and it will take the name Tulane in 1884.
The braille system of raised point writing devised by French educator Louis Braille, 25, will gain acceptance for use with virtually every language throughout the world (see Haüy, 1784; Barbier, 1819). Braille has been blind since age 3 and invented the system 10 years ago while studying at the National Institute for Blind Children (Institution National des Jeunes Aveugles) at Paris; he has been teaching fellow sightless people since 1828, and his system can be used for music as well as for words. It consists of a code of 63 characters, each made up of one to six raised dots arranged in a six-position cell, or matrix, that are embossed in lines on paper and can be read by passing one's fingers lightly over the page, moving from left to right (a braille writer moves from right to left, and the sheet is then turned over) (see 1852).
An electromagnetic telegraph built at Göttingen by mathematician Karl F. Gauss with German electrodynamics pioneer Wilhelm Weber, 29, is the first of its kind (see Morse, 1832; 1837).
The New Yorker Staats-Zeitung begins publication at New York. The German-language weekly will become a daily in 1849.
Sarah Josepha Hale's 6-year-old Ladies' Magazine renames itself American Ladies Magazine; it will be merged into Godey's Lady's Book in 1837.
Nonfiction: Abälard und Heloise by Ludwig Feuerbach.
Fiction: Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac; The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer, who was elected to Parliament in 1831 and is an earnest reformer; Jacques by George Sand.
Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge dies at London July 25 at age 61.
Essayist-children's author Charles Lamb dies at Edmonton, Middlesex, December 27 at age 59.
Painting: Algerian Women at Home by Eugène Delacroix; The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian by Jean Ingres; The Bright Cloud by Samuel Palmer.
The Munich Glyptothek sculpture gallery is completed by Leo von Klenze, 50.
London's National Gallery is founded by architect William Wilkins, 56.
Theater: A Dream is Life (Der Traum ein Leben) by Franz Grillparzer 10/4 at Vienna's Burgtheater.
Fanny Kemble retires from the stage at age 24 after her June marriage to Pierce Butler, a Philadelphian who owns a rice plantation with 700 slaves on Butler's Island, Georgia, in the Altamaha Delta (but see 1846).
Opera: Grace Malibran makes her La Scala debut 5/15 singing the title role of the 1831 Bellini opera Norma.
Ballet: La Tempête 9/14 at the Théâtre de l'Academie Royale, Paris, with Viennese ballerina Fanny Elssler, 25, who has studied under Auguste Vestris, choreography by Jean Co-alli, music by M. Schneitzhoeffer; ballerina Marie Taglione, now 29, adopts the bell-like skirt (worn in Sylphide) that will become standard for classical dancers worldwide. She has popularized dancing en pointe and will initiate the system of ballet examination at the Paris Opéra.
Violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini gives a "farewell" recital at London's Victoria Theatre 6/17 but many of the seats go unfilled (see 1831).
First performances: Harold in Italy Symphony by Hector Berlioz 11/23 at the Paris Conservatoire. Berlioz has based the work on the poem "Childe Harold" of 1818 by the late Lord Byron.
Hymn: "Jesus, Lover of my Soul" by Simeon Butler Marsh, verses by the late Methodist leader Charles Wesley.
Popular song: "Zip Coon" ("Turkey in the Straw") is published anonymously. Bob Farrel and George Washington Dixon will claim authorship.
Chantilly racetrack opens 26 miles north of Paris.
New York's first Fifth Avenue mansion goes up at the northeast corner of 9th Street for landowner's son Henry Brevoort Jr., who has profited in Wall Street from investments based on real estate sales.
Fire destroys London's Houses of Parliament and part of the city October 16. A major reconstruction program begins (see Buckingham Palace, 1837; Trafalgar Square, 1843; Big Ben, 1858).
Sardines are canned for the first time in Europe (see first U.S. sardine cannery, 1876).
British wheat prices fall to £10 per cwt, down from £30 in 1812.
Cyrus McCormick receives a patent for his reaper of 1831 and Obed Hussey begins manufacturing his reaper (see 1833; 1840).
Some 28 million acres of U.S. public lands will be offered for sale this year and next. As Americans move west of the Appalachians to take up the new lands, European immigrants will supplant them.
Gas refrigeration has its beginnings in a compression machine invented in England by inventor Jacob Perkins of 1790 nail-cutter fame, who has lived abroad for years. Now 58, Perkins distills rubber to create a volatile liquid that is allowed to evaporate by absorbing heat from its surroundings. When the vapor is compressed it turns back to liquid, giving off heat, and by alternately compressing and expanding Perkins extracts heat from the region of expansion until he has cooled water to the point that it freezes (see Faraday, 1823; Gorrie, 1842; Linde, 1873).
English political economist Thomas R. Malthus dies at Haileybury December 23 at age 68, having had the satisfaction of seeing Parliament enact a new Poor Law, partly as a result of his Essay on Population, which has gone through many revised editions since 1798. Father of three (one died at age 17), Malthus has been attacked for "having the impudence to marry after preaching against the evils of a family." He has been viciously caricatured by Charles Dickens, vilified by the late essayist William Hazlitt, and accused of defending war, plagues, slavery, and infanticide.
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