1850
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An "omnibus bill" introduced January 29 by Sen. Henry Clay contains compromise resolutions designed to reduce the growing polarity between North and South (see human rights [Wilmot Proviso], 1846). California is to be admitted to the Union as a free state, territorial governments are to be set up in the rest of the territory acquired from Mexico with no congressional stipulation as to slavery in the territory, Texas is to give up her claim to part of the New Mexico Territory in return for federal assumption of the Texas state debt, slave trading is to be abolished in the District of Columbia (whose slave markets have rankled abolitionist sensibilities), and a stronger fugitive slave law is to be enacted. Tennessee-born Congressman Lynn Boyd, 49, (D. Ky.) leads the fight for House approval of the Compromise.
Sen. John C. Calhoun (D. S.C.) attacks the Clay compromise March 4 in his "Speech on the Slavery Question," and Daniel Webster supports Clay March 7 in his speech "For the Union and Constitution." Calhoun dies at Washington, D.C., March 31 at age 68, but delegates from nine Southern states gather at Nashville, Tennessee, June 3 in response to last year's call by the Mississippi Convention to discuss a general movement of secession. Extremist Robert Barnwell Rhett pushes for secession, but moderate Whigs and Democrats control the Nashville Convention, and they vote in June to adopt 28 resolutions defending slavery and the right of all Americans to migrate to the Western territories. The delegates agree to extend the Missouri Compromise line west to the Pacific.
President Taylor dies of acute gastroenteritis at Washington, D.C., July 9 at age 65 after 16 months in office (he grew ill after downing large quantities of iced cherries and ice milk at a hot Fourth of July celebration that included laying the cornerstone for a Washington Monument). Taylor's cabinet resigns en masse, and his vice president Millard Fillmore, 50, moves into the White House.
Congress votes in September to approve the Compromise of 1850, California enters the Union September 9 as the 31st state, and the balance of the Mexican cession is divided at the 37th parallel into the territories of New Mexico and Utah. Texas receives $10 million for relinquishing her claims to part of the New Mexico Territory.
The Nashville Convention reconvenes for a second session from November 11 to 18 and rejects the Compromise of 1850, calling upon the South to secede, but this time there are fewer delegates, and they have little impact on their fellow Southerners, most of whom are content to let the matter ride.
The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty signed April 19 regulates U.S. and British interests in Central America; negotiated between Delaware-born Secretary of State John Middleton Clayton, 54, and London-born British ambassador to the United States Henry Lytton Bulwer, 49, it makes special reference to a proposed canal across Nicaragua (see 1889). The treaty's concessions to Britain make it unpopular in America but it receives ratification in both countries (see Walker, 1856).
Former Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer dies in exile at Paris July 9 at age 74; South American independence leader José de San Martín in exile at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, August 17 at age 72; Uruguayan revolutionary leader José Gervasio Artigas in exile at Ibiray, near Asuncíon, Paraguay, September 23 at age 86.
The Erfurt Union Parliament (Erfurter Unionsparlement) convened by Prussia from March 10 to April 29 tries to form a union of German states under the leadership of Prussia and Austria. Friedrich Wilhelm IV's saber-rattling chief minister Joseph (Maria) von Radowitz, 53, has proposed the union with a view to creating a stronger force against France, and has gained initial approval from Hanover and Saxony, but Vienna considers Prussia an upstart, Austria opposes the plan, and it fails to gain support from the conservative Prussian cabinet; Bavaria and Württemberg do not send representatives, Austria threatens to invade Hesse-Kassel, and Friedrich Wilhelm is forced to replace Radowitz with the more moderate Otto von Manteufel, who is more partial to Austria. Humiliated, Prussia finally renounces the plan November 29 as von Manteufel signs the Punctuation of Olmütz, agreeing to abandon the Erfurt Unin and recognize Austrian superiority within the German Confederation (see Convention of Badgastein, 1865).
A French electoral law enacted May 31 abolishes universal suffrage by requiring that a voter be resident in one place for at least 3 years as attested by a tax receipt or employer's affidavit. The law is directed at radical working men who tend to be migratory. French clubs and public meetings are forbidden June 9, Republican civil servants are dismissed at the slightest provocation, homes of Republicans are searched, and Republican newspapers are hit with fines and lawsuits (see 1851).
The Don Pacifico affair brings Britain and Greece close to war. David Pacifico, 66, is a British subject who served as Portuguese consul general at Athens from 1837 to 1842 and has held substantial claims against the Greek government. An anti-Semitic mob burned his house at Athens in December of last year, the British foreign secretary Henry J. Temple, Viscount Palmerston, now 66, has ordered a squadron to the Piraeus to force a settlement of the Pacifico claims and others, the British embargo Greek vessels in the Piraeus and then seize some Greek ships in January, the Greeks comply with British demands April 26 under pressure, and Palmerston defends his action June 29 in a parliamentary speech that appeals to British nationalism with the phrase "civis Romanus sum."
Former prime minister Sir Robert Peel dies at his London home July 2 at age 62, having sustained fatal injuries when he was thrown from his horse on London's Constitution Hill, near Green Park, June 29.
Prussia agrees July 2 to withdraw from Schleswig and Holstein under terms of a treaty signed with Denmark at Berlin (see 1848); Denmark obtains a guarantee of her territorial integrity in August at a London conference to which the great powers and Sweden have sent delegates (but see 1863).
The Battle of Chilianwallah in northwestern Lahore Province January 13 pits 20,000 British and Indian troops against 40,000 Sikhs in the Second Sikh War (see 1849). General Hugh Gough, 1st Viscount Gough, tries to get the jump on the Sikhs before they can be reinforced, but the orders of a superannuated East India Company general are misunderstood, a cavalry brigade withdraws as a result, and savage infantry combat in dense jungle ends with a withdrawal by the British after they have sustained 2,746 casualties, killed and wounded (3,894 Sikhs are killed or wounded). Now 69, Lord Gough claims to have defeated the Sikhs, but his withdrawal allows them to recapture 40 guns. He goes on to defeat a 60,000-man Sikh and Afghan army decisively at Gujerat February 21, losing only 92 killed and 682 wounded (the Sikhs and Afghans lose more than 2,000 killed and wounded), but the public outcry against his actions at Chilianwallah leads to his being replaced by General Sir Charles J. Napier.
The House of Commons charges Sir James Brooke with having received "head money" and otherwise abusing his power in Borneo (see 1841). Sir James returns to England to defend himself, a royal commission at Singapore will rule the charges "not proven," and Brooke's nephew Charles Anthoni Johnson will join him in 1852 (see 1868).
China's sixth Qing (Manchu) emperor Daoguang (Tao-kuang) dies at his native Beijing (Peking) February 25 at age 67 after a 29½-year reign in which the loss of the Opium War to Britain has exacerbated discontent in the country (see Treaty of Nanjing, 1842). Daoguang is succeeded by his 18-year-old son, who will reign until 1861 as Xianfeng (Hsien-feng), but rebellion begins in July when government troops in southern China attack God Worshipers led by Kwangsi district schoolmaster and mystic Hong Xiuquan (Hung Hsiu-chuan), 38. He professes to believe himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ, calls himself Tin-wang (Heavenly Prince), and will call his dynasty Taiping (Great Peace). The imperial court appoints Lin Zexu as commissioner in October to deal with the God Worshipers, but Lin dies November 22; helped by the strategist Yang Xiuqing, Hong leads southern peasants against the Manchu government in a civil war that will take 20 to 30 million lives in the next 14 years (see 1851).
Denmark sells her Gold Coast (Ghana) territories to Britain and ends her efforts at African colonization.
The Australian Colonies Government Act passed by Parliament in August provides for self-government by New South Wales and South Australia (see Victoria, 1851).
Britain's purchase of Danish ports on the Gold Coast (Ghana) and the establishment of a separate administration for the colony effectively stops the slave trade there, but a recent civil war among the Yoruba has increased the supply of slaves, and the trade has increased in nearby Dahomey and Lagos. British idealists propose giving up forcible means to enforce the ban on slave trading that has existed since 1807 and relying rather on moral suasion (see 1824). The Royal Navy has found slave ships elusive, the United States has denied the British permission to search her ships (see 1861), but Prime Minister Lord John Russell preserves the West African Squadron, arguing that "the high, the moral, and the Christian character of this nation is the main source and secret of its strength."
New Granada enacts legislation that frees the nation's 25,000 slaves, ends communal ownership of Indian lands, redirects tax revenues from the central to local governments, eliminates certain taxes and monopolies held by the central government, but legalizes and even encourages redistribution of the land in ways that actually strengthen the position of rich landowners, merchants, and the professional class vis-á-vis artisans, peasants, and poor Indians (who represent one-third of the nation's 2 million people and are induced to give up their small plots of land and small degree of independence). Ownership of the Indian lands will soon be concentrated in a few private hands, the new owners will use them to graze cattle, the Indians will become tenants, and the "reforms" of 1850 will sow the seeds of perennial dissension.
Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Court rules in March that racial segregation in Boston's public school does not create constitutional inequalities (Roberts v. City of Boston; see education, 1848). Lawyer Charles Sumner has championed the cause of Sarah Roberts, but although Shaw is personally opposed to slavery he sees no harm in segregation; his "separate but equal" doctrine will later be applied on a nationwide basis (seePlessy v. Ferguson, 1896).
A new Fugitive Slave Act passed by Congress September 18 strengthens the 1793 law by substituting federal jurisdiction for state jurisdiction and permitting a slaveowner to deputize others to help him in his pursuit of his legal property (see Supreme Court ruling, 1842). Slave trading is abolished in the District of Columbia September 20 but slavery will continue there until April 1862. A deputy U.S. marshal at New York arrests New York freedman James Hamlet as a fugitive from Baltimore in the first recorded action under the new Fugitive Slave Act, but the arrest arouses so much public indignation that Hamlet is redeemed and released. The Chicago City Council moves October 21 not to sustain the new act; a mass meeting at New York October 30 resolves that the act should be sustained, but many Northeners find it abhorrent that they should be required to assist in the apprehension of runaway slaves and even black freedmen (see Boston, Syracuse, 1851; Wisconsin, 1854).
The California legislature enacts a law barring nonwhites from testifying as witnesses in court cases; the state is trying to maintain white supremacy in the gold fields, the legislature has nearly approved a measure barring black immigration, and its new law will stand until 1863.
Representatives of seven tribes assemble December 10 in a council organized by Cherokee scout Jesse Chisholm on the San Saba River in what later will be Oklahoma Territory (see 1846). Chisholm has recovered white captives held by the tribesmen and will continue to do so on trading trips.
The first National Convention for Women's Rights opens October 23 in Brinley Hall at Worcester, Massachusetts, largely at the inspiration of Lucy Stone, now 33, who graduated from Oberlin College 3 years ago and will organize annual conventions for years to come (see 1848; Bloomer, 1851). Ernestine Rose is one of the speakers and declaims, "Who has ever heard of the Pilgrim Mothers? Did they not endure all—as the Pilgrim Fathers did?"
Congress abolishes flogging in the U.S. Navy.
The city of Los Angeles is incorporated April 4 and designated the seat of Los Angeles County, but although the adobe cowtown has prospered in the wake of the Gold Rush it gets only 11 inches of rainfall per year and the lack of water limits its growth (see environment [pipeline], 1913).
A U.S. Navy expedition travels to the Arctic under the command of Lieut. E. J. De Haven to seek traces of Sir John Franklin, the British Arctic explorer who disappeared 5 years ago in the Lancaster Sound region while searching for a Northwest Passage (see 1847). Franklin's widow organized a relief force that found a record of his expedition up to April 1848 with proof that he did discover a Northwest Passage. De Haven's party is financed by New Bedford-born New York merchant Henry Grinnell, 51, and includes Philadelphia-born physician Elisha Kent Kane, 30, but it meets with no success (see 1853; Rae, 1851).
Scottish explorer Edward J. (John) Eyre, 25, arrives at Albany in Western Australia July 7 after a year-long journey across the Nullarbor Plain with his Aborigine companion Wylie. Eyre left home for Australia at age 17, has discovered a lake that will be named after him, and is the first white man to cross the parched plain (he has been given up for dead) (see human rights, 1865).
Britain enters a "Golden Age" of prosperity as she embraces free trade principles that remove tariffs on foodstuffs (see Corn Law repeal, 1846). Self-sufficient in food until now and generally even a food exporter, Britain becomes a net food importer and depends on her manufacturing industry to provide the foreign exchange needed to feed her people. Food prices will rise far less swiftly than other prices and British wage increases will more than keep pace with price increases.
Britain's Amalgamated Society of Engineers organizes workers using novel principles that include large contributions from members, benefits to members, and vigorous pursuit of measures to improve wages and working conditions through direct action and collective bargaining.
American Express Co. is created March 18 by a merger of the 6-year-old Wells & Co., Livingston Fargo & Co., and the firm of Butterfield, Wasson & Co. founded last year by upstate New York entrepreneur John Butterfield, now 48 (see Wells Fargo, 1852; traveler's cheques, 1891; communications [Overland Mail], 1857).
Irish entrepreneur William Russell Grace, 18, makes his way to Callao, Peru, after 2 years at sea and 2 more with a Liverpool ship chandlery. Grace joins a Callao chandlery that he and his brother will take over within a few years (see 1865; Grace Line, 1855).
The 209-ton two-masted Baltimore-built clipper brig Frolic breaks up after running aground on a reef off the California coast the night of July 25. Owned by the 10-year-old Boston firm Augustine Heard and well insured, she was built 5 years ago to carry opium from Bombay (Mumbai) to Guangzhou (Canton), but steamships have largely replaced sailing ships for the Chinese opium trade (they are more reliable, cheaper to insure, and can carry more cargo). Heard has diverted the Frolic to California, where a new market for household goods has opened up, and she has come 6,000 miles from China in 44 days with a cargo that included a prefabricated house with oyster-shell windows.
The discovery of gold July 25 on the Oregon Territory's Rogue River brings an extension of the gold rush on the Pacific Coast.
Delaware-born gunpowder manufacturer Henry du Pont, 38, takes over management of E. I. du Pont de Nemours from his brother Alfred Victor, who has run it since 1837 and run up debts totaling $500,000 (see 1834). A West Point graduate, Henry will return the company to profitability (see 1857).
Economist Frédéric Bastiat dies of tuberculosis at Rome December 24 at age 49, having fulminated against protectionism and Ricardian economics in his recent essay "La Loi" ("The Law"): "The state," he has written, "is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else."
The United States uses energy at a rate of 7,091 pounds of coal per capita, a rate that many technologically advanced nations will not attain for more than 120 years, but 91 percent of U.S. energy comes from wood, and lighting is supplied largely by whale oil and natural gas (see petroleum, 1859; incandescent bulb, 1879).
Inventor William G. Armstrong devises an hydraulic accumulator consisting of a large water-filled cylinder with a piston that can raise water pressure to 600 pounds per square inch inside the cylinder and inside pipes that supply power to capstans, hoists, dock gates, and turntables (see 1847). Armstrong will improve ordnance for the British Army; the breech-loading gun that he invents will be the prototype of all modern artillery, and his shipyard will build heavily armored Elswick cruisers for the Royal Navy (see politics, 1860).
Thomas F. Waghorn dies at his London house in Islington January 7 at age 49, having pioneered overland travel across Egypt to shorten the journey between Britain and India (see P & O, 1841; canal concession, 1854).
The first U.S. clipper ship to be seen at London arrives from Hong Kong after a 97-day voyage (seeSea Witch, 1846). The Oriental carries a 1,600-ton cargo of China tea, and her $48,000 profit nearly covers the cost of her construction. British shipbuilders are inspired to copy the Oriental's lines but are handicapped by English rules of taxation that consider length and beam in measuring tonnage while leaving depth untaxed. The short, deep ships built at Aberdeen and on the Clyde do not approach the speed of U.S. clipper ships, whose owners soon abandon the China trade for the more profitable business of transporting gold seekers to California.
Cornelius van Derbilt establishes a shipping line to California via Nicaragua and cuts the prices charged by competitors (see 1834; 1853).
The New York State legislature grants a charter to the Pacific Railroad & Panama Steamship Company established in 1848 and increased now in capitalization from $400,000 to $2 million as demand increases for transport of gold, men, and supplies across the Isthmus of Panama (see 1855).
The S.S. Atlantic goes into transatlantic service for the U.S. Mail Steamship Company, competing with Samuel Cunard's Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. by offering amenities that make Cunard ships seem positively Spartan. Truro, Massachusetts-born shipping magnate Edward Knight Collins, 47, owns the 2,856-ton 200-passenger paddle-wheeler, 282 feet in length overall, that leaves New York April 27, damages her side-wheels on ice off Sandy Hook, but breaks the Royal Mail's speed record on her return voyage, crossing in 10 days, 16 hours, and attracting passengers with accommodations that are far more luxurious than those found on Cunard ships, serving food equal to that found at good restaurants (see 1852).
Rio Grande steamboat operator Richard King, 25, and former Navy commander Mifflin Kenedy, 30, receive backing from Texas merchant Charles Stillman to start a steamboat venture that will modernize and monopolize commercial traffic on the Rio Grande (see Santa Gertrudis Creek, 1853).
The Louisville & Nashville Railroad is incorporated March 5 with a charter from the Commonwealth of Kentucky to "build a railroad between Louisville, Ky., and the Tennessee state line in the direction of Nashville" (see 1859).
The Aurora Branch Railroad that will become the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad runs its first train September 2 over a newly-built six-mile line from Batavia, Illinois, to Turner Junction (later West Chicago). The New York State Legislature has outlawed use of wooden rails, directors of the Aurora Branch have acquired 12 miles of such rails at a bargain price from the Buffalo & Niagara Falls Railroad and had them spiked with secondhand strap iron, the Aurora Branch will grow quickly, and by 1854 will have 400 miles of track, all in Illinois (see 1854).
Mexico's first railway opens September 16 with an 11-kilometer line between Veracruz and Molino (see 1873).
A Land Grant Act signed into law by President Fillmore September 20 spurs development of railroads. The Illinois Central Railway receives nearly 2.6 million acres of Illinois land as a gift from Congress and becomes the first U.S. railroad to obtain a land grant. The company will be chartered next year to build lines between Cairo and East Dubuque and between Centralia and Chicago, will become the chief U.S. railroad running north to south, and will sell much of its land to settlers at $5 to $15 per acre.
Land grants to U.S. railroad companies in the next 21 years will cover more territory than France, England, Wales, and Scotland combined. Railroad trackage reaches 9,000 miles, up from little more than 3,000 in 1840; canal mileage reaches 3,600, up from 3,000 in 1840.
English "railway king" George Hudson comes to grief as accusations surface that he has been involved in a giant stock swindle (see 1827). The people of York have subscribed £25,000 to erect a statue to the man who brought the railroad to their city, but a pamphlet by essayist Thomas Carlyle questions the sense of honoring a man who has allegedly recorded accounts for the Eastern Counties Railway with something less than complete honesty and paid dividends out of capital invested by others. Hudson has amassed considerable wealth but now loses it; the statue will not be erected.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal begun in 1828 finally reaches Cumberland, Maryland, which the B&O Railroad reached in 1842. Built at a cost of $22 million, the 184.5-mile canal with its 74 lift locks is obsolete, plans to continue it 180 miles westward to Pittsburgh are abandoned, but it will remain in use until 1924.
Warren, Rhode Island-born machinist and clock maker Joseph R. (Rogers) Brown, 40, perfects and introduces a highly accurate linear and dividing engine that will improve machine-tool production (see Brown and Sharpe, 1853).
A trip hammer devised by Neponsit, Massachusetts, inventor Silas Putnam will be used by the U.S. cavalry to make horseshoe nails.
Boston-born New York shirtmaker Oliver F. (Fisher) Winchester, 39, sets up a New Haven, Connecticut, factory whose success will enable him within 5 years to buy control of the city's Volcanic Repeating Arms Company (see 1849). Winchester patented a new method of shirtmaking in February 1848; he will reorganize the arms company in 1857 under the name New Haven Arms Company (see Smith & Wesson, 1852; Henry lever-action rifle, 1860).
The Singer sewing machine invented by Renselaer County, New York-born actor-mechanic Isaac Merrit Singer, 38, will become the world's largest-selling machine of its kind (see Howe, 1843). A boiler explosion has destroyed Singer's patented wood-carving machine; after watching some Boston mechanics trying to repair a primitive sewing machine, he has been inspired to devise a better one (see 1851).
French archaeologist Auguste (-Ferdinand-François) Mariette, 29, of the Louvre Museum's Egyptian department travels to Egypt to obtain some ancient manuscripts, begins excavating at Sakkara in an area that embraces parts of the burial grounds of ancient Memphis; in the next 4 years he will unearth the Avenue of the Sphinxes and the Sarapeum, a temple containing the tombs of sacred bulls. The Egyptian government will offer Mariette a position as conservator of monuments, he will settle in Egypt in 1858, and he will remain there until his death in 1881, eliminating unauthorized excavations such as those made by the late Giovanni Belzoni before 1820, restricting the sale and export of antiquities, and persuading the Ottoman viceroy to establish a museum at Bulaq, near Cairo.
German mathematical physicist Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius, 28, enunciates the second law of thermodynamics: heat cannot by itself pass from a colder body to a warmer body but only from a warmer body to a colder body: an outside source of energy is needed to achieve the transfer of heat from a body at a given temperature to one at a higher temperature. This heat-transfer principle will be basic to all refrigeration, and to many developments in chemistry and physics (see Carnot, 1824; Thomson, 1851).
The Bunsen burner invented by German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, 29, at Heidelberg University produces an intensely hot, almost nonluminous flame that leaves no sooty deposit on test tubes. It uses three volumes of air to every volume of coal gas and will become standard equipment in every chemical laboratory (gas stoves will work on its principle).
Chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac dies at Paris May 9 at age 71; chemist Henri (Germain) Hess at St. Petersburg November 30 at age 48.
Ignaz Semmelweiss enforces antiseptic practices in the obstetric ward of Budapest's St. Rochus Hospital (see 1848). He has returned to Budapest after failing to convince Viennese hospital authorities of the need for sterile conditions (see Pasteur, 1861; Lister, 1865).
The first textbook of histology (the study of organic tissues) is published at Würzburg. Its author is Swiss anatomist Rudolf Albert von Kolliker, 33, who studied under Johannes Müller (see 1840).
Chemist and physician William Prout dies at London April 9 at age 65.
The ophthalmoscope invented by anatomist-physicist Hermann von Helmholtz is an instrument for examining the retina and the interior of the eye.
The vaginal speculum introduced into medical practice permits full visual examination of the cervix, but it is generally regarded as an affront to modesty and many physicians refuse to use.
The American Journal of the Medical Sciences publishes a paper by Montgomery, Alabama, surgeon James Marion Sims, 37, describing his success in repairing a vesico-vaginal fistula, an unpleasant and not uncommon tear between the bladder and the vagina that causes urine to leak into the vagina. Usually produced by prolonged or difficult labor or bad madwifery, the wound may heal itself, but if it does not it may doom a woman to suffer discomfort and isolation for the rest of her life. Operating on slave women whose masters have brought them in with uterine tears, Sims has developed a special speculum for use in the operation, his breakthrough establishes his reputation, and he moves to New York. He will later state that his education at Philadelphia's Jefferson Medical College, considered one of the best in the country 15 years ago, gave him absolutely no idea how to treat his first cases.
Only half the children born in the United States until now have reached the age of 5. The percentage will increase dramatically.
Pope Pius IX names Wilhelm Emmanuel Ketteler bishop of Mainz March 15, having rejected two other candidates (see 1848). A bureaucracy has for the past 25 years dominated the Church in the upper Rhine, but Biship Ketteler will free the clergy from this bureaucracy.
The Persian founder of Babism Ali Mohammed of Shiraz is condemned to death for heresy and executed in the public square of Tabriz July 9 at age 31 (see 1845). His follower Husayn Ali, 33, takes over the Bab's mission but will be exiled to Baghdad, then Constantinople, then Adrianople, and finally to Acre; he will claim to be the leader promised by the Bab, assume the title Babaullah (Splendor of God), and preach the new faith, Bahai.
The Falloux law passed by France's Parlement March 15 provides for the opening of primary schools for girls in towns with populations of more than 800. Named for the minister of education Vicomte Alfred-Fréderic de Falloux, it also reinstitutes the letter of obedience that allows a woman who has spent some time in a convent near a mother superior to teach without the diploma required of secular female teachers. The minister of education retains a monopoly in the distribution of teaching diplomas, but neither Church nor state has the resources to provide all the schools the country needs; the effect of the new law will be to multiply enrollment in Roman Catholic secondary schools and private lay schools.
Telegraphy pioneer Werner Siemens makes his 27-year-old brother Karl Wilhelm head of the firm's London office. A trained engineer, Wilhelm will open a steel works, change his name to William, and with help from his brother Friedrich play a major role in the improvement of steel-making (see technology, 1856; 1861).
Harper's Monthly begins publication in June at New York and will continue for more than 150 years (seeHarper's Weekly, 1856).
The United States has 254 daily newspapers, up from 138 in 1840 (see 1860).
The Portland Oregonian begins weekly publication December 4 to serve a city whose population has grown to 800, with a log-cabin hotel and a steam-powered sawmill, but Portland remains subordinate to the territorial capital Oregon City 12 miles upstream on the falls of the Willamette River. William W. Chapman and Stephen Coffin have had simple presses brought by ship from San Francisco (see 1860).
Nonfiction: Representative Men by Ralph Waldo Emerson; A Guide to Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar by London-born clergyman-schoolmaster Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, 40; History of the Roman State from 1815 to 1850 (Storia della sato romano dal 1815 al 1850) by Italian physician and historian Luigi Carlo Farini, 37, who supports the liberal monarchist Count Camillo Cavour and whose work is vehemently antirevolutionary.
Margaret Fuller, Marchioness Ossoli, dies July 19 at age 40 when her ship is wrecked off Fire Island, New York, and founders with all hands, including Fuller's husband, the Marchese Angelo Ossoli, and their child. Fuller married the impoverished nobleman 2 or 3 years ago at Rome but fled with him to Florence last year when the revolutionary republic that they had supported was crushed.
Fiction: The Personal History of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, whose "humble" Uriah Heep and Mr. Wilkins Micawber are confined in the King's Bench debtors' prison as the author's father was confined in the Marshalsea prison: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery" (illustrations by "Phiz"); Pendennis by William Makepeace Thackeray; The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is about inhumanity in Puritan New England (see human rights, 1650). Hawthorne begins with the observation that Puritan women of the 17th century, with their "broad shoulders and well-developed busts," were hardier than their descendants. Every "successive mother has transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame." His heroine Hester Prynne must wear the letter "A" as evidence of her adultery.
Novelist Honoré de Balzac dies of caffeine poisoning at Paris August 18 at age 51 (he has been drinking as many as 50 cups of coffee per day for years). Balzac has written 85 novels in 20 years, but his annual income has almost never exceeded 12,000 francs, and last year, after his health broke down, he traveled to Poland to meet the rich widow with whom he began corresponding in 1834; she married him in May.
Poetry: Sonnets from the Portuguese by English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 44, expresses hesitation at burdening poet Robert Browning with an invalid wife. She married Browning 4 years ago despite her infirmity, the result of an injury sustained while saddling a horse at age 15: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways./ I love thee to the depth and breadth and height/ My soul can reach" (Sonnet 43); "In Memoriam" by Alfred Tennyson, who began the elegy 17 years ago upon the death of his sister's fiancé, Arthur Hallam: "'Tis better to have loved and lost,/ Than never to have loved at all"; "Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,/ The flying cloud, the frosty light:/ The year is dying in the night;/ Ring out, wild bells, and let him die . . .; Ring out the old, ring in the new,/ Ring, happy bells, across the snow;/ The year is going, let him go;/ Ring out the false, ring in the true"; "The Building of the Ship" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "Sail on, O Ship of State!/ Sail on, O Union, strong and great!/ Humanity with all its fears/ With all the hopes of future years,/ Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"
Poet William Wordsworth dies at Rydale Mount April 23 at age 80. He is buried at Grasmere.
Painting: Morning, the Dance of the Nymphs by J. B. C. Corot; The Stonebreakers and Burial at Ornans by Gustave Courbet; Christ in the House of His Parents by John Everett Millais.
Gallery of Illustrious Americans by New York portrait photographer Matthew B. Brady, 27, gains national prominence for Brady (see 1856).
Opera: Genoveva 6/25 at Leipzig, with music by Robert Schumann; Lohengrin 8/28 at the Weimar Theater, with music by Richard Wagner that includes a "Wedding March" (see royal wedding, 1858). Franz Liszt conducts the performance for his friend, who took an active part last year in an uprising at Dresden and has fled Germany to escape arrest.
Coloratura soprano Jenny Lind signs a contract in January with showman P. T. Barnum, who guarantees "the Swedish nightingale" $1,000 per night plus all expenses, allows her to select her own concert repertory, and frees her to perform for charity. Barnum uses handbills, broadsides, and newspaper advertisements to make the 30-year-old singer's name known; a crowd of more than 30,000 is on hand to greet her when she arrives at New York September 1, she opens at Castle Garden September 11 in a concert that grosses $17,864.05, donates nearly $15,000 (her share of the receipts from her first two concerts) to charity, and departs November 25 on a 2-year tour that will earn her $130,000, of which $100,000 will go to charities. The contract is revised to give Lind a share in the profits when it becomes clear that proceeds will exceed Barnum's original projections.
Popular songs: "De Camptown Races (Gwine to Run All Night)" by Stephen C. Foster; "Cheer, Boys, Cheer" by English composer-singer Henry Russell, 38, lyrics by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay.
Squash racquets is played for the first time by boys at England's 279-year-old Harrow School (approximate year).
The word-building game Anagrams invented by a Salem, Massachusetts, schoolteacher will gain wide popularity (see Scrabble, 1948).
Wax museum founder Marie Tussaud dies at London April 16 at age 88, having worked at her Baker Street establishment until age 80. It will move in 1884 to the Marylebone Road.
Godey's Lady's Book publishes the drawing that appeared 2 years ago in the Illustrated London News showing the British royal family gathered around a Christmas tree. The magazine has removed Prince Albert's moustache, sash, and royal insignia along with Queen Victoria's coronet to give the picture a more democratic look, and Americans begin displaying Christmas trees.
The Pinkerton National Detective Agency opens at Chicago under the direction of Scottish-born lawman Allan Pinkerton, 31, who was elected deputy sheriff of Kane County, Illinois, 4 years ago after discovering a gang of counterfeiters and leading a force to capture them (see Vidocq, 1832). Pinkerton has recently joined the Chicago police force as its first and only detective, helped to apprehend the perpetrators of a series of railway and express company robberies, and has resigned to open the Pinkerton Agency, whose management adopts an eye for its logotype with the slogan, "We Never Sleep." It will solve a number of railroad crimes in the next decade (see politics, 1861).
The Boston murder trial of Harvard Medical College chemistry professor John W. Webster ends after 11 days in Webster's conviction of having killed physician George Parkman (see 1849). More than 60,000 people from around the country have attended the trial, being allowed into the courtroom in 10-minute shifts; dentist and anesthesiology pioneer T. G. Morton has testified in Webster's defense, but absent an indisputable corpus delicti Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw has allowed the introduction of grisly circumstantial evidence, he has shown extreme bias in his charge to the jury, and Webster is sentenced to death. He writes a "confession" but insists that his act was not premeditated. Hundreds of people write letters to the governor urging him to grant a reprieve on grounds that Webster was guilty only of manslaughter, not murder; Webster is hanged, and Parkman's widow raises money to support the Webster family.
Philadelphia architect Thomas U. (Ustick) Walter, 45, wins a congressional competition to expand the wings of the Capitol building at Washington, D.C. (see Bulfinch, 1817). Walter has designed the main building of his city's Girard College and the Philadelphia county prison (Moyamensing) with its Egyptian-style debtors' wing; he has also engineered the harbor facilities for La Guaira, Venezuela (see 1857).
A 50-year period of large-scale tenement construction begins at New York (see 1901) tenement law.
Fires damage San Francisco May 4, June 14, and September 17.
English fishermen take their last salmon from the Thames River, whose water is fast becoming heavily polluted. The fish will not reappear in the Thames for more than 120 years.
The U.S. cotton crop reaches 2,136,000 bales.
Cyrus McCormick buys out William B. Ogden for twice the $25,000 that Ogden invested in McCormick's Chicago reaper business (see 1847; 1851).
California raises 15,000 bushels of wheat (see 1860).
Milo maize (Kaffir corn) is introduced into the United States for use as livestock forage.
Jersey cows arrive in the United States, where they will be an important dairy breed noted for the high butter-fat content of their milk.
Open-ranging longhorn cattle herds on the western plains are estimated to number 50 million head, sharing the prairie with 20 million head of buffalo (bison). At age 7 or 8 the cattle's horns measure from four to five feet in length, tip to tip, and in years past the animals have been hunted for their horns, used for rifle racks, buttons, spoons, and forks, and for their hides, used for rawhide ropes, whips, buckets, clothing, and (when soaked and dried) even for nails (see Herefords, 1840; Aberdeen Angus, 1873).
The California legislature adopts a Trespass Act requiring that farmers put up four-and-a-half-foot-high stone walls, five-and-a-half-foot rail fences, or five-foot hedges to protect their planted fields from free-ranging cattle if they want to receive payment for damages done by the cattle (but see 1872).
German-born butcher Henry Miller (originally Heinrich Alfred Kreiser), 23, arrives at San Francisco in September with $6 in his pocket after 4 years at New York and opens a shop that will prosper initially through purchases of cattle from local stockyards (see 1854).
The Red Delicious apple discovered as a chance seedling in Iowa will become the leading U.S. apple variety.
The Lancet announces appointment of an analytical and sanitary commission to study the quality of British foods (see 1823; Hassall and Letheby, 1851; Hassall and Letheby, 1855).
Nearly 15 percent of the world's sugar supply now comes from beets (see 1814; 1878).
U.S. wheat-flour consumption reaches 205 pounds per capita, up from 170 pounds in 1830; Americans average 184 pounds of meat, up from 178.
The Royal Navy reduces its daily rum ration from one-quarter pint to one-eighth pint to be dispensed before the midday meal (see 1731; 1824).
Tea catches up with coffee in popularity among the English (see 1840; 1869).
Folger's coffee has its beginnings as Nantucket-born San Francisco merchant James Folger, 15, supplies gold-seekers with beans that have been roasted, ground, and packaged at a time when most coffee drinkers are buying green beans and roasting and grinding the beans themselves. Folger arrived at San Francisco in May of last year with his brothers Edward, now 21, and Henry, now 17, after a harrowing voyage around Cape Horn. The older boys have joined the Gold Rush, young James has gone into business with William Bovee, now 28, in the Pioneer Steam Coffee and Spice Mills, although they will have no steam engine until next year and must turn the roaster by hand. Folger will obtain top-quality beans from Central America that up to now have been shipped only to Europe.
Detroit's Stroh Brewing Co. has its beginnings in a small plant opened at 57 Catherine Street by German-born brewer Bernhard (Bernhardt) Stroh, 28, who left his native Kirn 2 years ago with $150, invested in a copper kettle, brewed a few gallons of beer, then brewed a full barrel, and sold it in the street from a wheelbarrow. In the next 135 years the company will grow to have seven plants across the country and produce some 33 million barrels, each holding 31 gallons of beer.
Millard Fillmore installs the first White House cooking stove, but his cooks quit in protest, preferring to use the fireplace until an expert from the Patent Office spends a day showing them how to regulate the heat with dampers.
Contraception pioneer Charles Knowlton dies at Winchendon, Massachusetts, February 20 at age 49.
The population of New York City reaches 700,000, with 20 percent of it foreign-born, mostly Irish. The U.S. Census reports that one of every four New Yorkers was born in Ireland (most have arrived half-starved and feverish in overcrowded vessels reminiscent of those used in the slave trade earlier in the century).
The U.S. Census shows a population of 23,100,278—up from just over 5 million in 1800; the South has 1.8 million black slaves, 2.1 million whites; 15.7 percent of the population overall is black.
The native population of the Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands falls to 75,000, down from 150,000 in 1819 (see 1860). King Kamehameha III gives up rights to much of his lands in the Great Mahele and foreigners take over the lands.
The world's population reaches 1.24 billion by some estimates—more than twice its number in the 17th century. Europe's population is about 400 million, China's about 440 million, up from about 395 million in 1800.
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