1861

1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870

political events

Prussia's Friedrich Wilhelm IV dies at Potsdam January 2 at age 65 after a 2½-year period of paralysis and insanity. He is succeeded after a reactionary 20-year reign by his 63-year-old brother, who has been acting as regent and will reign until 1888 as Wilhelm I.

Italy unites as a single kingdom while the United States disunites.

Kansas enters the Union as a free state January 29, but Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina secede between January and May, following the course taken by South Carolina late last year.

Delegates from six seceding states meet at Montgomery, Alabama, February 4 and form a provisional government, the Confederate States of America. Mexican War hero Sen. Jefferson Davis (D. Miss.) has formally withdrawn from the Senate in January and is named provisional president of the C.S.A. (He receives a letter of support from former president Franklin Pierce, newspapers publish the letter, and Northerners vilify Pierce as a traitor.)

The U.S. Senate narrowly defeats last year's Crittenden Compromise March 2 as congressional Radicals rattle sabers (see 1860). The Senate does not act on a proposal made by Crittenden in January to submit his proposals to a national referendum.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it," President Lincoln says in his inaugural address March 4. "Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it." Lincoln has arrived at Washington in secret and been greeted only by Maine-born congressman Elihu (Benjamin) Washburne, 44, (R. Ill.), a brother of Israel Washburn who added an "e" to his name in imitation of his English forebears before heading west for the boom town of Galena, Illinois, where he prospered.

Georgia-born Confederate vice president Alexander H. (Hamilton) Stephens, 49, says in a speech at Savannah March 21 that the United States was created on the false idea that all men are created equal. The Confederacy, he says, "is founded upon exactly the opposite idea: its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

Civil War begins April 12 as Fort Sumter on an island in Charleston harbor is bombarded by General Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard, 42, who has resigned as superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to assume command of the Confederate Army. The U.S. Army has numbered 13,024 officers and men as of March 4. President Lincoln calls for 42,034 volunteers to serve for 3 years, and by July there are some 30,000 green recruits in and about Washington under the command of Mexican War veteran Winfield Scott, but old "Fuss and Feathers" is now 75.

"The War Powers of the Government" by Maryland political activist Anna Ella Carroll, 45, is a pamphlet setting forth President Lincoln's legal justification for sending the U.S. Army against the Confederacy. Carroll has been a prominent spokeswoman for the anti-Catholic, anti-immigration American Party (widely ridiculed as the "Know-Nothing Party"), but Lincoln has her pamphlet distributed to every member of Congress. Pennsylvania Railroad executive Thomas A. Scott, now 37, pays her $1,250 out of his own pocket and has 10,000 copies printed. She travels in the fall to St. Louis, discovers that control of the Tennessee River is more essential to a Union victory than controlling the Mississippi, and upon her return in November submits a plan to Scott for implementing a Tennessee strategy that will prove decisive to the successful conduct of the war.

The Fire Zouaves (11th Regiment, New York State Volunteers) leave New York for Annapolis April 29 aboard the steamship Baltic, full of enthusiasm but practically untrained. Former second lieutenant Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth, 24, has resigned his commission after the firing on Fort Sumter, returned to the city, enlisted more than 1,000 volunteers—mostly from the city's firefighters, and been elected colonel by his men in a meeting at Palace Garden. Merchant A. T. Stewart has persuaded other well-to-do citizens to contribute $60,000 to arm the regiment with Sharp's rifles (in 10 different models) and 16-inch knives, and outfit them in "Zouave" uniforms consisting of grey jackets, baggy grey breeches, red shirts, and red fezzes. Colonel Ellsworth sees the Confederate flag fluttering from the top of a three-story Alexandria, Virginia, hotel May 24, dashes impulsively into the building with seven companions, pulls down the flag, and is shot dead by the hotel's proprietor, James W. Jackson, who is then shot dead by one of Ellsworth's Zouaves and becomes a hero to the South. A personal friend of the Lincolns, Ellsworth becomes the first major Union casualty; his body is taken to the White House May 25 and lays in state in the East Room. It reaches New York by special train early the next morning and is taken to Room 41 of the Astor House, where Ellsworth's parents and relatives have come down from Mechanicville; the body is taken to City Hall, where an estimated 10,000 people file past Ellsworth's bier before his coffin is moved by steamboat to Albany, where the body is displayed at the Capitol before being moved by special train from Troy to Mechanicville for burial. Streets and towns all over the North are renamed Ellsworth in honor of the dead hero.

Former U.S. senator Stephen A. Douglas dies of typhoid fever at Chicago June 3 at age 48. Senators from the Confederate states follow Sen. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi out of the U.S. Senate in June, but North Carolina-born senator Andrew Johnson, 52, (D. Tenn.) remains in his seat, having opposed secession; the onetime tailor who did not learn to read until adulthood wins plaudits for his courage throughout the North. President Lincoln will appoint him military governor of Tennessee next year with the rank of brigadier general.

Political pressure mounts for President Lincoln to avenge the death of Elmer Ellsworth and take Richmond. Lincoln orders General Irvin McDowell to march on the Manassas railhead 30 miles west of Washington, D.C., and McDowell obeys orders, even though he has never commanded even a company, much less an army of 39,000 men, and his civilian troops have had little training. Congressmen, businessmen, and their wives ride out in their carriages with picnic lunches to watch the proceedings, but many of McDowell's troops suffer heat stroke, thirst, and exhaustion on the long, hot march. Confederate troops, by contrast, arrive by rail (the first use of trains to transport troops to a battle site) and are well rested.

The Battle of Bull Run July 21 begins when 30-pound cannon open fire near the Manassas railway junction across the Potomac July 21. General Beauregard and Virginia-born General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, 54, command 32,000 Confederate troops, who fall back after an initial assault by superior Union forces, but Virginia-born Brig. Gen. Thomas (Jonathan) Jackson, 37, holds fast, winning the nickname "Stonewall" from a remark ("There is Jackson standing like a stone wall") by South-Carolina-born General Barnard Elliott Bee, 37, who is mortally wounded in the engagement and dies the next day. Confederate reinforcements arrive by rail, and Virginia-born Confederate cavalry captain James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart, 28, who resigned his commission in the U.S. Army at the outbreak of war, distinguishes himself in the battle (he is promoted to brigadier general in September with command of the Army of Northern Virginia's cavalry). The battle ends in a rout of General McDowell's forces, with panicked spectators fleeing the scene and blocking the roads and bridges leading back to Washington. The rebels lose 387 dead, 1,582 wounded, 13 missing; the Union 460 dead, 1,124 wounded, 1,312 missing. Among the survivors is Thomas F. Meagher, now 37, who has left his job as editor of the Irish News and joined the New York Volunteers as a captain; he will be promoted to brigadier general early next year and organize the Irish Brigade (see Chancellorsville, 1863).

President Lincoln gives Philadelphia-born "military genius" General George B. (Brinton) McClellan, 33, command of an army to protect Washington, D.C. A brilliant manager, McClellan graduated second in his class from West Point in 1846, fought in the Mexican War, but resigned his commission 4 years ago to become an Illinois Central Railroad executive; he arrives at Washington July 26, finds a collection of dispirited 3-year volunteers, has his military police round up stragglers, instills discipline in the new Army of the Potomac, and engages detective Allan Pinkerton to head a department of counterespionage (see crime, 1850). Pinkerton has gained prominence by uncovering and thwarting a plot to kill the president-elect at Baltimore during Lincoln's journey to Washington for the inauguration (see 1862).

Detective Allan Pinkerton arrests Washington, D.C., widow Rose O'Neal Greenhow, 46, on her doorstep August 23 as she tries to swallow a coded message. She is suspected of having passed three messages to the Confederacy, giving information on the strength they would face at Manassas and when the attack would begin. Greenhow and one of her daughters are placed under house arrest, and when they manage to slip more notes out to Rebel agents they are confined in the Old Capitol Prison, where Greenhow waves a Confederate flag from her window (see 1862).

John C. Frémont fails to put down disturbances in Missouri and is dismissed from his post as head of the Department of the West; his wife, Jessie, calls upon President Lincoln to ask for his reinstatement, she is refused, Frémont will soon lose the fortune that he made in California mining with unwise speculations in railroad stocks, and Jessie will be forced to support the family with her writing.

Confederate forces defeat Union General Nathaniel Lyon, 43, August 10 at Wilson's Creek, Missouri, 10 miles southwest of Springfield. Some 1,200 Union troops under the command of General Franz Sigel attack the enemy rear while General Lyon leads a frontal attack against the main body of the enemy. The 5,400 bluecoats are no match for the combined forces of Confederate troops and Missouri Militia, who number more than 10,000. Commanded by General Benjamin McCulloch and General Sterling Price, they repulse Sigel's attack and carry the day after several hours of bitter fighting in which both sides have sustained heavy losses; Lyon is killed, Sigel retreats toward Springfield.

Union forces under General Benjamin Franklin Butler, 42, capture Confederate forts on the North Carolina coast in late August.

Jefferson Davis wins confirmation as president of the Confederate States of America in an election held in October after seizure of federal funds and property in the South. Davis's wife, Varina (née Howell), 35, confides in a letter to her mother in Mississippi that "the North has a great advantage in manufacturing power" and that her husband is "depressed" about the Confederacy's prospects. She has followed President Davis to Montgomery, Alabama, and then to Richmond.

The Battle of Ball's Bluff on the Potomac October 21 ends in defeat for the Union.

President Lincoln gives General McClellan command of all federal forces November 1. McClellan spends the winter training a 200,000-man Army of the Potomac while Union naval forces attempt to enforce an embargo on Southern ports that was ordered in April (see 1862).

Armored artillery ships built by Indiana-born engineer James Buchanan Eads, 41, go into service for the U.S. Navy. President Lincoln asked Eads early in the year to submit plans for defending the Western rivers; Eads was nearly drowned as a teenager when a steamboat on which he was traveling with his family exploded as it approached St. Louis. Such explosions are common, and Eads went into business at age 22 salvaging sunken hulls; he made a fortune, invented a diving bell in the 1850s, and proposed at the outbreak of war that the government build seven 175-foot steam-driven ironclads; the first was ready in 45 days, all seven were completed within 100 days, and they incorporate innovations by Eads in armament and armament mounting (see transportation [bridge], 1867).

The U.S. Navy has only 28 steam-powered ships in April, but the navy's New York-born engineer in chief Benjamin F. (Franklin) Isherwood, 38, has written a major treatise on maritime steam engines and oversees construction of a fleet that will grow within a few years to number about 600 steam vessels.

Captain Samuel F. Dupont, now 58, is assigned to carry out an attack on Port Royal, South Carolina, whose two forts fall to Union forces November 7 with minimal loss of life, giving Dupont's South Atlantic Blockading Squadron an essential base of operations. All but three of the officers at the Washington Navy Yard resigned at the outbreak of hostilities because of Confederate sympathies; the three include Philadelphia-born ordnance officer John A. B. (Adolphus Bernard) Dahlgren, 51, who has invented a smooth-bore cannon that will be widely used by Union forces in the war. First mounted in an experimental vessel that went on a cruise in the late 1850s, the weapon is made of metal that varies in thickness to match the differences in internal pressure that occur when the cannon is fired.

The Trent affair November 8 precipitates an Anglo-American crisis. Antarctic explorer Captain Charles Wilkes, now 63, commanding the sloop-of-war U.S.S. San Jacinto, stops the British mail packet S.S. Trent and removes former U.S. senators John Murray Mason, 63, and John Slidell, 68, who are now Confederate commissioners bound for Britain and France (see Wilkes, 1842). They are imprisoned at Boston, President Lincoln will avert war by having his secretary of state William H. Seward, 60, order the release of the two men at the start of next year, and they will continue on to Europe, but their efforts to win official support for the Confederate cause will have little success.

The Colorado Territory is formed February 28, the Dakota Territory March 2, the Nevada Territory March 2 (see Comstock Lode, 1859). The Arizona Territory organized August 1 consists of all of New Mexico south of the 34th parallel (northeastern New Mexico has been included in the Colorado Territory).

A united Kingdom of Italy is proclaimed March 17 by the nation's parliament at Turin, joining Lombardy, Piedmont, Parma, Modena, Lucca, Romagna, Tuscany, and the Two Sicilies under Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont's House of Savoy (see 1859). Nice and Savoy were lost to France last year, Austria holds Venice and the rest of Venetia (it will not be united with Italy until 1866), Napoleon III holds Rome, which will not become part of Italy (and the nation's capital) until 1870. Conte Camillo Benso di Cavour has played a major role in creating the new kingdom but dies at his native Turin June 6 at age 50 (see 1866).

Polish statesman Prince Adam Czartoryski dies in exile at Montfermeil, France, July 15 at age 91, having led the effort to reunite his country (see insurrection, 1863).

The Ottoman sultan Abdul Mejid (Abdülmecid) I dies of phthisis June 25 at age 38 after a reign marked by reforms, including the repression of slavery. His 31-year-old brother Abdul Aziz Oglu Mahmud II will rule until 1876 as Abdul Aziz, obtaining enormous wealth and squandering it recklessly in his infatuation with western material progress.

The Royal Navy's H.M.S. Warrior completed outside London October 24 at a cost of £357,291 is the world's first ocean-going iron-hulled armored warship (see H.M.S. Rattler, 1845). Built to counter the French ironclad completed last year, she has a 4½-inch thick wrought iron hull that no enemy naval gun can penetrate and that makes La Gloire obsolete.

Portugal's Pedro V dies of cholera (or typhoid fever) at his native Lisbon November 11 at age 24 after a reign of less than 9 years. He married Stephanie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen 3 years ago but is childless and is therefore succeeded by his 23-year-old brother, who will reign until 1889 as Luiz I.

France's Napoleon III extends the financial powers of Parlement and mounts a grandiose program of public works despite the quickly mounting expenses of his extravagant foreign policy. Political opposition to the emperor begins to grow at a rapid pace.

Britain begins to force Bahrain's ruling al-Khalifa family to accept treaties that will give London control over the emirate's external affairs (see 1783; energy, 1932).

Benito Juárez returns to Mexico City in January as the Conservative government collapses, and he wins election to the presidency (see 1859). Now 55, Juárez is the first full-blooded Indian to be president, and there will not be another one in this century or the next, but the Congress distrusts him, the Conservatives have virtually emptied the nation's treasury, and the new president decides in July to suspend payments on all foreign debts for 2 years. French, British, and Spanish troops land at Veracruz in December to force Juárez to honor his financial obligations and resume the payments. Preoccupied with the Civil War, President Lincoln is unable to defend the Monroe Doctrine that was enunciated 38 years ago (see 1862).

Ecuador elects Guayaquil-born politician Gabriel García Moreno, 39, president. Educated partly in Europe, where he witnessed the revolutions of 1848, he seized power last year with the help of a general and former president after becoming convinced that the republic established in 1830 needed a strong leader with moral principles who could use religion to bridge the differences between classes and between whites and Indians (he will sign a concordat with the Vatican in 1863 dedicating the country to the Sacred Heart). Entrusting education, welfare, and much of the policy planning to the nation's Roman Catholic clergymen, García Moreno centralizes Ecuador's government and works to reduce corruption and strengthen the economy (see 1875).

Buenos Aires provincial governor Bartolomé Mitre defeats a federal army and wins election as president of a united Argentina, ending the rebellion that began in 1853, moving the national capital back to Buenos Aires, and establishing an efficient administration (see 1859). Now 40, Mitre will serve as president until 1868 (see Paraguayan war, 1864).

Former New Granada president Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera raises an army that takes Bogotá in July as Liberals and Conservatives continue to vie for control of the country (see human rights, 1850). Formerly a Conservative, Mosquera is now 62, has become a Liberal, proclaims himself president, expropriates Church lands, and will rule as dictator until a Liberal constitution is adopted in 1863 and New Granada becomes Colombia.

A 5,000-man French army relieves a blockade of Saigon February 25 and gains control of the area after defeating 20,000 Annamese regulars, led by General Nguyen Tri Phuong, who have kept 900 French and Spanish troops pinned down (see 1859). The former governor of French Guiana in South America Admiral Louis-Adolphe Bonard, 56, is given command of French forces in Vietnam November 29 and ordered to establish control of the region; he captures the province of Bien Hoa in December, handing a decisive defeat to Nguyen Tri Phuong (see 1862).

Siamese troops help Cambodia's uncrowned king Norodom abort an attempted coup by his half-brother Si Votha (see 1860). Norodom was educated at Bangkok and has strong connections there (see France, 1863).

China's seventh Qing (Manchu) emperor Xianfeng (Hsien-fieng) dies at Cheng-te in Hopeh Province August 22 at age 30 after an 11-year reign, having refused to return to Beijing (Peking) after the Europeans evacuated it. His antiforeign entourage enters Beijing and seizes power, but the usurpers are crushed in October as the former empress Xiaoqin gains help from Prince Gong (Kung) to enthrone her 5-year-old son Zai-Chun (Tsai-chun), who will reign until 1875 as the Tonghzi emperor Tongzhi (Tung-chih). His mother will serve as co-regent until 1873 together with Prince Gong (who with Dong Yuan Chun establishes Xiaoqin as the dowager empress Cixi). China's first ministry of foreign affairs is established November 11; regarded as a temporary institution that will exist only until the current crisis ends, it will continue long after the crisis has passed.

Madagascar's queen Ranavalona dies after a 33-year reign in which she has been paid to supply French traders with slaves and give them a monopoly in the African island's slave trade. Ranavalona's son will reign until his assassination in 1863 as Radama II, making a treaty of perpetual friendship with France and working to modernize the country.

The British Colonial Office sends former New Zealand governor Sir George Grey back to Auckland for a second term in hopes that he can end the Taranaki War that began last year. Now 49, Sir George has been governor of the Cape Colony since 1854 and won acclaim there for resolving disputes between natives and settlers, but he becomes convinced that the Maori forces of Wiremu Kingi pose a genuine threat to Auckland and takes defensive measures that look to the Maori like aggressive moves. The fighting spreads from Taranaki to the Waikato, with Kingi's followers putting up a valiant defense until they are beaten by imperial troops and colonial militia, who have the support of Maori opposed to Kingi (see 1863; Native Land Act, 1862).

Aborigines at Cullinlaringo, Queensland, kill 19 settlers October 17 in a skirmish whose death toll of Europeans will stand as the highest in Australian history. The dead include pastoralist and ardent nationalist Horatio Spencer Wills, whose 26-year-old son Thomas Wentworth Wills has studied at Rugby and become Victoria's champion cricketer.

The British viceroy to India Earl Canning reorganizes his executive council under terms of the Indian Councils Act, enlarging it to provide room for nonofficial Indian members and instituting departmental distribution of responsibilities (see 1858). Charlotte Elizabeth, Countess Canning, dies of malaria at Calcutta (Kolkata) November 18 at age 44 (see 1862).

Queen Victoria's prince consort Albert dies of typhoid fever at Windsor Castle, in Berkshire, December 14 at age 42. The queen is grief stricken, and the entire nation goes into mourning.

Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin returns to Europe after escaping imprisonment in Eastern Siberia (see 1847). Having traveled via Japan and the United States, Bakunin will be the leading European anarchist until his death in 1876.

human rights, social justice

Czar Aleksandr II completes the emancipation of Russian serfs begun in 1858. "I should rather liberate them from the top than wait until they liberate themselves from the bottom," he has said, and he allots land to the serfs for which they are to pay over a period of 49 years, but the land is given to village communes (mirs), not to individuals, and is to be redistributed every 10 or 12 years to assure equality. Since a peasant may buy only half the amount of land that he cultivated as a serf and will often be unable to afford his annual "redemption" payments, he will be unable to gain economic independence, much less improve the land or his methods of cultivation (see agriculture [Stolypin], 1906).

President Lincoln orders General Scott to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in parts of Maryland April 27, violating Article I, section 9 of the Constitution. Cockeysville farmer John Merryman, 36, acts under orders from the governor to prevent Pennsylvania troops from reaching Baltimore, where their presence might incite riots; he helps to burn railroad bridges and tear down telegraph poles as a lieutenant in the Baltimore County Horse Guards. Union Army officers surround his farm May 25, arrest him, and confine him at Fort McHenry without advising him of the charges against him. His lawyers petition the federal circuit court at Baltimore for a writ of habeas corpus to obtain his release, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney travels to Baltimore to hear the case and issues a writ May 26 ordering that the commanding officer at the fort bring Merryman before the court and show cause for his arrest, the officer cites Lincoln's April 27 order and refuses, Taney issues a ruling May 28 saying that only Congress has the right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Republican newspapers denounce Taney's opinion, Lincoln refuses to abide by it, and some legal scholars rush to support the president, noting that his purpose was to enable army officers to arrest and detain without trial suspected traitors at a time when civil authorities such as those at Baltimore were potentially sympathetic to the suspects. Lincoln addresses a special session of Congress July 4 defending his decision, Merryman is released after 7 weeks' confinement and indicted for treason, but his case does not come to trial because the federal government knows that no Maryland jury will convict him. By year's end Lincoln has totally subjugated Maryland's military authority; Baltimore's mayor, chief of police, police commissioner, 31 members of the Maryland legislature, some congressmen, judges, and newspaper reporters have been held at Fort McHenry without charges because of their political opinions or actions (see 1863).

Chiricahua Apache chief Cochise, 49, appears at an army post in Arizona Territory to deny charges that he kidnapped a white child. Taken prisoner, he escapes and takes hostages to be exchanged for other Chiricahua held by the U.S. Army. The exchange does not take place, the hostages are killed on both sides, and Cochise joins with his father-in-law, Mangas Coloradas, of the Mimbreno Apache in raids that threaten to drive the Anglos from Arizona (see 1862).

The Royal Navy obtains permission to search U.S.-flag vessels suspected of carrying slaves (see 1850); Congress has refused the "right to search" lest it infringe U.S. sovereignty, and although the permission comes too late to do much good, the British continue their efforts to suppress the slave trade (see 1870).

exploration, colonization

The Burke-Wills expedition in Australia reaches the Gulf of Carpentaria in early February, having made the first crossing of the Australian desert from south to north (see 1860). Robert O'Hara Burke, William John Wills, and Charles Gray start for home and arrive at Coopers Creek April 21, only to find that the party they left there has departed a few hours earlier for Menindee. The three men are too weak to go on, their last camel has died, their legs are nearly paralyzed, Burke and Willis die of starvation at the end of June, friendly Aborigines keep King alive (he will die in 1870 at age 31), and Wills's father will edit his journal for publication.

Explorer Henri Mouhot dies of fever near Luang Prabang in Laos November 10 at age 35. The French will erect a tomb in 1867 to honor the man who discovered Angkor Wat.

commerce

China's Maritime Customs Bureau chief Horatio Nelson Lay wins appointment as inspector general for all 14 ports through which Western goods enter the country (see 1855). Now 29, he will procure a fleet of eight British gunboats in 1863 at the Chinese government's request, but the government will refuse to allow a foreigner to control the fleet, it will be sold, and Lay will resign in 1864.

A gold strike on Alaska's Stikine River brings a rush of prospectors to the Russian-owned territory (see politics, 1867; Juneau, 1881).

Engineer Philip Deidesheimer implements a practical plan early in the year to prevent the cave-ins that have been thwarting silver miners in Nevada (see 1860). Inspired perhaps by a bee's honey comb, he has devised a "square-set" method of timbering that involves framing the timbers and putting them together in the shape of cribs, five or six feet in width and height, piling them on top of each other, and thereby creating a framework that braces the earth in all directions. Some of the cribs can be filled in with waste rock to form stone pillars that reach to the roof of the mine. He does not file for a patent on the plan, and it may not be patentable. But miners will adopt it worldwide, and Deidesheimer will die poor in 1916 at age 84. As superintendent of the Ophir mine, he persuades the owners to install a 45-horsepower pumping engine, an eight-inch pipe, and improved hoisting machinery, all at great expense. A business downturn early in the year bankrupts scores of New York firms, throws thousands of men out of work, and gives employers an excuse to cut wages from an average of $1.25 per day to just 85¢.

U.S. tariffs rise as Congress gives approval March 2 to the first of three Morrill Acts that will boost rates to an average of 47 percent (see 1857). Duties on tea, coffee, and sugar are subsequently increased as a war measure (see 1890).

Former Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court chief justice Lemuel Shaw dies at Boston March 30 at age 79, having served as chief justice for 30 years and ruled in 1842 that a striking labor union was not a conspiracy (but issued a ruling 7 years later that upheld racial segregation in Boston schools).

Prices on the New York Stock Board & Exchange drop after the firing on Fort Sumter and plunge after the Battle of Bull Run. New Hampshire-born Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Portland Chase, 53, comes to Wall Street in quest of more robust support from the city's financial district, which has been ambivalent about the war lest it antagonize Southern customers (banks continue to pay drafts against funds deposited by southerners). Specifically, Chase wants to borrow $50 million by issuing treasury notes paying 7.3 percent interest with the option of converting them into 20-year bonds, but James Gallatin of the National Bank of New York opposes the plan, as does John A. Stevens of the Bank of Commerce, and it is only with great difficulty that Chase obtains the money from a consortium of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia banks that has been organized by Moses Taylor of the City Bank, who is known as a "hard money Democrat" but supports the Lincoln administration and acts as chairman of the committee that makes the first federal loan.

The Civil War cuts off Southern agents of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company from their home office. One agent of the 51-year-old company buries his clients' policies in a keg and will retrieve them after hostilities end in 1865.

The Union has only enough saltpeter to supply its army and navy with gunpowder for 6 months, the shortage creates alarm at Washington, and the government commissions E. I. du Pont de Nemours as its agent to purchase supplies from Britain, whose warehouses have abundant stocks imported from India; chemist Lammot du Pont voyages to London and corners the market in saltpeter (see technology, 1857). Prime Minister Palmerston gets wind of what he has done and tries to stop the saltpeter from being shipped, but Lammot, now 30, threatens to dump the material and depress the market; Palmerston lets the shipment go forward, and du Pont's older brother Henry, now 49, obtains enough to keep his Delaware powder works producing at full capacity (Henry is appointed major general in the Union Army and works to keep Confederate sympathizers from taking over his native Delaware; his 22-year-old son Henry Algernon graduates at the head of his class at West Point and will play a prominent role in the war). The firm gives up more than 600,000 pounds of powder in Southern storehouses and refuses to sell any to Southern buyers at any price. While it establishes independent mills in California to meet demands from miners and will supply 40 percent of the Union's needs in the course of the war, making 4 million pounds of gunpowder to be sold at low prices for nearly $1 million, it will lose its trade with the West Indies and Mexico because of a ban on shipping cargoes that might fall into Confederate hands (see 1872).

New York State factories work night and day to produce ordnance, uniforms, shoes, tents, and other supplies for the Union Army. The arsenal at Watervliet employs 1,000 men, the Brooklyn Navy Yard more than 2,500. New York shipbuilder John Englis launches the Unadilla—first gunboat built for the navy after the firing on Fort Sumter—in just 58 days and delivers it 12 days ahead of schedule. New York industrialist Abram Stevens Hewitt, 39, of Cooper, Hewitt (he is Peter Cooper's son-in-law) develops a reputation for being able to deliver iron deck beams for warships on short notice; he and his partner Edward Cooper, 37, produce mortar beds and gun carriages, and Hewitt learns how to make gun-barrel iron as good as any from Britain.

Congress levies the first U.S. income tax August 5 to raise funds needed for the Union Army and Navy. The law imposes taxes at the rate of 3 percent on incomes in excess of $800 (see 1862).

Yorkshire industrial reformer Richard Oastler dies at Harrogate August 22 at age 71; Chartist supporter Thomas Duncombe at London November 13 at age 65.

I. M. Singer sells more sewing machines abroad than in America and enjoys profits of nearly $200,000 on assets of little more than $1 million (see 1856; 1863).

Jay Cooke & Company is founded at Philadelphia by Sandusky, Ohio-born banker Cooke, 40, who soon floats a $3 million war loan for the state of Pennsylvania (see 1862).

J. P. Morgan & Company is founded at New York, where Hartford-born banker's son John Pierpont Morgan, 24, becomes the local agent in bills and exchange for the London merchant banking house George Peabody & Company, in which his father, Junius Spencer Morgan, 48, has been a partner since 1838 and helped to finance trade between Europe and America; educated at Boston and at the University of Göttingen, the younger Morgan started his career 4 years ago as an accountant for a New York firm that has represented George Peabody & Company. Morgan will be a partner in Dabney, Morgan & Company from 1864 to 1871 and come to be the most powerful financier in America.

The U.S. recession that began in the fall of 1857 ends by fall as railroads, foundries, textile factories, and other concerns make large profits from war contracts granted by the federal government, whose expenses soar from $172,000 per day to more than $1 million per day, but wages lag behind prices, which begin a sharp ascent; New York property owner William B. Astor raises rents by 30 percent.

"Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world," says President Lincoln in a message to Congress December 3, but "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Cash reserves in New York banks fall in December to just over $29 million, down from more than $60 million in January. The banks suspend payments in gold December 30, all U.S. banks immediately follow suit, and they will not redeem paper money for metal currency (specie) until 1879 (see Legal Tender Act, 1862).

retail, trade

John Wanamaker opens a Philadelphia menswear shop with his brother-in-law Nathan Brown. Now 23, merchant Wanamaker will pioneer in selling all items at fixed prices with none of the haggling that has been customary between customer and clerk, and within 10 years he will be the largest U.S. menswear retailer (see 1877; Bon Marché, 1852).

The New York State Military Board learns that Washington will not clothe the troops and advertises April 23 for bids on 12,000 uniforms. Brooks Brothers assures the board that it has enough suitable cloth and receives a contract to produce blue uniforms at $19.50 each, only to find 2 days after signing the contract that it cannot fill the order without using something other than standard army cloth. The state treasurer inspects the alternative material, the military board approves its use, but it turns out to be "shoddy"—made up of scraps that can fall apart in wet weather or rough use. The newspapers expose what they call a "scandal," but Daniel, Elisha, John, and Edward Brooks negotiate a new contract with Governor Morgan, agreeing to replace the shoddy uniforms with suits made of the best-quality cloth without charge to the state. Other contractors are less scrupulous, and some will reap large fortunes supplying the government with shoddy goods of all sorts.

Marshall Field becomes general manager of Chicago's Cooley, Wadsworth store and will become a partner next year (see 1856; 1865).

Charles Digby Harrod, 19, takes over his father's London grocery store in the Brompton Road and works to turn Harrods into a department store (see 1849). He will install a plate glass window and by 1868 will have a weekly volume of £1,000 (see 1883).

Scottish-born London silk merchant George Grant, 39, of Banffshire hears of Prince Albert's death, buys up all the black crepe he can find, sells it to mourners, and makes a fortune (see agriculture [Aberdeen-Angus cattle], 1873).

energy

A crude two-stroke internal combustion engine patented by Cologne engineer Nikolaus (August) Otto, 29, runs on gas like last year's Lenoir engine but has a carburetor and represents a decided improvement (see 1866).

Britain produces 83.6 million tons of coal, France 6.8 million, Russia 300,000.

The Empire Well brought in by two Cleveland oil prospectors in September is a gusher that yields 3,000 barrels of Pennsylvania crude oil per day, producing a glut that drops the price to 10¢ per barrel (see 1860). Teamsters continue to charge $3 and more per barrel to move the oil to railheads for shipment to refineries (see Rockefeller, 1863).

transportation

Pennsylvania Railroad first vice president Thomas A. Scott supplies railroad cars and locomotives to open communications between Washington, D.C., and Annapolis at the outbreak of war; he is appointed assistant secretary of war for railways in August. Rail transport will prove decisive in the hostilities between the states.

The Southern Overland Mail Company that started in 1858 loses its government contract to the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express as the outbreak of war forces the abandonment of its southern stagecoach route. The new Central Overland operates through Salt Lake City (see Holladay, 1862).

The Central Pacific Railroad is chartered at Sacramento, California, June 28 to build the western section of a projected transcontinental rail link along the partially surveyed 41st parallel (see Pacific Railroad Survey, 1854). Watervliet, New York-born retail merchant-turned-politician Leland Stanford, 37, is president (and wins election as governor of California), Colis P. Huntington vice president, Mark Hopkins an officer, and Troy, New York-born storekeeper-turned-politician Charles Crocker, 39, head of construction (see 1863; Union Pacific, 1862).

Entrepreneur Henry Meiggs obtains a contract to complete a Chilean railroad between Valparaíso and Santiago (see 1854). Now 50, Don Enrique has knowledge of Spanish that has helped him win a position superintending construction of the Santiago al Sur Railroad. It will take him less than 2 years instead of the 4 provided to complete the new rail line. It will cost only $12 million (several previous contractors have gone bankrupt), Meiggs's success will bring him a profit of $1.32 million, he will repay most of what he stole from the city of San Francisco, and will build a $500,000 house at Santiago (see Peru, 1870; Costa Rica, 1871).

Paraguay's Ferro-Carril del Estado (state railway) begins regular operation September 21 between Asunción and Paraguarí using British-built locomotives and rolling stock on the 72-kilometer track.

The velocipede developed by Parisian coach builder Pierre Michaux is the world's first true bicycle (see MacMillan, 1839). Michaux establishes La Compagnie Parisienne Ancienne Maison Michaux et Cie., produces two prototype models that have cranks and pedals attached directly to their front wheels, and will sell 142 cycles next year (see 1870).

technology

The open-hearth process for making steel employs a regenerative gas-fired furnace that requires less coal than did previous methods such as the Bessemer process of 1856. German-born British inventor William Siemens, now 38, and French engineer Pierre Emile Martin, 37, have developed the process almost simultaneously (see Siemens, 1856); originally used in glass making, it uses gas produced from low-grade coal outside the furnace, will largely replace the Bessemer process, and will result in a rapid increase in steel production (see Hewitt and Cooper, 1862).

Jones & Laughlin opens a two-stack steel furnace at Pittsburgh. Benjamin Franklin Jones, 37, bought an interest 10 years ago in the American Steel & Iron works being built by Bernard Lauth outside Pittsburgh; Irish-born ironmaker James Laughlin, now 55, joined Jones and Lauth in 1854, having shipped pig iron from his Youngstown, Ohio, Falcon furnace, and the new firm will become a major steel producer (see 1900).

Britain produces 3.7 million tons of iron, France 3 million, the United States 2.8 million, the German states 200,000.

The Parrott Rifle patented by New Hampshire-born inventor-manufacturer Robert P. (Parker) Parrott, 56, is a cast-iron rifled cannon that is used by the Union Army at the Battle of Bull Run in July. Parrott learned 12 years ago of a rifled cannon being produced in secret by the Krupp factory in Germany, has worked for years to produce such a weapon, and offers it to the Union Army at cost. Its breech is strengthened by a wrought-iron hoop, it accommodates a larger explosive charge than other guns, and it is cheap and easy to produce. Parrott also patents an explosive shell girded with a brass ring that expands when the weapon is fired, filling the grooves inside the rifled cannon and thereby achieving unprecedented accuracy.

The Gatling gun invented by North Carolina-born agricultural-equipment developer Richard J. (Jordan) Gatling, 43, can fire hundreds of rounds per minute. The first practical machine gun, it is a multibarrel, crank-operated weapon that will be used by the Union Army, but not until 1864 (see Maxim, 1883).

The outbreak of war boosts demand for Volcanic Arms Company rifles and self-primed cartridges, as well as for Smith & Wesson pistols and revolvers (see 1856). The Springfield, Massachusetts, company has increased the size of its workforce from 25 to 600 and enlarged its factory to boost production of handguns, but while some in the War Department favor purchase of the Henry repeating rifle patented in 1860, others say it wastes too much ammunition and the Union Army will use it only in the closing months of the war.

Rifle maker Eliphalet Remington dies at Ilion, New York, August 12 at age 67 as his factory gears up to increase production of firearms. He has made farm equipment as well as weapons since 1856, and his son Philo, 44, takes over the company for which he has worked since 1840. Many of the soldiers in both Union and Confederate armies are equipped with smooth-bore rifles dating to the Revolutionary War era; the War Between the States will give impetus to modernization of weaponry not only in America but in Europe as well.

science

London physicist William Crookes, 29, discovers the chemical metallic element thallium in some seleniferous deposits and names the soft, poisonous rare earth after Thalia, the Greek muse of comedy and pastoral poetry. Crookes inherited a large fortune from his late father and since 1856 has occupied himself solely with scientific work in his own private laboratory; his continuing studies with thallium will lead him to discover the principle of the radiometer, a device that converts light radiation into rotary motion.

German zoologist-cytologist Max (Johann Sigismund) Schultze, 36, at the University of Bonn defines the cell as a mass of protoplasm with a nucleus (see Purkinje, 1840); he recognizes protoplasm as a basic substance found in both animal and plant life.

Botanist-geologist John S. Henslow dies at Hitcham, Norfolk, May 16 at age 65.

medicine

The U.S. Sanitary Commission created by Secretary of War Simon Cameron June 9 is an outgrowth of the Ladies Central Relief founded April 25 by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, now 40, and is headed initially by park designer Frederick Law Olmsted, now 39. Former educator Clara Barton, also now 40, quits her job at the U.S. Patent Office to distribute food and supplies sent by their families in Massachusetts to troops stationed at the capital. She sees after the Battle of Bull Run that men brought to the Potomac docks are dying for want of prompt medical attention, gains permission to pass through the battle lines (although she is well aware that women on a battlefield are regarded as nuisances or even prostitutes), and attends to survivors of the carnage. Pioneering the practice of professional nursing, Barton will be called the "Angel of the Battlefield," raise thousands of dollars to buy food and medicine for Union troops, and create and direct facilities for recovering soldiers' lost baggage (see philanthropy [American Red Cross], 1881).

Dorothea Dix, now 59, wins an appointment as superintendent of women nurses for the Union.

Philadelphia surgeon Samuel David Gross, 56, publishes A Manual of Military Surgery.

Bellevue Hospital Medical College opens at New York with New Jersey-born physician Lewis Albert Sayre, 41, as the first U.S. professor of orthopedic surgery.

Louis Pasteur advances the germ theory of disease, first proposed by Girolamo Fracastoro in 1530. Pasteur's paper Mémoire sur les corpuscles organisés qui existent dans l'atmosphere convincingly discredits the 1748 notion of spontaneous generation and others of its kind which are still commonly believed (see 1860; Davaine, 1849; Lister, 1865).

religion

Napoleon III sends French troops to Lebanon, where Druse tribesmen have massacred Mennonites. Christians will hereafter dominate Lebanon.

education

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is founded downriver from Harvard at Cambridge, Massachusetts. A committee headed by geologist William Barton Rogers, 56, with members who include power-loom developer Erastus B. Bigelow, now 47, has implemented proposals for the establishment of the new institution. Boston physician and financier William Johnson Walker, now 71, holds Rogers in high regard and has provided about two-thirds of the $100,000 required under MIT's charter before it can begin operations (Walker last year offered Harvard about $130,000 for reforming its medical school, but he demanded an entirely new faculty and the Harvard Corporation rejected his offer; he has left his family this year to live in a Newport, Rhode Island, boarding house and devote his life to philanthropy).

Vassar Female College is chartered at Poughkeepsie, New York, by local brewer Matthew Vassar, 69, who has made a fortune in land speculation. "It is my hope," he will say, "to inaugurate a new era in the history and life of woman. I wish to give one sex all the advantages too long monopolized by the other. Ours is, and is to be, an institution for women—not men" (see 1865).

Yale awards the first American degree of doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) (see Bryn Mawr, 1885).

communications, media

Pony Express cofounder William Hepburn Russell testifies January 18 before a House select committee investigating last year's misappropriation of Indian Trust Fund money and protests his innocence. He is indicted January 30 along with former secretary of war John B. Floyd and Godard Bailey. A criminal court dismisses the last of the three indictments in March, but litigation over the matter will revive in years to come (Floyd has opposed secession but raised a brigade of volunteers following Virginia's secession). A Western Union telegraph line opens October 24 between New York and San Francisco, one of whose hills will hereafter be called Telegraph Hill. The wire has been strung across the continent despite opposition from hostile tribes and Confederate sympathizers who have tried to prevent it, and it brings an end to the money-losing Pony Express started last year. William Hepburn Russell and Alexander Majors have used 121 riders and some 500 ponies to carry more than 3,000 pieces of mail, losing only one pouch (see Holladay, 1862).

Detroit Free Press publisher Wilbur F. Storey sends correspondents to Washington, D.C., and the battlefields at the outbreak of hostilities in April, buys the 7-year-old Daily Chicago Times from reaper magnate Cyrus H. McCormick, takes possession June 8, renames it the Chicago Times June 20, and declares in an editorial, "It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell" and thus adheres to the paper's existing Democratic Party bias (see 1863).

The 10-year-old New York Times publishes its first Sunday editions to capitalize on interest in the Civil War.

Parliament abolishes taxes and duties on paper, giving further impetus to the growth of newspapers (see 1853; 1855). Sales of the 6-year-old London Daily Telegraph average 130,000 copies per day, twice the circulation of the Times of London, and by 1877 its circulation will exceed 240,000, making it the world's highest-circulation paper.

L'Osservatore Romano begins publication at the Vatican. Pope Pius IX has started the paper to help him respond to critics who want the Church to give up the Papal States that it has owned since the Donation of Pepin in 756.

The first U.S. pencil factory opens on New York's East River near 42nd Street under the direction of John Eberhard Faber, now 38 (see 1849; Dixon, 1827). Faber continues to import graphite and clay from abroad but has bought tracts of cedar forest in Florida, built a sawmill at Cedar Keys, and opted to eliminate shipping and tariff costs by launching his own manufacturing operation, which prospers despite the problems created by the war (see Mongol pencil, 1893).

literature

Fiction: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, illustrations by Marcus Stone, 21; Silas Marner, or the Weaver of Raveloe by George Eliot; The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade, whose romance of the Reformation is based on wide reading in literature of the period; Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope; East Lynn by Worcester-born English novelist Mrs. Henry Wood (née Ellen Price), 47, whose moralizing melodrama about the fall of virtue will be translated into many languages (see Theater, 1862).

Poetry: The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language by English anthologist-poet Francis T. (Turner) Palgrave, 37, who will publish a second, enlarged edition in 1897; The Season; a Satire by English lawyer-turned-poet Alfred Austin, 26.

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning dies at Florence June 29 at age 55 (her husband, Robert, returns to London); Arthur Clough dies at Florence November 13 at age 42 while traveling for his health.

art

Painting: Orphée, Le Repos by J. B. C. Corot; St. John by New York painter John La Farge, 26; Nanna by Bavarian-born painter Anselm Feuerbach, 30, a son of the philosopher and moralist Ludwig Feuerbach, who has painted a formal, statuesque idealization of the model Nanna Risi.

French illustrator (Paul) Gustave Doré, 29, produces wood-cut engravings for Dante's Inferno.

Sculpture: Ugolino and His Sons by French sculptor Jules Carpeaux, 34, who has lived at Rome since 1854, when he won the Rome Prize. Also known as Jean-Baptiste, Carpeaux creates a dramatic bronze for the Tuileries Gardens at Paris that wins him commissions for many portrait busts.

photography

Oneonta, New York-born San Francisco photographer Carleton E. Watkins, 31, ventures into the Yosemite Valley, having earlier worked on an assignment to take pictures for explorer John C. Frémont, who has obtained a land grant that includes the huge Mariposa estate and mine in the Sierra Nevada mountains. He loads pack mules with his specially built wooden box camera, a portable darkroom, and 18-by-22-inch glass negative plates plus a stereo camera for taking three-dimensional views. Watkins sends his photographs and stereographs to Boston and New York, where they have a great impact (see environment, 1864; Painting, 1866).

theater, film

Theater: It's a Family Affair, We'll Settle It Among Ourselves (Svoi lyudi sochtemsya) by Aleksandr Ostrovsky 1/10 at St. Petersburg's Alexandryinsky Theater. Now 37, Ostrovsky wrote the play in 1849 under the title The Bankrupt (Bankrot), its exposure of bogus bankruptcy cases among Moscow merchants provokes an outcry, and further productions will be banned for 13 years; Liverpool-born physician-turned surgeon Charles Wyndham, 23, makes his acting debut in January at Mrs. John Woods's Olympic Theater at New York but will soon go off to serve as a surgeon in the Union Army. He has obtained a degree from Guy's Hospital, London; Siegfried's Death (Siegfrieds Tod) by Friedrich Hebbel 1/31 at Weimar's Hoftheater; Kriemhild's Revenge (Kriemhildes Rache) by Hebbel 5/18 at Weimar's Hoftheater; The Tragedy of Man (Az ember tragediája) by Hungarian poet-playwright Imre Madách, 38, is a 15-act drama covering the past and future of man, beginning with Adam and Eve (intended for reading, it will be performed at Budapest's National Theater in 1883). Madách has worked as a lawyer and is elected to the Hungarian parliament.

Playwright Eugène Scribe dies at Paris February 20 at age 70; actor and stage manager William Farren at London September 24 at age 75.

music

Opera: South Carolina-born soprano Clara Louise Kellogg, 18, makes her operatic debut 2/27 at New York's 7-year-old Academy of Music singing the role of Gilda in the 1851 Verdi opera Rigoletto; Adelina Patti, now 18, makes her European debut at London's Covent Garden 5/14 singing the role of Amina in the 1831 Bellini opera La Sonnambula and goes on to sing at Berlin in December.

Ballet: Le Marché des innocents 5/29 at the Théâtre Imperial de l'Opéra, Paris, with Mariya Surovshchikova in a production staged by her husband, Marius Petipa.

Dancer Lola Montez dies in obscurity at Astoria, New York, January 17 at age 42, having gained notoriety as mistress to Bavaria's late Ludwig I.

Musical instrument importer Rudolph Wurlitzer finds he can no longer fill all the orders he receives for German-made instruments and opens a factory at Cincinnati, chiefly to produce bugles, drums, trumpets, and other band instruments for the military (see 1856). Now 30, he will open a Chicago branch in 1865 (see 1890).

First performances: Mephisto Waltz by Franz Liszt, in January at Weimar's Grand Ducal Palace; Mass in B minor by the late Johann Sebastian Bach 4/24 at Berlin (first complete performance; see 1733); Quartet in G minor for piano and strings by Johannes Brahms 11/16 at Hamburg's Wormer Hall.

English composer-conductor Vincent Novello dies in retirement at Nice August 9 at age 79, leaving his son Joseph Alfred, now 51, to carry on the music publishing house that he started in 1811.

Hymn: "Abide with Me; Fast Falls the Eventide" by English composer-organist William Henry Monk, 38, lyrics by the late Scottish Anglican clergyman Henry Francis Lyte, who died in 1847 at age 54.

Popular songs: "Dixie" is played at the inaugural of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and quickly becomes the marching song of the Confederate Army, much to the chagrin of New Yorker Daniel Decatur Emmett (see 1859); "Aura Lea" by the U.S. composer George R. Poulton, lyrics by Cincinnati poet William Whiteman Fosdick, 36; "Maryland! My Maryland!" by Marylander James R. Randall, whose lyric is set to the music of the German Christmas song "O Tannenbaum" (Randall has heard that Massachusetts troops were attacked while passing through Maryland and hopes that his state will join the Confederacy); "The Vacant Chair, or We Shall Meet but We Shall Miss Him" by Sheffield, Massachusetts-born New York composer George Frederick Root, 41, lyrics by H. S. Washburn.

sports

The 160-pound English middleweight champion and "scientific" boxer James "Jem" Mace, 29, uses speed and his left jab to win the British heavyweight title, which he will lose next year to Tom King but will regain when King refuses to fight him again (see Marquess of Queensberry rules, 1867).

architecture, real estate

Elisha G. Otis patents a steam-powered elevator but dies at Yonkers, New York, April 8 at age 50, leaving Otis Elevator Company to his sons (see 1857). The Otis elevator together with cheaper steel will permit development of the high-rise building and lead to the rise of the modern city (see 1884).

agriculture

Most Russian peasants can do no more than grow enough food for their own families' needs with a small surplus in good years to sell for tax money. Most cultivate with wooden plows, harvest their crops with sickles or scythes, and thresh their grain with hand flails. One-third of the peasants have no horses, another third only one horse, and even in the richer parts of Russia the soil's fertility is drained by strip farming and a shortage of fertilizer (see Stolypin, 1906).

Chicago ships 50 million bushels of U.S. wheat to drought-stricken Europe, up from 31 million in 1860 despite the outbreak of the Civil War and the shortage of farm hands. "Without McCormick's invention, I feel the North could not win and that the Union would be dismembered," says former U.S. attorney general Edwin McMasters Stanton, 46. The McCormick reaper sells for $150, up from $100 in 1849, but McCormick offers it at $30 down with the balance to be paid in 6 months if the harvest is good and over a longer term if the harvest is disappointing (see Singer, 1856).

Union authorities at Denver stop Texas rancher Oliver Loving from returning south until Kit Carson and Lucien Maxwell intervene (see 1860). The Confederacy will commission Loving in the next few years to drive cattle to Mississippi for provisioning its troops there, but the war will end with the Richmond government owing him by some accounts somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000 (see 1866).

The California State Legislature commissions Count Agoston Haraszthy to bring select varieties of European wine grapes to the state (see 1857). Using $12,000 of his own money, Haraszthy will select 100,000 cuttings that represent 300 varieties from Europe's great vineyards, inaugurating the modern era of California wine production. Two of his sons will be married in 1863 at the hacienda of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo to daughters of the general, who was imprisoned briefly during the Mexican War but has prospered since the gold rush (see 1841; 1920; report, 1862; grape phylloxerae, 1868).

consumer protection

A lecture to the Royal Society of Arts demonstrates that 87 percent of London's bread and 74 percent of the city's milk is still adulterated despite the Adulteration of Foods Law enacted last year (see 1872).

Louis Pasteur confutes theories that lack of oxygen is what keeps canned food from spoiling. His paper "Animalcules infusoires vivant sans gaz oxygene libre et determinant des fermantions" introduces the terms aerobic and anaerobic in describing the growth of yeast at the expense of sugar in the presence or absence of oxygen (it will later be called the "Pasteur effect"). Pasteur also notes that since milk is alkaline rather than acid, it requires more heat for sterilization, but heating milk to 110° C. will stop the growth of "vibrios" and preserve it indefinitely, he says (see 1895).

food and drink

Baltimore canner Isaac Solomon reduces the average processing time for canned foods from 6 hours to just 30 minutes by employing Humphry Davy's discovery that adding calcium chloride raises the temperature of boiling water to 240° F. and more (see 1874).

Gail Borden licenses more factories to produce his condensed milk, which the Union Army is purchasing for use in field rations. Borden's son John Gail fights for the Union, his son Lee with the Texas Cavalry for the Confederacy (see 1858; 1866).

Van Camp's Pork and Beans helps sustain Union troops in the field. Indianapolis tinsmith-turned-grocer Gilbert C. Van Camp, 37, has mixed pork, beans, and tomato sauce in his Missouri Street store to create a new canned food staple (it will become the world's largest-selling brand of pork and beans) and he secures an army contract.

Godey's Lady's Book calls the tomato a "delicious and wholesome vegetable" but warns its readers to cook tomatoes for at least 3 hours, since cooking them for less will result in "a sour porridge."

Philadelphia butcher Peter Arrell Brown Widener, 27, obtains a government contract to supply mutton to Union troops in and about Philadelphia. Widener will pocket a $50,000 profit that he will invest in a chain of meat stores and in street railways, building a huge fortune (see American Tobacco, 1890).

America's first commercial pretzel bakery opens at Lititz, Pennsylvania, where Julius Sturgis gives up baking bread to produce hard pretzels, using a recipe allegedly given him more than 10 years ago by a vagrant in exchange for a meal.

Roller mills come into use in Britain: refined wheat flour without wheat germ will become the dietary staple by the 1870s, and not just among the rich.

Henri Nestlé, 45, begins his rise to world prominence. The Swiss businessman has taken a financial interest in a chemical firm at Vevey operated by Christopher Guillaume Keppel, and he assumes ownership upon Keppel's retirement (see 1866).

Discovery of a cheap method for producing ice makes it practicable to chill and freeze meat, but ways to refrigerate and ship bulk meat in good condition will not be found until 1880.

Cookbook: The Book of Household Management by English journalist Isabella Beeton (née Mayson), 25, gives recipes for Victorian dishes in a thick three-pound, 1,296-page volume with color plates whose contents appeared originally in her publisher husband Samuel Orchert Beeton's Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine. Mrs. Beeton's book will have sales of some 60,000 copies in its first year, and it will continue to attract buyers for more than 50 years, selling over half a million copies by 1890.

population

British-ruled Ireland makes abortion a criminal offense.

Britain's population reaches 23.1 million while Ireland has 5.7 million, Italy 25, Russia 76.

America's 23 Northern states have a combined population of at least 21 million; the Confederacy has 9 million, about 4 million of them slaves.

1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870