Officially called the American Party, the Know-Nothing political movement was spurred on by the influx of Irish Catholic immigrants into the United States in the 1840s, the greatest period of European migration ever seen so far. In 1854 immigrants formed a higher proportion of the total U.S. population than ever before or since that time. As the Whig Party disintegrated in the 1850s, separatists...
On April 24, 1889, The Episcopal Methodist, a Baltimore, Maryland newspaper, published an article by the Reverend J. M. Hawley entitled Southern Methodism and the Age, calling for the Methodist Church to reform itself in order to be a success in the modern age. Hawley called the present age a great period for both the Church and the country. The Church, he said, must embrace the age and modernize along...
Writing from Ouachita, Louisiana on December 4, 1860, Sarah Lois Wadley, caught up in the sentiments of secession and northern oppression, describes a famous sermon delivered in New Orleans on November 29, 1860, which her father showed to her in writing. Delivered by Benjamin Morgan Palmer of the First Presbyterian Church, this sermon advocated southern secession in defense of its providential trust...
Dissent in the Democratic Party The big issue leading up to the election of 1896 was the question of the free coinage of silver. With the decline of the economy following Grover Cleveland's election and his repealing of the Sherman Silver Purchase act, his Democratic base began to falter, and the Populist Party support of the free coinage of silver began to invade much of the Democratic Party. An...
In December of 1817, President Monroe asked Andrew Jackson to combat the Seminole and Creek Indians in Florida to prevent the territory from becoming a safe haven for runaway slaves. A letter dated March 16th was printed, in part, in the South Carolina newspaper Southern Patriot and detailed a “horrible massacre' of a family at the hands of a group of Indians. In total four people were killed...
A promissory note is a contract detailing the terms of a promise or loan by one person to pay a sum of money to another person. Many people in the antebellum south used promissory notes when dealing with large amounts of money. John Day and Horatio S. Dexter entered into a promissory note together on October 5, 1824. The amount of the note was for six thousand four hundred and seventy nine dollars....
Helen Lane and Arthur S. Johns requested the presence of John Ambler and his family to their Tuesday morning wedding in the area of Louisa and Hanover counties. The bride's family sent out the invitation and they requested that the Ambler family attend the wedding. The ceremony was scheduled for Tuesday morning at nine am. Weddings traditionally took place within the community and then the couple...
The Women's Medical College of Baltimore in Maryland held its sixth ever graduation ceremony in the afternoon on May 2, 1888. The ceremony was held at the YMCA Hall, decorated for the occasion. There was music and speeches and the Dean of Students, Dr. Richard Henry Thomas, announced the graduates. The graduates were Ida C. Coler, Mary P. Dole, and M. Lizzie Zimmerman. Coler was from Ohio, Dole from...
The Need for More Ships In the late nineteenth century, as the steel and iron industries of the United States slowly became larger and more powerful, newly developed Southern industrial areas began to show interest in the building of a stronger, more powerful merchant marine. A Virginia newspaper, The Montgomery Messenger, shows great interest in the economic benefits of a more extensive merchant...
Dolly Burge recorded in her diary feelings about events that happened in her life and impacted her. Her daughter's departure for college completely devastated Burge. Since her husband had died, it meant that she was living without her family. When her daughter decided to get married, it devastated her even more. She wrote about how upset she was in her diary entries. Burge felt that she had provided...