Episodes Nearest to December 20, 1848: 1 through 25 of 25

  1. A Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Movement
    date December 20, 1848map PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvaniatags Abolition, Anti-slavery

    On December 20, 1848, in a small chamber of the Assembly Buildings in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society held a very outspoken convention. Many gathered -- presidents, vice presidents, and secretaries -- in order to set straight their position in regard to the Free Soil Party and the church. They were also going to let the people of Pennsylvania know their stand on the United States...

  2. Moral vs. Immoral: Exploring Slavery in Florida
    date January 1, 1849map ALCHUA, Floridatags Race-Relations, Slavery

    "He called the slave owners worse than house thieves and we laughed at the old fool for his ignorance," said Margaret Lynn Lewis in a 1849 letter to her son John Lewis Cochran. As members of the planter class, the Lewis family relied on slave labor in order to maintain their farm.

    The use of slave labor in Florida was centered on King Cotton, which was essential to the prosperity of the...

  3. Governor Issues Plan for Establishing Railroad
    date December 4, 1848map WAKE, North Carolinatags Economy, Government, Politics, Migration/Transportation, Urban-Life/Boosterism

    Governor Graham called upon the North Carolina Senate for action in implementing his plan to install continuous railroad from Gaston to Charlotte and connecting 250 miles of North Carolina's piedmont. His proposition required the formation of a joint stock company in which the State and private stockholders would split the 2 or 2.5 million price tag. In the Governor's estimations, 500,000...

  4. The Oncoming Threat of Cholera in New Orleans in 1849
    date December 30, 1848 to January 11, 1849map ORLEANS, Louisianatags New Orleans, cholera

    After a sixteen-year hiatus, cholera was once again on the doorstep of New Orleans. On December 30, 1848, reports from Pittsburgh began circling that cholera was the responsible agent for thirteen deaths aboard steamships known as the Diadem, the Watkins, and the Savannah; all of which had docked in the New Orleans harbor. A message from Cincinnati stated that fourteen people aboard the Peytona, which...

  5. The New Textile Industry in Athens, Georgia
    date January 11, 1849map CLARKE, Georgiatags Agriculture, Economy, Government, Law, Politics, Migration/Transportation, Urban-Life/Boosterism

    Cotton farming had reached great heights in Georgia by the mid-1800's but some saw that there was still room to grow in the cotton business. Though most of their neighbors were engaged in farming, twenty citizens of Athens, Georgia decided to break the mold. In January of 1849 they announced in the Athens Southern Banner, that they were joining together to form a new business: The Athens...

  6. The Hanging of Dave
    date November 17, 1848map WASHINGTON, Tennesseetags African-Americans, Crime/Violence, Health/Death, Race-Relations, Slavery

    On the Friday preceding November 20, 1848, the town of Jonesborough witnessed the hanging of a slave named Dave charged with the murder of his master. The slave did not deny his crime and appeared to show no remorse at the time of his execution. The only excuse offered by Dave for this gruesome act was that he had been drinking before the time the act was committed. Those who were there to witness...

  7. “The Graduation of Elizabeth Blackwell; A Triumph for the Autonomy of Women in Nineteenth- Century America”
    date January 23, 1849map ONTARIO, New Yorktags Women, Medicine, Education, Gender Relations

    On January 23, 1849 at the graduation ceremony at Geneva Medical College, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive a degree to practice medicine. The traditional commencement ceremony and distribution of diplomas was held in the college’s Presbyterian Church. Within the hour before the ceremony began the Church was filled to maximum capacity. The audience present at the...

  8. The Change of Society in New Orleans Brought on by Cholera in 1849
    date December 30, 1848 to February 17, 1849map ORLEANS, Louisianatags cholera, New Orleans

    The devastation of cholera resumed in New Orleans on January 13, 1849 when the Medical Board pronounced that the disease had made its way into the levee. As was the case in the cholera epidemic of 1833, no one could explain why it had suddenly sprouted up again. There had not been many records indicating that ships from Europe had brought any cases of the disease in the most recent months. Theodore...

  9. Railroads of antebellum Virginia
    date January 29, 1849map ROCKBRIDGE, Virginiatags Economy, Government, Migration/Transportation, Urban-Life/Boosterism

    In February 1840, the Virginia Legislature was busy discussing the Lynchburg and Tennessee Railroad Bill. The Bill argued that the Southwestern part of Virginia needed access to major trade routes. The majority was in opposition to the original bill (for many reasons, particularly monetary), so Mr. Paxton of Rockbridge County, Virginia proposed a substitute bill, which was found more agreeable by...

  10. An Absent Plantation Owner
    date February 10, 1849map IBERVILLE, Louisianatags Agriculture

    It seems that John Murrell of Lynchburg, Virginia, was often away from his Louisiana plantation. Murrell bought Tally Ho Plantation in Iberville Parish in 1848. The plantation was run by an overseer named L. Hewett, who communicated with Murrell through a series of letters, most posted to an address in Lynchburg and some to an address in New Orleans. In the letters, Hewett told Murrell about the...

  11. The Price on a Life
    date February 26, 1849map ROCKBRIDGE, Virginiatags African-Americans, Government, Law, Politics, Race-Relations, Slavery, War

    Daily habits, such as flipping through a newspaper, must have been hard on an anti-slavery southerner. The newspapers prior to the Civil War are full of reminders that not all people were in fact equal. Two adds in The Valley Star (the primary newspaper in Lexington, Virginia) were surprisingly similar: one describing a lost horse and the other a lost slave. In Virginia at the time, the two were...

  12. Making Their Own Way
    date February 28, 1849map NEW CASTLE, Delawaretags African-Americans, Arts/Leisure, Law, Race-Relations

    In 1849 a law was passed in the state of Delaware that threatened to sell free blacks into a year of servitude if they were "idle and poor" and remained unemployed. This law gave free blacks motivation to make a way for themselves.

    Free blacks living in the State of Delaware during the antebellum era faced a number of experiences as they tried to make their own way. These unique...

  13. The U.S. Congress Creates the Department of the Interior
    date March 3, 1849map Washington City, District of Columbiatags Native-Americans, Government

    The idea of the formation of a U.S. Department of Interior laid in the back of the mind of the U.S. Congress since the ratification of the Constitution in 1789. However, in the months following the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, the proposal reasserted itself as the federal government and its responsibilities expanded enormously. As a result, in the second session of the 30th Congress...

  14. Malcolm H. Addison Gets Religion
    date March 4, 1849map TERRITORY, Territorytags Church/Religious-Activity, Education

    At the McKenzie College on the Texas frontier religion was taken seriously. The Reverend John Witherspoon Pettigrew McKenzie founded the school and was also its headmaster. Malcolm H. Addison attended McKenzie College and like most college students both past and present, he received letters from his parents. For Addison, the subject of these letters inevitably turned to a questioning of the status...

  15. Sarah C. Owen Addresses the Rochester 1848 Woman’s Rights Convention
    date August 2, 1848map MONROE, New Yorktags Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth McClintock, Amy Post, woman's rights, woman's suffrage

    A little less than a month after the Seneca Falls Convention, the Convention that sparked the woman’s rights movement, a Woman’s Rights Convention was held on August 2, 1848 in Rochester, New York at the Unitarian Church to continue the work done at Seneca Falls. The Woman’s Rights Convention in Rochester was planned by Amy Post, Sarah Hallowell, Sarah Fish, and Sarah C. Owen because there...

  16. Riot Turns Macbeth Performance into Real Tragedy
    date May 10, 1849map NEW YORK, New Yorktags Crime/Violence, Urban Society

    On the night of May 10, 1849 a riot erupted at the Astor Place Theater in New York City. Leading up to the riot, there had been a rivalry between the English actor Edward Macready and the American actor Edwin Forrest. Baker wrote that this rivalry began when Forrest believed that Macready sabotaged his recent tour of England. The nativist trend in the United States at the time did not help...

  17. Poe's "Sepulchre by the Sea": Love and Death in Victorian America
    date May, 1849 to 1849map NEW YORK, New Yorktags Cult of Death, Disease, Poetry, Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, tuberculosis, love

    Edgar Allan Poe spent his final months in poverty, tormented by grief, drowning his depression in alcohol and poetry. In May 1849, in his small New York cottage, he wrote what was to be his last completed poem, “Annabel Lee,” in which he returned to the themes that had haunted him for much of his life. The poem, set long ago in a kingdom by the sea, describes the speaker’s undying love for...

  18. The Southern Press
    date May 25, 1849map PICKENS, South Carolinatags Economy, Government, Politics

    The Keowee Courier published Senator Butler's contention that shocked the local town of South Carolina that the Southern Press was not to be found in the North. His statement read that not a Southern newspaper is to be seen in a large newspaper reading room in Washington D.C. Finally, the Courier insisted that Southerners must open their eyes to the truth and tyranny of the North. The...

  19. Plantation Owner Seeks Compensation From Incompetent Overseer
    date June 22, 1848 to August 9, 1848map HOUSTON, Georgiatags Agriculture, Law

    On June 22, 1848, plantation owner John Powers filed a petition against his overseer, William Ingram, in the Inferior Court of Houston, Georgia. Powers sought reimbursement for financial losses resulting from the overseer's poor and irresponsible work, asserting that half of his cotton and corn crop was lost due to bad management, want of industry and misconduct of the defendant. His plantation...

  20. Zachary Taylor Grapples With the Wilmot Proviso
    date 1848map SUFFOLK, Massachusettstags Politics, Slavery, Law

    As soon as the Mexican War ended and the Mexican Cession granted the United States even more land for the nation, a common contemporary issue posed the question: would these new territories be free soil or allow slavery? David Wilmot, a Democratic representative from Pennsylvania at the time, added a proposal of how to settle the slavery question once and for all, known as the Wilmot Proviso. The...

  21. A English tourist documents his travels from Liverpool, England to New York.
    date June, 1848map KINGS, New Yorktags Transportation/Migration, Crime/Violence, Economy, Law, Slavery, Urban Life/Boosterism

    In 1848, Archibald Prentice composed “A tour in the United States” during his journey from Liverpool, England to New York. In his letters, Prentice recorded observations of his experiences throughout his tour of America.

    During his stay in the Astor House in New York, Prentice wrote about what he observed after touring Brooklyn. He was particularly fascinated by the working man of America....

  22. California Gold Rush
    date 1849map TALLAPOOSA, Alabamatags Migration/Transportation

    The California Gold rush occurred many hundreds of miles from the American South, but its affect was felt throughout the country, drawing large populations of “49ers from most of the Southern States. <br />Alabama in particular was affected. While small in comparison to the California gold rush, a gold rush in the Alabama Creek lands in the 1830's lead to the spread of gold mining...

  23. Cholera Epidemic
    date 1849map ORLEANS, Louisianatags Health/Death

    In late May, 1949 the Virginia legislature reconvened, though their work and discussion was often interrupted by the fears regarding the Cholera outbreak affecting the region, especially Richmond where the legislature met.<br />After much discussion and debate on whether it was necessary to leave, the legislature decided to move to the Fauquier Springs Hotel (though more like a country club)...

  24. Nathaniel Wilkinson House
    date 1849map ORLEANS, Louisianatags Gothic Architecture, New Orelans

    Located at 1015 South Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Nathaniel Wilkinson House serves as a reflection of the Romantic Gothic architecture that invaded the region during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Erected in 1849, an Englishman named Nathaniel Newton Wilkinson attempted to capture the Gothic style in his own residential structure. Undoubtedly unpopular within Louisiana...

  25. The Power of the Bible
    date 1849map WORCESTER, Massachusettstags Slave Trade, Freed Slaves, Church, African-Americans

     

    Walking all alone through the dirt roads of Vermont on a bitterly cold winter day, Aaron found himself astonished. Aaron's astonishment had nothing to do with the journey itself; it was far removed from the runaway slave advertisements he had grown accustomed to seeing on the sidewalks of Ohio claiming his name, from the days in which he had to hide whenever there were newcomers in town,...