In modern society, it is commonly accepted as a rule of the profession that doctors remain cool and detached from their patients in order to provide them with the best medical care possible, unobstructed by emotional thoughts, feelings, or actions. The diary of Dr. Walter Wade proved that even in the mid-nineteenth century that this concept was not a foreign one. A large percentage of his journal...
President Zachary Taylor's only inaugural address of the year 1849 is, at first glance, a rather typical political address from a rather typical president. He is one president in the long line of ex-military men to join politics. Like many, he was not especially interested in politics and more coerced into it. Taylor and his address are an important because he is one of the presidents in the run-up...
On Saturday afternoon, John D. Roland left New York on the steam-packet Home bound for Charleston. His trip quickly took a turn for the worst. By Monday morning, the ship encountered a violent hurricane in the waters around Cape Hatteras and was taking on water. All hands were at the pumps, women included, bailing out water, but the leak continued to increase. After water reached the engine,...
During the antebellum period newspapers frequently published editorials that prophesized the events to come. These special prospectuses gave readers a direct insight into the minds of the editors by outlining their principles and beliefs. The National Era was a weekly abolitionist newspaper and the editor of the paper, Mr. Bailey, was interested in publishing literary ideas as well as developments...
John Jacob Oswandel from Lewistown, Pennsylvania, would go on to serve in the field in the volunteer army. He and an associate, Louis Bymaster, traveled to Huntingdon, Pennsylvania to register for military service on 12 December 1846. After meeting with Captain William F. Small of Company C, First Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, they were filed and sent off by ship for training. After...
In 1848 Walker I. Brookes sent a letter to his father from his plantation in Jasper and Jones counties, Georgia. In the letter he discussed many problems he was facing on the plantation. The troubles he wrote about included having to postpone planting, having to buy animals and having to deal with a fire in a field that burned a fence. He began the letter by discussing a delivery of materials by...
Late in 1849, famed author Fredrika Bremer arrived in America on a visit from Sweden. Her writings were well known in America and upon an invitation to visit she gladly accepted. Well aware of the high regard for women in America, she was intent on studying their position and value.
During her two year stay in America, Ms. Bremer visited and was entertained by some of the most prominent...
“The Black Enchanter…” functions as the comic relief in a play titled John-Donkey’s Prize Plays. This actor was one of many white actors in a black face minstrel show in the period before the Civil War. This black character is portraying the “court jester” of this time period, entertaining white people in old torn clothes with his over exaggeration of black features: broken...
The second stage of the transatlantic slave trade was also called the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage was a horrifying experience for slaves headed to the Americas. Slaves were quartered on ships for up to two months and treated as cargo. They were often chained in shackles and kept below deck where they had to lay down because there was less than three feet of height. There was never enough...
On January 12, 1848 Abraham Lincoln, a Whig congressman from Illinois, gave a speech questioning the Mexican-American war that he believed was “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced.” A month earlier Lincoln, as a freshman member of the House of Representatives, introduced the “Spot Resolutions” that asked President Polk to submit evidence that the initial cause and the first battle...