Episodes Around: 18540526 to 18540603

  1. Frederick Law Olmsted Journeys Through Texas
    date 1853 to 1854map SABINE, Texastags African-Americans, Slavery

    As the Northern journalist and famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted began his journal through Texas, he wrote, “In entering new precincts, the mind instinctively looks for salient incidents to fix its whereabouts and reduce of define its vague anticipations.' Olmsted's research journey through Texas commissioned by the New York Daily Times (now the New York Times) culminated...

  2. Thomas Hart Benton Begins Term as Congressman
    date March 4, 1853 to March 3, 1855map Washington City, District of Columbiatags Slavery

    A Southerner born in North Carolina, Thomas Hart Benton became an influential figure in Missouri and was in positions of political leadership for most of his life. He was the first United States Senator to serve five terms. In his political career, he was a strong advocate of westward expansion and was an architect of the movement that would become known as Manifest Destiny. Benton authored the...

  3. Economic Sociology of Enslavement
    date 1854map ORLEANS, Louisianatags Economy, Race-Relations, Slavery

    Henry Hughes published Treatise on Sociology: Theoretical and Practical at the age of 25 while living in New Orleans. His book argued that slavery was such a positive influence on dealings between masters and slaves that it should govern social relations throughout the United States, not just the South. African-Americans were not slaves, but rather warrantees. Hughes wrote: Property in men, is...

  4. Capitalist Enslavement
    date 1854map DAVIDSON, Tennesseetags Economy, Race-Relations, Slavery

    George Fitzhugh, a native of Brentsville, Virginia, published Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society. He looked upon Africans and African-Americans as children, uniquely suited to slavery. Just as children cannot be governed by mere law ? because they are so much under the influence of impulse, passion and appetite, the negro individual had to be treated as a grown up child ? The...

  5. The Need for Railroads in Norfolk
    date 1854map NORFOLK CITY, Virginiatags Agriculture, Economy, Migration/Transportation, Urban-Life/Boosterism

    Railroads were an essential component to economic growth and stability during the mid-nineteenth century. One letter, written by An Eastern Virginian to The Lynchburg Virginian in 1854, stressed the vital need to fix the railways running between Norfolk and the Valley of Ohio. Though transporting goods to the Valley of Ohio was possible, the route was extremely difficult due to the railway's...

  6. Murder in Portsmouth, Virginia
    date 1854 to March, 1855map NORFOLK CITY, Virginiatags Crime/Violence, Health/Death, Urban-Life/Boosterism, Women

    On October 14, 1854, a neighbor found the Braden family of Portsmouth, Virginia dead in their home. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was excessive amounts of laudanum in their stomachs. The town was outraged and astonished. Who would commit such a heinous crime? The members of the community greatly respected the Braden family, and mourned their loss. A carpenter who was in the house that...

  7. Cholera Epidemic
    date May 26, 1854 to June 3, 1854map DAVIDSON, Tennesseetags Health/Death, Migration/Transportation, Urban-Life/Boosterism

    Nineteen people in Nashville and the surrounding area died of what doctors suspected to be cholera. Most of the deaths occurred near the city limits. The Nashville Union sought to control any possible panic by relaying information of the epidemic with this concluding sentence: This is the whole truth up to this time [original emphasis]. They reassured their readers that once the weather changed...