In this day and age, newspapers rarely print fiction. Of course, there is the occasional magical story written by a third grade class that appears every once a week in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper, but for the most part, fictional stories of real substance are not published in newspapers anymore. This was not the case in the 1800's. Appearing in The Valley Star each week was...
In an article written on August 19, 1856, The Daily Dispatch commented on the growing sectionalism between the North and the South in the United States. In a then recent speech by a Missouri Senator it was stated that “there existed more comity between any two foreign nations now on the face of the earth than there exists on the part of the Northern States towards the South (The Daily Dispatch,...
The Seminole Wars were bitter fights between the white settlers of Florida and the Seminole Indians, a tribe founded in the 1700s after tribes migrated further south. The First Seminole War began in 1817 when Andrew invaded Eastern Florida, backed by the U.S. Army. While the first war only lasted a year, the Second Seminole War began in 1821 and did not end 1842, although no peace treaty was ever...
On August 14th, 1856 a man was arrested on the charges of disseminating incendiary material. The man, John Duberry, was caught distributing the speeches of Senators Sumner and Seward amongst slaves in Columbus, Mississippi. For committing a “crime' such as this, Duberry could have received a sentence of ten years in jail. Unfortunately though, the newspaper did not print a follow up...
Last Island, Louisiana was a popular vacation spot for wealthy families in the nineteenth century. The island, located in the Gulf of Mexico, served as an ideal summer getaway because of its full exposure to southern breezes and desirable climate. Last Island was relatively small, measuring twenty five miles long and three fourths of a mile wide. The island's attractive qualities, namely...
In the summer of 1856 tensions ran high between pro slavery and free soil groups in the territory of Kansas and thus trickled into the nearby, slave state Missouri. Although allowing Kansas to be a slave state would have violated the Missouri Compromise established in 1820, pro slavery forces fought to add yet another state to “their' side. Free soil groups vehemently opposed instituting...
On August 10th a slave named Henderson, the human property of Edward Gresham, was arrested and caged. Police officers caught Henderson in an illegal assembly of eleven other blacks, trespassing over private property and carrying fire arms. Henderson probably faced punishment by the law following his arrest, and then subsequently by his master once released from confinement. Slave rebellions generally...
In September of 1856, during the race for the presidency, James Buchanan addressed the Senate on the subject of slavery. The issue of slavery was central to the Presidential Election of 1856. Buchanan, reticent of the fact that he needed to find middle ground on the topic in order to appeal to both pro-slavery southerners and abolitionist northerners, crafted his statements on slavery so as not...
A bloody massacre of immigrants on route to California by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) and aided by local Native Americans occurred in Mountain Meadows, Utah. The blame for the massacre originally fell on the Native Americans. The Pittsfield Sun, a Massachusetts newspaper, provided an eyewitness account to the horrific crime and indicted the Mormons...
In July of 1856 the Senate labored over the span of two days to come to an accord regarding the issue of slavery in Kansas. On the morning of the 11th, the Committee on Territories adopted the new Kansas bill, first introduced by Senator Toombs of Georgia. This new bill declared Kansas a slave state and was passed by a vote of thirty three to twelve. The bill only needed approval by the House...