- The founding of the Women's Exchange for Women's Work in Charleston
1885
CHARLESTON, South Carolina
WomenThe Women's Exchange for Women's Work was founded in Charleston in 1885 with the intention of helping the “educated poor' become self-sufficient. Numerous goods were sold there, including foods, flowers, and various crafts. So that it would not be a “humiliating charity,' they placed a 10% surcharge on the goods. A similar exchange was soon opened in New Orleans. These...
- The Double Hip “Ironsides” Corset shapes American Women 1885 NEW YORK, New York fashion, corsets, women's rights
Victorian women liked their corsets tight. If a person looked up and down any busy street in the late nineteenth century, they saw townswomen that struck dramatic silhouettes. The corset, a tight fitting, boned garment, restricted movement and reshaped the natural position of organs inside a women's body. A trade card from 1885 featured a corset typical of the period dubbed the Double Hip...
- Ulysses S. Grant Pens His Memoirs 1885 to 1886 ALLEGANY, New York Civil War, historical memory
An inquirer once asked Grant about meeting General Lee at Appomattox: "What were your thoughts, General, in that sublime moment when you knew that at least Lee would surrender, and the heavens of your glory where about to open?" Grant's only answer to that was: "My dirty boots and wearing no sword." General Lee was dressed in a new uniform and sword by his side for the occasion, and Grant was...
- Whitman mourns for the fallen star of the Union 1885 COLUMBIA, New York Politics, Health/Death, assassination, Murder
Walt Whitman, one of the major American writers of the Civil War, wrote When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd after the assassination of the very charismatic leader of the Union during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln. This poem mourned the death of the powerful, western fallen star which was now hidden by blackness, leaving only desperation and bitterness behind. The poem followed...