In December 1829, Josiah F. Polk and Philip Lindsey created the Tennessee Colonization Society in Nashville. Polk and Lindsey's society was a branch of the American Colonization Society whose goal was to repatriate free slaves to Liberia in Africa. They started to try to convince free slaves to leave the United States as soon as the Society was created in 1829. If the slaves were not free, members...
In the early morning of August 25th, 1885, dark clouds began to roll in over Charleston. The wind began to blow, lightly at first, then steadily increasing in strength as morning drew nearer. Rain began to fall, harder and harder, until water levels rose all over the city. The weather grew steadily worse throughout the night, and the storm from the Atlantic Ocean moved in. According to one Charleston...
On January 26 and 27, 1830, senators Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts got into a heated debate that captured many of the issues that threatened to tear the nation apart. The main issues involved the tariff and nullification. Two days prior to Webster’s reply, Hayne delivered a speech in Congress that attacked Webster by questioning his loyalty to the Constitution....
Many slaves throughout the 1800's sought to escape bondage in any way they could, and though this usually resulted in them running away, occasionally they turned to a more extreme means of escape. The Baton Rouge Gazette reports on January 30, 1830, that “on Saturday night last about 10 o'clock Mr. John Whitten was killed by one of his own slaves, by a discharge from a musket loaded...
When Senator Samuel Foot of Connecticut introduced a bill to limit the sale of Western lands to reduce tensions with Native-Americans and to slow the spread of slavery, he probably knowingly set off a fury among Southern land speculators and agriculturalists. This, in combination with the Tariff of 1828 -- which many Southerners saw as a direct assault on their well being -- was seen as a violation...
On January 1st, 1830, a bill was placed before the Virginia legislature ““to incorporate the Trustees of Randolph Macon College'' as reported by the Richmond Enquirer on February 4, 1830. Passed on February 3, the bill established a college at Boydton, Virginia, near the border with North Carolina. Though founded by Virginia Methodists, according to Randolph Macon's website...
With a sound "resembling the discharge of a small piece of artillery" and "the rushing sound of steam, and the rattling of glass", the starboard boiler on the steamboat Helen McGregor exploded on February 24, 1830 on the Memphis waterfront. In The Mariner's Chronicle, one gentleman on board described the scene in the boiler room as a "complete wreck - a picture of destruction". He...
The advertisements started early in the year for the South Carolina Jockey Club's Annual Horse Race. News of the event was spread to New York and Virginia, as this was known to be one of the biggest social events of the season. The races lasted for several days, ending in a ball that topped all social events of the season and culminated in the election of the new slate of officers. The Charleston...
On March 23, 1830, Senator Thomas Benton of Missouri introduced what he called the Mounted Infantry Bill, calling for ten companies of cavalry to be recruited and used to patrol the Santa Fe Trail. The Trail, which was an overland trade route between St. Louis, Missouri, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, was critical to the growing economy of Missouri. It had resulted in a tremendous amount of trade through...
In 1827, the editors of The Genius of Universal Emancipation published a portion of a letter "from a gentleman in Illinois to his friend in Philadelphia" that relates the story of a slave that was brought from Illinois to Missouri. The slave, "there having been treated with cruelty" was afterwards taken and sold in Louisiana. This slave then "found his way", in a manner unclear, back to St. Louis...