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...
ohn Stapleton, an English attorney, handled the affairs of several Charleston properties included in the estate of Mrs. Hannah Bull. He managed the sale of her slaves, cattle, hogs, sheep and other effects of Mrs. Bull's properties after her death. In a letter to Higham, Fife & Co. dated May 20, 1836, Stapleton detailed the sale of several slaves and included the titles. As the attorney, the...
In May of 1836, a long simmering conflict between whites and Creek Indians in Alabama and Georgia finally erupted. President Jackson's destruction of the Bank of the United States had resulted in uncontrolled speculation, and frontier people were clamoring for more land. This was in spite of the 1832 Treaty of Cusseta, which stipulated that individual Creeks be given a parcel of 320 acres...
By the time the Millennial Harbinger hit the presses for its April 1836 issue, the movement begun by its editor, Alexander Campbell, had grown so substantially that it began to challenge other Christian denominations. D.S. Burnet, a writer for the Millennial Harbinger, exclaimed the growth of the restoration movement of primitive Christianity. He explained that ever since its founding,...
First introduced to the House floor by South Carolina's James Henry Hammond, the gag rule was a radical measure designed to completely eliminate debate dealing with abolition. Traditionally, representatives received and tabled antislavery prayers, or buried them in committee; the gag rule, however, prevented even this formality from taking place. This was not a spontaneous development, but...
In December of 1835, Andrew Jackson proposed to Congress that some form of legislation be drafted to restrict the circulation of “incendiary publications' in slave states. He was quoted by the Mobile Commercial Record as saying: “The General Government, to which the great trust is confided, of preserving inviolate the relations created among the States by the constitution, is especially...
The territory of Arkansas began its push for admittance to the Union in 1833, but some Congressmen, as well as many Arkansas citizens, thought statehood could wait until the population had grown considerably. After all, they benefited financially from their status as a territory. However, the need to draft a Constitution and petition Congress for admission became more urgent when Michigan made...
In April of 1836, a major turning point occurred in the war between Texas and Mexico. Texan forces under Colonel James Fannin had suffered a crushing defeat at Goliad in late March; Santa Anna had ordered the execution of the 350 remaining soldiers there. News of the “Goliad Massacre' incensed Texan soldiers under the command of Sam Houston. They looked forward to their chance for retribution....
With the expansion of the United States in the 1830s came an inevitable influx of money from purchases of public land. According to a Treasury Department report issued on February 1, 1836, the surplus amounted to about 30,000,000. In 1833 Congress had passed a bill to distribute the surplus among the states, with the support of Andrew Jackson. But in 1836 the fate of the surplus became a point...
The Alamo had fallen and Sam Houston decided that it was time. On March 11, 1836, Houston ordered Texas families to retreat across the Colorado River in order to escape the Mexican army. Dilue Harris, a young white girl, packed up her belongings and left her home with her family. They began to encounter trouble when they attempted to cross the Trinity River. The water level of the river and the...