Joseph McNeir was a volunteer soldier during the Mexican American War. McNeir had maintained correspondence with his family throughout his time in service. The letters often discussed the life that Joseph McNeir lived during his service as well as how many volunteers were there to serve. McNeir gave intimate details of how the war was going, the expected daily events, and where the soldiers were...
In June of 1845, the True American abolitionist newspaper was founded. Its editor, Cassius Marcellus Clay, was an outspoken abolitionist from the South (a Whig from Kentucky). His arguments against slavery usually were primarily economic in nature, thus appealing to the self-interests of farmers and small slaveholders that, at the time, were feeling the effects of severe economic depression...
For at least four generations, Charles Manigault and his family had owned plantations in the Island region of Chatham, Georgia and the Charleston District of South Carolina. In Chatham County, they invested a lot of money in growing rice, as did many planters across the lowcountry regions of both states. However, in 1844 Charles began to be slightly disgruntled with the labor production of his...
Andrew Jackson, otherwise known as “Old Hickory' and a “man of the people', was the 7th President of the United States, and the first to hail from a state other than Virginia or Massachusetts. Born in a backwoods area in the Carolinas, Jackson served during the American Revolution and eventually ended up as a lawyer in Tennessee. His later distinguished military career included...
After a hard four days of fighting at Monterrey, Mexico, a young soldier named Zenas Matthews described the scene. “Genl. Taylor came around to our side of the town with his staff and went to the Quarters of Genl. Ampudia who surrendered the town[TJ(1] .” he wrote. The conditions of surrender, however, displeased the troops, as, according to Matthews, the Mexicans were allowed to...
In late September 1846 several slaves from the Fairntosh plantation in Durham, North Carolina fell sick with malaria. Their owner, planter Paul Cameron, tells his father Duncan how he provided medicine for his sick slaves as well as the traditional herbs and teas.
“Since that time we have a great deal of chill and fever at the mill quarter in [unintelligible] I have made the...
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) grew up as a slave on a plantation in Maryland; he was the son of a white man. After 20 years of living in the horrible, violent conditions of the institution of slavery, Douglass escaped to the North. He became educated and one of the most prominent and outspoken abolitionists. This book is a narration of his life, with a preface written by another strong abolitionist,...
On October 8, 1846, in Clark County, Alabama, Sam Forwood wrote a letter to his sixteen-year-old son, William Stump Forwood, who was living in Maryland with his grandmother for schooling.Young William had been questioning what occupation he should pursue, and his father had several points of advice. Sam advised his son to pursue the profession of medicine. As Sam explained it, becoming a doctor...
In 1845, a group of Southern Baptists broke away from the Triennial Convention and the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS) due to differences on the slavery issue. This particular group of Southern Baptists did not oppose slavery, as the Triennial Convention and the ABHMS had begun to do. The Baptist Board, situated in Boston, in November of 1844, adopted certain resolutions, one of...
In May of 1845, a committee of ordained leaders from the German Baptist Brethren (Church of the Brethren) convened in Roanoke County, Virginia to discuss the most pressing questions facing their denomination. Much of their discussion, according to the minutes of the meeting, focused on the nuances of traditional Brethren theology in terms of worldliness, alcohol use, nonresistance, feet washing,...