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1820-1829 |
Political and
Social History |
Literature |
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1820 |
James Monroe is almost unanimously reelected
as president over John Quincy Adams, winning 231 of 232 electoral votes.
Missouri Compromise balances slave and free
states admitted to the union. Missouri is admitted as a slave state, but no
slavery will be permitted anywhere north of Missouri's southern border.
Congress makes trade in foreign slaves an act
of piracy
Daniel Boone dies at age 85.
Spring. In Palmyra in western New York state,
Joseph Smith has the first in a series of religious visions that ten years
later, on April 6, 1830, lead to the organization of the
Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons). After removing first to Kirtland,
Ohio, and Commerce (later Nauvoo) Illinois, Smith was shot to death by a mob
in Carthage, Illinois, in 1844.
U. S. population: 9,638,453
20 November. The
whaling ship
Essex is rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in the Pacific ocean. The
survivors are found 94 days later, after a gruelling ordeal that includes
near starvation and cannibalism. As a sailor aboard the Acushnet in
1840,
Herman Melville hears the story and reads Owen Chase's narrative of the
disaster, an account that will later influence Moby-Dick.
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In the Edinburgh Review (volume 33,
January 1820) Sydney Smith writes, "In the four quarters of the globe, who
reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? Or looks at an American
picture or statue?"
Washington Irving, The Sketch Book (1819-20)
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1821 |
Missouri enters union as 24th
state, thus balancing the union at 12 slave and 12 free states
Opening of Santa Fe trail.
Republic of Liberia in West Africa is
established as a refuge for freed American slaves.
The Waterford Academy for Young Ladies, later
the Emma Willard School, opens in Waterford, N.Y, the first college-level
school for women in the Unites States.
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James
Fenimore Cooper, The Spy
 After
a hunting accident in 1809, Sequoyah (1730?-1843) develops a written
alphabet for the Cherokee language. It is approved by the Cherokee chiefs
in this year.(Image of Sequoyah courtesy of the
Smithsonian's Portrait
Gallery.)
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1822 |
Denmark Vesey, a free African American, is
convicted and hanged along with 35 others in Charleston, S.C. when his plans
to lead a slave uprising are revealed.
President James Monroe asks Congress to
recognize several newly independent republics in Latin America, among them
Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Peru.
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1823 |
2 December. President Monroe presents Monroe
Doctrine stating that U.S. will not tolerate European interference in
Western Hemisphere.
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James
Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers
Clement Clarke Moore, "A Visit from St.
Nicholas" (For an article discussing the recent controversy
over whether Moore really wrote this poem, go to
http://www.common-place.org/vol-01/no-02/moore/index.shtml)
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1824 |
John Quincy Adams is elected president
(1824-28) in a contested election that ends in the House of Representatives
on 9 February 1825. Speaker of the House Henry Clay uses his influence to
elect Adams, an action bitterly resented by candidate Andrew Jackson, whose
99 electoral votes make him a logical choice. Adams names Clay his
Secretary of State.
Bureau of Indian Affairs is established.
Great Salt Lake explored by scout Jim Bridger.
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Washington Irving, "Tales of a Traveller"
Lydia Maria Child,
Hobomok
(romance glorifying the "noble savage")
James Seaver, A Narrative of the Life of
Mrs. Mary Jemison (captivity
narrative)
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1825 |
Creek chief William McIntosh signs treaty
ceding Creek lands to the U.S. and agrees to vacate by 1826; other Creeks
repudiate the treaty and kill him.
Completion of the Erie Canal linking the Great
Lakes with New York City; first load of grain shipped in 1836
John Trumbull, William Dunlap, and Asher B.
Durand discover Thomas Cole's
Lake with Dead Trees in a show window; Cole and Durand become
associated with the
Hudson
River School of painters.
Fanny Wright, a Scottish reformer, publishes a Plan for the Gradual
Abolition of Slavery and establishes the Nashoba Community in Tennessee
(1825-28) as a cooperative in which slaves could earn their freedom.
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1826 |
First American railroad completed in Quincy,
Massachusetts
Death of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on
July 4.
12 September. Former Freemason William Morgan
of Batavia, N.Y, who had exposed Masonic secrets in Illustrations of
Masonry, disappears from the Canandiagua, N.Y. jail under mysterious
circumstances and is never seen again. A general belief that the Freemasons
had killed him for revealing their secrets leads to the formation of the
Anti-Masonic party, the first third party in American politics.
(For a description from the Freemasons' point of view, visit
http://www.freemason.org/ims/morgan.htm)
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Cooper,
The Last of the Mohicans
Graham's Magazine (1826-58)
26 May. Elias Boudinot, "An Address to the
Whites"
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1827 |
Creek Indians sign a second treaty ceding
lands in western Georgia
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas established to
protect Santa Fe Trail.
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Cooper, The Prairie
Edgar Allan
Poe, Tamerlane and Other Poems
Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Hope Leslie
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1828 |
Noah Webster publishes American Dictionary
of the English Language.
John James Audubon publishes the first volume
of Birds in America.
Andrew Jackson is elected president, winning
178 electoral votes to incumbent John Quincy Adams's 83.
21 February. Elias Boudinot and Sequoyah begin
publishing the Cherokee Phoenix, the first American newspaper
published in a Native American language.
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Hawthorne, Fanshawe (suppressed by the author) |
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1829 |
Creek Indians receive orders to relocate
across the Mississippi River
First steam-powered locomotive in America.
Mexico resists the efforts of Andrew Jackson
to purchase Texas.
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Poe,
Al Araaf, Tamerlane, and Other Poems
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