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1850-1859 |
Political and
Social History |
Literature |
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1850 |
Fugitive Slave Act provides for the return of
slaves brought to free states.
Compromise of 1850 admits California as a free
state and Texas as a slave state; New Mexico and Utah organized with no
restrictions on slavery.
National
Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts.
U. S. population: 23,191,876
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Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet Letter, which sells 4,000 copies
in the first 10 days and becomes a best seller.
Emerson,
Representative Men
Melville, White-Jacket
Susan Warner (1818-85), The Wide, Wide
World (domestic
fiction)
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1851 |
15 February. Frederick Jenkins (called
Shadrach), an African American working as a waiter, is seized by
slavecatchers; Richard Henry Dana, Jr., tries to free him by legal means,
but first Shadrach is rescued by a group of African Americans.
Sioux sign Treaty of Traverse des Sioux giving
up land in Iowa and Minnesota
According to
HarpWeek,
Horace Greeley did not originate the phrase but "gave wide exposure to
Indiana editor John Soule's counsel to 'Go west, young man, go west.'"
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Melville, Moby-Dick
Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes
(1851-57)
Birth of
Kate
Chopin (d. 1904)
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1852 |
Democrat Franklin Pierce, a friend of
Hawthorne's, defeats General Winfield Scott for the presidency and affirms
his support for the Compromise of 1850.
"Know-Nothing" Party opposes Catholics and
foreigners.
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Harriet
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin sells one million copies within
the year.
Melville, Pierre
Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
Birth of
Mary E.
Wilkins (Freeman) (d. 1930)
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1853 |
Gadsden Purchase gives the U.S. a strip of
land to the Pacific Ocean.
Abba Alcott and 73 other women petition the
Massachusetts Constitutional Convention to urge suffrage for women.
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Hawthorne,Tanglewood Tales
Birth of Thomas Nelson Page (d. 1922)
William Wells Brown,
Clotel; or, The
President's Daughter, published in England, is the first novel by an
African American.
Putnam's
Monthly Magazine (1853-1922)
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1854 |
Emigrant Aid Society encourages anti-slavery
settlers to move to Kansas
Kansas-Nebraska Act passes, allowing "popular
sovereignty"; the net effect was to negate the Missouri Compromise (1820).
Wendell Phillips and others lead anti-slavery
mob to attack a Federal court house in Boston that holds a fugitive slave
Abraham Lincoln gives a speech condemning the
Kansas-Nebraska Act
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Henry
David Thoreau, Walden
Melville, "The Encantadas"
Thomas
Bangs Thorpe, The Hive of the Bee Hunter
Maria Cummins, The Lamplighter
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1855 |
Free-soil Kansans vote to outlaw slavery.
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Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom
Walt
Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Longfellow, Hiawatha
Melville, "The Paradise of Bachelors" and "The Tartarus of Maids";
"Benito Cereno"; Israel Potter
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1856 |
Abolitionist John Brown kills 5 pro-slavery
men at Pottawotamie Creek; Kansas becomes known as "Bleeding Kansas" because
of clashes between pro- and anti-slavery forces.
James Buchanan, the Democratic candidate,
defeats John C. Fremont for the presidency.
"Know-Nothing" nativist movement
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Melville, The Piazza Tales, and "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
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1857 |
Dred Scott decision
by the Supreme Court. After being brought to free territory by his owner,
Scott sued for his freedom, but the court ruled that he had never ceased to
be a slave, denied that he was a citizen, and denied him the right to sue.
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Melville,The Confidence Man
Atlantic
Monthly (1857- )
Harper's Weekly (1857-1916)
Fanny Fern (Sarah Willis Parton),
Fern Leaves
from Fanny's Portfolio
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1858 |
President Buchanan asks that Kansas be
admitted as a slave state, a request rejected.
Lincoln nominated to oppose Stephen Douglas
for the Senate; Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Financial panic of 1858.
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Charles W. Chesnutt born (d. 1932)
Oliver Wendell Holmes,
The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table
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1859 |
John Brown leads an armed group of 21 to seize
the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, is captured, and is executed.
Georgia passes a law forbidding owners from
manumitting slaves in their wills.
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Harriet
Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing
Harriet E. Wilson,
Our
Nig: or, Sketches in the Life of a Free Black . . . ,first novel by
an African American woman
Martin Delany,
Blake or The Huts of America: A Tale of the Mississippi Valley, the Southern
United States (serialized in 1859 in The Anglo African Magazine )
Birth of
Katherine Lee Bates, author of "America, the Beautiful"
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