Timeline

The Classic Short Story

1830

  • Indian Removal Act.
  • Revolution in France.
  • U. S. population: 12,866,020.

1831

  • Publication begins on the abolitionist paper, The Liberator
  • Nat Turner leads a slave uprising in which 70 whites are killed; 100 blacks are killed in a search for Turner.

1832

  • The New England Anti-Slavery Society is founded.
  • Edgar Allan Poe publishes his first tale, “Metzengerstein.”

1833-34

  • Slavery is abolished throughout the British Empire.

1833

  • "MS Found in a Bottle" by Edgar Allan Poe wins $50 in a competition sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor.
  • An early form of baseball is played in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the Olympic Ball Club.
  • Schoolmistress Prudence Crandall admits black students to her girls' school in Connecticut.
  • Oberlin College opens, the first co-educational college and the first to admit blacks.

1834

  • The magazine Southern Literary Messenger begins publication

1835

  • Halley's Comet passes by Earth.
  • To increase the amount of available money needed for a growing economy, the state banks begin to issue bank notes not backed by gold and silver. Inflation results
  • Mob in Charleston, S.C. burns abolitionist literature, and abolitionist writers are expelled from Southern states.

1836-1846

  • Transcendentalism flourishes in New England.

1836

  • Beginning on February 23, Santa Anna leads 3,000 men in a siege of the Alamo, killing 187 Texans on March 6.
  • The Massachusetts Supreme Court rules that any slave brought within its borders by a master is free.

1837

  • The electric telegraph is patented.
  • Following several months of increasing inflation and shrinking credit, the Panic of 1837 begins, causing widespread bank failures and unemployment.

1838

  • Removal of 15,000-17,000 Cherokee Indians from Georgia on the "Trail of Tears" results in 4,000 deaths.
  • The Underground Railroad is organized, helping slaves to escape to the North.

1839

  • The first bicycle is built in Scotland by Kirkpatrick Macmillan.
  • A Spanish slave ship, Amistad, carrying 53 slaves, is taken over in a mutiny by Cinque; before the Supreme Court, John Quincy Adams argues their right to be free.
  • At the Anti-Slavery Convention in London, William Lloyd Garrison and others walk out when women abolitionists are not allowed to be seated as delegates.
  • Transcendentalist Club begins to publish The Dial with Margaret Fuller as the first editor.

1840

  • The establishment of the British Postal System makes it easier to circulate newspapers and magazines.

1841

  • Dorthea Dix begins her campaign against the mistreatment of the insane.

1842

  • The Sons of Temperance is founded at the Teetotalers' Hall in New York City.
  • P.T. Barnum exhibits young midget "Tom Thumb," Charles Sherwood Stratton.

1843

  • The Association for Improving the Conditions of the Poor in New York City is founded.
  • Maori revolt against the British in New Zealand

1844

  • Samuel Morse transmits the first telegraph message: "What hath God wrought?"
  • Daniel O’Connell is found guilty of conspiracy against British rule in Ireland.

1845

  • The potato famine in Ireland brings great numbers of Irish immigrants to the United States.
  • Henry David Thoreau begins living in a cabin at Walden Pond.

1846

  • The panorama, a moving picture on rollers, is popular.

1847

  • Pure Politeness: A Handbook of Etiquette for Ladies is a popular etiquette manual.
  • The U.S. Postal Service is established.
  • New congressman Abraham Lincoln makes a speech opposing the Mexican War.

1848

  • Seneca Falls Convention.
  • Revolutions break out in Milan, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Warsaw, Naples, Budapest, Prague, and Venice.
  • Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery.
  • James Marshall discovers gold near Sutter's Fort, California. News of the find begins the California Gold Rush of 1849.
  • The Mexican War ends with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In exchange for $15 million and the settling of $3.25 million in American claims, Mexico cedes some 500,000 square miles of its territory in the western and southwestern U.S.

1849

  • Amelia Bloomer begins publishing The Lily, a journal supporting temperance and women's rights.

1850

  • Harper's Monthly Magazine begins publication.
  • Female clerks are employed for the first time in U.S. shops.
  • The Fugitive Slave Act provides for the return of slaves living in free states.
  • National Women's Rights Convention is held in Worcester, Massachusetts.

1851

  • The New York Daily Times (The New York Times) begins publication.

1852

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin sells one million copies within the year.

1853

  • The women's suffrage magazine Una begins publication.
  • Abba Alcott and 73 other women petition the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention to urge suffrage for women.

1854

  • Emigrant Aid Society encourages anti-slavery settlers to move to Kansas.

1855

  • Free-soil Kansans vote to outlaw slavery.
  • Pavilion of Realism at the Paris Exposition.

1856

  • Abolitionist John Brown kills 5 pro-slavery men at Pottawotamie Creek.

1857

  • The Atlantic Monthly is founded in Boston by James Russell Lowell.
  • Architect Frederick Law Olmsted designs Central Park in Manhattan.
  • Harper's Weekly begins publication under George William Curtis.
  • The Dred Scott Decision declares that blacks are not American citizens.

1858

  • Felice Orsini attempts to assassinate Napoleon III.

1859

  • John Brown leads an armed group of 21 to seize the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and is captured and executed.
  • Georgia passes a law forbidding owners from manumitting slaves in their wills.
  • Erastus Beadle first publishes dime novels.

1860

  • Abraham Lincoln is elected president of the U.S.

1861

  • Alexander II frees the Russian serfs.
  • Attack on Fort Sumter off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, signals the beginning of the Civil War.

1862

  • Battle of Antietam (Maryland), the single bloodiest day of the war (over 23,000 killed or wounded).
  • Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is published in newspapers in the North.

1863

  • United States President Abraham Lincoln formally signs the Emancipation Proclamation.
  • The 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, the first black regiment, is formed.
  • Lincoln dedicates the cemetery at Gettysburg, the occasion of the "Gettysburg Address."

1864

  • "In God We Trust" first appears on a U.S. coin.
  • New York photographer Mathew Brady travels through the battlefields of the South, recording the Civil War on film.
  • Sand Creek Massacre of Native Americans in Colorado.

1865

  • Clara Barton is put in charge of the search for missing soldiers.
  • The Ku Klux Klan begins operations out of the office of Thomas M. Jones.
  • The 13th Amendment outlaws slavery in the United States.
  • U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated.
  • Confederate armies surrender to U.S. forces, ending the Civil War.
  • On June 19th, "Juneteenth,” African-Americans in Texas learn that they are freed from slavery.

1866

  • Treaty of Vienna.
  • Congress passes the Civil Rights Bill of 1866.

1867-1895Literary Naturalism is popular in Europe.

1867

  • Harper's New Monthly Magazine publishes George Ward Nichols's interview with "Wild Bill" Hickock.
  • Charles Dickens gives his first reading in a theater in New York City.
  • All males over 21 are granted suffrage in U.S. territories.
  • Alfred Nobel produces dynamite, the first explosive that can be safely handled.

1868-1869Spanish Revolution; Queen Isabella II abdicates the throne.

1868

  • Anton Roman of San Francisco, California founds The Overland Monthly, publisher of Jack London, among others.
  • Fourteenth Amendment grants full citizenship to all (including African Americans) born in the U.S. except Native Americans.

1869

  • The American Transcontinental Railroad is completed.
  • The Suez Canal is open for shipping.
  • Dmitry Mendeléev produces the Periodic Table.
  • Wyoming passes first woman's suffrage act.
  • Congress enacts the "Ku Klux Klan Act of 1870" or "Enforcement Act" to stop southern white resistance to the power African Americans have gained during Reconstruction.