1800-1860: Government and Politics: Chronology

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1800-1860

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1800-1860

1800

• Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tie in electoral college votes for president of the United States; both candidates are popular in Western districts.

1801

• 17 Feb. The House of Representatives selects Jefferson as president; Burr becomes vice president.

1802

• 6 Apr. All federal internal internal taxes are abolished.

1803

• 30 Apr. The Louisiana Purchase doubles the size of the United States.

1804

• 14 May Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out to explore the Louisiana Territory.

1805

• 8 Nov. Lewis and Clark reach the Pacific Ocean.

1806

• The Burr conspiracy to establish to establish an independent nation in the Southwest is revealed.
• 23 Sept. Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis.

1807

• Aaron Burr is captured and tried for high treason in the plot to “effect a separation of the Western Part of the United States.” He is found not guilty.
• The Embargo Act is put into effect.

1808

• 1 Jan. The overseas slave trade is abolished; meanwhile, the internal slave from coastal to western states skyrockets.

1809

• 15 Mar. The Embargo Act is repealed, and western farmers profit.

1810

• 27 Oct. The United States annexes West Florida.

1811

• 7 Nov. At the Battle of Tippecanoe, at the junction of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers, Gov. William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory defeats the Shawnees under the Prophet Tenskwatawa and burn the nearby Indian village.

1812

• 30 Apr. Louisiana is admitted into the Union, becoming the eighteenth state.
• 18 June The United declares war on Great Britain.

1813

• 5 Oct. At the Battle of the Thames, Shawnee leader Tecumseh is killed, and his colition of Native American warriors is dispersed.

1814

• A British army burn Washington, D.C., but fails to take Baltimore.

1815

• 8 Jan. At the Battle of New Orleans, U. S. forces under Gen. Andrew Jackson defeat a much large British army.

1816

• James Monroe is elected president.

1817

• 28 Apr. The Rush-Bagot Treaty is signed between the United States and Great Britain, limiting the number and size of warships on the Great Lakes.
• 10 Dec. Mississippi is admitted into the Union as the twentieth state.

1818

• 4 Apr Congress adopts the design of the U.S. flag still in use today.
• 30 Oct. The Canadian-United States boundary is extended west along the Forty-ninth parallel.

1819

• 22Feb. The united states and spin sign the Transcontinental, or Adams-Onis, Treaty. The United states receives Florida and th western boundary of Louisi and is fixed along the Sabine, Red, and Arkansas rivers to the Continental Divide, and then to Forty-second parallel and the pacific Ocean.

1820

• 6 Mar. In the Missouri Compromise, Congress “forever prohibits” slavery in all parts of the Louisiana purchase north of 36°30′.

1821

• 10 Aug. Missouri is admitted into the Union as a slave state.

1822

• June The Denmark Vesey slave plot is thwarted in south Carolina.

1823

• 2 Dec. In his annual message to Congress, James Monroe enunciates the Monroe Doctrine, a foreign policy that declares the Western Hemisphere closed to further European colonization and interference.

1824

• John Quincy Adams wins the disputed presidential election.

1825

• 26 Oct. The Erie Canal completed, connecting Western farmers and the Great Lakes to markets in New York.

1826

• 24 Jan. Creek Indians sign the Treaty of Washington, ceding territory to the federal government and gaining another year to remain on their lands.
• 4 July Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

1827

• 6 Aug. The United States and Great Britain sign a treaty extending the 1818 agreement to continue joint occupation of Oregon Territory.

1828

• Andrew Jackson is elected in a landslide, winning every Western state in the country.

1830

• 6 Apr. Joseph Smith, author of The Book of Mormon, founds the Church o Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at Fayette, New York.
• 27 May Jackson vetoes the Maysville Road Bill, which would have provided federal monetary support for a sixty-mill road construction project entirely in Kentucky.

1831

• Jackson forms a “kitchen cabinet,” an informal group of advisors.
• 9 May The Frenchmen Alexis de Tocqueville and William de Beaumont arrive in America.

1832

• 6 Apr. Black Hawk surrenders, thus ending the Black Hawk War in the Northwest.

1833

• 2 Mar. President Andrew Jackson signs the Force Act, authorizing the use of military force to collect tariff duties in South Caroline.
• 4 Dec. The American anti-slavery society is formed.

1834

• 30 June The Indian Intercourse Act is passed.

1835

• 30 Jan. Richard Lawrence tries to assassinate Andrew Jackson, the first attempt on the life of a U.S. president.

1836

• 6 Mar. The Alamo falls to Mexican force.
• 21 Apr. At the Battle of san Jacinto, sam Houston and a force of Texan militia defeat a Mexican army under Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. As a result of this battle, Texas wines its independence from Mexico.

1837

• 3 Mar. The United States recognizes the Republic of Texas.

1838

• Dec. The forced removal of southeastern Indians to Oklahoman, known as the Trail of tears, begins.

1839

• June Slaves aboard the Spanish ship Amistad revolt and gain control of the vessel. They are captured off U.S. water, but after a lengthy court battle the slaves are set free in 1841.

1840

• William Henry Harrison wins the presidential election.

1841

• John C. Fremont explores the headwaters of the Des Moines river in Iowa.
• The preemption Act grants “squatter’s rights” to settlers.

1842

• Frémont leads an expedition to explore the route to Oregon beyond the Mississippi River as far as the South pass of the Continental Divide in Wyoming.
• 9 Aug. In the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, the American and Canadian boundary is established between Lake Superior and Lake of the Woods.

1843

• 29 May John C.Fremont leaves Kansas City for another exploratory journey of the West;the expedition yields an accurate survey of the immigrant route to Oregon.

1844

• 8 June The U.S. Senate votes not to annex Texas.
• 27 June Mormon leader Joseph smith is murdered by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.

1845

• 23 June Texas is annexed by the United States.
• July Magazine editor John L.O’Sullivan coins the phrase “Manifest Destiny.”

1846

• May The Mexican war begins.
• 15 June In the Oregon Treaty the boundary between the United States and Canada is set at the Forty-ninth parallel.
• 8 Aug The Wilmot Proviso passes the House of Representatives for the first time.

1847

• 24 July Mormons arrive at the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

1848

• 24 Jan. Gold is discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California.
• 2 Feb. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican War.

1849

• More than seventy thousand Americans, joined by eight thousand Mexicans and five thousand South Americans, head to the California gold fields.

1850

• Congress grants land to the Illinois Central Railroad.
• Sept. Congress passes the Compromise of 1850.

1851

• Northerners begin to resist the Fugitive Slave Act.

1852

• Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin sells three hundred thousand copies and intensifies the controversy surrounding slavery.

1853

• 30 Dec. In the Gadsden Purchase the United States receives twenty-nine thousand square miles of Mexican territory south of the Gila River for a southern railroad line.

1854

• 30 May The Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

1855

• 30 Mar. Amid armed violence, Kansans choose legislators in the first territorial election. However, border ruffians from Missouri force the election of a proslavery legislature.

1856

• 21 May Lawrence, Kansas, is sacked by proslavery force.
• 22 May South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks beat and severely injures Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner in the Capitol.
• 24 May The Pottawatomie Massacre leaves five proslavery Kansans dead.

1857

• 6 Mar. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, U.S. supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney rules that the Missouri Compromise is unconstitutional and that blocks are not U.S. citizens.

1858

• 21 Aug-15 Oct Abraham Lincoln debates Stephen A. Douglas for an Illinois senate seat.

1859

• 16 Oct. John Brown raids the federal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

1860

• 6 Nov. Lincoln wins the presidential election with no support from southern sates.
• 20 Dec. South Carolina secedes from the Union.