istoryworld
Events relating to north america
William Hickling Prescott follows his great work on Mexico with a 2-volume History of the Conquest of Peru
Gold is found on the property of John Sutter, at Coloma on the Sacramento river in California, and news of it launches the first gold rush
A treaty signed in Guadalupe-Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War, gives the US six new states
Two New York girls, Maggie and Katie Fox, claim to be in touch with the spirit of a murdered man, thus launching the modern cult of spiritualism
The Wilmot Proviso is defeated in the US Senate, heightening north-south tensions on the issue of slavery
US feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organize a convention on women's rights in Seneca Falls, New York
Oh! Susannah is in the first published collection of popular songs by Stephen Collins Foster
A utopian community dedicated to the sharing of both property and sexual favours is established by John Humphrey Noyes near Oneida, New York
Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail, already serialized in 1847, is published in book form
An anti-British mob attacks the New York theatre where William Macready is appearing as Macbeth, leaving 22 dead and many injured
The gold rush to California gathers pace during 1849, causing the prospectors to become known as 'forty-niners'
Vancouver Island is given the status of a British crown colony, to be followed by British Columbia in 1858
The brothers James and John Harper launch in New York Harper's Monthly Magazine, still published today
As many as 50,000 US pioneers travel west this year on the Oregon Trail
The slave trade, but not slavery itself, is banned in Washington and the district of Columbia
The US Congress passes the Compromise of 1850, designed to defuse the growing crisis over slavery
The Fugitive Slave Act, concerned with the arrest of runaway slaves, is the most contentious part of the Compromise of 1850
Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes his novel The Scarlet Letter, in which Hester Prynne is forced to wear the letter A for Adultress
US Secretary of State John Clayton and British ambassador Henry Bulwer come to an agreement about the building of a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific
Escaped slave Harriet Tubman makes the first of many dangerous journeys back into Maryland to bring other slaves into freedom
Jenny Lind, the 'Swedish Nightingale', has a great success touring the USA in a show presented by P.T. Barnum
Allan Pinkerton retires from the Chicago police force and forms the Pinkerton National Detective Agency
An American clergyman, L.L. Langstroth, discovers the 'bee space', which becomes a standard feature of the modern beehive
The first American branch of the Young Men's Christian Association is established in Boston
The New York Times is founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond as a conservative daily with an emphasis on accuracy
