istoryworld
Events relating to north america
US author Nathaniel Hawthorne bases his novel The House of the Seven Gables on a curse invoked against his own family
Herman Melville publishes Moby Dick; or, The Whale, a novel based on his own 18-month experience on a whaler in 1841-2
A journalist in the Terre Haute Express gives a piece of advice, 'Go west, young man', that chimes perfectly with the US pioneer spirit
The citizens of the US are scandalized to discover that the Mormons practise polygamy
In the four years since the discovery of gold, the population of California has leapt from 14,000 to 250,000
Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes a massively successful antislavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, that sells 300,000 copies in its first year
Antoinette Brown becomes the first female to be ordained a minister in the USA, in the First Congregational Church in South Butler, NY
An anti-slavery movement, formed in the USA to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act, adopts a resonant name, calling itself the Republican party
US inventor Elisha Otis dramatically demonstrates his new safety elevator, cutting the rope suspending his platform in New York's Crystal Palace
The controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act passes into law, enabling citizens of these territories to decide whether or not to allow slavery
US minister to Mexico James Gadsden secures a treaty by which the USA purchases from Mexico much of southern Arizona
Thoreau publishes an account of his two years of self-sufficient transcendentalism in his hut at Walden Pond
The first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is published anonymously, at his own expense, and contains just 12 poems
Longfellow publishes his American Indian epic, The Song of Hiawatha, in an irresistibly catchy metre
Abolitionist John Brown presides over the lynching of five pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie in Kansas
The Haughwout Store, a five-storey building in New York, instals the first Otis safety elevator
An ultra-reactionary Supreme Court judgement in the Dred Scott case heightens US tensions over slavery
John O'Mahony, an Irish emigrant to the USA, founds the Fenian Brotherhood as a secret organization supporting the Irish republican cause
Abraham Linclon comes to national prominence through his debates on slavery with Stephen Douglas, his rival for an Illinois seat in the Senate
Oliver Wendell Holmes' book The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table is the first in a breakfast-table series
Longfellow uses a romantic story of early New England for his narrative poem The Courtship of Miles Standish
Frozen remains and a document are finally found to reveal the fate of the Franklin expedition of 1845 to the NorthWest Passage
Edwin L. Drake strikes oil in Pennsylvania, leading to several local oil rushes
John Brown is captured leading a group of abolitionists to seize arms from the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry
Abolitionst John Brown is convicted of treason at Harper's Ferry and is hanged
