|
|||||||||
| 1800 | 1810 | 1820 | 1830 | 1840 | 1850 | 1860 | 1870 | 1880 | 1890 |
This page includes:
Presidents: James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson | Population: 9,638,453 | Statehood: Maine, Missouri, |
About the 19th Century Decades PagesOur objective, as with the twentieth century, is to help viewers understand the cultural history of each period of the 19th century - decade by decade. We encourage users to browse through these decades, then visit the suggested links for more information. As librarians who love the Internet, but still like to get our hands on books, we must remind users that the Internet has become a wonderful resource for researchers. Just don't forget that trip to the library where you can sit for hours viewing original documents and photographs. The smell of the old books alone make it worth the trip! The 1820-1829The 1820's was a decade of politics and growth as a country. Both the Democratic and the National Republican parties were formed during this decade. The first woman was nominated for the presidency | Boston streets were lit with gas | Americans adopted coffee as a popular drink. | A boat race in New York harbor had an estimated crowd of 50,000 people | Gambling was permitted in some areas | Public horse races were held on Long Island | In the evenings, Americans gathered around the piano and sang. |
The Federal
style and American Greek revival
style remained very popular from 1820 to 1860. Americans loved these grand
styles. Grove
Court houses in Greenwich Village were good examples of nineteenth
century architecture before the emergence of American Greek Revival. In 1821,
an American named Antonio
Canova, sculpted a statue
of George Washington. It was placed in the capitol of North Carolina, Raleigh.
Another sculpture, Horatio
Greenough's colossal statue of George
Washington remains in Washington. Isaac
Damon, the most popular architect of New England, completed The
Meeting House in Deerfield, Mass. An important architectural feat was The
First Church (Unitarian) at Quincy, Mass. 
Built
by from local granite, it was called the Stone Temple. Charles
Lesueur drew plans for the Delaware River shore in Philadelphia,
leaving the original city grid William Penn had created before. Philadelphia
was the largest city, financial center, and major port of the country (until
1830 when NYC gained this honor).
American artists would have come to a sad end if it had not been for the
commissions of the wealthy. There was widespread demand for portraiture.
Gilbert Stuart
was one of the most successful and prolific of artists.
Thomas Sully was another artist who gained wealth as a portraitist, completing
over 2000 portraits during his lifetime. The
Hudson River School, a group of American painters who adopted a romantic
attitude toward nature, became highly popular. This romantic art depicted images
of America's wilderness, and was led by artists. Thomas
Cole and Asher B. Durand.
The National Academy of Design (first
called The New York Drawing Association) was organized in NYC. Samuel
F.B. Morse (who later invented the telegraph) was chosen as its first president.
He was a portraitist during
the early decades. John James
Audubon published The Birds of
America (WOW! Take time here.) in England. Scrimshaw,
carving the teeth or jaw of a sperm whale, flourished during this period. Fishermen
filled their lonely hours by creating these beautiful
scenes on bone.
Ohio Governor
Jeremiah Morrow helped pass the Federal Land
Law of 1820 which spurred expansion into new territories by enabling settlers
to purchase 80 acres of land for $1.25 per acre. In 1821, William
Becknell opened the Santa Fe Trail in order to trade with New Mexico.
President James
Monroe vetoed the Cumberland
Road Bill to repair and collect tolls on the National
Road across the Appalachian Mountains. His veto requested the passage
of a constitutional ammendment giving the national
government authority to finance and build roads.
William Ashley
organized gatherings called rendezvous
in 1825 where trappers could trade
furs for needed supplies. In 1824, Jedediah
Smith rediscovered the South
Pass over the Rocky Mountains opening Oregon and California to settlers. Commerce
between new territories and established communities grew as transportation
on rail lines, such as the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad, and river routes, like the Erie
Canal, were completed. Gateway cities, such as New Orleans, Cincinnati,
St. Louis and Chicago, grew quickly,
providing urban markets which tied the new territories by trade to the Atlantic
states. The United States remained an agricultural
nation. 
The
Missouri
Compromise of 1820 allowed slavery to exist in some of the new states which
were created out of the Louisiana purchase, while others were designated free
states. The demand for American
cotton in British factories
in 1829 helped increase production in the American South. Debate
over the slavery question increased when larger plantations began using overseers
to maximize production. John
Jacob Astor made a fortune in fur trading while other merchants grew rich
by selling different commodities as Americans reoriented
their businesses and farms in order to acquire manufactured goods of all kinds.
Native Americans also became more dependant on goods provided by trade, ultimately
undermining older established tribal economies. In 1828 John
C. Calhoun led Southerners in a protest of the Tariff
of Abominations, so called because it placed high tariffs on imported raw
materials. As tariffs were used
by the federal government as a source of funding, protests sprang up along
sectional lines. Nicholas
Biddle became the president of the Second Bank of the United States in 1823.
John Quincy Adams who
had become president in 1824, believed in a national
marketplace which sponsored trade and commerce between the North and the South.
When Andrew
Jackson became president in 1828, he began a campaign
to abolish the Second Bank of the United States, claiming it had too much
power.
A native literature began to appear. Several American authors were read in
both the United States and abroad. Two literary giants were especially revered
- Irving and Cooper. Rip Van
Winkle was written by Washington
Irving. Popular author James
Fenimore Cooper wrote a romance of the American Revolution, The Spy. 
He
published his Leather-Stocking novels, including The
Last of the Mohicans, to phenominal success. Cooper's popularity was
partly due to the reader's growing pride in America and its primitive lands.
Mohicans with its distinctive American hero is considered by most as
the first and most representative novel, helping America establish itself as
a country 'culturally' apart from England whose values included love of nature,
individualism, and physical ability.
Another literary theme was the romantic treatment of the Indian. One of the most popular accounts of Indian captivity was A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison by James E. Seaver. Works included Logan, an Indian Tale by Samuel Webber and The Land of Powhattan by a Virginian.The first newspaper for Indians was published by the Cherokee Council in Echota, Ga. and was created using Cherokee language based on letter symbols. It is still being published. The first newspaper for and by Negroes of America was published in 1827, the Freedom's Journal.
In great vogue during this period were 'annuals' or 'gift books.' An annual was a publication bound in beautiful leather. These contained poetry and women, especially, enjoyed them. The American Tract Society, founded 1825, flooded the country with Christian literature. Tract titles included Beware of Bad Books, Novel Reading, and Poor Sarah. Sir Walter Scott published Ivanho and sold over 2,500,000 copies. He and Charles Dickens (British) were the two most published authors in the U.S. In NYC, the Knickerbocker Group was a school of writers which included Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, James Kirke Paulding, and others. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the first American poets began publishing. A number of his early poems were published in the United Stated Literary Gazette, including "The Angler's Song" and "Autumnal Nightfall." Edgar Allan Poe's first book of poems, Tamerland and Other Poems, was published. The American Quarterly Review, a scholarly journal, was founded in Philadelphia. Frances Trollope arrived in the U.S. on a visit from England (1827) and later wrote Domestic Manners of the Americans, one of the first of many books by English authors who criticized American intellectual life, tastes, and manners. Perhaps the major writing of the decade (or century) was the monumental American Dictionary of the English Language by Noah Webster, a labor of 20 years.
Hard times in the United States, brought on by the Panic
of 1819, added impetus to the desire to find a new life in unsettled parts
of the continent. 1823 saw the founding
of the first Anglo-American settlement in what was then the province of
Tejas in Mexico. Stephen
F. Austin
recruited people to settle land granted to his father by the Mexican government.
These original
300 pioneers set in motion circumstances that, in less than twenty-five
years, culminated in Texas becoming the 28th state in the Union. Trails leading
west encouraged commerce and migration. The Santa
Fe Trail was established by William
Becknell, a trader from Franklin, Missouri, in 1821. This trail helped
open trade between the United States and newly independent Mexico It was
still another route in the constant press westward. By 1825, in a
treaty with the Osage Indians, the United States had negotiated the
right-of-way for this major public highway. Still only two states were
admitted to the Union during this decade. They gained admission via the Missouri
Compromise. The people of Maine,
which had previously been a part of Massachusetts, voted for separation in 1819,
and Maine entered the Union in 1820 as a "free" state. Missouri
was admitted a little over a year later as a "slave" state. This kept
the number of "free" and "slave" states equal.
The federal government began
collecting immigration figures in 1820 and these figures indicate that 151,000
new residents entered the country in this decade. Most of these people
were still from the British Isles, but the second largest group came from Germany.
The bitterly cold winters of 1825-26 and 1826-27 caused great hardship
in that country and motivated many Germans to leave their homeland.
There were a number of other factors that spurred on this influx
of people from Europe. When the depression caused by the Panic
of 1819 eased, there was a labor shortage in the United States. Artisans
thrown out of work by the industrial revolution felt their skills might
be in demand in the new world. Small farmers displaced by the change in
agriculture brought on by large scale
scientific farming were lured by the promise of new, cheap land. Political
and religious upheavals in the old countries of Europe also enticed individuals
to seek a new life in America. The emigration was further enhanced by the flood
of printed material about the United States being generated by the press
and publishers in Europe. As knowledge about the new country across the seas
was disseminated , more people decided to try their fate there. The increase
in foreign born residents began to effect American politics. The Democratic
Party was considered to be more friendly toward immigration and to those people
not born in the United States. The
votes of the Irish in New York City and the Germans and Scotch Irish in Pennsylvania
helped to put the first westerner in the White House as Andrew
Jackson was elected in 1828.
BOOKS:
A short story by
Richard Malcolm Johnson titled "The
Goosepond School" told the tale of an often abusive school master in the
late 1820s. The events are based on the author's own experiences as a
school boy and illustrate the harsh discipline and school conditions of the
time. A more enlightened method of teaching the young was tried in the
utopian community of
New Harmony, Indiana. Here Robert
Owen sought to implement the educational theories of Johann
Pestalozzi. In 1827 Samuel
Griswold Goodrich began publishing the Peter
Parley textbooks which, along with the previous textbooks of Noah Webster,
made available American texts for American schools. In 1820 the first
Roman Catholic school in New England was founded in Boston. A year later
Boston's English Classical School became the first
public high school in the country. The early part of the decade saw
the legislatures of Ohio
(in 1821), Indiana
(in 1824), and Illinois (in 1825) establish school districts, and, in 1825,
New York established public schools.
In higher education there began to be a clamor for a more relevant college curriculum
that taught skills rather than the then current emphasis on a classical
education. The Yale
Report of 1828 defended the classical curriculum as a way to stimulate thought
and hone the mind for future knowledge and life-long education. Even before
the Yale Report, though, things were changing. In 1825 Miami
University in Ohio had instituted a parallel program that allowed students
to substitute classical languages and mathematics for more modern subjects.
In 1826 Union
College in Schenectady, New York, followed suit. It was a trend that
was to continue throughout the century. In 1824 Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute opened its doors as the first solely technical school
in the United States.
BOOKS:
IN THE NEWSFLASH! 1824. Boiler explodes on the steamship Maid of New Orleans, which had traveled safely between New Orleans and St. Louis for several years, killing six persons. FLASH! 1826. Country courting song, On Top of Old Smoky, written by the Scottish, Irish, and English immigrants in the southern hills of Appalachians, is a hit! FLASH! March 16, 1827. The first issue of Freedom's Journal, the first Negro newspaper, is published. FLASH! July 4, 1826. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson dead within hours of each other on the day commemorating the birth of our country. FLASH! June 21, 1829. The Georgia Courier urges southerners to diversity her economy by adding manufacturing, fearing the concentration on growing cotton. FLASH! 1825. In Pennysylvania, inclined plane railway seen as an alternative to the expensive canals connecting the Hudson Valley to the Great Lakes FLASH! April, 1825. Columbian Centinel reports criminal conspiracy as journeyman carpenters in Boston strike for higher wages. Claims stricking on the part of labor to improve working conditions is illegal. FLASH! April 30, 1829. New York Workingmen's Party demands a reduction of the work day to ten hours. |
MUSIC AND THEATER
|
Originally bands had consisted of wind instruments such as flutes,
oboes, bassoons
and non-keyed French horns.
During the 20s brass instruments began showing up in bands as the development
of keys enabled them to achieve a wider range. The trumpet and saxhorn
were among the newer instruments. The first pianofortes
were a luxury, imported from Europe, but European pianos could not withstand
the rigors of the climate in the northeast. In 1823, Jonas
Pickering began serious piano production in Boston. 
He
designed his pianos with a cast iron frame, enabling them to be shipped by rail,
river and canal. In 1825, Alpheus
Babcock patented a piano that could stay in tune in the American climate.
Chivalrous love songs such as Gaily
the Troubadour and songs of separation and yearning
like Shenandoah
were popular during this period. They were generally written by men and
sung by women as parlor songs. Family
and guests gathered around the piano and sang humorous and sentimental songs,
like Turkey
in the Straw , The
Old Oaken Bucket, or The
Last Rose of Summer.
Lowell Mason, a compiler of sacred
music, would take secular melodies from Europe, selected for their harmonic
correctness, and add religious words. In theaters, performance revolved
more and more around stars such as Maria
Garcia Malibran. Operas such as Mozart's Marriage
of Figaro and Rossini's Barber
of Seville attracted the more sophisticated crowds. One
popular melodrama, Clari, a Beauty-and-the-Beast libretto by John
Howard Payne is best remembered for the song Home
Sweet Home. The circus
appealed to the masses. In 1828 Thomas
D. Daddy Rice portrayed Jim
Crow in between scenes of a play in which he was acting. This was
the beginning of minstrel shows. A more urbane black, Zip
Coon, was portrayed by George Washington Dixon. Hunters
of Kentucky by Samuel Woodworth was used by Andrew Jackson as a campaign
song in 1828.
Families entertained at home. Games, dancing and conversation were important.
Everyone participated. Children 
played
games (jackstraws,
hoops, snail) when chores were completed. The minuet
was a popular dance during the early 1800's and a lady would carefully choose
her dress for an evening that included dancing. Men, women and children enjoyed
wearing stylish clothing.
A hand-woven fashionable stole could be worn over a day dress in cool weather.
One of the first American restaurants, Delmonicos,
opened in New York City in 1827. The Boston
Exchange Hotel served food and provided room for weary travelers in Boston.
Frances Trollope and other Brits were amazed at the eating habits of Americans,
Trollope noted: "They
eat with the greatest possible rapidity and in total silence." Coffee gained
popularity in America, but temperance movements claimed it was an aphrodisiac.
This was a decade of firsts for sporting people. Yale College banned football fining offenders not to exceed half a dollar. The first horse race had a purse of $20,000. Horse trotting and boat racing were great forms of entertainment. The first gymnasium was opened in Northampton, Mass. The first swimming school was opened in Boston. John Quincy Adams and John James Audubon were members. The first archery club was formed by a group of artists. The first fancy dress ball on record in New York Society was held at Bowling Green in lower Manhattan.
While government involvement in the sciences was considered unconstitutional,
explorationcame within the bounds of the constitution and the General
Survey Act of 1824. 1825 the Erie
Canal was completed but with it came controversy about federal oversight of
interstate transportation. Henry
Schoolcraft located the source
of the Mississippi River, the Hudson
Bay Company explored Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Utah and California, and
Jim Bridger reached the
Great Salt Lake.
The explorers sent
back specimens and drawings of previously unknown plants, animals and birds, overturning
existing schemes for classification. John
James Audubon began publishing his Birds
of America in 1827. In 1829, an Englishman, James
Smithson, who had never been to America, bequeathed $550,000 to the government
of the United States to establish a scientific institution which became known
as the Smithsonian. Learning herbal
remedies from the American Indians resulted in a uniquely American
pharmacology. Dengue Fever,
a mosquito-borne disease with unbearable headache and pain in the bones and joints,
broke out in Savannah and spread throughout the South. Although Congress rejected
the metric
system in 1821, mechanical knowledge was promoted with the Franklin
Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanical Arts
and the Rensselaer
School, established to promote the study of science and engineering.
Amasa Holcomb began
manufacturing telescopes in 1826. The first railroad, the B
& O, was a horse
drawn rail service charted in 1827. The
typewriter was patented, called a typographer.
Charles Grandison Finney preached a new strain of revivalism
which appealed to members of the society who were interested in challenging the
power of the existing white, male dominated society, and promoted a creed of free
will that made good works the test of a converted heart. A new, dynamic
middle class
was busy executing a capitalist revolution in the political economy, naturally
gravitating to evangelical religion with its emphasis on human agency and responsibility.
The middle class and a more urban society
also gave rise to the "cult
of true womanhood" a philosophy
which divided activities by gender, giving women
the responsibilities
of child rearing and preservation of morals in the family, while men earned
money to support the family and had societal
obligations in areas of government, military and business. Missionary societies
beginning in the 20's were the American
Sunday School Union, 1824, the American
Tract Society (for disseminating religious literature), 1825, 
the American
Society for the Promotion of Temperance, 1826, and the American
Peace Society, 1828. The American
Temperance Society originally desired to save people from the evils of liquor,
but later endeavored to redeem drunkards as well. The successful ATS adopted
a system of itinerant lecturers to spread its message. The American
Colonization Society was promoted by a Quaker, Benjamin
Lundy editor of a newspaper called The
Genius of Universal Emancipation. Linked to these national organizations
were many locally run benevolent groups such as the Female
Charitable Society of Rochester, New York, established in 1822 to aid the
sick poor.
Abolitionism drew proponents from many of the missionary societies as well as other diverse groups. Frances Wright, Richeson Whitby, James Richardson and George Flower helped establish a community at Nashoba, in 1826, where children of slaves could live and receive an education. The Underground Railroad, which had been in existence for some time, became a very actively used method for slaves to escape into free states in the north and into Spanish held territory in Florida and Mexico.
Kingwood College Library | The 19th Century | The 20th Century | Write Us
Design and Maintenance-2/2004-
Peggy Whitley Updated 11/2006, pwhitley
Contributions: Bettye Sutton, Sue Goodwin, Becky Bradley, Sheilda
Welling, Peggy Whitley
Kingwood College Library