What happened in the 1850s?
By Sam Pickard
If asked on the spot, the average American probably wouldn’t be able to think of something from the 1850s, a decade that has faded into the background of American consciousness. Despite this, most people probably know more than they realize about this important decade in American history. If you want to learn about what was happening in the wider world before you read the Marple in the 1850s series, or just want to refresh your memory, here’s a brief summary of important events, fashion, and technology of the 1850s.
Presidents and Politics
The 1850s were the decade before the American Civil War and consequently much of the national politics and discourse revolved around slavery. The Mexican-American War had ended in 1848 with an American victory and the annexation of much of what is now the southwest United States, including California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. General Zachary Taylor, a war hero, had been elected president after the war, but died in July 1850 after less than a year-and-a-half in office. Taylor was succeeded by his vice president, Millard Fillmore (1850-1853), who lost the Whig Party nomination for 1852 to another war hero, General Winfield Scott. Scott lost the presidential election to Franklin Pierce, who after one term (1853-1857) stepped down and was replaced by the first Pennsylvanian to serve as president, James Buchanan (1857-1861).
Most of the presidents during this era were relatively weak executives in an era when stronger leadership may have slowed the drift toward Civil War. At the dawn of the decade, a political debate raged about whether or not to permit the institution of slavery in the newly conquered western territory. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, supported by senators Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, pushed for a compromise, which was opposed by President Taylor and rabidly pro-slavery South Carolina Senator John Calhoun as well as abolitionist New York Senator William Seward. With the deaths of Calhoun and Taylor, the Compromise of 1850 was passed. Its main provisions established new territories in the west, ended the sale of enslaved people in the District of Columbia, and enacted the Fugitive Slave Act, which required officials in free states to assist in the return of enslaved people who had self-emancipated themselves and escaped from bondage. This law was deeply unpopular in the North, with abolitionist sentiment further channeled by the 1851-1852 publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Solomon Northup’s memoir Twelve Years a Slave (1853).
In 1854 Senator Douglas spearheaded the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, opening territories north of the Missouri Compromise Line to the potential for slavery. This led to a low-grade civil war in Kansas (known as Bleeding Kansas) between those supporting its admission as a free state and those who wanted it to be a slave state. Among the most famous figures from this Bleeding Kansas was a radical abolitionist named John Brown.
Douglass’ role in crafting the Kansas-Nebraska Act and allowing the expansion of slavery into the western territories was challenged by Abraham Lincoln, who unsuccessfully attempted to unseat Douglass in the Illinois Senate election of 1858. Lincoln and Douglass famously held a series of seven debates over the course of the campaign, which while failing to get Lincoln elected to the Senate, made him a national figure and enabled him to successfully win the presidency in 1860. By that time, the issue of slavery had come to a head. In 1859, the above mentioned John Brown (from Kansas) attempted to spark an insurrection of the enslaved by seizing the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. While his attempted uprising was put down by U.S. Marines under the command of Col. Robert E. Lee and Brown was executed, he remained a galvanizing figure in the fight to end slavery.
Fashion
While the debate over slavery consumed much of the political attention of the 1850s, it was not the only notable occurrence of the 1850s. In 1851, a craze for Bloomers hit the United States, driven by those advocating for greater rights for women. Bloomers were a form of reformed dress for women, comprised of shorter skirts with pant legs, and were highly controversial at the time. Popular high fashion was more traditional, with women wearing large, full-length skirts with tiers of ruffles and men donning colorful suits with vests, bow ties, and top hats. A stylish woman might part her hair in the center and wear a bonnet while outside. Men’s hair was worn on the longer side and facial hair grew in popularity.
Literature
In addition to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Twelve Years a Slave (mentioned above), several notable American literary works were published in the 1850s. Nathaniel Hawthorne focused on Colonial Massachusetts, publishing The Scarlet Letter in 1850 and The House of the Seven Gables in 1851. Hawthorne’s friend Herman Melville published his classic whaling novel Moby-Dick in 1851 as well, and two years later wrote the short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Finally, in 1855 young journalist Walt Whitman took a chance and paid to have several hundred copies of his book of poems Leaves of Grass printed to great acclaim.
Immigration
The first large-scale wave of non-British immigration continued into the 1850s from the 1830s and 1840s. Irish Catholics fleeing the Potato Famine in their homeland poured into the United States. Germans, some of whom were fleeing the aftermath of the failed Revolutions of 1848, also came to America in great numbers. This influx of people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds than the majority of Americans at the time caused tension that occasionally broke out into violence, such has been seen in the bloody and destructive anti-Irish Catholic Nativist Riots in Philadelphia during 1844.
Transportation
These new immigrants, particularly the Irish, provided needed cheap labor for the industrialization of the northeastern and midwestern United States and the expansion of railroads. The Pennsylvania Railroad, founded in the previous decade, acquired the state-run Main Line of Public Works in 1857 and completed an all-rail route from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. During this era railroad suburbs began to arise—most famously along Philadelphia’s Main Line area, but also in Germantown, the North Penn area of Montgomery County, and Delaware County. In Delaware County, the West Chester & Philadelphia Railroad (now SEPTA’s Media/Elwyn Line) was constructed during the 1850s.
The Wider World
On the world stage, the 1850s were approaching the height of the Victorian Era. In Great Britain, Queen Victoria (reign 1837-1901) presided over a growing global empire, with British control over the India consolidated after the failed Indian (Sepoy) Rebellion of 1857-1858. In Europe, Britain allied with France under Emperor Napoleon III to support the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War against Russia (1853-1856). A British attack on Russian lines during this war was the inspiration for Tennyson’s 1854 poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” After the British and French emerged victorius from the Crimean War, they defeated China in the Second Opium War (1856-1860).
The world beyond the United States was not entirely consumed by war during the 1850s. Britain hosted the Great Exhibition in 1851 at the famed Crystal Palace—considered the first world’s fair. In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species and Charles Dickens serialized A Tale of Two Cities.
The world also grew more connected during this time, not only because of the aforementioned railroads, but also because of Transatlantic Telegraph cable laid by the steamship Great Eastern enabled near-instantaneous communication between the United States and Europe.
The 1850s was a period of transition. The United States and the world as a whole were becoming more interconnected and industrialized. Yet, it was also the end of an era. With the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in November 1860, the United States would soon be plunged into four years of civil war that would leave the nation radically transformed.