Eighty-seven pioneers led by George Donner set out from Illinois for California on April 16, 1846. The expedition suffered a series of unfortunate events and circumstances, leading to the deaths of nearly half the party. Some resorted to cannibalism for survival. Rescuers arrived in February 1847, but only forty-eight members of the party survived.
James W. Marshall, a 36-year-old carpenter and handyman, discovered gold at a sawmill near Sacramento, California. The discovery set off the California gold rush. In 1849, 80,000 men arrived in California hoping to make a fortune in mining. Few struck it rich, and the gold rush lasted less than a decade.
The first National Women’s Rights convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. It attracted delegates from nine states.
Democratic nominee Franklin Pierce was elected president over Whig candidate General Winfield Scott.
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species became the foundation of modern biology when it was published in 1859.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War. The US acquired California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and parts of Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, and Wyoming.
Fifty-three captive West Africans revolted at sea and seized control of the slave ship L’Amistad. The ship was soon captured by the US Navy and towed to New Haven, where there was a legal battle over the Africans’ fate. In 1841, the Supreme Court ruled that the Amistad captives had been illegally enslaved and released them.
Mary Lyon opened the first women’s college, Mount Holyoke, in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in November 1837.
The 1860 election revealed how divided the country had become. There were essentially two separate sectional campaigns: one in the North, pitting Abraham Lincoln against Stephen A. Douglas, and one in the South between John C. Breckinridge and John Bell. Only Stephen Douglas mounted a truly national campaign. The Republicans did not campaign in the South and Lincoln’s name did not appear on the ballot in ten states. In the final balloting, Lincoln won only 39.9 percent of the popular vote, but received 180 Electoral College votes, fifty-...
Fearing that Lincoln’s election signaled the end of slavery, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union.