Weekend With Shades - Saturday - June 13

THE YEAR WAS
BY SHERI FENLEY
A Monthly - Weekend With Shades - Column







OVERVIEW –

“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the "Old South." Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind...”

~ From the opening of the film Gone with the Wind (1939) ~

The book , written by Margaret Mitchell, and the movie has fixed in my mind a picture of what Antebellum United States was like. It is however, an extremely romantic and fantasy version of what life was really like during the years leading up to the Civil War.

In reality the country was slowly being torn apart and forced to choose sides, the air filled with tension and hostility.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act had split the Kansas territories into two states: Kansas and Nebraska. The act mandated that any state accepted into the Union would decide with a majority vote of the people whether it would be a free or slave state. Groups from both sides immediately sent in settlers by the hundreds in order to have a majority of the vote in their respective favors. As Tensions and tempers flared, people were tarred and feathered, kidnapped, killed. All too soon, the violence escalated. In an era that would come to be known as "Bleeding Kansas," the territory would become a horrific combat zone for five years.

CULTURE –

The Great Chinese Merchant’s Ball of 1856

On June 19, 1856 Alexander Liholiho, Kamehameha IV, The King of Hawaii married Emma Naea Rooke. The American Club hosted an affair on July 4th to celebrate the nuptials and three weeks later, the German Club honored the royal couple with an extravagant ball. The King and Queen then set out for a tour of their island kingdom. It was during their absence that a group of Cantonese merchants decided that they needed the King’s favor if they wanted to be successful in their trade with Hawaii. The Chinese set out to have an event that would far surpass any other held to date.

Alexander Liholiho, Kamehameha IV
The King of Hawaii &
Emma Naea Rooke

They ran into a major cultural and social wall. Men and women did not dance together in China. In fact is was quite unacceptable for members of the opposite sex to dance. One of the group finally convinced the others that they would need to learn to dance or scrap the idea of the ball. Grudgingly they made their way as a group down to the local dance hall where they learned over the course of several weeks to dance the polka and waltz

The festivities on that November 1st far exceeded the Cantonese wildest dreams. Every influential person in Honolulu had been invited. Over 1000 attended, double that of the previous events. Guests were delighted with three foot high pagodas made of pastries, watermelon that had dragons carved into the rinds. Larges bouquets of flowers were in every window.

Not only did the Chinese gain the King’s favor, they won the respect of the other ethnic business groups who were their peers.

February 19, 1856 - Tin-type camera was patented by Hamilton Smith in Gambier, Ohio.

Example Of A TinType Image

The first installment of Gustav Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary appeared in the Revue de Paris on October 1, 1856 after the publisher refused to print a passage in which the character Emma has a quickie with a beau in the back seat of a carriage.

Harper's Weekly begins publication at New York, where it will continue until 1915.

Fiction books published in 1856 include “It's Never Too Late to Mend” by Charles Reade. The book details abuses that include torture in English prisons. “ Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp” by Harriet Beecher Stowe expands on the author's antislavery views.

On the hit parade for 1856 were "Darling Nelly Gray" by Benjamin Russell Hanby and "Gentle Annie" by Stephen C. Foster.

LAW AND LAWLESSNESS –

Kate Warne, the first female private detective, begins to work for the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Chicago, Illinois.

May 16 – The Vigilance Committee is founded in San Francisco, California. It lynches two gangsters, arrests most Democratic Party officials and disbands itself on August 18.

The “Sacking of Lawrence” by Pro-Slavers took place on May 21, 1856. A few days later, to avenge the violence on Lawrence, John Brown, his sons and a group of abolitionists went to Pottawaromie Creek, dragged five pro slavery men from their homes and hacked them to death.

SPORTS –

James Ambrose, better known as bare-knuckle boxer “Yankee Sullivan” is found dead in his San Francisco jail cell May 31 at age 45. His boxing style was described as “fast, tough, spunky and hit hard with both fists.”

"Yankee Sullivan committed suicide while confined in the vigilance committee’s headquarters, awaiting trial for various crimes. Sullivan became so panic-stricken when he heard a Vigilante say that he would probably be hanged on the morrow that he opened a vein in his wrist and bled to death before a physician could reach him."

His burial in the Mission Delores Cemetery in San Francisco is quite the exception as suicides are not buried in Catholic cemeteries.

TRANSPORTATION –

The Wabash and Erie Canal opens after 24 years of construction. The 458-mile canal extending south to Evansville on the Ohio River is the largest ever dug in America

The first railway bridge to span the Mississippi opens April 21st between Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa. Built of wood resting on stone piers, the bridge is 1,582 feet. On April 22nd, the bridge is tested for durability by driving a train of three locomotives and eight passenger cars onto it. All goes well until a couple of weeks later when a steamboat rams into the bridge. Before the railroad company can sue for damages, the steamboat company files suit, claiming that the bridge has blocked its right of way.

POLITICS –

Even the U. S. Senate saw bloodshed. On May 19, 1856 Senator Charles Sumner, a Republican from Massachusetts and a staunch abolitionist, delivered an oration lasting most of the day. Entitled “The Crime Against Kansas”, it was basically a plea to accept Kansas immediately as “Free State”. Apparently he used the opportunity to singled out a couple of Pro-Slavers, one being fellow Senator Andrew Butler from South Carolina, and called their integrity into question.

Three days later, Preston Brooks, a Representative from South Carolina and the nephew of Senator Andrew Butler, felt the need to defend his uncle’s honor. Brooks walked right onto the Senate floor and proceeded to whip Senator Sumner senseless with his cane. He beat him so badly, Sumner was laid up for three years.

On the ballot for the November 4th elections were three candidates for president: John C. Fremont who was a Republican from California, James Buchanan a Democrat from Pennsylvania and former president Millard Fillmore from New York representing the American ("Know Nothing") party. James Buchanan won with 174 electoral votes becoming our 15th president.

FASHION –

The cage crinoline patented by a French-born American named Tavernier consists of lightweight, flexible, "watchspring" steel hoops, protected by rubber inserts riveted to vertical tapes.

Mauve (purple) becomes the color of fashion as the French empress Eugènie decides that the color matches her eyes. An English chemistry student, William Henry Perkins, first produced this mauve dye from coal tar making it the world's first synthetic dye.

CALAMITIES AND CATASTROPHES –

The Great Train Wreck of 1856 occurred on July 17th near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An excursion train carrying Philadelphia schoolchildren plows into a scheduled train at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. 67 are killed, most of them children and more than 100 are injured.

On August 10, 1856 a hurricane destroyed Last Island, Louisiana, leaving 400 dead. The island had been the home to a popular resort and several gambling establishments. The storm broke the island up into a few small islands stripping it completely of any vegetation.

INDUSTRY –

Baking powder becomes available commercially for the first time in the United States.

Mechanical ice-making is pioneered by Australian inventor James Harrison, an emigrant from Scotland.

Gail Borden patents his method for condensing milk using heat and a vacuum pan.

MILITARY –

On August 30, 1856 the U.S. Army started an experiment unlike any other in U.S. military history . Back in the spring of 1855, Jefferson Davis, who was the Secretary of War, somehow convinced the War Department to give him $30,000 to purchase camels. Yes, camels and the purchase price included an authentic camel trainer to teach the soldiers everything they ever wanted and needed to know about camels. 34 camels arrived at the Quartermaster Depot in Indianola, Texas having traveled all the way from Egypt. The plan was to use the camels in the building of a wagon road from Texas to California.

For the most part, the experiment was a success, however the start of the Civil War put an end to the Camel Military Corps. What happened to the camels you ask? Well a few were sold off to privates parties for $30 each, a few went to Ringling Brothers Circus and the camel trainer took a few for himself and started a freighting business along the Colorado River.



SOURCES

“Gone With The Wind” movie poster courtesy of Netflix.com

"James Buchanan", Mathew Brady, photographer, courtesy of The Library of Congress

“The Great Chinese Merchant’s Ball”, by Bob Dye, The Hawaiian Journal of History, 1994, Vol. 28, accessed online at http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/

Queen Emma & Kamehameha IV, 1856 courtesy of the Hawaii State Archives

“Yankee Sullivan No More”, The New York Times, Wednesday, June 1, 1856, p.1

BoxRec.com
http://www.boxrec.com

“Bridging the Mississippi: The Railroads and Steamboats Clash at the Rock Island Bridge”, By David A. Pfeiffer, Prologue Magazine, Summer 2004, Vol. 36, No. 2

The U.S. Senate website - http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Caning_of_Senator_Charles_Sumner.htm

www.fashion-era.com

"The Great Train Wreck of 1856", an unknown artist rendition, courtesy of Amusement Park Nostalgia, http://www.amusementparknostalgia.com

“The Story of Last Island”, The New York Times, Wednesday, 15 October 1893, p. 24

The US Army Quartermaster Museum
http://www.qmmuseum.lee.army.mil/

This Day In History – www.history.com

InfoPlease - www.infoplease.com

Wikipedia = www.wikipedia.com

"1856." People's Chronology. The Gale Group, Inc, 2005. Answers.com 27 May. 2009. http://www.answers.com/topic/1856

Territorial Kansas Online - http://www.territorialkansasonline.org