Sunday, February 11, 2024

1805

 

November 15: Lewis and Clark reach the Pacific. Scientists now believe that the Coastal Salish people bred small dogs for their fleece, which they wove into dog wool blankets.

 

Scientists have examined 16,000 bone specimens from the dog family, found from Oregon to Alaska, and determined that the vast majority of canid bones were from domesticated dogs, not wolves, coyotes, or foxes. The coastal tribes also had hunting dogs, but sheared the smaller knee-high animals. In the early nineteenth century one white trader mentioned seeing canoes full of “dogs more resembling Cheviot Lambs shorn of their wool.” (Story in The New York Times.)



Lewis and Clark reach the Pacific, by way of the Columbia River.


The expedition spends the winter at Fort Clatsop, which they build.


1806

 

FROM the Yale Alumni Magazine, we have proof that the good old days were never as good as they seem: 

A full-scale riot, the first of many fought with fists, clubs, and knives, breaks out between off-duty sailors and Yale students. Townspeople refer to the leader of the Yale mob, Guy Richards, as the “College bully.” Soon thereafter, students turn the title into an elected undergraduate position until it is outlawed by the faculty in 1840. (See also: 1841, 1854, 1858, 1919 and 1959.)



Hair style: 1806.


1807

 


JAMES WILKERSON becomes enmeshed in an investigation into an alleged plot, led by Aaron Burr, to create a new nation in the Mississippi Valley. James Monroe, had previously been offered a military post under General Wilkerson, but correctly responded that he would “sooner be shot.”

 

* 

NEW JERSEY alters its laws, which had for more than three decades, allowed women to vote. In 1776, the new state had decreed that all “inhabitants” could vote as long as “they” could prove they had property worth more than 50 pounds. In 1797, a new law regarding voters used the phrase, “he or she.” Most married women gave over all their property to their spouses, and so lost the right to vote, but in 1800, one Jersey lawmaker was clear. “Our constitution gives this right to maids and widows, white and black,” he said.

 

So, did women exercise their right in any large numbers? Records were unclear; and researchers went to work to try to find out. Eighteen old voter rolls were found, nine of which showed that women did want to vote when they could. One poll list from Somerset County, in 1801, seemed to show that 46 of 343 voters were female. The sample was large enough to make a point. Out of 2,695 documented votes on the rolls, the names of around 208 women appeared.

 

Then, as now, there were wild claims of voter fraud. The New York Times explains:

 

There were charges of rampant fraud and corruption, as newspapers filled with tales of elections thrown into chaos by incompetent and easily manipulated “petticoat electors,” to say nothing of men who put on dresses to vote five, six, seven times. …

 

More than one election brought complaints of men rounding up carriage-loads of dubiously eligible women and bringing them to the polls, to help push their candidate over the top. In 1802, a candidate claimed that he lost a legislative race by a single vote only because a married woman and an enslaved woman had illegally cast ballots.

 

Finally, in 1806, came a bitterly fought election in Essex County to decide where a new courthouse would be built. Nearly 14,000 votes were cast – more than the number of eligible voters. …

 

And so in 1807, New Jersey – which also had no racial restrictions in voting at the time – passed a law explicitly limiting the franchise to white men.

 

The property qualification, however, was dropped, making all white males, for the first time, eligible to vote.

 

*

 

June 22: Off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, the British frigate Leopard intercepts the U.S. warship Chesapeake. The British captain,

 

demanded the surrender of several seamen serving on the Chesapeake, whom he claimed to be deserters from the British service. When this demand was not acceded to, the Leopard, at a distance of a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet, poured her whole broadside into the American vessel. The Chesapeake was unprepared for action. She received three broadsides without being able to answer in kind, and then struck her flag and surrendered. Three men were killed and eighteen wounded. The alleged deserters were taken aboard the Leopard. Three of them were Americans, one of the three being a negro. (56/273)

 


*

 

VAN LOON writes,

 

Jefferson and his ministers knew that both France and England were in desperate need of American grain. Therefore, in December of 1807, they ordered all American vessels to remain at home until further notice and sent word to London and Paris that not another bushel of American grain or bale of American cotton would be forwarded to Europe until these two governments had promised to behave themselves and leave the American traders alone. (124/285-286)

 

As for impressment, Van Loon notes that many men were reluctant to serve on British warships, but the King required sailors.

 

Hence the pleasant habit of His Majesty’s tipstaffs of emptying the prisons and of raiding saloons and respectable beer-gardens and dragging the occupants to the nearest war vessel to become jolly tars and lead the life of galley slaves until the reestablishment of peace.

 

Needless to point out that these pickpockets and footpads (not to mention perfectly peaceful tailors and clerks who had gone out for a bit of air and a mug of ale) did not make ideal sailors.

 

Conditions aboard were unhealthy and before these reluctant sailors ever learned their new business, they “were apt to be dead from an enemy’s bullet or from one of those forms of disease which the jailbirds carried to the fleet and which turned so many ships into floating hospitals.”

 

He continues, “Hence the practice of waiting for all returning commercial vessels and depriving them of the greater part of their crew.” The next step was to insist that likely young fellows on foreign ships were actually British subjects and “enlist” their services, “with the help of irons and chains.” (124/287)


 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I think it would work to ask students to put themselves in the place of any of these impressed sailors. I never thought of that when I was teaching; but it should work.

 


*

 

June 22: The British ship Leopard of 50 guns stops the American frigate Chesapeake “which was fresh from the wharf and had not even got her guns in position.” Opening fire without warning, the enemy killed and wounded 21 American sailors, and four more were arrested as “deserters.” The Leopard then joined the English squadron which was taking in a fresh supply of water off Norfolk, Virginia. (124/289)

 


*

 

“None seemed willing to trust the evidence of their own senses.”

 

ROBERT FULTON, having given up painting and taken up engineering, builds the first successful steamboat. “The hull of his vessel he constructed in America. The engine, however, he ordered from the firm of Boulton & Watt in Birmingham in England. The Clermont was a huge success “and in less than a year had grown too small for the number of passengers who wished to go from New York to Albany in the fabulously short time of thirty-six hours.” (124/345)

 

(Fulton himself says it was 32 hours.)


 


*

 

The following selection is from Charles Coffin. 


One of the boys who used to visit William Henry’s shop and see him make guns was Robert Fulton, who was born in Little Britain, Pennsylvania, near Lancaster, and who used to set water-wheels whirling in the pasture brooks. He saw the model of the little steamboat which Mr. Henry constructed. He met Thomas Paine at Mr. Henry’s, and many other prominent men, and saw upon the walls of Mr. Henry’s parlor pictures painted by Benjamin West, whom Mr. Henry had befriended, who had traveled in Europe, and had become a famous painter.

 

While looking at the pictures Robert Fulton forgot his mill-wheels, and resolved to become an artist. He went to England, and studied painting under Mr. West’s instruction. He saw the steam-engines constructed by Watt and Boulton, and all his love for machinery came back to him. He gave up painting and became an engineer, went to Paris, and made experiment with torpedoes for blowing up warships. He built a steamboat sixty-six feet long, launched it on the Seine; but the bottom dropped out, and the engine went to the bottom of the river.

 

Fulton returned to the United States. The grand idea had taken possession of him that steam could be used in navigation. Robert Livingston, Chancellor of New York, believed that it could be done. He lived at Clermont, on the Hudson. Together they built a boat 133 feet long, 18 wide, and 9 feet deep, and named it the Clermont. People laughed at them; predicted its failure. When all was ready they invited their friends on board. Fulton let on the steam, but the boat did not move.

 

“I told you it would not work,” said one of the party.

 

“Wait,” said Fulton.

 

He fixed the machinery, and the boat moved away from the shore, and up the Hudson. The country people knew not what to make of it.

 

“The devil is on his way up-river with a sawmill in a boat!” shouted a Dutchman to his wife.

 

In thirty-two hours the Clermont was at Albany, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, and returned to New York in thirty hours.

 

This was what the New York Evening Post said, October 2, 1807: “Mr. Fulton’s new-invented steamboat, which is fitted up in a neat style for passengers, and is intended to run from New York to Albany as a packet, left here this morning, with ninety passengers, against a strong head-wind. Notwithstanding which, it was judged she moved at the rate of six miles an hour.”

 

Fulton had succeeded where John Fitch, James Rumsey, and Samuel Morey had failed. It was the beginning of a new era in navigation. (72/140-141)

 

* 

Excerpts from Makers of the Nation, Fanny E. Coe, 1914: 

From a mere child, Fulton had shown himself the born inventor. He loved to spend hours in the ships and at the forges watching the men at work. One day he came to school very late. “Where have you been?” asked the master. “I have been making myself a lead pencil. It is the best I have ever had.” And Robert handed his teacher a pencil which he had hammered out of sheet metal. It was indeed an excellent pencil; the lad had not overestimated it.

 

Robert used to go fishing with a chum a few years older than himself. The boys used a flat-bottomed boat which they moved with long poles. This labor was very fatiguing. Robert invented paddle wheels which, when attached to the boat, made it move very easily. After this, the fishing trips were all play and no work.

 

Robert Fulton was very skillful in drawing and painting. He was in doubt as to which he should be, a portrait painter or an inventor.

 

When he was twenty-one, Fulton went to England. There he sought out the well-known American painter, Benjamin West. He studied painting under West, but he also turned his attention to inventions. He made some important devices that have to do with canals, and he also invented the torpedo and the torpedo boat.

 

Skipping ahead, we pick up with the launch of the Clermont: 

We will let Fulton himself tell of their departure. “The moment arrived in which the word was to be given for the boat to move. My friends were in groups on the deck. There was anxiety mixed with fear among them. They were silent, sad, and wary. I read in their looks nothing but disaster, and almost repented of my efforts. The signal was given, and the boat moved on a short distance and then stopped and became immovable. To the silence of the preceding moment, now succeeded murmurs of discontent, and agitations, and whispers, and shrugs. I could hear distinctly repeated: “I told you it was so; it is a foolish scheme; I wish we were out of it.’

 

“I elevated myself upon a platform and addressed the assembly. I stated that I knew not what was the matter, but if they would be quiet and indulge me for half an hour, I would either go on or abandon the voyage for that time. This short respite was conceded without objection. I went below and examined the machinery, and discovered that the cause was a slight maladjustment of some of the works. In a short time it was obviated. The boat was soon put in motion. She continued to move on. All were still incredulous. None seemed willing to trust the evidence of their own senses.”

 

As the Clermont pushed on steadily mile after mile upstream, the guests grew happier and more confident. The fresh air, the wonderful scenery, the delightfully rapid motion made the day one never to be forgotten…

 

[Soon the passengers broke into song.]

 

The boatmen in their little craft upon the river and the farmers on the shore were filled with amazement as the Clermont passed. She burned very soft wood, so that much smoke and flame poured from her smokestack. When some of the sailors and boatmen saw “this queer-looking sail-less thing” gaining upon them in spite of contrary wind and tide, they actually abandoned their vessels and took to the woods in fright.

 

The speed of the little vessel quite satisfied Fulton and Livingston. Here is Fulton’s report on the first trip:

 

“My steamboat voyage to Albany and back has turned out rather more favorably than I had calculated. The distance from New York to Albany is one hundred and fifty miles. I ran it up in thirty-two hours, and down in thirty. I had a light breeze against me all the way, both going and coming, and the voyage has been performed wholly by the power of the steam engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners, beating to the windward, and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved.” Thus the Clermont won the New York monopoly for the partners.

1808

 


Coin found at site of Tubman's family's cabin.


THE FOLLOWING comes from an article in Smithsonian magazine, about slaves escaping into Spanish territory:

 

Rescuing some children – not others. 

In January 1808 a Black man recorded as “Rechar,” presumably Richard, arrived at Trinidad de Salcedo, a small Spanish outpost near present-day Madisonville, Texas. He told his story to the authorities. His family had been split up by enslavers and scattered all over southern Louisiana. Having made his own escape from a plantation in Opelousas, he managed to find and rescue his wife and three of their seven children. He tried, and failed, to rescue the other four, then led his reduced family across more than 100 miles of swampy wilderness and crossed the Sabine River into freedom. (Their fate in Spanish territory is unknown.)

 

Even though slavery existed in New Spain, American runaways were usually granted asylum by the Spanish authorities, because the American form of slavery was regarded as far more brutal and dehumanizing. In New Spain, for example, slaves were subjects of the Spanish crown, not property, and it was illegal to separate husbands and wives or to impose excessive punishments. Rechar declared that “the harshness of American laws” as well as keeping his family together were the reasons for his escape.

 

* 

THE PARENTS of Harriet Tubman, Ben Ross and Harriet Green, are married; but the location of their cabin, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, remains unknown for two hundred years. Harriet is known to have lived there between the ages of 17 and 22, or from 1839 to 1844. Historians were excited to find evidence narrowing down the site in 2021. That included ceramic shards and a coin from 1808. 

We do know that Ben Ross was granted ten acres of land, five years after his master, Anthony Thompson, died in 1836. 

Tubman’s father cut and sold timber to make money and was himself a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Harriet came to know some of the black mariners who hauled the timber to Baltimore. They taught her how to read the stars and where safe places might be found and dangerous spots avoided. 

The story in The New York Times indicates that Harriet would later make thirteen separate trips South and rescue at least 70 enslaved individuals.

1809

 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES is born.   

In History of American Literature, Reuben Post Halleck notes that Holmes “was reared in a cultured atmosphere. In middle age Holmes wrote, ‘I like books – I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable boy has among horses.’” (30/258)

 

*


WASHINGTON IRVING is engaged to Matilda Hoffman, 18, who dies. He lives another fifty years but never marries. Halleck notes that he carried her Bible with him whenever he traveled. (30/115)

 

* 

December 28: The New York Evening Post announces that a work has been found by Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker. In one scene, we meet Wouter Van Twiller, Governor of New Amsterdam: 

The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned as though it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere....

 

His habits were as regular as his person. He daily took his four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each; he smoked and doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining twelve of the four-and-twenty. (118)

 

Irving traveled to Britain in 1815, where his mother was born. He wrote The Sketch Book there, and did not return to this country for seventeen years.  


NOTE TO TEACHERS: My students were sometimes interested in how sports teams got nicknames – such as the New York Knicks, the Boston Celtics, and the Denver Nuggets. Boston had that Irish influx in the 1840s and 50s, and Denver had a gold rush in 1859. Also: the Philadelphia 76ers, Detroit Pistons, Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs, and Portland Trail Blazers have names with historical implications, to name just NBA franchises.


1810

 

THE BOARD OF SELECTMEN in Boston prohibits balls as “uncongenial to the habits and manners of the citizens of this place.” (Boston’s Immigrants, p. 23.)

History is full of examples, 

where people warn that dancing leads to sin and immorality.

Above: The "Charleston."



1811

 

BUILT in Pittsburgh, the steamboat New Orleans begins operations on the Mississippi River.

 

* 

The Battle of Tippecanoe. 

November 7: It is four o’clock in the morning… 

Stephen Mars, one of General Harrison’s sentinels, sees something in the grass. Crack! goes his rifle, and an Indian leaps into the air. Then comes the war-whoop, a flashing of guns, and a rush upon the camp. In an instant General Harrison is in his saddle. At the north-west corner of the camp Captain Joe Davis falls mortally wounded. At the south-west corner Captain Spencer is killed, and Lieutenant Warrick mortally wounded. The Indians are attacking on all sides.

           

“Hold your ground, we will beat them!” shouts General Harrison.

           

“Charge!”

 

The soldiers rushed upon the Indians with a yell, driving them from their hiding-places, chasing them like deer through the woods. General Harrison pushed on to the Prophet’s Town; but not an Indian was to be seen – all had fled. In a few minutes the flames licked up every hut and wigwam, and all the corn which had been stored for the winter. It was a defeat from which the Indians never recovered. 

 

With fighting raging, The Prophet, Tecumseh’s brother, watched, 

at a safe distance from danger, singing a war-song and performing some protracted religious mummeries. When he was told that his followers were falling before the bullets of the white men, he said, “Fight on; it will soon be as I told you.” When at last the warriors of many tribes – Shawnees, Wyandots, Kickapoos, Ottawas, Chippewas, Pottawatomies, Winnebagoes, Sacs and a few Miamis – fugitives from the battlefield – lost their faith and covered The Prophet with reproaches, he cunningly devised a lying excuse for his failure. He told them that his predictions had failed of fulfillment because, during his incantations, his wife touched the sacred vessels and broke the charm! His followers, though superstitious in the extreme, would not accept his explanation and they deserted him in such large numbers that he was compelled to take refuge with a small band of Wyandots, his town having been set on fire. The foe scattered in all directions, and hid themselves where the white man could not easily follow.


(These two selections, above, come from Andrews or McLaughlin. I failed to note the source and often get rid of books after I copy parts I want.)





NOTE TO TEACHERS: Tecumseh’s brother was probably jealous of his importance and fame. He told his followers that he could make the settlers’ bullets harmless. It has been said he bragged about himself and his deeds – and earned the nickname, “The Noise Maker.” 

It helped keep my students interested to point out that people never change.