Antebellum America (1816-1860)
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Newspaper reports, letters, and guidebooks from the early days of the Gold Rush clearly indicate the presence of Native Americans working as miners. Reports from 1848 and early 1849 estimate there were about twice as many Indian miners as white miners. From the reports it is not always clear whether Indians were free or unfree, though most were…

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Item Type: Newspaper/Magazine
Date: 1848

In 1848 a group of 300 women and men, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, met in Seneca Falls, New York to outline a list of demands for women’s equality. The Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence, included a list of grievances directed at the male-led government. It was signed by…

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Item Type: Pamphlet/Petition
Date: 1848

In 1848 a group of 300 women and men, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, met in Seneca Falls, New York to outline a list of demands for women’s equality. The Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence, included a list of grievances directed at the male-led government. It was signed by…

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Item Type: Pamphlet/Petition
Date: 1848

With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the United States gained over half a million square miles of new lands in the Southwest. However, American settlers who traveled west to settle the land were not moving into unoccupied territory. Expansionist-minded leaders, though, predicted the eventual demise of Native American and Mexican peoples…

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Item Type: Newspaper/Magazine
Date: 1848

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War in 1848, ceded 525,000 square miles--55% of--Mexican territory to the United States. In exchange, the United States paid approximately $15 million in damages to pay for destruction of Mexican property by the U.S. military during the war. Thousands of Mexican, Spanish, and…

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Item Type: Government Document
Date: 1848

John C. Calhoun, Senator from South Carolina and future spokesman for southern secession, delivered the following speech to Congress on January 4, 1848. At the time, U.S. and Mexican diplomats were in the midst of negotiating a peace treaty to determine how much of Mexico would be incorporated into the U.S. Calhoun argued for limiting territorial…

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Item Type: Speech
Date: 1848

Elizabeth Cady Stanton served for twenty years as the president of the National Woman Suffrage Association. She committed her life to the cause of political equality between men and women, which emerged out of her work as an abolitionist. The radical Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 insisted in this Declaration of Sentiments that equal political…

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Item Type: Pamphlet/Petition
Date: 1848

Some half a million Irish were evicted during the Great Famine, especially following the Poor Law Extension Act of 1847 which shifted the burden of famine relief to the landlords. Rather than support poor tenants on their estates, many landlords evicted them. The 'Gregory clause' of the 1847 Act forced tenants with more than a quarter of an acre to…

Item Type: Newspaper/Magazine
Date: 1848

A.W. Auner of Philadelphia was among the most prolific printers of "broadside ballads," cheaply-produced topical songs and poems that were widely available throughout the nineteenth century. "Poor Pat Must Emigrate," published by Auner sometime in mid-century, chronicles the plight of the by-then-familiar figure of the Irish immigrant. The song…

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Item Type: Music/Song
Date: Circa 1848

In this letter to relatives back home in County Donegal, William Dever describes some of the obstacles faced by Irish immigrants in the antebellum period. In contrast to German and Dutch immigrants, who were often able to purchase farms, the Irish often ended up working in menial positions, as in the case of the "banker" whose story Dever relates…

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Item Type: Diary/Letter
Date: 1848