[legendsport]

PART VI - Events of 1819-1824

1819

• February 22, 1819 - The United States officially takes over the territory of Florida from the Spanish government.
• March 3, 1819 - Mississippi is admitted to the Union, bringing the total to states to 14. Congress passes a resolution holding the number of stripes on the U.S. Flag at 13 to commemorate the "thirteen states which held true to the dream of the Founding Fathers" - a swipe at the New England states which had seceded.
• March 4, 1819 - Federalist DeWitt Clinton in inaugurated for his second term as New England President, having defeated Republican Daniel Tompkins in the November 1818 election.
• May 22, 1819 - The American steamship Savannah, under part steam and sail-power, crosses the Atlantic Ocean from Savannah, Georgia to Liverpool, England, arriving 29 days later on June 20.
• July 4, 1819 - The United States Military Academy is established at Lexington, Virginia to replace the former Academy at West Point, New York, which became the New England Military Academy upon the secession of New York in 1815.
• November 4, 1819 - Public referendums on secession in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey narrowly decide in favor of both states' remaining in the United States. President Monroe calls this a "great day for American democracy."
• December 14, 1819 - Alabama is admitted to the United States as the fifteenth state.
• The United States slowly recovers from the Panic of 1819. Later historians will place the blame of several factors, including the heavy amount of borrowing by the government to finance the War of 1812, as well as the tightening of credit by the Second Bank of the U.S. in response to risky lending practices by wildcat banks in the west.

1820

• January 29, 1820 - George III king of Great-Britain (reigned 1760-1820), dies at 81. He is succeeded by his son the Prince Regent who rules as George IV.
• February 6, 1820 - Free African American colonists, eighty-six in number, plus three American Colonization society members, leave the United States from Philadelphia, and sail to Freetown, Sierra Leone.
• February 23, 1820 - A plot to murder the British cabinet, "The Cato Street Conspiracy" is exposed.
• April 1820 - A pamphlet in Boston titled "Why the African is Still A Slave" is published. The pamphlet claims that although slavery was prohibited in the United States by the Treaty of Ghent, that five years later, the condition of former slaves has not changed. "His legal status is that of a free man, yet the former slave has no rights fundamental to the free man. He may not own land, he may not vote and he is forced to labor at abominable wages at the very toil from which he has been supposedly freed." The pamphlet is dismissed by many in the U.S. as "Yankee propaganda."
• May 1, 1820 - The last hanging, drawing and quartering in England takes place for the final Cato Street conspirator.
• June 1, 1820 - General George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie takes over as Governor General of British North America. Ramsay, a protege of the Duke of Wellington who served under Wellesley in both the Peninsular and American campaigns, believed the colonial government might accelerate development by constructing roads that would open up the massive colony to settlement, commerce, and the readier exchange of information as well as possibly serve a military purpose.
• September 28, 1820 - To prove that a tomato is not poisonous, Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson eats one in public in Salem, Massachusetts.
• November 17, 1820 - Nathaniel B. Palmer, 21-year-old captain of the sealing sloop Hero sailing out of Stonington, Connecticut, is the first man to set foot on the continent of Antarctica (and just the third to have sighted land south of Cape Horn).
• November 1820 - The election of James Monroe to a second term in office comes with a landslide victory in the Electoral College with Monroe defeating Federalist candidate Richard Stockton by a tally of 165 to 8 (with Stockton winning only his home state of New Jersey).
• As a result of a recession in Europe following the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars, an unemployed 25-year-old named William Lyon Mackenzie emigrates from Scotland to Canada, where he will play a vital role in the coming years.
• The Cherokee Nation is founded, with an elected government, among re-settled tribes in the Arkansas Territory. John Ross, a young man who had been instrumental in earlier tribe negotiations with General Andrew Jackson and the U.S. Government, is chosen as the head of the National Council.

1821

• January 16, 1821 - The Tories under Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool win the British general election which had begun in 1820.
• January 17, 1821 - James Austin and 300 settlers from the U.S. are granted permission to settle in Texas by the revolutionary Mexican government.
• February 23, 1821 - The first pharmacy college is founded in the Philadelphia College of Apothecaries. Also this same year, the first women's college in America, Troy Female Seminary, is founded by Emma Willard in Troy, New York.
• February 24, 1821 - Mexico is granted independence by Spain.
• May 5, 1821 - Napoleon Bonaparte dies in Russian captivity in St. Petersburg.
• July 1821 - The Hudson's Bay Company merges with arch rivals, the Montreal-based North West Company, creating unemployment for a substantial proportion of their Métis workforce.
• July 19, 1821 - George IV is crowned king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; His estranged wife Caroline of Brunswick is excluded from the coronation.
• August 4, 1821 - The Saturday Evening Post is published for the first time as a weekly newspaper by Atkinson and Alexander.
• September 27, 1821 - The Empire of Mexico is declared as revolutionaries enter Mexico City which has been abandoned by Spanish troops.
• November 16, 1821 - The first legal international trade on the Santa Fe Trail began after William Becknell, a Missouri trader, met with Governor Melgares one day earlier. The huge profit earned convinced Becknell that he should return over the trail route the following year.

1822

• January 5, 1822 - The Empire of Mexico annexes Central America.
• January 7, 1822 - The first group of freed American slaves settle a colony known as the Republic of Liberia when they arrive on African soil at Providence Island. The capital, Wellesley, is named after British General Sir Arthur Wellesley (the Duke of Wellington) whose victory in the War of 1812 led to the abolition of slavery in the U.S.
• February 13, 1822 - Advertisements for Ashley's Hundred, organized by General William H. Ashley and Major Andrew Henry, to ascend the Missouri River on a fur trading mission, appear in Missouri newspapers. The men who would answer the call to employ included Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger and Kit Carson. Over the next decade, these expeditions would leave St. Louis at irregular intervals, and cause international tensions between the U.S. and Great Britain as the expeditions would frequently pass on territory ceded to Britain in the Treaty of Ghent.
• February 23, 1822 - Boston is incorporated as a city and officially named as the capital of the Republic of New England.
• March 30, 1822 - The U.S. Congress combines East and West Florida into the Florida Territory.
• July 1822 - A law prohibiting the sale of alcohol to Indians is passed, causing a disruption in the fur trade pattern that relied on the Indians to trap and hunt for the furs, in exchange for alcohol and other goods.
• July 8, 1822 - Chippewas turn over huge tract of land in Ontario to the United Kingdom.
• July 25, 1822 - General Agustín de Iturbide crowned Agustín I, first emperor of México.
• August 1822 - A proposed Act of Union in the British Parliament which would classify French-Canadians as a minority without language rights fails to pass after stringent protests by French-Canadian leaders who travel to London to plead their case.
• October 1822 - U.S. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun requests that the Cherokee relinquish their land claimed by Georgia, in fulfillment of the United State's obligation under the Compact of 1802. Before responding to Calhoun's proposition, Ross first ascertained the sentiment of the Cherokee people, which he found to be unanimously opposed to cession of land.
• November 1822 - According to British tradition, Rugby School student William Webb Ellis invents rugby when he picks up the ball and runs with it.
• November 5, 1822 - Daniel Tompkins is elected President of the Republic of New England, narrowly defeating Federalist John Quincy Adams. Connecticut Governor Oliver Wolcott, Jr., who had served President George Washington as the Secretary of Treasury, is elected Vice-President.
• December 12, 1822 - Mexico is officially recognized by the United States government. The Republic of New England follows suit on December 19th.

1823

• January 17, 1823 - President Monroe appoints the first U.S. ambassadors to the newly free South American nations (Brazil and the united formerly Spanish colonies known as Gran Colombia - which would later split into several independent nations).
• March 4, 1823 - Daniel D. Tompkins is sworn in as the 2nd President of the Republic of New England.
• May 10, 1823 - Louis-Joseph Papineau and John Neilson are in London to present a petition of 60,000 signatures against favouring Union of the colonies of British North America into one entity.
• July 1, 1823 - United Provinces of Central America gain independence from Mexico.
• December 2, 1823 - In a speech before Congress, James Monroe announces the Monroe Doctrine, stating the policy that European intervention anyplace is the Americas is opposed and that he would establish American neutrality in future European wars.

1824

• January 1824 - John Ross travels yet again to Washington to defend the Cherokees' possession of their land, where John C. Calhoun offered two solutions to the Cherokee delegation: either relinquish title to their lands and remove west or accept denationalization and become citizens of the United States.
• March 11, 1824 - The Bureau of Indian Affairs is established by the United States War Department. They appoint Ely Parker, a Seneca tribe member, as its first director. This department is meant to regulate trade with Indian tribes.
• April 24, 1824 - John Ross petitions the U.S. Congress to intercede in the growing divide between the War Department and the Cherokee. This is a marked departure from previous Indian relations with the U.S. Government which had usually been submissive. Henry Clay derides the motion, ascribing it to "an elevated sense of self-importance following the forced formation of Indiana."
• May 3, 1824 - In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the first strike by female workers, occurs at a textile factory.
• June 10, 1824 - Representatives of the Government of Indiana, including the Great Chief Tecumseh himself, visit Washington D.C. where they meet with John Ross and other Cherokee leaders. Against the advice of such Shawnee leaders as Black Hoof and Little Turtle, Tecumseh offers the Cherokee land in Indiana. "We must stand together, for seperately we will each be washed away as pebbles against the stream of white men pouring ever westward," the Shawnee leader states.
• October 4, 1824 - Mexico becomes a republic.
• November 1824 - William Lyon Mackenzie establishes the Colonial Advocate, and the newspaper will begin his rise as a political power in Upper Canada.
• November 2, 1824 - The U.S. Presidential election results in no candidate receiving a majority of the Electoral College vote. With the Federalist Party having dissolved, the contest was between several Democratic-Republicans of differing factions. Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Creek War is a favorite of the Southwestern members of the party; Richard Stockton is favored by the Northern-most segment; Henry Clay is favored by the middle South and William Crawford by the Southeast.
• November 30, 1824 - The construction of the Welland Canal across the Niagara Peninsula begins. The canal's purpose is allow Montreal to continue to compete with New York City for shipping. New York's cause had been drastically improved by the construction of the Erie Canal which connected Lake Erie with the Hudson River.
• December 1, 1824 - The U.S. House of Representatives begins deliberations to determine the next U.S. President. Eventually, Andrew Jackson is named the winner, even though Richard Stockton had actually received a higher number of Electoral College votes, 79, than Jackson, 64. It was not a majority due to votes for Henry Clay, 27, and William Crawford, 31. In the first election with popular vote totals, Jackson garnered less votes there as well, with 105,321 to 155,872 to Stockton. This election would have dire consequences which would begin to be seen in the early months of 1825, even before Jackson took office.