1802 to 1803

Society

1802. The French make Bonaparte first consul for life.

1802. The New American Practical Navigator by Salem, Mass., mathematician-astronomer Nathaniel Bowditch will soon be a second bible for sea captains.

1802. EI du Pont de Nemours has its beginnings in a gunpowder plant built on the Brandywine River near Wilmington, Del.

1802. Boston's Board of Health orders vaccination against smallpox

1802. The United States Military Academy is founded at West Point, NY.

1802. British physician Thomas Wedgwood produces the world's first photograph.

1802. Mme. Tussaud's wax museum opens at London.

Literature

Delphine. Mme. de Stael. French. 1802. Novel. Epistolary. Unfulfilled love. In the end he is shot as a traitor. She poisons herself.

The Genius of Christianity. Francois Chateaubriand. French. 1802. Treatise. Extols Christianity. Describes it as the chief source of progress in the modern world.

Rene. Francois Chateaubriand. French. 1802. Romance. Set in America. Violently unhappy, morbidly introspective youth. Typical romantic.

Society

1803. The Louisiana Purchase doubles the size of the United States, extending her western border to the Rocky Mountains.

1803. Chief Justice John Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court rules that any act of Congress which conflicts with the Constitution is null and void. His decision in the case of Marbury v. Madison, February 14, establishes the Court as the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution.

1803. Massachusetts and New York threaten to secede from the Union in protest against the Louisiana Purchase which Thomas Jefferson has made without consent of the Senate.

1803. Britain and France renew war.

1803. South Carolina resumes importing slaves as Eli Whitney's 1792 Cotton gin makes cotton growing profitable and boosts demand for field hands.

1803. Cotton passes tobacco for the first time as the leading U.S. export crop.

1803. U.S. engineer Robert Fulton develops a small ship propelled by steam power.

1803. English artillery officer Henry Shrapnel develops an explosive shell that will be called the shrapnel shell.

1803. A table of atomic weights arranged by English chemist-physicist John Dalton represents the first clear statement of atomic theory.

1803. Morphine is isolated and given its name by German pharmacist Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Saturner who uses the name of the Greek god of dreams Morpheus for his narcotic.

1803. John James Audubon arrives at Philadelphia. He will move to Kentucky in 1808, open a general store at Louisville and begin painting American birds from life.