Monday, October 22, 2007

1831 to 1833

Literature
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Victor Hugo. French. 1831. Romance. Romance of medieval times. Esmeralda; Capt. Phoebus; Frollo; Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer.

Crotchet Castle. Thomas Love Peacock. British. 1831. Novel. Satire on romantic themes. Humorously erudite discussions. Debate on the best period in history.

Society
1832. The "spoils system" in U.S. politics gets its name January 21 in a Senate speech by Sen. William Learned Marcy (NY) who says that he can't see "nothing wrong in the rule that to the victor belongs the spoils." Politicians will continue for decades to name cronies to government jobs and dispense favors that will enrich their friends.

1832. The Democratic-Republican party that has elected every U.S. president since Thomas Jefferson renames itself the Democratic party. Its first national convention has established the two-thirds majority requirement for nomination.

1832. The U.S. Government has exclusive authority over tribal Indians and their lands within any state, rules the Supreme Court.

1832. The Creeks sign a treaty ceding their lands east of the Mississippi to the United States.

1832. The Seminoles in Florida cede their lands to the U.S. in a treaty signed by 15 chiefs who agree to move west of the Mississippi.

1832. Chief Black Hawk in the state of Illinois leads his people back from west of the Mississippi, retakes a village, and begins his 4-month Black Hawk War that ends only when the Illinois militia massacre the warriors at Bad Axe River in Wisconsin Territory.

1832. A modern sewing machine devised by New York inventor Walter Hunt has a needle with an eye in its point that pushes thread through cloth to interlock with a second thread carried by a shuttle. Hunt does not obtain a patent, and when he suggests that his daughter Caroline go into business making corsets with his machine, she will protest that it would put needy seamstresses out of work.

1832. The cholera epidemic that spread through Russia reaches Scotland. Scottish physician Thomas Latta injects saline solution to save the life of a cholera patient and pioneers a new treatment.

1832. English physician Thomas Hodgkin gives the first description of a disease marked by a sarcoma of the lymph nodes. Hodgin's disease will have a fatality rate of about 75% within 5 years of onset.

1832. Domestic Manners of the Americans by English novelist Frances Milton Trollop who says of her subject, "I do not like them. I do not like their principles. I do not like their manners. I do not like their opinions."

Literature
Indiana. George Sand. British. 1832. Novel. Heroine, a creole named Indiana, abandons old husband for fascinating young lover.

The Legends of the Alhambra. Washington Irving. American. 1832. Stories. Admirer of Moorish civilization. Clash between the Spaniards and the Moors.

Society
1833. On War by the late Prussian general Karl von Clausewitz is a posthumous work on the science of warfare that will be a classic.

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