1880

Society

1880. "War is hell," says Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, now 60, in an address to a Columbus, Ohio, reunion of the Grand army of the Republic. "There is many a boy here who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come."

1880. A Boer Republic independent of Britain's Cape Colony is proclaimed December 30 by Oom Paul Kruger who begins a short-lived revolt.

1880. The word "boycott" enters the English language through an incident in Ireland's County Mayo. Tenant farmers organized by the Irish Land League refuse to harvest crops on estates managed by Charles Cummingham Boycott, a retired British army captain.

1880. Parliament passes Britain's first Employers' Liability Act, September 13, grnting compensations to workers for injuries.

1880. Half of New York's population is packed into tenements on the Lower East Side, an area that accounts for a disproportionate 70% of the city's deaths.

1880. Nearly 550,000 English and nearly 440,000 Irish immigrants enter the United States.

Literature

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Lew Wallace. American. 1880. Novel. Aristocratic Jew; false Roman friend, Messala. Galley slave; chariot race; converted to Christianity.

The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life. George W. Cable. American. 1880. Novel. New Orleans in the period of the Louisiana Purchase. Race, family feuds; struggle between the new order and the old.

Nana. Emile Zola. French. 1880. Novel. Product of a squalid environment becomes a prostitute; leads dissipated existence.

"Tar Baby." Joel Chandler Harris. American. 1880. Story. Rabbit is so incensed by Tar Baby's unresponsiveness that he hits it until he is completely stuck.

Democracy. Henry Adams. American. 1880. Novel. Social and political satire based on the corruption of the second Grant administration.

Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings. Joel Chandler Harris. American. 1880. Tales. Stories based on traditional fables on the black race. In dialect. Animals with human qualities.