1850

Pre-Civil War date

1850 refers to the year, often invoked as shorthand for the antebellum period in American history—a time of slavery, westward expansion, and mounting sectional conflict.

Critics use it to characterize attitudes or policies as regressive: Their views on women belong in 1850.

The Compromise of 1850 attempted to balance free and slave states.

victorian

Queen Victoria

Long-reigning British empress

British EmpireVast colonial domain
industrializationTransition to factory-based economy
steam engineThermal vapor motor

Charles Dickens · gaslight · corset · top hat · crinoline · etiquette · gentility · moralism · Gothic Revival · penny dreadful

antebellum

plantation

Large-scale farming operation

slaveryOwnership of people
cottonPlant fiber for textiles
secessionFormal withdrawal from union

abolitionism · states' rights · Harriet Tubman · Missouri Compromise · Dred Scott · John Brown · nullification · slave trade · Frederick Douglass · Mason-Dixon

american

Gold Rush

Historic prospector migration

CaliforniaWest coast megastate
manifest destinyObvious, inescapable fate
transcontinentalSpanning an entire continent

pioneers · settlers · Oregon Trail · expansion · Zachary Taylor · clipper ship · Levi Strauss · forty-niners · westward · frontier

1850

Queen Victoria

plantation

Gold Rush

1850

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