Chapter 3. Timeline of American Legal History, 1800-1870.
American Legal History Timeline: 1800 to 1870
| 1800, May | A new Slave Trade Act amended the Slave Trade Act of 1794 by further restricting American participation. Whereas the earlier law had focused on American ships and ports, this law prohibited any Americans from participating in the slave trade as individual investors in foreign ships, or as sailors or merchants on foreign ships. A subsequent law of 1803 would add new fines for anyone who brought newly imported slaves into states that prohibited the slave trade. Another law of 1807 finally ended the slave trade to the U.S. |
| 1800, Dec. | Thomas Jefferson elected as third president. The election of 1800 was marred by a problem that arose from the way electoral votes were counted (C2.1.3): the political allies Jefferson and Aaron Burr both received the same number of votes, a tie that was only settled with difficulty by the outgoing Congress. Jefferson served two terms, from 1801 to 1809, inaugurating a period of political dominance by the Democratic-Republican Party that lasted until 1824. During this period the formerly dominant Federalists grew increasingly weak. Jefferson’s Vice-Presidents were Aaron Burr (1801-05) and George Clinton (1805-09), both of New York. |
| 1803, Feb. | Marbury v. Madison case decided by Chief Justice John Marshall. This decision declared as unconstitutional one minor provision in the Judiciary Act of 1789, which provision (in Sec. 13) gave the Supreme Court jurisdiction over a type of court order (writs of mandamus). Although the act of striking down this provision of the law had no larger impact in itself, Marshall’s decision is often seen as helping to establish the Supreme Court’s capacity to subject federal legislation to “judicial review,” i.e., to decide its constitutionality. |
| 1803, Oct. | Louisiana Purchase ratified. For fifteen million dollars, the Jefferson administration purchased from France what was then known as the Louisiana Territory. The addition of this vast tract of land, which included about 828,000 square miles and all or parts of what later became fifteen US states, almost doubled the size of the country. The Louisiana territory had been claimed by France from the late 1600s until 1763, when France ceded it to Spain, after French losses to Britain in the French and Indian War made its claims in the interior of North America untenable. But with the growth of French power within Europe under Napoleon, in 1801 Spain returned this territory to France. There were about 60,000 French-speaking people in the southernmost part of the territory, mostly in and near New Orleans (which was founded by France in 1718), but the rest of territory was inhabited almost exclusively by a large number of Native American tribes. |
| 1804, June | Twelfth Amendment ratified, changing the voting procedures in the Electoral College in presidential elections. It required the Electors to cast two distinct ballots, one for president and one for vice-president. The original Constitution (2.1.3), not anticipating the development of political parties and their ability to form majorities behind a single national “ticket” or list of candidates, had stipulated that each state Elector should cast two votes for president: the person receiving the most votes would become president, and the person receiving the second-most would become vice-president. This procedure created problems in both the lections of 1796 and 1800. |
| 1807, March | Slave Trade to the U.S. Abolished, effective January 1, 1808. This law outlawed the slave trade to the U.S. as soon as it was possible based on the Constitution (1.9.1). Because enforcement was difficult, some slaves continued to be imported. Also, this prohibition did not affect the domestic trade in slaves within and among the states. |
| 1808, Nov. | James Madison elected President. He would serve two terms, from 1809 to 1817. His vice-presidents were George Clinton of New York (1809-12) and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts (1813-14). |
| 1812-15 | War of 1812. Tensions had been mounting between American settlers in the western territories and resident Native Americans, who were usually supported by the British and Spanish governments. At the same time, war between Britain and the French Empire under Napoleon had led Britain to blockade the European continent, which interfered with American trade. Britain also used ‘impressment’ to seize sailors on American ships that Britain claimed were deserters from its navy, a policy that enraged many Americans. In June of 1812 the U.S. declared war on Britain. Overall the war changed little between the U.S. and Britain, because the American attempt to conquer Canada failed, just as the British invasion of the U.S. was in most places prevented—except for temporary devastation in Washington, D.C. More significantly, U.S. forces defeated several Native American groups in the Northwest and the South, consolidating U.S. control of most of the continent east of the Mississippi River. |
| 1816, March | Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee decision by SCOTUS overruled Virginia’s supreme court and returned land to a family who had received it from the King, but which had been confiscated by Virginia during the Revolution because the family were loyalists. The court upheld the original grant in this case in order to conform to U.S. treaties with Great Britain, which trumped state law based on the supremacy clause, and in the process it also for the first time exercised its appellate jurisdiction over state courts. |
| 1816, Nov. | James Monroe elected President, as a Democratic-Republican. He served two terms, from 1817 to 1825. The last president of the founding generation, Monroe was a slave-owning Virginia planter, who had studied law under Thomas Jefferson, fought in the Revolutionary war, and served in the Continental Congress. By 1816 the Federalists had all but disappeared as an effective political party, so that Monroe’s presidency also marks the end of the First Party System (Federalists vs Democratic-Republicans). The relatively brief period of national unity that marked his presidency became known as the Era of Good Feeling. |
| 1819, Feb. | Dartmouth College v. Woodward case decided by the Marshall court. The decision overturned a New Hampshire state law that changed Dartmouth College–a privately funded institution–into a state university. This set a precedent for the use of the contract clause (C1.10.1) to limit state legislation, in particular by extending the definition of a “contract” to include private corporations. In this way this case is often credited with helping to prepare the legal ground for the enormous expansion of private business corporations in the mid-1800s.
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| 1819, March | McCulloch v. Maryland case decided by Chief Justice John Marshall. This unanimous Supreme Court decision struck down a Maryland law that had imposed a state tax on the Maryland offices of the federally-chartered Bank of the U.S. The decision invoked the commerce, necessary and proper, and supremacy clauses. |
| 1820, March | Missouri Compromise signed into law. This compromise balanced the admission of Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. This kept the balance in the Senate between the North and South, with 12 free states and 12 slave states. The Compromise also prohibited slavery north and west of Missouri’s southern boundary, or more specifically north of 36 degrees 30 minutes latitude throughout the Louisiana territory, outside the state of Missouri. This part of the compromise was ultimately repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. |
| 1823, Dec. | Monroe Doctrine proclaimed by President James Monroe in his state of the union address. During a period that saw more and more independence movements throughout Latin America, Monroe stated that while the U.S. would not interfere with any existing European colonies in the region, it would consider any new initiatives by European powers to take control in the region to be hostile actions towards the U.S. This statement was authored by John Q. Adams, Monroe’s Secretary of State, and it did not become known as the Monroe Doctrine until a few decades later, around 1850. By the later 1800s this proclamation came to be recognized as the beginnings of the U.S.’s assertion of hegemonic power in the Americas. |
| 1824, March | Gibbons v. Ogden case decided by Chief Justice John Marshall. This decision interpreted the Constitution’s commerce clause (1.8.3) broadly to include the federal government’s power to regulate navigation, including in all navigable waters that served for interstate commerce, even if these waters were themselves entirely within one state. This case arose from a dispute over rival state grants of steamboat routes on the Hudson River, and resulted in the rejection of a New York grant of a monopoly to one company. |
| 1824, Nov.- 1825, Feb. | John Q. Adams elected by Congress as president after an inconclusive Electoral College vote. Among the top four presidential candidates, all of whom were Democratic-Republicans, no candidate received a majority of electoral votes. Andrew Jackson received the most votes, followed by Adams of Massachusetts, William Crawford of Georgia, and Henry Clay of Kentucky. As required by the Twelfth Amendment, the House of Representatives then chose among the top three candidates. Henry Clay, who was Speaker of the House at the time, threw his support behind Adams, who was then elected by the House as president. Both because Jackson felt that he should have been selected by the House and because Adams subsequently made Clay his Secretary of State, Jackson and his supporters called this the “corrupt bargain.” Adams, the son of founder John Adams, served one term, from 1825 to 1829, with John Calhoun as his Vice-President. Adams lost the 1828 election to Jackson. |
| 1827 | Slave Grace case decided in England. A slave named Grace had been brought to England and lived there for a year, legally making her free. But then she returned, apparently voluntarily, to the British colony of Antigua in the Caribbean. This decision ruled that upon her return to a jurisdiction where slavery was recognized made her a slave again. |
| 1828, Nov. | Andrew Jackson elected President, defeating John Q. Adams by a landslide. He served two terms, from 1829 to 1837, with Vice-Presidents John Calhoun (1829-32) and Martin Van Buren (1833-37). Calling themselves “Democrats” during the campaign, Jackson’s supporters formally organized as the Democratic Party shortly after the election. This marks the beginning of what historians call the “Second Party System,” as the Democrats’ opponents became organized as the Whig Party (1834-1860). Jackson was also the first president who was neither a member of the founding generation nor one of the founder’s children (John Q. Adams), who was born neither in Virginia nor Massachusetts, and who, though born in the Carolinas, was a resident of a state west of the Appalachian Mountains (Tennessee). Both because of the gradual expansion in the right to vote (through the removal of property qualifications), and because of Jackson’s and his party’s emphasis on a more fully democratic politics that represented the interests of small farmers, settlers, and the “common man,” his presidency also became known as the era of “Jacksonian Democracy.” |
| 1830, May | Indian Removal Act passed. This law gave the president power to negotiate removal treaties with Native tribes living east of the Mississippi. Under these treaties, Native-Americans were to give up their lands east of the Mississippi in exchange for lands to the west. Those wishing to remain in the east would become citizens of their home state. |
| 1831, Jan. | William L. Garrison began publishing the Liberator in Massachusetts, starting a new, more aggressive anti-slavery movement, i.e., abolitionism. |
| 1831, March | Cherokee Nation v. Georgia case decided by Chief Justice John Marshall. Although he expressed sympathy for the Cherokee, he ruled that the court lacked jurisdiction to intervene on their side, because they were not a truly sovereign nation, but rather, a “domestic dependent nation.” This concept has had a long legacy, one that still today defines the relationship between the independent tribes and the federal government. |
| 1831, Aug. | Nat Turner Rebellion, the largest slave rebellion in American history, broke out in southeastern Virginia. Suppressed within a few days, this rebellion led to the deaths of about 60 whites and 120 African-Americans. |
| 1832, March | Worcester v. Georgia case decided. John Marshall reversed his approach of the previous year in Cherokee Nation by holding that the Cherokee had the right to self-government based on federal treaties, and therefore that Georgia’s extension of state law over them was unconstitutional. But neither the state of Georgia nor the federal government did anything to enforce this decision. |
| 1832, July | Andrew Jackson vetoed the bill re-authorizing the Bank of the U.S. |
| 1832-33 | Nullification Crisis. The passage of the federal tariff law of 1828, which further increased already high taxes on imported manufactured goods, provoked strong opposition in the South, and especially in South Carolina, where this tax was called the “tariff of abomination.” Its critics charged that high, “protective” tariffs favored one region, the Northeast, over others. After a few years of discussions and threats, in November, 1832, South Carolina issued an official declaration that it would nullify the federal tariff laws of both 1828 and 1832, and would forcefully resist collection of these taxes. President Andrew Jackson responded in December with a proclamation that made clear that he would consider any such actions as treason. Henry Clay helped to broker a compromise, allowing South Carolina to back down, in return for a new law, passed in March, 1833, that slowly lowered the tariff. |
| 1836 | Texas rebels against Mexico, declares a republic, and requests admission to the U.S. as a slave state. |
| 1838 | The Trail of Tears. After signing a treaty in 1836 with a small group of Cherokees, who were not recognized as leaders by most, the Cherokee were given two years to migrate voluntarily, at the end of which time they would be forcibly removed. By 1838, when only 2,000 had migrated, the U.S. government forced the remaining 16,000 to begin the trek to the Oklahoma territory west of the Mississippi. This forced march, in which 4,000 Cherokee people died of cold, hunger, and disease, became known as the Trail of Tears. This was only one part of a larger program instituted by the Jackson administration that removed 46,000 Native American people from their land east of the Mississippi to the Oklahoma territory. |
| 1841, March | U.S. v. Amistad. After a Spanish slaving ship hailing from Cuba was seized off the coast of Connecticut by a U.S. Coast Guard ship in 1839, a federal case wound its way to the Supreme Court. The court decided that the alleged slaves were to be freed, since it became obvious that they had been acquired through the slave trade to Africa, which was illegal. In the trial before the Supreme Court, the Africans were represented by former U.S. President, John Quincy Adams. Justice Joseph Story’s opinion asserted the Africans’ right to resist “unlawful” slavery. |
| 1842, March | Prigg v. Pennsylvania case decided by the Supreme Court. The decision struck down a Pennsylvania law of 1826 that was held to interfere with the federal Fugitive Slave Act (1793), and reversed the conviction by a Pennsylvania court of Edward Prigg, who had captured a person claimed as a runaway slave and returned her to a slaveowner in Maryland. Although this decision upheld the Fugitive Slave Act and its constitutional basis (4.2.3), it also clarified that the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act was the sole responsibility of the federal government, and voluntary for states. |
| 1845, Aug. –Dec. | The term Manifest Destiny coined by John O’Sullivan, a journalist based in Washington D.C., who used it in arguments in support both of the U.S. annexation of Texas and of the U.S. claim to the Oregon territory. In O’Sullivan’s usage, the idea was that the U.S. had a divine mandate to spread across the American continent. |
| 1845, Dec. | Texas admitted as a slave state |
| 1846, April-1848, March | Mexican-American War. President James Polk had campaigned in 1844 on a plan to annex, or accept the statehood of Texas, which passed Congress in Dec., 1845. He had also offered to buy much of what is now the U.S. southwest from Mexico, but Mexico refused. In early 1846 Polk sent U.S. troops under General Zachary Taylor into an area that Mexico claimed, in what is now west Texas, north of the Rio Grande and south of the Nueces River. After the Mexican army attacked these troops, Congress declared war on Mexico. U.S. forces defeated Mexican forces and occupied the country’s major cities, including Mexico City. Finally, an effectively captive Mexican government agreed to cede vast territories to the U.S., an agreement formalized in the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. |
| 1846, June | Oregon Treaty signed between the U.S. and Britain, which avoided a new war by agreeing to resolve their overlapping claims to the territory west of the Rocky Mountains and north of California. The parties agreed to extend the border between the U.S. and Canada along the 49 degrees North latitude line that already former their border in the Midwest. The newly acquired U.S. territory included all of what are now the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming. |
| 1846, Aug. | Wilmot Proviso introduced in the House by Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania. Rejected by Congress, this provision would have banned slavery in all of the new territories acquired or to be acquired from Mexico. |
| 1848, April | New York Married Women’s Property Act passed. This law gave wives similar legal rights as single women with regard to their estates and wages. It became a model for this type of legislation, which from the mid-1800s was passed in most states. |
| 1848, May | Treaty of Guadalupe-Hildalgo ratified. The treaty, which into effect in July, 1848, confirmed the results of the Mexican-American War, in that the two countries agreed on their new border, which was defined largely by the Rio Grande River, and also included on the American side of the border virtually all of the former Mexican state of Alta California. The newly acquired territory, known as the Mexican Cession, comprised all of what are now the states of California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Mexican residents of this territory were given the choice of emigrating to Mexico or becoming U.S. citizens. |
| 1848, May | Wisconsin admitted as a free state. |
| 1848, July | Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments. At a convention in Seneca Falls, New York, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others, women’s rights advocates issued a statement modeled on the Declaration of Independence. It claimed equal rights for women and listed the many ways in which such rights had been denied to them historically and were still denied. It is considered the beginning of an organized movement for women’s rights in the U.S. |
| 1850, Sept. | Compromise of 1850 passed by Congress, which seemed to resolve most of the disputes between the North and South that arose out of the Mexican-American War (1846-48). This compromise consisted of a series of five laws, including the admission of California as a free state, the abolition of the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and the creation of territorial governments in Utah and New Mexico, where under the principle of ‘popular sovereignty’ settlers themselves would be allowed to decide the issue of slavery. Finally, the compromise also included a new, harsher fugitive slave law. |
| 1850, Sept. | Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 reiterated the obligation of all federal officials to assist in the arrest and return of fugitive slaves (see the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793). It imposed heavy penalties (e.g., $1000 fines) on officials or anyone else who did not cooperate, provided for rewards to those who arrested fugitive slaves, did not allow the suspected slave a jury trial, and permitted those seeking a fugitive slave to prove their case before a judge with only minimal proof, such as by presenting an affidavit (sworn statement) from the owner. This law was passed to overcome the resistance of northern states to the capture of fugitive slaves through such means as ‘personal liberty’ laws that provided suspected slaves with various procedural protections. |
| 1850, Dec. | Strader v. Graham case decided by the Taney court. The decision held that three musicians from Kentucky, who had worked as slaves on steamboats on the Ohio River, but escaped to Canada, had still been slaves at the time of their escape, despite earlier travels in free territories. This case thus overturned the precedent that had been followed in most American courts until then, which, based on the argument of Somerset v. Steward (1772), considered that time in free territories could free a slave. Instead, the Taney court adopted the approach of the Slave Grace case (1827), which made a person’s status as slave or free, provided he or she was not a fugitive (i.e., a run-away slave in a free state), entirely up to the state in which the person resided at the time. |
| 1852, March | Uncle Tom’s Cabin published by Harriet Beecher Stowe |
| 1854, March | Republican Party formed in Ripon, WI, in part as a protest against the Kansas-Nebraska bills that were then being debated in Congress. |
| 1854, May | Kansas-Nebraska Act signed into law, opening to slavery the U.S. territories acquired in the Louisiana Purchase but not yet formed into states, which territories included all or parts of the future states of Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, etc. Based on a bill introduced by Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL), this law divided the land west of Missouri into two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, and in both it allowed slavery to be decided by popular sovereignty, i.e., allowing the settlers of the new territories to decide if slavery would be legal there. Antislavery supporters were outraged because, under the terms of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, slavery had been outlawed in these territories. |
| 1857, March | Dred Scott v. Sandford case decided by Chief Justice Roger Taney. |
| 1858, Aug.- Oct. | Lincoln-Douglas debates. During the Illinois U.S. Senate campaign, Abraham Lincoln debated the incumbent, Stephen Douglas, in seven debates, in each of which each candidate spoke for a total of ninety minutes. All of the debates focused on slavery, and they garnered enormous attention from newspapers throughout the country. Lincoln won the popular vote, but lost in the Illinois legislature. (At the time, as required by the original Constitution (1.3.1), state legislatures elected senators; it was not until 1913 that the Seventeenth Amendment established the popular election of senators.) Despite this loss, Lincoln gained national attention, setting him up for the presidential election of 1860. |
| 1860, Nov. | The Election of 1860 reflected the deep divisions of the country, with four candidates splitting the vote, and none winning a majority of the popular vote. Although the Republican Lincoln received only 40% of the popular vote, he got 180 of the 303 (or 59%) electoral college votes, and thus easily won the election. But he received almost no southern votes. At its convention earlier that year the Democratic Party split between northern and southern factions, and in the election the northern Democrat Stephen Douglas came in second with 29.5% of the popular vote, but his support was largely restricted to the North. The southern Democrat John Breckinridge swept most of the southern states, but given their relatively small population, this represented only 18% of the popular vote. Finally, a compromise candidate, the Constitutional Union Party’s John Bell, got 13% of the popular vote, mostly in the upper south states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Thus Lincoln began the Civil War with support only in the North, and even there opinion was strongly divided between Republicans and Democrats. |
| 1860, Nov. | Abraham Lincoln elected president, becoming the first president of the new Republican Party. His victory marks the beginning of the “Third Party System,” which is still in place today, in which the dominant parties are the Democrats and the Republicans. His Vice-President was Hannibal Hamlin. Lincoln was re-elected in 1864 when, though still in control of most of the Republican Party, he ran as the leader of a new party, the Union Party, with the Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee as his Vice-President. Lincoln won in 1864, but was assassinated in April, 1865. |
| 1860, Dec. | South Carolina declares its secession from the Union, and invites other southern states to join it. |
| 1861, Feb. – March | Confederate Constitution drafted and signed by the first seven Confederate states to secede. Now joining South Carolina were Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. |
| 1861, April 12-13 | Battle of Fort Sumter. Confederate forces bombarded and then took over Fort Sumter, a federal fort on an island in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. This began the hostilities of the Civil War. Following this battle, four more states joined the Confederacy: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. |
| 1861-65 | U.S. Civil War. |
| 1862, May | Homestead Act signed into law. This act accelerated the settlement of the western territory by granting adult heads of families 160 acres of surveyed public land for a minimal filing fee and 5 years of continuous residence on that land. It is also notable in that is terms were gender-neutral, allowing for both male and female heads of households to claim homesteads. |
| 1863, Jan. 1 | Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln, declaring the freedom of all those slaves residing in the states and counties that were at that time still held by the Confederates. This was the first major step by the Union to free slaves on a large scale, even if at the moment it was issued it did not actually free any slaves. |
| 1865, April 9 | Battle of Appomattox Courthouse in central Virginia. The Confederate army of General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union army of General Ulysses Grant. This signaled the end of major warfare in the Civil War, even though smaller battles continued in a number of regions into the summer. |
| 1865, April 14. | Lincoln assassinated by the actor John W. Booth, who shot Lincoln in the head as he watched a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Booth acted as part of a carefully planned series of assassinations, which also targeted Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. The conspirators hoped to revive the Confederate cause, but the other two targets were either untouched (Johnson) or were only wounded (Seward), and no Confederate revival ensued. Johnson became president, serving one term (1865-69). |
| 1865, Dec. | Thirteenth Amendment ratified. |
| 1866 | Civil Rights Act |
| 1868, July | Fourteenth Amendment ratified. |
| 1870, Feb. | Fifteenth Amendment ratified. |