Eleven persons in Philadelphia and seven in Norwich, England, killed by steamboat boiler explosions, resulting in violent public opposition to steam vessels. Cholera epidemic started in Bengal, spread over Asia and Europe, crossed the Atlantic, and caused a million deaths before it was checked some years later. Béranger, French poet, imprisoned for blasphemy.
Mme. de Staël, French writer, and Thaddeus Kosciusko, Polish patriot and soldier in the American Revolution, died.
RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that James Monroe became President of the United States on March 4.
1818
The army of occupation withdrawn from France. King Frederick William III of Prussia, at the instigation of Metternich and the Russian Czar Alexander, having become an implacable opponent of liberalism and popular education, began to suppress schools and colleges. General discontent in Spain, and several abortive uprisings occurred against Ferdinand VII, whose misgovernment had left an empty treasury and an unpaid army. Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, and Congress refused to rebuke him; negotiations with Spain for the purchase of Florida. Illinois admitted to the Union, and the contest over the admission of Missouri commenced in Congress. Pensions granted to needy Revolutionary soldiers, and to the widows and children of Revolutionary soldiers—the beginning of the pension system. The number of stripes in the United States flag reduced to thirteen, the number of stars to be equal to the total number of States in the Union.
Polar expeditions sent out both from America and from England. In the latter country, Abraham Thornton, accused of murder, claimed the right to prove his innocence by meeting his accuser in battle; under an ancient statute this was possible, and as Thornton's accuser declined the proposed combat, the prisoner was set free. The obsolete law was thereupon repealed. Patent leather and strychnia discovered. Steam first used for heating purposes.
Independence of Chile finally declared, after eight years of fighting, on February 12.
RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that Charles XIV (formerly Marshal Bernadotte) succeeded Charles XIII as King of Sweden and Norway.
1819
Most of the Cherokee Indians removed from Georgia to lands west of the Mississippi. Congress agitated by the Missouri discussion; bill to prohibit slavery in the territory of the Louisiana Purchase north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, excepting in Missouri, introduced, and passed the following year. Opposition to slavery increased in the Northern States. Yellow fever in New York. Alabama admitted to the Union. Würtemberg abolished serfdom. August Kotzebue, German playwright and leader of the opposition to liberal ideas and education, assassinated by Sand, a Jena student; severe measures of repression, under the influence of Metternich, the great Austrian minister, followed. Throughout the German States censorship of the press was established, wholesale arrests of liberals occurred, student societies were forbidden, and ninety-four students were executed for wearing black, red, and yellow ribbons, the emblems of liberalism.