In Great Britain, Daniel O'Connell was sentenced to a heavy fine and to imprisonment, but the judgment was reversed by the House of Lords. The Repeal movement, which he had led, languished thereafter. The tractarian agitation raised at Oxford. Gold discovered in South Australia. The Y.M.C.A. founded by George Williams, in London.
Premature insurrection in Calabria, Italy, suppressed, and twenty leaders executed. As a result of the Algerian campaigns, France became involved in war with Moroccan rebels. France, which had been annexing islands in the South Seas, made amends for indignities visited on British residents in Tahiti by her naval representatives. China revoked edicts against Christianity.
Among persons of prominence who died were Albert Thorwaldsen, Danish sculptor; Bernadotte, in his later life King Charles XIV of Sweden; Joseph Bonaparte, brother of the great Napoleon; John Dalton, English chemist; and Etienne St. Hilaire, French zoologist.
RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that Oscar I became King of Sweden and Norway, at the death of Charles XIV.
1845
Congress passed a resolution for the annexation of Texas to the United States (January 25), and March 1 President Tyler signed it. Slavery was to be permitted in Texas. Preparations begun for war with Mexico. The Mormons decided to migrate westward from Illinois. Florida and Texas admitted to Statehood. United States Naval Academy founded at Annapolis.
In Ireland, the potato crop failed, and a terrible famine set in. Sir John Franklin set out on his ill-fated Arctic expedition, never to return. Sikh War in the Punjab begun. Peel's cabinet resigned, but as Lord John Russell failed to form a new one, Peel was recalled. Jesuits expelled from France. Indignation against France because French soldiers smothered five hundred Kabyles in the caves of Dahra, Algeria. The city of Quebec nearly destroyed by fire. Spain reluctantly recognized the independence of Venezuela. Seven Catholic cantons of Switzerland signed an act of secession from the confederacy, and agreed to support one another against all attacks; this union is called the Sonderbund.
Andrew Jackson, ex-President of the United States; Thomas Hood, English poet and humorist; Sydney Smith, English politician, clergyman, and wit; and Elizabeth Fry, English prison reformer, died.
RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that James Knox Polk became President of the United States.