Book of the Decade
Dred Scott or Dead Scott
Ooh Panic
The panic of 1857 was the first world-wide economic crisis that began in late 1857. The panic started because of the constant declining of the international economy and over expanding the domestic economy in the United States. Even though The Panic of 1857 didn't last very long, the economy was not fully recovered until the American Civil War. Before the depression/Panic of 1857, banks, farmers, and merchants decided to take many risk leaving them experiencing the majority of the impact of The panic of 1857.
The Rip-Off
The Treaty of Traverse des Sioux was signed on July 23, 1851. This treaty ceded territory from Sioux Indian tribes in the Minnesota Territory. The United States paid roughly 3 cents an acre for about 24 million acres and charged $1.25 an acre to settlers wishing to settle in the new territory. The tribes were then given two reservations that were about twenty miles wide and seventy miles long but this ended up being only temporary reservations. With the United States not paying as much they should, tension increased between the tribes and later resulted in the Dakota War of 1862.
Slave or Naw
The Kansas- Nebraska Act became a law on May 30, 1854, it determined that the settlers in newly founded states got to decide if they wanted their state to become a free state or a slave state. This influence people to make Emigrant Aid Companies such as the New England Emigrant Aid Company which tried to recruit settlers in order to win the state as a free state. These companies were also in the south, but they tried to recruit settlers that would move into these territories and vote them as slave states, giving the south an advantage when it came time to vote on laws.
The Big Boom
The first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania, it with roughly 69.5 feet down. It was drilled by Edwin Drake giving the name, Drake Well. The Drake Well was the first well meant to get oil while other wells were wells drilling for salt brine and produced oil and natural gas by accident. But what made the Drake Well so famous is that it attracted the first great wave of investments in oil drilling, refining, and marketing; starting an economic boom.