A Little History

Major Events and Culture

The 1850s were part of the Victorian era.  Queen Victoria had reigned in England since 1837 and would live to January of 1901.  Her reign would last for about 63.5 years, and in 1850s, it was still fairly young. However, just because this era was long, doesn’t mean it was peaceful or completely stable. Peace and stability varied depending on location, and this was an age of imperialism, which sparked battles for territory and power. The Crimean War (which included the battle and famous charge that inspired the poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade“) lasted from 1853 to 1856, and the Second Opium War was fought between 1856 and 1860. The Second Opium War was one of two wars fought by China against the British in an effort to stop the British East India Company from selling opium to Chinese merchants. China had been dominating trade because it had many products that people wanted, like porcelain, silk, and tea, so the British essentially turned to drug dealing to get the upper hand. Opium was used as a medicine, but the problem was that the large amounts of opium that the British East Company produced and smuggled into China were meant for recreational purposes, which led to drug abuse and drug addiction. There was also an attempted rebellion in India against British rule in 1857.

In the United States, the Civil War had not yet happened, and slavery was still legal. This is part of the period in the South known as the Antebellum period (from the Latin meaning “Before the War”). However, signs of the coming war were already showing.

People had campaigned for the abolition of slavery for years. In literature during this decade, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was published in 1852. This novel is credited with increasing anti-slavery sentiments and even may have made the country more willing to go to war over the issue, leading up to the Civil War in the following decade.

Physical violence also took place before the war actually started. Violent skirmishes erupted in the Kansas Territory between 1854 and 1859 between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers. On October 16, 1859, abolitionist John Brown attempted to lead a slave revolt with a raid on the armory at Harpers Ferry (Virginia, later part of West Virginia). The raid went badly, and John Brown was captured by Robert E. Lee, tried, and eventually hanged. However, the incident was highly publicized and reactions to it demonstrated the increasing polarization on the issue of slavery. The raid and John Brown’s death were commemorated in the North by a marching song called “John Brown’s Body” which hailed him as a hero and later provided the tune for Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (and also many parodies created by children later). In the South, people who already had been considering a separation from the rest of the United States viewed the raid as a sign of the lengths that abolitionists were willing to go in order to free the slaves and destroy what Southerners saw as their way of life. Their feelings were that their only chance to maintain the institution of slavery and the way of life that depended on it was to break away and form their own Confederacy with each other. The election of Abraham Lincoln the following year was the final straw. With his known anti-slavery sentiments, Southern states decided that secession was the only option, and the Civil War officially began.

Three new states were added to the United States: California, Minnesota, and Oregon, raising the total number of states to 33 by the end of the decade.

Society was becoming more industrialized and urban throughout the 19th century.  Populations had already started shifting from the countryside to the big cities, and factories were increasing production of consumer goods.  New technological developments were changing people’s lives. Steam trains had become popular methods of travel and transport around the world. In 1851, the Great Exposition in London celebrated advancements in industry and manufacturing. In November 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, introducing his theories of evolutionary biology and natural selection.

Childhood and Growing Up

For many, being a child during these years was difficult.  Child labor, even for rather young children, was still legal in the United States and would remain legal, in some form, for many more years. Children growing up on family farms would naturally engage in farm chores, supervised by parents and older siblings, but as the country became more industrialized, children were increasingly used in factories.  Children were also used in coal mining, which had its own dangers and health risks.  Poor families and immigrants often relied on money that their children earned to help make ends meet, and industries profited from their cheap labor, which made it difficult to keep rules and limits in place for the children’s welfare.

Up to this time, there wasn’t really an organized foster care system in the United States, but this decade would see the beginning of one of the earliest forms. The practice of sending homeless or parentless children on “Orphan Trains” (typically called “Baby Trains” or “Mercy Trains” at the time) from the big cities on the East Coast of the United States to live and work on farms in the Midwest (or even further west) began in the 1850s and would continue until the 1920s.  The theory was that living in the country and working on farms would be more wholesome for them than remaining in crowded cities. The system largely depended on the kindness of the strangers who would be giving these children homes, although they did work out ways to check up on the orphans to make sure that they were being treated well. For some of the children, the orphan train system worked out well, and they were placed with families who gave them a better life.  However, some children were simply exploited as a source of cheap labor.

Children from more affluent families were more likely to focus on education rather than working, although many did not pursue higher education.  In those days, not many jobs required college degrees, and more people could get decent jobs with a high school education or less.  (Back when I was studying journalism, my teacher explained that newspaper articles are traditionally written at about an 8th grade reading level, roughly age 13 or 14 in the United States, partly to make them accessible for different age groups and reading abilities and partly because, for a long time, that was about the standard education level of adults who could read.)

It was common for babies to be delivered at home rather than in a hospital, and in the case of families who lived in rural areas, it was more likely that the birth would be attended by family members or women from neighboring farms than by a physician.  Infant mortality rates were higher during this period than in modern times because the level medical care available wasn’t as good, antibiotics like penicillin had not yet been developed so infectious diseases were more likely to turn deadly, and there were less vaccines for preventing diseases in the first place.  It was fairly common for families to lose at least one child in infancy.  This is also part of the reason why the overall life expectancy was lower.  It wasn’t that adults would always die at a much younger age (although that did happen sometimes because of diseases or accidents); it was also that quite a lot of people didn’t make it to adulthood, or even out of early childhood, in the first place.  Remember that an “average lifespan” for a decade is an “average” number (the “mean” in math), not the most common number by itself (the “mode” in math).  The difference is important because, to find out what age an adult would likely live to once they reached adulthood, you would have to focus on the average age at death only for those who reached adulthood, not including infants and children.  Adding in the infant mortalities brings down the average overall and can give you a false picture that no one ever lived to see their grandchildren, which was not the case.  So, if a person managed to survive some of the riskier points of life, such as early childhood or the child-bearing years for women, their odds of living to what we might consider a more normal lifespan might be better than you think.  Of course, that’s “if.”  People who lived at this time period would have been aware of the dangers of diseases and other risks for themselves and their children, and they would have known that even if they survived to adulthood, they might well lose a child someday.  The good news is that, during the coming 20th century, new medicines and vaccines helped to save many lives that would otherwise have been lost, giving this generation’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren a far better chance in life than they had.

Literature

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was one of the most influential novels of its time. However, there was also a literary counter-movement known as “plantation literature” or “anti-Tom literature” that attempted to defend the concept of slavery, trying to paint a rosy picture of plantation life. Although most of this plantation literature was aimed at adults, some of this type of literature did make its way into children’s literature of the period.

During this decade, Nathaniel Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter in 1850, and Charles Dickens published his novel A Tale of Two Cities in 1859. You’ll notice as you look through the list of children’s books below that some authors who were famous for writing for adults, such as Charles Dickens and Nathaniel Hawthorne, also wrote children’s literature. It was common during the 19th century for authors to write for both children and adults.

Children’s Fiction Books

General Fiction

The Daisy Chain (1856)

The mother of a family of eleven children dies, and the eldest daughters of the family must take over running the household and caring for their younger siblings. It’s particularly difficult for the spirited Ethel, and it involves some self-sacrifice. The story is highly moralistic and has Christian themes. The consensus of other people who have reviewed this book is that it is very well-written, but some of the attitudes in the story about the expectations and place of women in society can be off-putting. By Charlotte Mary Yonge.

Eric, or, Little by Little (1858)

Eric is an English boy whose parents live and work in India. They send him to a boarding school in England for his education, but because of the bullying and wrongful punishments he receives there, he falls into bad habits, and his life goes downhill. He eventually dies at his childhood home. The story emphasizes that being good at heart and having faith in God isn’t enough if a person gives in to temptation. This book was popular during the mid-19th century, but was later criticized for its overly religious tone. By Frederic W. Farrar.

Available to read online through Project Gutenberg.

Summer Holidays: A Story For Children (1850)

A boy goes to visit his cousins in the countryside over the summer, helping an unfortunate older man and having adventures. The story is told in short, episodic chapters. By Amerel.

Available to read online through Project Gutenberg.

Tom Brown’s School Days (1857)

A boy named Tom Brown goes to boarding school at Rugby. Things are difficult for him, including dealing with a bully, but he makes some good friends and learns some valuable life lessons. This book was based on the author’s own school experiences. It was one of the most famous Victorian British boarding school stories and helped to popularize the genre. By Thomas Hughes.

Available to read online through Project Gutenberg.

Series

Stories of Rainbow and Lucky

An unusual series from this time period featuring a young black character, a fourteen-year-old boy who is kind and intelligent, finding employment and dealing with racism in the Northern states before the beginning of the American Civil War. “Rainbow” is the nickname of the black character (they never call him anything else although he does apparently have another name), and Lucky is the name of a horse that he tames because he is good with animals. The series ends happily for Rainbow with a bright future and possible marriage ahead for him, in spite of the racism that he encounters. By Rev. Jacob Abbott. 1859-1860.

This five-book series is notable not only for its empathy with a black main character and open acknowledgement of racism but for its general understanding of human psychology as the author includes realistic human flaws in his characters and makes a point of explaining the reasons behind his characters’ behavior. The author also explains many small details of daily life in the mid-19th century. A number of character names are puns on their professions or natures, which is also fun. (“Rainbow” is also a pun nickname because he is “colored,” which was considered a more polite racial term at the time the stories were written. The characters actually talk about racial terms and make distinctions between what’s considered polite and what isn’t by mid-19th century standards during the course of the books in order to teach young readers how to speak politely.)

You can read all five books in this series online at Nineteenth-Century American Children & What They Read. This site also has commentary about each of the books in the series.

Adventure

The Coral Island (1858)

Three boys struggle to survive on a South Pacific island after being shipwrecked. By R. M. Ballantyne.

Available to read online through Project Gutenberg.

Fantasy

The Enchanted Forest (1856)

A fairy tale type story about a princess and her magical adventures. Originally written in French. By La Comtesse de Segur.

Flower Fables (1854)

A collection of short stories. By Louisa May Alcott. This was her first published work. It is now public domain and on Project Gutenberg.

Granny’s Wonderful Chair (1857)

A series of fairy tales framed as the adventures of a girl named Snowflake and her magical chair. By Frances Browne.

The King of the Golden River (1851)

A pair of mean brothers become goldsmiths and melt down a special golden mug that belongs to their other brother. The mug becomes a golden dwarf who is the King of the Golden River and explains to the brothers how to turn a river into a real river of gold. By John Ruskin. (He originally wrote this story in the 1840s for a young girl who later became his wife.)

Picture Books

Little Eva: Flower of the South (1853)

This is an example of plantation literature for children. Eva is a young girl living on a plantation (ripping off the name of a very similar young girl in Uncle Tom’s Cabin). She is a sweet and good girl who teaches slaves to read and write (illegal in many places where slaves were held – some masters ignored the laws, but it was discouraged more than encouraged). One day, a slave named Sam saves Eva from drowning. Eva’s parents are so grateful that they offer to free Sam as a reward, but he refuses to leave them because he loves them so much. (Most stories that require suspension of disbelief do it earlier in the story, not at the very end. Just saying.) By Philip J. Cozans.

This is as much of a review as I’m ever going to do of this story. I don’t think there’s much else to say about it anyway, except that it did crack me up that, when the story describes Eva reading the Bible to the slaves on the Sabbath, it says “she has learned some of them to read.” Good job, Eva. It should be “taught,” and the author does use “teaching” two pages earlier. Some people may point out that “learned” would not be incorrect in an archaic sense of the word, but this is probably a regionalism. The author was probably aware that it wasn’t technically correct for standard English, but he slipped back into the regional expression in the middle of a run-on sentence. The book is pretty short, most of the “story” just describes what a good little girl Eva is with little actual plot. The book has to excessively praise dear little Eva so you’ll understand why Sam wants to remain her family’s slave and, by extension, why people should stop complaining about slave owners in general because lots of them are as “good” as little Eva. The book’s message isn’t very subtle. About half the pages are illustrations. If you feel the need to read it, it is currently available on Internet Archive.

Children’s Non-Fiction

A Child’s History of England (1852-1854)

By Charles Dickens. Available online through Project Gutenberg.

Hand Shadows to be Thrown Upon the Wall (1859)

A how-to guide to making hand shadows. By Henry Bursill.

Reading without Tears (1857)

A guide to help children learn how to read. Years later, Winston Churchill‘s governess attempted to use this book to give him reading lessons. When recalling his youthful lessons, he stated, “It certainly did not justify its title in my case.” By Favell Lee Mortimer.

A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1851) and Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls (1853)

Retellings of famous Greek myths. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Available to read online through Project Gutenberg.

Series

Countries of the World Described Series

This is by Favell Lee Mortimer, author of the Peep of Day.  As far as I know, the series didn’t have a title, but this is what I call it as a reference to the titles of the books in the series. 1849-1854.

Warning: Not only would informational books about countries from this period be horribly out of date by modern standards, these books aren’t even going to tell you much of use about the world during the period in which they were written. Mostly, what you learn about other countries from this series is that Mrs. Mortimer doesn’t like a lot of them because they are full of people with bad habits, religions she doesn’t approve of, and criminals of all kinds. They also don’t all have “fine” rivers and forests. She makes it a point to tell you about the deficits of rivers and forests in many areas of the world. I am not joking. These books are loaded with obvious prejudices, gross generalizations, and sharp criticism of practically everyone. Read my description of the series for more details. I’m not going to do reviews of individual books in this series, but it’s worth describing the series as a whole so that you’ll understand. People read these books when they were published and gave them to real children for educational purposes. What people read as children explains so much of the way they behave as adults. If you read it yourself, beware of offensive materials, and please don’t inflict it on modern children.

Children of the Decade

Children born in this decade in the United States:

Popular 1850s Names – Most would be names that we would consider “classics” in the early 21st century, like: Mary, Sarah, Elizabeth, John, William, and James.

They would have been children during the American Civil War (1861-1865). The ones born in the early part of the decade would have strong memories of the war and would remember aspects of life before the war began. Slavery would have been legal in the United States during their earliest years.

They would have been in their 40s or 50s around the time the Wright brothers built and flew their first airplanes during the early 1900s.  Their earliest memories would be from a time before aviation existed.

They would have been in their 50s through their 60s during World War I (1914-1918).  Some of their children or grandchildren may have take part in the war.  All of them would have called the war “The Great War” before World War II.

They were born before women in the United States could vote.  None of their mothers had the right to vote at the time of their births or for their entire childhoods.  They would later be adults in their 60s and 70s when women’s suffrage was granted after the ratification of the 19th Amendment (although some western states did have women voting even before that).

They lived during a time when people not only did not have television but also did not have home radios (which were invented and popularized in the 1920s).  If you wanted music at home, you had to either learn to sing or play an instrument yourself, listen to a family member who could, or use a phonograph (early record player) to play a record.  Phonographs, developed in 1877 by Thomas Edison, commonly were of the wind-up variety, so no electricity was needed.  They were elderly adults by the time home radios were invented.

They would have been in their 70s and 80s during the Great Depression, although not all born in this decade would have lived to see this period of history.  By then, many of them would have been grandparents, and some may have even been great-grandparents.  Their children or grandchildren could have been among those who lost their jobs or were struggling to find work while still providing for their families.

Few of them would have lived to see World War II. Those who did would have been in their 80s or 90s. Fewer of them would have lived to see the start of the Cold War at the end of World War II. Almost none would have lived to see the Civil Rights Movement, which started around the time they were 100 years old or more.

Children born in this decade would also have read books from the following decade, the 1860s, in their youth. However, children who were old enough to read some of the books published in the early part of this decade when they were first sold would have been born in the preceding decade, the 1840s.

Children’s Authors Were Children, Too!

Everyone was young once, and I’d just like to take this opportunity to remind readers that authors born around this time would have grown up like other children of their time, witnessing the same events and reading the same books as they grew up.

Children’s authors born in this decade:

Robert Louis Stevenson – November 13, 1850 – Author of Treasure Island (1883) and A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885)

L. Frank Baum – May 15, 1856 – Author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

Kate Douglas Wiggin – September 28, 1856 – Author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903) and Mother Carey’s Chickens (1911)

Edith (E.) Nesbit – August 15, 1858 – Author of The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), Five Children and It (1902), and The Railway Children (1906)

Kenneth Grahame – March 8, 1859 – Author of The Wind in the Willows (1908)

Other Resources

Documentary Films

CrashCourse

CrashCourse is a YouTube channel with fun educational videos on a variety of topics and different periods of history. The videos are fairly short for educational lectures. Most are less than 15 minutes long. These videos are intended for teenagers and older, so be aware that there may be topics and language inappropriate for younger children.

Deepening Division Threatens the Union | America: The Story of Us (S1, E4)

From the History Channel. About 44 minutes long.

THE ULTIMATE FASHION HISTORY: The 1850s & 1860s

An educational lecture about fashions in the 1850s and 1860s. Contains some information and images not suitable for children! Fashions of the time were inspired by imperialism and also functioned to obscure women’s bodies and keep men at a physical distance with hoop skirts. About 14 minutes long.

Getting Dressed – Victorian Gardener (1850s)

Shows what an English gardener would have worn and explains how they would have lived. Includes information about the Language of Flowers. By CrowsEyeProductions.

Getting Dressed – Dickensian Christmas (Victorian Maid in 1853)

Shows an English maid getting dressed in winter clothing before attending a public reading of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. By CrowsEyeProductions.

For more about 1850s culture:

The People History: 1850 to 1859 Important News, Key Events, Significant Technology

Wikipedia: 1850s

Lists of 1850s children’s books:

Nineteenth-Century American Children & What They Read

Explains about the lives of children in the 19th century and books and magazines that they read. The focus seems to be on the 1870s and earlier.

Books By Decade

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