Q. David Bowers
In the presidential election, Vice President Martin Van Buren won with the support of President Andrew Jackson. Van Buren pledged to follow in the footsteps of his "illustrious predecessor," a catch phrase that in 1837 would reappear on copper Hard Times tokens depicting a jackass.
Construction of the Washington Monument, which eventually would be 555 feet, five inches high, was begun by government architect Robert Mills and his associates. Ceremonial contributions of cut stones for inclusion in the base were solicited from other countries. Construction would take place in fits and starts and would take about a half century to complete.
The publishing house of J.B. Lippincott & Company was founded in Philadelphia in 1836 and would expand to great importance. Among its stable of authors years later in 1860 would be Director of the Mint James Ross Snowden. In the meantime, the director of the Mint was Robert Maskell Patterson who had taken office in July 1835 and who would serve until July 1851. Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, was published and contained this line: "The inevitable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common." The author suggested that readers "enjoy an original relation to the universe." Perhaps in contrast, in Hartford, Connecticut, 22-year-old Samuel Colt patented his six-shooter, which was effective up to about 30 yards. Colt would go on to become world famous, and his products would kill countless humans, including innumerable Native Americans.
In 1836, Alonzo D. Phillips invented a phosphorus match, a great improvement over the "Lucifer" match invented in England in 1827. Match companies sprang up in various United States cities. Cincinnati College president William Holmes McGuffey prepared his First and Second Reader books, which would appear in many editions through the early twentieth century and which used admonitions of virtue and good living to educate children. In New York City, Delmonico's Restaurant issued America's first printed menu, never dreaming that this would lead over a century later in the 1960s to such "improvements" as huge menus (some measuring two or three feet), which seemed to go along with pepper grinders measuring a foot high. On May 31,1836, fur trader and real estate developer John Jacob Astor opened the doors of the Hotel Astor in New York, a forerunner of two later hotels each named the Waldorf Astoria. In oceanic commercial shipping, sailing vessels were dominant, and just 60,000 tons (of 2,350,000 total) of shipping were by steam.
In 1837, slavery was a hot topic in Congress, which enacted a gag rule to suppress debate. The Anti-Slavery Society furnished a new press to Alton, Illinois newspaper publisher Elijah Lovejoy, whose Alton Observer press had been destroyed by citizens who protested his abolitionist stance. An armed mob sought to destroy the new press as well, and in the fight Lovejoy was killed.
In 1837, Phineas T. Barnum hoaxed over 10,000 visitors to Niblo's Garden in New York City with his exhibition of Joice Heth, a frail "161-year-old" former slave who claimed to be the midwife who assisted in the delivery of baby George Washington in 1732. The New York & Harlem Railroad, which would later issue tokens (to delight numismatists who found them years afterward), extended its horsecar line to Harlem in 1837 and also developed the world's first steam-powered tram.
On March 3, 1837 the number of Supreme Court justices was increased from seven to nine. Michigan was admitted to the Union on January 26, 1837. Possibly more than any other state, Michigan was a haven for fraudulent "wildcat" banking and note-issuing operations.
On graduating from Harvard, Henry David Thoreau expanded upon Emerson's Nature essay in a commencement address, suggesting that man should not work for six days and rest on the seventh, but rather should work one day and leave six free for the "sublime revelations of nature." Charles Dickens' novel, The Pickwick Papers, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales were published.
John Deere, an Illinois blacksmith born in Vermont, devised a self-cleaning plow to break sod and Create furrows. (This would later become famous-or infamous--as "the plow that broke the plains," ultimately causing the Midwest Dust Bowl.) The abolishition of land purchase abuses (by means of the Specie Circular) and depressed farm prices following the financial panic, made land more affordable. In Cincinnati the dry-goods firm of Shillito' s was formed; in 1863 it would issue encased postage stamps, In the same city Procter & Gamble was founded, and in New York City, Tiffany & Co. began business. Samuel F.B. Morse demonstrated his magnetic telegraph and sought a patent on it. In the meantime, in England two scientists patented their own telegraph.
In Germany, August Froebel opened the world's first kindergarten (literally, "children's garden"). In England on June 20, 1837, Queen Victoria began her reign on the throne, which would last until her death in 1901 and which gave rise to the term "Victorian era."
Back in the United States the Coinage Act of 1837 was very important. Carothers, in his history, Fractional Money, stated the following concerning it:
"In 1836 Director Moore wrote to Congress saying that the proportions of alloys in gold and silver coins should be changed. After the law of 1834, silver was undervalued, so the law of 1837, reducing the value of silver was desirable. The law was passed on January 18, 1837. A very important point was the creation of a bullion fund of $1 million which meant that the mint could buy bullion for the manufacture of coins in advance of deposit by owners. The seigniorage charge of 1/2% on immediate delivery of coins was abolished. The mint was directed to give depositors the denominations they preferred if it was possible to do so. A copper purchase fund was created also. The alloy in both gold and silver coins was brought to 10%. In the silver coins the copper content was reduced 3 1/2 grains bringing the weight of the silver dollar from 416 to 412 1/2 grains without a change in the fine weight of 371 1/4 grains." The fine weight of silver remained at 3711/4 grains in both old and new dollars, keeping their intrinsic value unchanged.