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Events from the year 1855 in the United States.
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Events from the year 1855 in the United States.
David Rice Atchison was a mid-19th-century Democratic United States Senator from Missouri. He served as president pro tempore of the United States Senate for six years. Atchison served as a major general in the Missouri State Militia in 1838 during Missouri's Mormon War and as a Confederate brigadier general during the American Civil War under Major General Sterling Price in the Missouri Home Guard. Some of Atchison's associates claimed that for 24 hours—Sunday, March 4, 1849, through noon on Monday—he may have been acting president of the United States. This belief, however, is dismissed by most scholars.
1855 (MDCCCLV) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar, the 1855th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 855th year of the 2nd millennium, the 55th year of the 19th century, and the 6th year of the 1850s decade. As of the start of 1855, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 4, 1856. Democratic nominee James Buchanan defeated Republican nominee John C. Frémont and Know Nothing/Whig nominee Millard Fillmore. The main issue was the expansion of slavery as facilitated by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. Buchanan defeated President Franklin Pierce at the 1856 Democratic National Convention for the nomination. Pierce had become widely unpopular in the North because of his support for the pro-slavery faction in the ongoing civil war in territorial Kansas, and Buchanan, a former Secretary of State, had avoided the divisive debates over the Kansas–Nebraska Act by being in Europe as the Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
The Yakama are a Native American tribe with nearly 10,851 members, based primarily in eastern Washington state.
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War, was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.
The Yakama Indian Reservation is a Native American reservation in Washington state of the federally recognized tribe known as the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. The tribe is made up of Klikitat, Palus, Wallawalla, Wenatchi, Wishram, and Yakama peoples.
Wesley Livsey Jones was an American politician who served in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate representing the state of Washington.
The 34th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C., from March 4, 1855, to March 4, 1857, during the last two years of Franklin Pierce's presidency. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1850 United States census. The Whig Party, one of the two major parties of the era, had largely collapsed, although many former Whigs ran as Republicans or as members of the "Opposition Party." The Senate had a Democratic majority, and the House was controlled by a coalition of Representatives led by Nathaniel P. Banks, a member of the American Party.
The Yakima War (1855–1858), also referred to as the Plateau War or Yakima Indian War, was a conflict between the United States and the Yakama, a Sahaptian-speaking people of the Northwest Plateau, then part of Washington Territory, and the tribal allies of each. It primarily took place in the southern interior of present-day Washington. Isolated battles in western Washington and the northern Inland Empire are sometimes separately referred to as the Puget Sound War and the Coeur d'Alene War, respectively.
The following are events from the year 1825 in the United States.
Events from the year 1830 in the United States.
James Willis Nesmith was an American politician and lawyer from Oregon. Born in New Brunswick to American parents, he grew up in New Hampshire and Maine. A Democrat, he moved to Oregon Country in 1843 where he entered politics as a judge, a legislator in the Provisional Government of Oregon, a United States Marshal, and after statehood a United States senator and Representative.
Kamiakin (Yakama) was a leader of the Yakama, Palouse, and Klickitat peoples east of the Cascade Mountains in what is now southeastern Washington state. In 1855, he was disturbed by threats of the Territorial Governor, Isaac Stevens, against the tribes of the Columbia Plateau. After being forced to sign a treaty of land cessions, Kamiakin organized alliances with 14 other tribes and leaders, and led the Yakima War of 1855–1858.
The Walla Walla Council (1855) was a meeting in the Pacific Northwest between the United States and sovereign tribal nations of the Cayuse, Nez Perce, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Yakama. The council occurred on May 29 – June 11; the treaties signed at this council on June 9 were ratified by the U.S. Senate four years later in 1859.
Events from the year 1861 in the United States. This year marked the beginning of the American Civil War.
Events from the year 1863 in the United States.
Events from the year 1814 in the United States.
Events from the year 1847 in the United States.
Lucullus Virgil McWhorter was an American farmer and frontiersman who documented the historical Native American tribes in West Virginia and the modern-day Plateau Native Americans in Washington state. After living in West Virginia and Ohio, in 1903 he moved to the frontier of Yakima, Washington, in the eastern part of the state. He became a rancher and activist, learning much from his Yakama Nation neighbors and becoming an activist for them. In 1914 he was adopted as an honorary member of the Yakama, after helping over several years to defeat a federal bill that would have required them to give up much of their land in order to get any irrigation rights. They named him Hemene Ka-Wan,, meaning Old Wolf.
Andrew Jackson Bolon was a Bureau of Indian Affairs agent whose 1855 death at the hands of renegade Yakama is considered one of several contributing factors in the outbreak of the Yakima War. Some sources assert Bolon was the first law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty in the territory that is now the state of Washington, though the Washington Peace Officers Memorial in Olympia, Washington lists a King County sheriff's deputy killed the year before Bolon's death.
Media related to 1855 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons