The eighteen forties were a tumultuous time for the United States. Different events affected the Union. These events ranged from James Polk’s inauguration, to the Mormons’ conflict in Illinois, to Texas’ admittance into the Union, to the Mexican-American War, to slave riots. Did these issues have any affect on college students from that era, specifically students at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania? To answer that question, this post examines the Mexican-American War through a wide lens, while analyzing slave riots through the zoomed in lens of an 1847 slave riot in Carlisle.
This post contains various interactive links to examine the affects of those events. Special features of this post include:

  • Discussion of perspective with relevance to how and why historians “zoom” and the possibility of student ignorance to national events
  • Comparative timeline with national events side by side with Dickinson events
  • Photo gallery of various primary sources used in this project