Life in 1860: A Guide for Vintage Base Ball Interpreters

Life in 1860
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Publishing and authors. Words added to the dictionary. Music. Theatre. Architecture. Faith. Cultural Movements. Political Movements.

(Although we refer to this period of American history as antebellum ("before the war"), 1860 vintage base ball participants in first-person certainly would know nothing of the upcoming American tragedy and would not use the word.)

PUBLISHING and AUTHORS.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was very popular in 1860, and perhaps he was at the peak of his career. His poetry was first published in 1839. Song of Hiawatha was first published in 1855 and The Courtship of Miles Standish in 1858.

Ralph Waldo Emerson published the anti-slavery The Conduct of Life in 1860.

Harriet Beecher Stowe rocked the publishing world in 1852 with Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her follow-up novel was Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, 1856. Her "latest" work of 1858 is The Minister's Wooing, which was published in serial form in The Atlantic Monthly December 1858 and all of 1859. Cornell University has scanned the pages and posted them on the Internet.

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) had become well-known by 1860, having first published stories in 1852.

"Peter Parley" was a character in a series of moralistic and popular juvenile novels published by Samuel G. Goodrich from 1827 to 1860.

Two well-known periodicals debuted in 1857: The Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Weekly. The older Harpers's New Monthly Magazine completed its tenth year in 1860, with a circulation of 200,000 copies. In 1855, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper quickly set the standard for illustrated newspapers and became an American fixture until 1922.

Paperback dime novels and guide books first appeared in 1860 with the establishment of Irwin P. Beadle & Co. the previous year.

Ann Sophia Stephens, an American editor and writer whose melodramatic novels, popular in serialized form, gained an even wider readership as some of the first dime novels.

Englishman Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species late in 1859.

SELECTED WORDS POPULAR ENOUGH TO BE ADDED TO WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY, 1832-1860.

fielder - noun 1832

brogan - noun 1835

Christmas tree - noun 1835

time-table - noun 1838

Victorian - adjective 1839

OK (okay) - adverb or adjective Etymology: abbreviation of oll korrect, facetious alteration of all correct,1839; noun 1841; (the transitive verb form did not get added until 1888)

photograph - noun 1839

underground railroad - noun 1842

shindig - noun 1842

root beer - noun 1843

shivaree - noun 1843

baseman - noun 1845

first base, second base, third base - noun 1845

gutta-percha - noun 1845

cellulose - noun 1848

knickerbocker - noun 1848

collodion - noun 1851

telegram - noun 1852

home run - noun 1856

fair ball - noun 1856

left field, center field, right field - noun 1857

ground ball - noun 1857

shortstop - noun 1857

right-hander - noun 1857

ambrotype - noun 1858

states' rights - noun plural 1858

stereograph - noun 1859

minie ball - noun 1859

fingerprint - noun 1859

foul ball - noun 1860

- "baseball" is circa 1815 (probably two words at the time)
- the current entry under "Doubleday" - "Function: biographical name Abner 1819-1893 American Soldier & reputed inventor of baseball; claims to invention and naming of baseball disproved in modern times"

MUSIC.

Popular song of the 1850s and 1860:

Stephen Collins Foster's (1826-1864) "plantation melodies" are well-known: "Gwine to Run All Night (De Camptown Races)" (1850); "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853); ³Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair" (1854); "Old Black Joe" (1860)

· "Wait for the Wagon" by F. D. Benteen (1851)

· "Old Folks at Home" "Ethiopian Melody as sung by Christy's Minstrels" originally credited to Edwin P. Christy; Stephen Foster sold the rights to him for $5.00 (1851)

· "Pop Goes de Weasel" by Charles Twiggs, Esq. (1853)(The familiar children's verses are a twentieth century invention; the original version is clearly rooted in minstrel shows and is a comical poke at contemporary topics: Uncle Tom's Cabin, temperance movement, New York World's Fair.)

· "Listen to the Mocking Bird" by Winner and Milburn (1855)

· "Darling Nelly Gray" by Benjamin Russel Hanby (1856)

· "Jingle Bells (The One Horse Open Sleigh)" by James Pierpont (1857) (the song was reworked and became much more popular in the twentieth century)

· "Dixie's Land" ("Dixie") by Daniel Decatur Emmett of Bryant's Minstrels (1859) (first unauthorized publication in New Orleans in early 1860; published by Emmett in June 1860)

Hutchinson Family.
Typical of many traveling performers, the Hutchinsons were held in high regard by their audiences and fellow performers alike.

German choral societies were still popular, but on the decline in 1860 in states like Ohio, Illinois and Minnesota where transplanted German-speaking peoples had resettled. The Cecelia Society and Harmonic Society in Cincinnati was formed in 1856. It was Cincinnati where the first Saengerfest was held in 1849. The war ended the golden age of this form of musical expression.

Wagner's grand operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin made their New York debuts in 1859. Verdi's Rigoletto made its U. S. debut in New Orleans in 1860.

Town brass bands were an American staple by 1860. An Irish immigrant, cornetist P. S. Gilmore, had just established the format of the American concert band, based on European traditions. He built around the brass instruments by adding two woodwinds for each brass instrument. When the war broke out, many town brass bands "enlisted together for the war and became regimental bands in their state's volunteer fighting units." Gilmore's band served with the Massachusetts 24th Regiment.

THEATRE.

to come

ARCHITECTURE.

Greek Revival
The era of Greek Revival architecture had passed by 1860, but its influence was left behind for all to see. Many of this nation's early institutions adopted the Greek Revival style because of its strength and solidity. Although no longer fashionable for homes in 1860, banks, courthouses, universities, and fraternity halls retained this style.

Gothic Revival
This architectural style was in high fashion in 1860. Pointed arches is this style's most prominent feature.

FAITH.

Holiness Movement

Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement

CULTURAL MOVEMENTS.

Temperance
By 1860, the temperance movement had spread throughout much of the nation, its roots going back to the colonial era. "Good Templars" could be found in many communities. The group was the "Order of Good Templars", founded in 1851 at Utica, New York. States and territories began passing prohibition laws in 1846.

Transcendentalism

POLITICAL MOVEMENTS.

Dissolution of Whig Party

rise and fall of American Party

establisment of Republican Party

creation of Constitutional Union party