1858 Timeline

1858 Castle & Cooke Invest in Haiku Sugar Company
Castle & Cooke enter the food business with their first investment in Hawaii's sugar industry. The Haiku Sugar Company, is the first sugar enterprise in Hawaii to raise capital through st...
1858
to 1861
General James Bethune hires Perry Oliver to promote and tour "Blind Tom" Wiggins around the country
Slaves with musical talent meant income for their owners and in 1858 James Bethune "hired out" Tom to concert promoter Perry Oliver for a period of several years. It has been estimated th...
1858 May Lincoln Uses Judicial Notice in the "Armstrong Case"
The Trial The acquittal represented a personal and professional triumph for Lincoln, who once rocked the defendant's cradle in New Salem. Lincoln took over the defense after a change o...
1858 May 11 Minnesota is the 32nd State Admitted to the Union
On May 11, 1858, Minnesota became the 32nd state admitted into the Union. Minnesota's application for statehood was submitted to President James Buchanan in January, but became entangled...
1858 Jun Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth seperate
In June of 1858 Catherine and Charles were legally separated. Days later Dickens published a notice in the London Times and Household Words that tried to explain the separation to the pu...
1858 Jun 16 Abraham Lincoln Delivers the House Divided Speech
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect t..." —Abraham Lincoln
1858 Jun 21 Henry Clemens (Mark Twain's Brother) Dies While Working on Steamboat
While training, Samuel convinced his younger brother Henry to work with him. Henry was killed on June 21, 1858, when the steamboat he was working on, the Pennsylvania, exploded. Twain had...
1858 Jul 1 Charles Darwin First Goes Public on Views of Evolution
Darwin’s book was half way when, on 18 June 1858, he received a paper from Wallace describing natural selection. Shocked that he had been “forestalled”, Darwin sent it on to Lyell, as req...
1858 Jul 29 The United States And Japan Sign The Treaty Of Amity And Commerce
On July 29, 1858, the United States and Japan signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce (the Harris Treaty). Townsend Harris, the first U.S. diplomatic representative to Japan, negotiated t...
1858 Aug 5 Julia Archibald Holmes Becomes The First Woman To Reach Pikes Peak
On August 5, 1858, Julia Archibald Holmes became the first woman on record to reach the summit of Pikes Peak. She, her husband James Holmes, and two others began their trek on August 1. F...
1858 Aug 20 Charles Darwin Publishes 'On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties'
This famous paper originally appeared in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology, but has been printed in books, in part or in whole, several times since. The events and cor...
1858 Aug 21 Lincoln Loses First of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates on Slavery
August 21, 1858, was the day that Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas met in Ottawa, Illinois, in the first of the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Ottawa is a town in north-central Ill...
1858 Aug 27 Freeport Doctrine Is Focal Point in Douglas' Argument at the Second Lincoln-Douglas Debate
At Freeport Lincoln challenged Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision. Douglas replied that settlers could circumvent the decision by not establishing the l...
1858 Sep 15 Third Lincoln-Douglas Debate at Slave State Borders
MR. DOUGLAS’ SPEECH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before you today in pursuance of a previous notice, and have made arrangements with Mr. Lincoln to divide time, and discuss with him...
1858 Sep 18 Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate at Coles County Fairgrounds
Fourth Joint Debate at Charleston Mr. Lincoln’s Speech (September 18, 1858) LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It will be very difficult for an audience so large as this to hear distinc...
1858 Oct 7 Douglas Seeks to Prove that Lincoln was an Abolitionist at the Fifth Lincoln-Douglas Debate
At Galesburg Douglas sought again to prove that Lincoln was an abolitionist with the following quotes from Lincoln: “I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independen...
1858 Oct 13 Lincoln Declares Slavery a Moral Wrong in the Sixth Lincoln-Douglas Debate
It was, wrote Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer of the Quincy Debate between U.S. Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, “the nastiest of the campaign.” Lincoln advisors ...
1858 Oct 15 The Slave Debate Comes to a Head at the Seventh and Final Lincoln-Douglas Debate
SENATOR DOUGLAS’ SPEECH. Long and loud bursts of applause greeted Senator Douglas when he appeared on the stand. As he was about to commence speaking, he was interrupted by Dr. Hope, o...
1858 Oct 27 Theodore Roosevelt is Born
Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, in a four-story brownstone at 28 East 20th Street, in the modern-day Gramercy section of New York City, the second of four children of The...
1858 Nov 22 Denver, Colorado is Founded
Denver City was founded in November 1858 as a mining town during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush in western Kansas Territory. That summer, a group of gold prospectors from Lawrence, Kansas, arri...