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### Fast Facts

### Also in this Section:

                          - 2020 Fast Facts
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                          - 1850 Fast Facts
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### *POP*Culture: 1850

**ICONS:**Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred Scott, John Brown
                          - The September 18, 1850, Fugitive Slave Act provides for the return of slaves brought to free states.
                          - Millard Fillmore is sworn into office as the 13th President of the United States, following Zachary Taylor's death on July 9, 1850.
                          - "America" wins the first America's Cup yacht race on August 22, 1851. 
                          - Harriet Beecher Stowe's  Uncle Tom's Cabin  is published in 1852.
                          - The December 30, 1853, "Gadsden Purchase" gives the United States a strip of land in the Southwest that would later become the states of New Mexico and Arizona.
                          - The Republican Party is founded in Ripon, WI, on February 28, 1854.
                          - Poet Walt Whitman publishes  Leaves of Grass  on July 4, 1855.
                          - The U.S. Supreme Court's March 6, 1857, "Dred Scott Decision" rules that Scott, a slave moved to a free state, never ceased to be a slave despite residing in a free state, denied him citizenship, and denied him the right to sue.
                          - Elisha Otis installs the first elevator on March 23, 1857.
                          - Drilling is completed on the first productive commercial oil well in Titusville, PA, on August 27, 1859.

| The 1850 Census     |   | 10 Largest Urban Places    |
|---------------------|--------|----------------------------|
| 23,191,876          |
| 7.9                 | 1      | New York City, NY          | 515,547 |
| 35.9                | 2      | Baltimore, MD              | 169,054 |
| June 1              | 3      | Boston, MA                 | 136,181 |
| 30                  | 4      | Philadelphia, PA           | 121,376 |
| $1,423,000          | 5      | New Orleans, LA            | 116,375 |
| 6.1                 | 6      | Cincinnati, OH             | 115,435 |
| 2,165               | 7      | Brooklyn, NY               | 96,838 |
| 3,231               | 8      | St. Louis, MO              | 77,860 |
| 160                 | 9      | Spring Garden District, PA | 58,894 |
| Joseph C.G. Kennedy | 10     | Albany, NY                 | 50,763 |
| 13                  |

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