America History of 1851

• 15 February. Shadrach Minkins,an African American working as a waiter,  is seized by slavecatchers in Boston; Richard Henry Dana, Jr., tries to free him by legal means, but first Shadrach is rescued by a group of African Americans. 
• Sioux sign Treaty of Traverse des Sioux giving up land in Iowa and Minnesota.
• According to HarpWeek, Horace Greeley did not originate the phrase but "gave wide exposure to Indiana editor John Soule's counsel to 'Go west, young man, go west.'" 
• Congress passes the Land Act of 1851, an attempt to sort out competing land claims by Mexican Americans, called Californios, who were longtime settlers in California, and the immigrants, often from other areas of the United States, who contested their claims. The net result was a loss of land by the Californios, as depicted in María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's novel The Squatter and the Don (1885).