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95-498: In April, a farmer in Lake Placid lost control of a fallow fire. The fire was fueled by a 72-day-long drought, scarce rainfall, dried leaves, and vegetation. Other factors that aided the spread of the fire included 8 inches less snowfall than the ten-year-average, and rainfall after April 17 was 0.2 inches, the least ever recorded. Fires in other parts were ignited by sparks due to wood and coal-fueled trains and logging . The center of

190-511: A slave catcher during the war, and at its end he pressed the British to return the slaves to their masters. With the British certificates of freedom in their belongings, the black loyalists, including Washington's slave Harry, sailed with their white counterparts out of New York harbor to Nova Scotia . More than 3,000 were resettled in Nova Scotia, where they were eventually granted land and formed

285-513: A camp in town. The Lake Placid Club offered concerts and gala festivities for decades. Lake Placid is home to five private schools: According to the United States Census Bureau , the village has a total area of 1.5 square miles (4.0 km ), of which 1.4 square miles (3.6 km ) is land and 0.15 square miles (0.4 km ), or 10.79%, is water. The village is located near the southern end of Lake Placid lake. More immediate to

380-653: A committee, of which he was chair, to investigate "the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race". Their report, first delivered to the Medical Association in an address, was published in their journal in 1851, and then reprinted in part in the widely circulated DeBow's Review . Whether slavery was to be limited to the Southern states that already had it, or whether it was to be permitted in new states made from

475-525: A famous speech in the Senate in 1837, declared that slavery was "instead of an evil, a good – a positive good". Calhoun supported his view with the following reasoning: in every civilized society one portion of the community must live on the labor of another; learning, science, and the arts are built upon leisure; the African slave, kindly treated by his master and mistress and looked after in his old age,

570-538: A future date, sometimes with an intermediary status of unpaid indentured servant. Abolition was in many cases a gradual process. Some slaveowners, primarily in the Upper South , freed their slaves, and charitable groups bought and freed others. The Atlantic slave trade was outlawed by individual states beginning during the American Revolution. The import trade was banned by Congress in 1808 , although smuggling

665-473: A handful, freed their slaves by personal decision, often providing for manumission in wills but sometimes filing deeds or court papers to free individuals. Numerous slaveholders who freed their slaves cited revolutionary ideals in their documents; others freed slaves as a promised reward for service. From 1790 to 1810, the proportion of blacks free in the United States increased from 8 to 13.5 percent, and in

760-567: A hundred thousand (nearly one in five black slaves) left their homes ... betting on British victory", but Cassandra Pybus states that between 20,000 and 30,000 is a more realistic number of slaves who defected to the British side during the war. Many slaves took advantage of the disruption of war to escape from their plantations to British lines or to fade into the general population. Upon their first sight of British vessels, thousands of slaves in Maryland and Virginia fled from their owners. Throughout

855-535: A least one month having an average mean temperature ≤ 32.0 °F (0.0 °C), at least four months with an average mean temperature ≥ 50.0 °F (10.0 °C), all months with an average mean temperature < 71.6 °F (22.0 °C) and no significant precipitation difference between seasons. Although most summer days are comfortably humid in Lake Placid, episodes of heat and high humidity can occur with heat index values > 90 °F (32 °C). Since 1897,

950-422: A public question from there forward". After the new country's independence was secure, slavery was a topic of contention at the 1787 Constitutional Convention . Many of Founding Fathers of the United States were plantation owners who owned large numbers of enslaved laborers; the original Constitution preserved their right to own slaves, and they further gained a political advantage in owning slaves. Although

1045-533: A punishment for crime is still legal in the United States. By the time of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the status of enslaved people had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry. During and immediately following the Revolution, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states and a movement developed to abolish slavery. The role of slavery under

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1140-403: A resident of the village, became the first person to win two gold medals when he doubled in speed skating at the 1932 Winter Olympics. In the U.S., the village is especially remembered as the 1980 USA–USSR hockey game site. Dubbed the " Miracle on Ice ," a group of American college students and amateurs upset seasoned and professional Soviet national ice hockey team , 4–3, and two days later won

1235-477: A significantly higher number and proportion of enslaved people in the population overall, as its commodity crops were labor-intensive. Early on, enslaved people in the South worked primarily on farms and plantations growing indigo , rice and tobacco ( cotton did not become a major crop until after the 1790s). In 1720, about 65 percent of South Carolina's population was enslaved. Planters (defined by historians in

1330-405: A stronger. 4. The happiness of the governed is in no sense its object. 5. The temporal improvement or the eternal well-being of the governed is in no sense its object. The object of it has been distinctly stated in one sentence by Judge Ruffin ,— "The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public safety." Slavery, then, is absolute despotism, of the most unmitigated form. In

1425-511: Is 104.1 inches (264 cm). According to the A. W. Kuchler U.S. potential natural vegetation types, Lake Placid would have a dominant vegetation type of Northern Hardwoods / Spruce ( 108 ) with a dominant vegetation form of Northern Hardwoods ( 23 ). The plant hardiness zone is 4a with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of −27.1 °F (−32.8 °C). The spring bloom typically peaks on approximately May 12 and fall color usually peaks around October 1. Slavery in

1520-450: Is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing

1615-473: Is better off than the free laborers of Europe; and under the slave system conflicts between capital and labor are avoided. The advantages of slavery in this respect, he concluded, "will become more and more manifest, if left undisturbed by interference from without, as the country advances in wealth and numbers". South Carolina army officer, planter , and railroad executive James Gadsden called slavery "a social blessing" and abolitionists "the greatest curse of

1710-601: Is near the West Branch of the Ausable River , a well-known stretch of water for fly fishing . Lake Placid is home to the Lake Placid Sinfonietta, a professional summer chamber orchestra that has existed since 1917. Musicians associated with New York City's Greenwich House Music School summered in Lake Placid around 1920, as did the opera singer George Hamlin . Victor Herbert was the most famous musician to own

1805-455: Is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. However, as the abolitionist movement's agitation increased and the area developed for plantations expanded, apologies for slavery became more faint in the South. Leaders then described slavery as a beneficial scheme of labor management. John C. Calhoun , in

1900-475: Is well known among winter-sports enthusiasts for its skiing, both Alpine and Nordic . Whiteface Mountain (4,867 ft or 1,483 m), in nearby Wilmington about 13 miles (21 km) from Lake Placid, offers skiing, hiking, gondola rides, and mountain biking, and is the only one of the High Peaks that can be reached by an auto road . Whiteface Mountain has a vertical elevation of 3,430 feet (1,050 m),

1995-475: The 1932 and the 1980 Winter Olympics , the 1972 and 2023 Winter World University Games as well as the 2000 Goodwill Winter Games . Lake Placid was founded in the early 19th century to develop an iron ore mining operation. By 1840, the population of "North Elba" (four miles southeast of the present village, near where the road to the Adirondak Loj crosses the Ausable River ), was six families. In 1845,

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2090-800: The Confederacy . Shortly afterward, the Civil War began when Confederate forces attacked the U.S. Army's Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. During the war some jurisdictions abolished slavery and, due to Union measures such as the Confiscation Acts and the Emancipation Proclamation , the war effectively ended slavery in most places. After the Union victory, the Thirteenth Amendment to

2185-594: The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 gave effect to the Fugitive Slave Clause. Salmon P. Chase considered the Fugitive Slave Acts unconstitutional because "The Fugitive Slave Clause was a compact among the states, not a grant of power to the federal government". In a section negotiated by James Madison of Virginia, Section   2 of Article   I designated "other persons" (slaves) to be added to

2280-604: The Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1865, and issues concerning slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics, economics, and social custom. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation , sharecropping , and convict leasing . Involuntary servitude as

2375-600: The United States Congress acted on President Thomas Jefferson 's advice and, without controversy, made importing slaves from abroad a federal crime, effective the first day that the United States Constitution permitted this prohibition: January 1, 1808. During the Revolution and in the following years, all states north of Maryland ( the Mason–Dixon line ) took steps towards abolishing slavery. In 1777,

2470-565: The United States Constitution (1789) was the most contentious issue during its drafting. The Three-Fifths Clause of the Constitution gave slave states disproportionate political power, while the Fugitive Slave Clause ( Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 ) provided that, if a slave escaped to another state, the other state could not prevent the return of the slave to the person claiming to be his or her owner. All Northern states had abolished slavery to some degree by 1805, sometimes with completion at

2565-466: The Upper South from less than one to nearly ten percent as a result of these actions. Starting in 1777, the rebels outlawed the importation of slaves state by state. They all acted to end the international trade, but, after the war, it was reopened in North Carolina (opened until 1794) and Georgia (opened until 1798) and South Carolina (opened until 1787, and then reopened again in 1803.) In 1807,

2660-631: The Vermont Republic , which was still unrecognized by the United States, passed a state constitution prohibiting slavery . The Pennsylvania Abolition Society , led in part by Benjamin Franklin , was founded in 1775, and Pennsylvania began gradual abolition in 1780. In 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled in Commonwealth v. Jennison that slavery was unconstitutional under

2755-629: The cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor, and the Southern states continued as slave societies. The U.S., divided into slave and free states , became ever more polarized over the issue of slavery. Driven by labor demands from new cotton plantations in the Deep South , the Upper South sold more than a million slaves who were taken to

2850-416: The gold medal . Another historic first was the performance of American speed-skater Eric Heiden , who won five gold medals. Lake Placid has continued to host international multi-sport events. The World University Games took place there on two occasions; hosting the 1972 Winter Universiade and the 2023 Winter World University Games . Lake Placid hosted the 2000 Goodwill Winter Games . Lake Placid

2945-494: The "Freed Slave Utopian Experiment," Timbuctoo . Brown would become known for his militant abolitionist work, which led to his raid on Harpers Ferry and his conviction for treason and murder . Shortly before his execution in 1859, John Brown asked to be buried on his farm, which remains preserved as the John Brown Farm State Historic Site . As leisure time increased in the late 19th century, Lake Placid

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3040-460: The 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". At that time, it was feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery. On April 22, 1820, Thomas Jefferson , one of the Founding Fathers of the United States , wrote in a letter to John Holmes , that with slavery, We have

3135-697: The Adirondacks. Fire towers were built on several mountains in the 1910s to monitor fires. The lumber industry was also regulated to prevent the accumulation of slash . Lake Placid, New York Lake Placid is a village in the Adirondack Mountains in Essex County , New York , United States. In 2020, its population was 2,205. The village of Lake Placid is near the center of the town of North Elba , 50 miles (80 km) southwest of Plattsburgh . Lake Placid became known internationally for hosting

3230-802: The American Continental Army . Rhode Island started enlisting slaves in 1778, and promised compensation to owners whose slaves enlisted and survived to gain freedom. During the course of the war, about one-fifth of the Northern army was black. In 1781, Baron Closen, a German officer in the French Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment at the Battle of Yorktown , estimated the American army to be about one-quarter black. These men included both former slaves and free-born blacks. Thousands of free blacks in

3325-851: The British forces. Historians agree that the proclamation was chiefly designed for practical rather than moral reasons, and slaves owned by American Loyalists were unaffected by the proclamation. About 1,500 slaves owned by patriots escaped and joined Dunmore's forces. A total of 18 slaves fled George Washington 's plantation, one of whom, Harry, served in Dunmore's all-black loyalist regiment called "the Black Pioneers". Escapees who joined Dunmore had "Liberty to Slaves" stitched on to their jackets. Most died of disease before they could do any fighting, but three hundred of these freed slaves made it to freedom in Britain. Historian Jill Lepore writes that "between eighty and

3420-434: The British war effort. Such proclamations were repeatedly issued over the course of the conflict, which resulted in up to 100,000 American slaves fleeing to British lines. Self-emancipated slaves who reached British lines were organized into a variety of military units, which served in all theaters of the war. Formerly enslaved women and children, in lieu of military service, worked instead as laborers and domestic servants. At

3515-577: The Deep South. The total slave population in the South eventually reached four million. As the U.S. expanded, the Southern states attempted to extend slavery into the new Western territories to allow proslavery forces to maintain power in Congress. The new territories acquired by the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cession were the subject of major political crises and compromises. Slavery

3610-452: The Great Fire of 1903 was Lake Placid, which spread at a rate of 8 miles in two hours. The high winds spread the fire to a tract 6 miles long by 3 miles in width. It spread to as far as 150 miles south from where it originated. It covered areas including Schroon Lake , Lake George , Olmsteadville , Newcomb , Ausable Forks , Saranac Lake , and Clintonville. 6,487 men and women were fighting

3705-502: The North had to search for employment. George Fitzhugh used assumptions about white superiority to justify slavery, writing that, "the Negro is but a grown up child, and must be governed as a child." In The Universal Law of Slavery , Fitzhugh argues that slavery provides everything necessary for life and that the slave is unable to survive in a free world because he is lazy, and cannot compete with

3800-488: The North might well have lost. Slavery was a contentious issue in the writing and approval of the Constitution of the United States . The words "slave" and "slavery" did not appear in the Constitution as originally adopted, although several provisions clearly referred to slaves and slavery. Until the adoption of the 13th Amendment in 1865, the Constitution did not prohibit slavery. Section 9 of Article I forbade

3895-543: The Northern states fought in the state militias and Continental Army. In the South, both sides offered freedom to slaves who would perform military service. Roughly 20,000 slaves fought in the American Revolution. After the Revolutionary War broke out, the British realized they lacked the manpower necessary to prosecute the war. In response, British commanders began issuing proclamations to Patriot-owned slaves, offering freedom if they fled to British lines and assisted

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3990-577: The Northern states had passed laws outlawing slavery, either immediately or over time. In New York, the last slaves were freed in 1827 (celebrated with a big July   5 parade). Indentured servitude , which had been widespread in the colonies (half the population of Philadelphia had once been indentured servants ), dropped dramatically, and disappeared by 1800. However, there were still forcibly indentured servants in New Jersey in 1860. No Southern state abolished slavery, but some individual owners, more than

4085-879: The Snows , were shot in the area. By 1921, the Lake Placid area boasted a ski jump , speed skating venue, and ski association. In 1929, Godfrey Dewey, Melvil's son, convinced the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Lake Placid had the best winter sports facilities in the United States. The Lake Placid Club was the headquarters for the IOC for the 1932 and the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. The Club did not allow Jews or Catholics, but there were other hotels that catered to them. Especially during and after World War Two, many cosmopolitan refugees from Hitler's Germany and Austria spent their summers in Lake Placid. Main Street

4180-488: The South, losses of slaves were high, with many due to escapes. Slaves also escaped throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic, with many joining the British who had occupied New York. In the closing months of the war, the British evacuated freedmen and also removed slaves owned by loyalists. Around 15,000 black loyalists left with the British, most of them ending up as free people in England or its colonies. Washington hired

4275-570: The Union address), went into effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date on which the importation of slaves could be prohibited under the Constitution. The delegates approved the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution ( Article IV, section 2, clause 3 ), which prohibited states from freeing those "held to Service or Labour" (meaning slaves, indentures, and apprentices) who fled to them from another state and required that they be returned to their owners. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and

4370-668: The United States The legal institution of human chattel slavery , comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans , was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South . Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas . From 1526, during the early colonial period , it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies , including

4465-576: The United States Constitution was ratified on December 6, 1865, prohibiting "slavery [and] involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime." During most of the British colonial period, slavery existed in all the colonies. People enslaved in the North typically worked as house servants, artisans, laborers and craftsmen, with the greater number in cities. Many men worked on the docks and in shipping. In 1703, more than 42 percent of New York City households held enslaved people in bondage,

4560-483: The United States was a variable thing, in "constant flux, driven by the violent pursuit of ever-larger profits." According to demographic calculations by J. David Hacker of the University of Minnesota, approximately four out of five of all of the slaves who ever lived in the United States or the territory that became the United States (beginning in 1619 and including all colonies that were eventually acquired or conquered by

4655-532: The United States) were born in or imported to the United States in the 19th century. Slaves were the labor force of the South, but slave ownership was also the foundation upon which American white supremacy was constructed. Historian Walter Johnson argues that "one of the many miraculous things a slave could do was make a household white...", meaning that the value of whiteness in America was in some ways measured by

4750-465: The Upper South as those who held 20 or more slaves) used enslaved workers to cultivate commodity crops. They also worked in the artisanal trades on large plantations and in many Southern port cities. The later wave of settlers in the 18th century who settled along the Appalachian Mountains and backcountry were backwoods subsistence farmers , and they seldom held enslaved people. Beginning in

4845-399: The ability to purchase and maintain black slaves. Harriet Beecher Stowe described slavery in the United States in 1853: What, then, is American slavery, as we have seen it exhibited by law, and by the decision of Courts? Let us begin by stating what it is not: 1. It is not apprenticeship. 2. It is not guardianship. 3. It is in no sense a system for the education of a weaker race by

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4940-453: The air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill." Hammond believed that in every class one group must accomplish all the menial duties, because without them the leaders in society could not progress. He argued that the hired laborers of the North were slaves too: "The difference   ... is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment," while those in

5035-424: The assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it – when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell". Our new [Confederate] Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to

5130-607: The attitudes of white Southerners, and the concentration of the black population in the South, were bringing the white and black populations to a state of equilibrium, and were a danger to both races. Because of the racial differences between master and slave, he believed that the latter could not be emancipated. In a letter to his wife dated December 27, 1856, in reaction to a message from President Franklin Pierce , Robert E. Lee wrote, There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution

5225-410: The average family size was 2.93. The population was spread out, with 22.4% under the age of 18, 8.5% from 18 to 24, 33.2% from 25 to 44, 19.3% from 45 to 64, and 16.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.3 males. The median income for a household in the village was $ 28,239, and

5320-470: The colonial era were unevenly distributed: 14,867 lived in New England , where they were three percent of the population; 34,679 lived in the mid-Atlantic colonies , where they were six percent of the population; and 347,378 in the five Southern Colonies , where they were 31 percent of the population. The South developed an agricultural economy dependent on commodity crops . Its planters rapidly acquired

5415-455: The community of the black Nova Scotians . In the first two decades after the American Revolution, state legislatures and individuals took actions to free slaves. Northern states passed new constitutions that contained language about equal rights or specifically abolished slavery; some states, such as New York and New Jersey, where slavery was more widespread, passed laws by the end of the 18th century to abolish slavery incrementally. By 1804, all

5510-532: The differences between the Constitution of the Confederate States and the United States Constitution , laid out the cause for the American Civil War, as he saw it, and defended slavery: The new [Confederate] Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions – African slavery as it exists among us – the proper status of

5605-592: The end of the war, freed slaves in British lines either evacuated to other British colonies or to Britain itself, were re-enslaved by the victorious Americans, or fled into the countryside. In early 1775, the royal governor of Virginia , Lord Dunmore , wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth of his intention to free slaves owned by American Patriots in case they staged a rebellion. On November 7, 1775, Dunmore issued Dunmore's Proclamation , which promised freedom to any slaves of American patriots who would leave their masters and join

5700-457: The enslaved of the early Republic were considered sentient property, were not permitted to vote, and had no rights to speak of, they were to be enumerated in population censuses and counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of representation in the national legislature, the U.S. Congress . The rebels began to offer freedom as an incentive to motivate slaves to fight on their side. Washington authorized slaves to be freed who fought with

5795-465: The federal government from prohibiting the importation of slaves, described as "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit", for twenty years after the Constitution's ratification (until January 1, 1808). The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 , passed by Congress and signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson (who had called for its enactment in his 1806 State of

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5890-907: The fire in Adirondack. There were few fire prevention measures and no mechanized equipment. The telephone and telegraph lines were all down. It burned 14,000 acres in Lake Placid and killed every tree in the region. 40,000 acres in Rockfeller Preserve near Paul Smith were destroyed. Loon Lake House in Loon Lake was under threat, and the White Face Inn of Lake Placid was completely surrounded by fire. Fire in Keene Valley burned nine miles from Cascade to St. Hubert's Inn . 17,000 acres in towns of Keene and Elizabethtown were burned. North Hudson lost 18,000 acres, and Nehasane Preserve lost 12,000 acres to

5985-528: The fire. A total area of 600,000 acres was burned due to the fire, out of which more than 400,000 acres belonged to the Adirondack Forest. The cost of firefighting in Lake Placid went over $ 1 million. All fish in Heart Lake and Big Moose Lake were killed due to the fire. It led to the unemployment of 200 men. Heavy ash fell on New York City and Utica . The total direct loss was $ 3,500,000. One-third of

6080-457: The first in the U.S., and has more courses than any other venue in the Adirondacks. Many of its courses were designed by well-known golf course architects, such as Seymour Dunn and Alister MacKenzie . The geographic features of the Adirondacks were considered reminiscent of the Scottish landscape, where the game started, and thus a fitting canvas for original play, or "mountain golf." Lake Placid

6175-467: The forests on and around Giant Mountain and Rocky Peak Ridge were burned by the fires, which stripped the topsoil down to bedrock and left the peaks bare of plants or soil. Exposed rock remains at the peaks of the mountains today. The 1903 fire and smaller subsequent fires in 1908 and 1909 motivated the New York government to allocate more resources to fire prevention, fire detection, and fire fighting in

6270-515: The highest air temperature was 97 °F (36.1 °C). The average wettest month is June which corresponds with the annual peak in thunderstorm activity. During the winter months, the average annual extreme minimum air temperature is −24.5 °F (−31.4 °C), corresponding to hardiness zone 4. Since 1897, the coldest air temperature was −39 °F (−39.4 °C). Episodes of extreme cold and wind can occur with wind chill values < −50 °F (−46 °C). The average annual snowfall total

6365-441: The highest vertical elevation of mountains in Eastern North America. The area has one of only 16 bobsled runs in the Western Hemisphere. In 2010, U.S. News & World Report highlighted Lake Placid as one of the "6 Forgotten Vacation Spots" in North America. Many people use Lake Placid as a base from which to climb the 46 High Peaks in the Adirondack Mountains . Lake Placid built its first golf course in 1898, one of

6460-400: The historian James Oliver Horton noted, prominent slaveholder politicians and the commodity crops of the South had a strong influence on United States politics and economy. Horton said, in the 72 years between the election of George Washington and the election of Abraham Lincoln, 50 of those years [had] a slaveholder as president of the United States , and, for that whole period of time, there

6555-463: The intelligent European white race. He states that "The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world." Without the South, "He (slave) would become an insufferable burden to society" and "Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery." On March 21, 1861, Alexander Stephens , Vice President of the Confederacy, delivered his Cornerstone Speech . He explained

6650-505: The leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away   ... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon

6745-479: The median income for a family was $ 43,042. Males had a median income of $ 26,585 versus $ 21,750 for females. The per capita income for the village was $ 18,507. About 8.5% of families and 13.2% of the population were below the poverty line , including 13.3% of those under age 18 and 17.8% of those age 65 or over. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Lake Placid has a warm-summer, humid continental climate ( Dfb ). Dfb climates are characterized by

6840-522: The most prominent hotels were: The Grand View Hotel, Stevens House, The Mirror Lake Inn, The Ruisseaumont Hotel, Northwoods Inn, Hotel Marcy, Searles House, and The Homestead. Some of them are still in business. Lake Placid hosted the Winter Olympics in 1932 and 1980 . Lake Placid, St Moritz , and Innsbruck are the only sites to have twice hosted the Winter Olympic Games. Jack Shea ,

6935-421: The nation". Gadsden was in favor of South Carolina's secession in 1850, and was a leader in efforts to split California into two states, one slave and one free . Other Southern writers who also began to portray slavery as a positive good were James Henry Hammond and George Fitzhugh . They presented several arguments to defend the practice of slavery in the South. Hammond, like Calhoun, believed that slavery

7030-438: The negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of

7125-532: The philanthropist Gerrit Smith arrived in North Elba and not only bought a great deal of land around the village but granted large tracts to former slaves . He reformed the land law and demonstrated his support of abolitionism . The abolitionist John Brown heard about Smith's reforms and left his anti-slavery activities in Kansas to buy 244 acres (1.0 km ) of land in North Elba. This parcel later became known as

7220-466: The political power of Southern states, as three-fifths of the (non-voting) slave population was counted for congressional apportionment and in the Electoral College , although it did not strengthen Southern states as much as it would have had the Constitution provided for counting all persons, whether slave or free, equally. In addition, many parts of the country were tied to the Southern economy. As

7315-403: The population. There were 1,303 households, of which 22.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 34.1% were married couples living together, 8.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 53.6% were non-families. 45.7% of all households were made up of individuals, and 16.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.02, and

7410-489: The second half of the 18th century, a debate emerged over the continued importation of African slaves to the American colonies. Many in the colonies, including the Southern slavocracy , opposed further importation of slaves due to fears that it would destabilize colonies and lead to further slave rebellions . In 1772, prominent Virginians submitted a petition to the Crown , requesting that the slave trade to Virginia be abolished; it

7505-422: The second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies, behind only Charleston, South Carolina . Enslaved people were also used as agricultural workers in farm communities, especially in the South , but also in upstate New York and Long Island , Connecticut , and New Jersey . By 1770, there were 397,924 blacks out of a population of 2.17 million in what would soon become the United States. The slaves of

7600-401: The size of the United States, and it was established at the insistence of Cutler and Putnam as "free soil" – no slavery. This was to prove crucial a few decades later. Had those states been slave states, and their electoral votes gone to Abraham Lincoln's main opponent, Lincoln would not have become president. The Civil War would not have been fought. Even if it eventually had been,

7695-478: The state's new 1780 constitution . New Hampshire began gradual emancipation in 1783, while Connecticut and Rhode Island followed suit in 1784. The New York Manumission Society , which was led by John Jay , Alexander Hamilton , and Aaron Burr , was founded in 1785. New York state began gradual emancipation in 1799, and New Jersey did the same in 1804. Shortly after the Revolution, the Northwest Territory

7790-413: The superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This view of the "Negro race" was backed by pseudoscience . The leading researcher was Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright , a Southerner and the inventor of the mental illnesses of drapetomania (the desire of a slave to run away) and dysaesthesia aethiopica ("rascality"), both cured, according to him, by whipping. The Medical Association of Louisiana set up

7885-547: The total of the state's free population, at the rate of three-fifths of their total number, to establish the state's official population for the purposes of apportionment of congressional representation and federal taxation. The "Three-Fifths Compromise" was reached after a debate in which delegates from Southern (slaveholding) states argued that slaves should be counted in the census just as all other persons were while delegates from Northern (free) states countered that slaves should not be counted at all. The compromise strengthened

7980-614: The village is Mirror Lake, which lies between the village and Lake Placid. As of the census of 2000, there were 2,638 people, 1,303 households, and 604 families residing in the village. The population density was 1,913.2 inhabitants per square mile (738.7/km ). There were 1,765 housing units at an average density of 1,280.1 per square mile (494.2/km ). The racial makeup of the village was 95.75% White , 0.68% African American , 0.45% Native American , 0.91% Asian , 0.57% Pacific Islander , 0.19% from other races , and 1.44% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.91% of

8075-530: The wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville , in his influential Democracy in America (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against blacks increased as they were granted more rights (for example, in Northern states). He believed that

8170-531: Was a legal practise and had become entrenched socially and economically in many societies. The ideals and principles promoted in the Enlightenment and the American Revolution helped to put slavery and the desire for its abolition on the political agenda. As historian Christopher L. Brown put it, slavery "had never been on the agenda in a serious way before", but the American Revolution "forced it to be

8265-408: Was common thereafter, at which point the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service (Coast Guard) began enforcing the law on the high seas. It has been estimated that before 1820 a majority of serving congressmen owned slaves, and that about 30 percent of congressmen who were born before 1840 (some of whom served into the 20th century) at some time in their lives, were owners of slaves. The rapid expansion of

8360-556: Was defended in the South as a "positive good" , and the largest religious denominations split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South. By 1850, the newly rich, cotton-growing South threatened to secede from the Union . Bloody fighting broke out over slavery in the Kansas Territory . When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, slave states seceded to form

8455-601: Was discovered as a resort by the wealthy, drawn to the fashionable Lake Placid Club . Melvil Dewey , who invented the Dewey Decimal System , designed what was then called "Placid Park Club" in 1895. This inspired the village to change its name to Lake Placid, an incorporated village in 1900. Dewey kept the club open through the winter in 1905, which aided the development of winter sports in the area. It often hosted national conventions. Nearby Saranac Lake had hosted an international winter sporting event as early as 1889 and

8550-470: Was established, by Manasseh Cutler and Rufus Putnam (who had been George Washington's chief engineer). Both Cutler and Putnam came from Puritan New England. The Puritans strongly believed that slavery was morally wrong. Their influence on the issue of slavery was long-lasting, and this was provided significantly greater impetus by the Revolution. The Northwest Territory (which became Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota) doubled

8645-625: Was filled with fashionable shops, albeit opened only during the season. In addition to the John Brown Farm and Gravesite, the Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic Bobsled Run , New York Central Railroad Adirondack Division Historic District , and United States Post Office are listed on the National Register of Historic Places . There were three major hotels built in the 1870s, and many subsequent inns flourished. Among

8740-458: Was needed to build the rest of society. In a speech to the Senate on March 4, 1858, Hammond developed his "Mudsill Theory", defending his view on slavery by stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in

8835-490: Was never a person elected to a second term who was not a slaveholder. The power of Southern states in Congress lasted until the Civil War , affecting national policies, legislation, and appointments. One result was that most of the justices appointed to the Supreme Court were slave owners. The planter elite dominated the Southern congressional delegations and the United States presidency for nearly fifty years. Slavery in

8930-399: Was rejected. Rhode Island forbade the importation of slaves in 1774. The influential revolutionary Fairfax Resolves called for an end to the "wicked, cruel and unnatural" Atlantic slave trade. All of the colonies banned slave importations during the Revolutionary War. Slavery had existed for thousands of years, all around the world. In the United States and many parts of the world it

9025-458: Was used year-round by patients seeking treatment for tuberculosis at sanatoria . The fresh, clean mountain air was considered good for them and was a common treatment for tuberculosis. As the dramatic surroundings became more known to residents of New York City, filmmakers started to use Lake Placid and its surroundings for shooting silent films around 1920. Many movies, among them News Parade , Summer Bachelors , The Avalanche , and Out of

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