1850s

thumb|335x335px|From left, clockwise: Henry Clay introduces the [[Compromise of 1850 the U.S. Senate; Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Russian forces fight against British, French and Ottoman forces in Sevastopol during the Crimean War; 'SS Arctic''', an American steamship, sinks in the Atlantic Ocean after a collision with a French steamship, SS Vesta in 1854; The Panama Railroad opens in 1855 connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans with a railroad in Central America; Anglo-French and Qing Empire forces engage each other in a four-year long campaign known as the Second Opium War starting in 1856; Dred Scott v. Sandford denies American citizenship as mandated under the U.S. Constitution to African Americans; Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species in 1859, presenting the idea of natural selection.]]

The 1850s (pronounced "eighteen-fifties") was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1850, and ended on December 31, 1859.