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18541776 Club

Anti-slavery Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats meet under the oaks in Jackson; they call themselves Republicans

Thousands gather at Morgan's Forty on the edge of town, united by fury over the Kansas-Nebraska Act's opening of closed territories to slavery.

By the spring of 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act had thrown open the question of slavery to popular vote in territories once closed to it, and Northern anti-slavery Whigs, Free Soilers, and disaffected Democrats had nowhere left to go. On July 6, 1854, a large crowd gathered under an oak grove on the edge of Jackson, Michigan, known locally as Morgan's Forty. There, they formed a new party and settled on a name: Republican. Within six years it would elect a president and within seven, fight a war…

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More from July 6
1962

AEC detonates 'Sedan' 636 feet underground at Yucca Flat; 12 million tons of earth go skyward

The radioactive cloud is already drifting east, and early tracking puts fallout exposure across the Midwest at more than 13 million people.
1777

St. Clair abandons Ticonderoga overnight; the garrison slips out without firing a shot

Burgoyne's engineers spent three days hauling cannon up Mount Defiance, and by dawn the fort's heaviest guns, its cattle, and its invalids are left behind.
1779

D'Estaing holds Grenada; Byron charges 25 French ships with 21 and pays in blood

The disordered British chase leaves 183 dead and the Lion limping toward Jamaica after a battle the admiral entered expecting the advantage.
18921776 Club
Frick's barbed-wire lockout turns to open battle on the Monongahela after armed steelworkers and their families open fire from the riverbank on two barges of agents.
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More from Expansion & Antebellum
1858

Minnesota enters the Union as the 32nd state; the Dakota name, the French motto, the New England soul

Nine years after Ramsey stepped off a riverboat to govern 5,000 settlers, the eastern half of the old territory takes its place on the map.
1846

Congress declares war on Mexico; Polk tells the nation its blood was shed on its own soil

The vote formalizes three weeks of open conflict rooted in a disputed border, the annexation of Texas, and a decade of unresolved claims between two nations.
1854

Pierce signs the Kansas-Nebraska Act; the Missouri Compromise's thirty-four-year line is gone

Douglas's "popular sovereignty" doctrine now lets settlers in both territories vote on slavery themselves, erasing the 36°30' ban that has held since 1820.
1846

Thirty-three armed settlers seize Sonoma before dawn; California declares itself a republic

General Vallejo is taken prisoner in his own home, 170 government horses are seized, and a hand-sewn bear flag now flies over the barracks.
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