Sidney Blumenthal - All the Powers of Earth

March 4, 1853:

Inauguration of Franklin Pierce as president

May 30, 1854:

Kansas-Nebraska Act passes the Congress

October 4, 1854:

Lincoln speaks against the Kansas-Nebraska Act at the Illinois House of Representatives

February 8, 1855:

Lincoln, the Whig candidate for the U.S. Senate, recognizes he lacks the votes in the state legislature to win, and throws his support to the antislavery Democrat Lyman Trumbull to defeat the pro-Douglas candidate

August 16, 1855:

Andrew Reeder, the first territorial governor of Kansas, removed by President Pierce for his objections to fraudulent elections

September 28, 1855:

New York Republican Party created out of fusion of Whigs, Democrats, and Free Soilers

October 7, 1855:

John Brown arrives in Kansas

October 23, 1855:

Free state settlers meet at Topeka to adopt a constitution banning slavery in the territory, elect a governor, and designate Andrew Reeder its congressional delegate

November 1855:

Wakarusa War in Kansas between free state and proslavery forces

December 25, 1855:

Christmas dinner at Maryland home of Francis P. Blair to found the national Republican Party

February 22, 1856:

The Know Nothing Party, or American Party, nominates former president Millard Fillmore as its presidential candidate

February 22, 1856:

First national convention of the Republican Party takes place at Pittsburgh

February 22, 1856:

Lincoln writes the platform at a meeting of antislavery editors at Decatur as the founding document of the Illinois Republican Party and calls for its first convention

March 12, 1856:

Stephen A. Douglas submits his report on Kansas to the Senate

May 1920 1856:

Charles Sumner delivers his speech to the Senate, The Crime Against Kansas

May 21, 1856:

Missouri Ruffians led by former senator David Rice Atchison sack the Kansas free state capital of Lawrence

May 22, 1856:

Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina canes Charles Sumner in the Senate

May 2425, 1856:

John Brown and his men murder five proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie, Kansas

May 29, 1856:

Lincoln delivers his Lost Speech as the keynote of the founding convention of the Illinois Republican Party

June 6, 1856:

James Buchanan defeats Stephen A. Douglas at the Democratic Party national convention to win nomination as the presidential candidate

June 19, 1856:

John C. Frmont nominated as the first Republican Party presidential candidate; Lincolns name put into nomination for vice president but loses to William Dayton, a former U.S. senator from New Jersey

November 4, 1856:

James Buchanan elected president

March 4, 1857:

Inauguration of James Buchanan as president

March 6, 1857:

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney issues decision in the Dred Scott case

June 12, 1857:

Douglas defends the Dred Scott decision in a speech at Springfield

June 15, 1857:

Fraudulent election in Kansas elects proslavery delegates to a constitutional convention

June 26, 1857:

Lincoln assails the Dred Scott decision in a speech at Springfield, declaring of the captive slave, All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him.

August 24, 1857:

The Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company collapses, triggering an economic panic

October 19, 1857:

Proslavery delegates meeting at Lecompton to ratify a Kansas constitution legalizing slavery

November 26, 1857:

Kansas territorial governor Robert J. Walker confronts President Buchanan at the White House on the Lecompton Constitution and is rebuffed

December 3, 1857:

Douglas visits Buchanan at the White House, demands he reject the Lecompton Constitution as a violation of popular sovereignty, and is threatened by the president that he will be crushed

December 8, 1857:

Buchanan endorses the Lecompton Constitution in his first annual message to the Congress

December 9, 1857:

Douglas denounces Buchanan in a speech before the Senate

December 11, 1857:

Frederick P. Stanton, acting territorial governor serving in Walkers absence, dismissed by Buchanan