Free Republic

In December 1854, gold miners or diggers (which later became a word to describe all Australia's fighting defence force personnel) took up arms and rebelled by building and defending the Eureka Stockade in their campaign against excessive taxation and undemocratic government. There were a fair few people from California among them. Wikipedia reports that: "a contingent of 200 Americans under James McGill arrived at 4 pm in the afternoon" of December the second, but most left before the Battle the early the next day, the Sabbath, a time which the British colonial forces used for their advance in part because...

For a brief moment, the isolated port of Petropavlovsk became an active front in the Crimean War. The ensuing battle was more farcical than heroic. The Crimean War is usually considered a Black Sea conflict, but it actually took place on several frontiers of the Russian empire, including the Baltic and White Seas. In the summer of 1854, the Pacific squadrons of three nations—Russia, Great Britain, and France—fought the most unusual and anachronistic action of the war on the distant and forbidding Kamchatka Peninsula. The ships, tactics, and commanders involved in that battle seemed more appropriate for Admiral Horatio Nelson’s...

Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois September 15, 1858 MR. DOUGLAS' SPEECH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before you today in pursuance of a previous notice, and have made arrangements with Mr. Lincoln to divide time, and discuss with him the leading political topics that now agitate the country. Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great political parties known as Whig and Democratic. These parties differed from each other on certain questions which were then deemed to be important to the best interests of the Republic. Whig and Democrats differed about a bank, the...