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A wonderful set of photographs taken in China and Japan which gave the Western world one of its first glimpses of the Far East is going for auction. And one particular image of Chinese corpses at North Fort in Peiho in 1860 has presented a stark reminder of the Second Opium War. The North Fort was one of several Taku Forts - strategically-placed defences in China that guarded the mouth of the Peiho River. The fort, which was located near modern-day Tianjin, was breached on August 20, 1860 and its garrison surrendered after a fierce fight.

WASHINGTON, Tuesday, Dec. 25. Christmas Day has been very dull, and everybody seems to be gloomy. Very many gentlemen have gone home to spend the holidays. The investigation has been pursued in the matter of the frauds at the Department of the Interior to-day. Nothing beyond the amount first mentioned has yet been discovered. A rumor has been current for the past three days of frauds in the Treasury Department, but it is without foundation, so far as I can learn. No investigation has been instituted, as stated, in that Department. RUSSELL has gone to jail for want of bonds;...

Special Dispatch to the New-York Times. WASHINGTON, Sunday, July 8. During the difficulties with the Mormons, which came near leading to a serious collision with the American troops, a plan proposed by Capt. WALTER M. GIBSON for the immediate emigration of the Mormons to Oceanica was adopted by BRIGHAM YOUNG, and forwarded to Dr. BERNHEISEL to be laid before the President for his approval, with a request for some proposition on the part of the Government to purchase their improvements in Utah. The President refused to notice the matter further than to remark that BRIGHAM YOUNG could do as he...

A video posted on Chinese microblogging website Weibo by the Russian embassy of a party held today to celebrate the 160th anniversary of Vladivostok sparked online outrage with Chinese diplomats, journalists and users referring to the city by its old name ‘Haishenwai’. Vladivostok which once used to be part of China’s Qing dynasty and was known as Haishenwai was annexed by the Russian empire in 1860 after China’s defeat by the British and the French in the Second Opium war. Reacting to Russian embassy’s tweet, Shen Shiwei, a journalist working with the state-owned broadcaster CGTN, tweeted: “This “tweet” of #Russian...

The Indian troubles have occurred six hundred miles west of Camp Floyd. One or two stations have been threatened between here and Ruby Val- ley, (300 miles west;) but between Ruby Valley and Carson City the Mail and Express route has been almost abandoned. Immediately after the intelligence of the murder of the Express riders, Light Company "B," Fourth Artillery, was converted into an impromptu Dragoon Company, and Lieut. WEED sent out with, a detachment of twenty men with orders to proceed as far as Ruby Valley, there to establish a depot and wait the arrival of Lieut. PERKINS, who...

In the years leading up to the Civil War, many Northerners and Southerners alike wanted the federal government to take a more aggressive approach toward acquiring new territory. In fact, some private citizens, known as filibusters, took matters into their own hands. They raised small armies illegally; ventured into Mexico, Cuba, and South America; and attempted to seize control of the lands. One particularly successful filibuster, William Walker, actually made himself president of Nicaragua and ruled from 1856 to 1857. For the most part, these filibusters were just men in search of adventure. Others, however, were Southern imperialists who wanted...

Roughly 60 years after the abolition of slavery, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made an incredible connection: She located the last surviving captive of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the United States. ... In fact, they are only now being released to the public in a book called Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” that comes out on May 8, 2018... he was only 19 years old when members of the neighboring Dahomian tribe captured him and took him to the coast. There, he and about 120 others were sold into slavery and crammed onto the...

The last ship known to have smuggled slaves from Africa to the US is said to have been discovered after a year-long investigation. The remains of the Clotilda were found at the bottom of the Mobile river in Alabama. The ship was used to smuggle men, women and children into America from Africa. It operated in secret, decades after Congress banned the importation of slaves, and was intentionally sunk in 1860 to hide evidence of its use. "The discovery of the Clotilda is an extraordinary archaeological find," Lisa Demetropoulos Jones, executive director of the Alabama Historical Commission (AHC), told the...

All across the South, statues of Confederate heroes are being removed, warehoused, and in some cases destroyed. They are being removed under the false assumption that they are "symbols" of racism. That assumption is based on a grossly simplistic understanding of Southern history. In a letter of Dec. 27, 1856 to his wife, Robert E. Lee called slavery a "moral and political evil." During his life, he emancipated slaves, created schools for slaves, and aided the passage of slaves to Liberia. In the context of the antebellum South, Lee was decidedly an enlightened individual. It is surprising that his statues...

I've noticed there are some rather interesting parallels happening in this election cycle with the 1860 election. First, the election came at a time of deep political division. The Dems were led by a weak President, James Buchanan, but they held Congress. The newly formed Republican Party were becoming popular, and were considered radical socially. Then, during the nomination process, the Democrats split three ways into factions, and eventually nominated two rivals, Stephan Douglas (the Dem Establishment choice) and John Breckinridge (the hard-core Southerner choice). Not satisfied with these choices, another faction split from the Dems and ran as a...

Democratic Party Platform; June 18, 1860 1. Resolved, That we, the Democracy of the Union in Convention assembled, hereby declare our affirmance of the resolutions unanimously adopted and declared as a platform of principles by the Democratic Convention at Cincinnati, in the year 1856, believing that Democratic principles are unchangeable in their nature, when applied to the same subject matters; and we recommend, as the only further resolutions, the following: 2. Inasmuch as difference of opinion exists in the Democratic party as to the nature and extent of the powers of a Territorial Legislature, and as to the powers and...

Even while the Civil War raged, slaves in Cuba could be heard singing, “Avanza, Lincoln, avanza! Tu eres nuestra esperanza!” (Onward, Lincoln, Onward! You are our hope!) – as if they knew, even before the soldiers fighting the war far to the North and long before most politicians understood, that the war in America would change their lives, and the world. The secession crisis of 1860-1861 threatened to be a major setback to the world antislavery movement, and it imperiled the whole experiment in democracy. If slavery was allowed to exist, and if the world’s leading democracy could fall apart...

Here's one more historical curiosity to observe this election cycle. Since election day was standardized in 1845 there have been 6 presidential elections held on November 6th and Republicans have won all six. That means next Tuesday, the 7th Presidential election held on this date, will either break or uphold a streak that began in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Yitschak Ben Gad: "Politics, lies, and videotape: 3,000 Questions and Answers on the Mideast Crisis," SP Books, 1991, 479 pp.p. 245 Q: What is known about the massacre of 1860? A: In 1860, the Lebanese Druze attacked the Christian Maronites. Thousands of men, women and children were murdered. The Christians sent forth a desperate plea for help to the European powers in order to save them from complete annihilation... Q: Who came to the aid of the Christians? A: Sir Moses Montefiore, the well-known British Jewish leader, astonished by the disaster that befell the Lebanese Christians, did his utmost to...

As the season of presidential politics 2012 unfolds, I’m struck by similarities between today and the tumultuous period in our history that led up to the election of Abraham Lincoln and then on to the Civil War. So much so that I’m finding it a little eerie that this year we are observing the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. No, I am certainly not predicting, God forbid, that today’s divisions and tensions will lead to brother taking up arms against brother. But profound differences divide us today, as was the case in the 1850′s. The difference...

"Resolved, That we, the delegated representatives of the Republican electors of the United States, in convention assembled, in discharge of the duty we owe to our constituent and our country, unite in the following declarations: 1. That the history of the nation during the last four years has fully established the propriety and necessity of the organization and perpetuation of the republican party, and that the causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, and now more than ever before demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph. 2. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration...

Copperheads "Peace Democrats" Republican Abraham Lincoln was able to win the 1860 presidential election largely because the Democratic party had torn itself into several factions and could offer no united opposition. In the North the Democrats divided into two factions- the War Democrats and the Peace Democrats. Neither group agreed with the way the Republican administration conducted the war, but the War Democrats at least supported the fight for the Union. The Peace Democrats were opposed to the war and would have accepted a negotiated peace resulting in an independent Confederacy. Most Peace Democrats were from the midwestern states of...