The Year of 1854

Sown in Dark Soil picks up in 1854, fifty years after the Cagle family first moved to the Appalachian mountains in Cleared for Planting. Astute observers can already see that the chasm between the North and the South is getting wider. Luke Moretz has gone to Anson County to visit a friend, and the conversations he hears lets him know that the compromising may soon be over. The big issue of 1854 was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the debates over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. What will that mean for the nation? Here are some of the things that were happening in 1854:

Stephen A. Douglas

Jan. 4 - Senator Stephen Douglas introduces bill to form Nebraska Territory, which evolves into a slavery debate 
Feb. 28 - Republican Party officially forms in Wisconsin
Mar. 20 - Boston Public Library opens
Mar. 28 - France and Great Britain declare war on Russia to begin the Crimean War
Mar. 31 - Commodore Matthew Perry signs trade agreement with Japan
May 30 - The Missouri Compromise (1820) was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would allow for all new states and territories to vote whether they would  be a slave or a free

Naval Academy

June 10 - The Naval Academy's first class graduates at Annapolis, Maryland
Jul. 6 - First Republican state convention is held in Jackson, Michigan
Aug. 8 - Smith and Weston patents metal bullet cartridges
Aug. 9 - Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden
Sep. 19 - Henry Meyer patents sleeping rail car

Oct. 4- Abraham Lincoln makes his first political speech at the Illinois State Fair
Oct. 21 - Florence Nightingale and 38 nurses are sent to help wounded soldiers in the Crimean War
Dec. 9 - Alfred Tennyson publishes "The Charge of the Light Brigade"

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