Southern Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beats Northern Senator Charles Sumner in the halls of Congress as tensions rise over the expansion of slavery.

On June 6, 1856, the fifth and final day of the Democratic Party’s national convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, President Franklin Pierce becomes the first elected president of the United States not to be nominated by his party for a second term. Instead, the party chooses James Buchanan, who will go on to win the presidency in November.

In an extraordinary demonstration of resolve and fortitude, nearly 500 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (often informally known as Mormons) leave Iowa City and head west for Salt Lake City carrying all their goods and supplies in two-wheeled handcarts. Of all the thousands of pioneer journeys to the West in the 19th century, few were more arduous than those undertaken by the so-called Handcart Companies from 1856 to 1860.

In Music Fund Hall in Philadelphia, the first national convention of the Republican Party, founded two years before, comes to its conclusion. John Charles Fremont of California, the famous explorer of the West, was nominated for the presidency, and William Lewis Dayton of New Jersey was chosen as the candidate for the vice presidency.

On August 23, 1856, Eunice Foote's work is presented to a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Albany, New York. She is the first to articulate the possibility of global warming from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Future President Woodrow Wilson is born in Staunton, Virginia on December 28, 1856. He attended private schools and graduated from Princeton University in 1879 before studying law at the University of Virginia and earning his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He was hired by Princeton as a professor of political science in 1899 and went on to serve as the institution’s president from 1902 to 1910. As Princeton’s head administrator, he revolutionized its teaching program and was largely responsible for elevating Princeton to its current prestige. Wilson’s management of Princeton also earned the attention of Democratic Party leaders, who encouraged him to run for political office. Wilson once admitted that if he hadn’t entered politics he would have been happy to live out his life teaching and playing golf, his favorite past time.