Federal government edit

• President: Franklin Pierce (D-New Hampshire)
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney (Maryland)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Nathaniel P. Banks (American-Massachusetts)
• Congress: 34th

January–March edit

• January 24 – U.S. President Franklin Pierce declares the new Free-State Topeka government in Bleeding Kansas to be in rebellion.
• January 26 – Puget Sound War/Yakima War: Battle of Seattle – Marines from the USS Decatur drive off American Indian attackers after an all day battle with settlers.
• February – The Tintic War breaks out in Utah.
• February 1 – Auburn University is first chartered as the East Alabama Male College.
• February 2 – Dallas, Texas is incorporated as a city.
• February 12 – American clipper ships Driver and Ocean Queen leave Liverpool and London respectively; both will be lost without trace in the Atlantic, perhaps due to ice, killing 374 and 123 respectively.^[1]
• February 18 – The American Party (Know-Nothings) convene in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to nominate their first presidential candidate, former President Millard Fillmore.
• March 6 – Maryland Agricultural College (present-day University of Maryland, College Park) is chartered.
• March 9 – National Fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon is founded at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
• April 10 – The Theta Chi fraternity is founded at Norwich University.

April–June edit

• May 16 – The Vigilance Committee is founded in San Francisco, California. It lynches two gangsters, arrests most Democratic Party officials and disbands itself on August 18.
• May 21 – Bleeding Kansas: Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces (the "Sacking of Lawrence").
• May 22 – Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beats Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate, for a speech Sumner had made attacking Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas ("Bleeding Kansas"). Sumner is unable to return to duty for 3 years while he recovered; Brooks becomes a hero across the South.
• May 24 – Pottawatomie Massacre: A group of followers of radical abolitionist John Brown kill 5 pro-slavery supporters in Franklin County, Kansas.
• June 2 – Bleeding Kansas – Battle of Black Jack: Anti-slavery forces, led by John Brown, defeat pro-slavery forces.
• June 6 – At the Democratic National Convention, President Franklin Pierce is denied re-nomination for the November presidential election.
• June 9 – 500 Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa and head west for Salt Lake City, Utah, carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.

July–September edit

• July 17 – The Great Train Wreck of 1856: Two trains collide near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania killing at least 59 and injuring at least 100.
• August 10 – 1856 Last Island hurricane: A hurricane destroys Last Island, Louisiana, leaving at least 200 dead. The whole island is broken up into smaller islands by the storm.
• August 21 – The Charter Oak fell to the ground during a storm
• August 23 – Kate Warne, the first female private detective, begins to work for the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
• August 30
  • Bleeding Kansas – Battle of Osawatomie: Pro-slavery forces defeat anti-slavery forces.
  • Chickasaw Constitution signed; establishes new Chickasaw Nation in Indian Territory.
• September 1 – Seton Hall University is founded by Archdiocese of Newark Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, a cousin of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and nephew of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.

October–December edit

• November 4 – U.S. presidential election, 1856: Democrat James Buchanan defeats former President Millard Fillmore, representing a coalition of "Know-Nothings" and Whigs, and John C. Frémont of the fledgling Republican Party, to become the 15th president of the United States.
• November 17 – American Old West: On the Sonoita River in present-day southern Arizona, the United States Army establishes Fort Buchanan in order to help control new land acquired in the Gadsden Purchase.
• November 21 – Niagara University is founded in Niagara Falls, New York.

Ongoing edit

• Bleeding Kansas (1854–1860)
• Third Seminole War (1855–1858)

• January 7 – Charles Harold Davis, landscape painter (died 1933)
• January 8 – Elizabeth Taylor, painter and traveler (died 1932)
• January 9 – Lizette Woodworth Reese, poet (died 1935)^[2]
• January 12 – John Singer Sargent, painter (born in Tuscany; died 1925 in the United Kingdom)
• February 2 – Frederick William Vanderbilt, railroad magnate (died 1938)
• March 20 – Frederick Winslow Taylor, inventor and efficiency expert (died 1915)
• April 5 – Booker T. Washington, educator (died 1915)
• April 23 – Granville T. Woods, African American inventor (died 1910)
• March 8 – Colin Campbell Cooper, impressionist painter (died 1937)
• May 6 – Robert Peary, Arctic explorer (died 1920)
• May 15 – L. Frank Baum, children's writer (The Wizard of Oz) (died 1919)
• May 26 – George Templeton Strong, composer (died 1948 in Switzerland)
• July 9/10 – Nikola Tesla inventor, genius (died in 1947 in New York, United States)
• July 11 – Georgiana Drew, stage actress (died 1893)
• July 24 – Franklin Ware Mann, inventor (died 1916)
• July 25 – Charles Major, novelist and lawyer (died 1913)
• August 15 – Charles E. Townsend, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1911 to 1923 (died 1924)
• September 3 –Louis Sullivan, architect, "father of skyscrapers" (died 1924)
• September 5
  • William B. McKinley, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1921 to 1926 (died 1926)
  • Thomas E. Watson, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1921 to 1922 (died 1922)
• September 9 – Richard R. Kenney, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1897 to 1901 (died 1931)
• October 7 – Moses Fleetwood Walker, baseball pitcher and Black nationalist (died 1924)
• October 10 – George McClellan, U.S. Representative from New York (died 1927)
• October 28 – Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, portrait and genre painter (died 1942)
• October 30 – Charles Leroux, balloonist and parachutist (died 1889)
• November 6 – Jefferson David Chalfant, trompe-l'œil painter (died 1931)
• November 13 – Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (died 1941)
• November 14 – Madeleine Lemoyne Ellicott, suffragette (died 1945)
• November 16 – Carrie Babcock Sherman, wife of James S. Sherman, Second Lady of the United States (died 1931)
• November 17 – Thomas Taggart, U.S. Senator from Indiana in 1916 (died 1929)
• November 21 – William Emerson Ritter, biologist (died 1944)
• November 22 – Heber J. Grant, seventh president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (died 1945)
• December 22 – Frank B. Kellogg, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1917 to 1923 (died 1937)
• December 23 – James Buchanan Duke, tobacco and electric power industrialist (born 1925)
• December 28
  • Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921 (died 1924)
  • Sarah Platt-Decker, née Chase, suffragist (died 1912)

• January 1 – John M. Berrien, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1841 to 1852 (born 1781)
• January 16 –Thaddeus William Harris, naturalist (born 1795)
• April 19 – Thomas Rogers, railroad locomotive builder (born 1792)
• April 20 – Robert L. Stevens, president of Camden and Amboy Railroad (born 1787)
• April 26 – George Troup, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1816 to 1818 and 1829 to 1833 (born 1780)
• May 5 – William Crosby Dawson, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1849 to 1855 (born 1798)
• May 31 – John Milton Niles, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1835 to 1839 and 1843 to 1849 (born 1787)
• July 9
  • Alfred Cuthbert, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1835 to 1843 (born 1785)
  • James Strang, Mormon splinter group leader (born 1813)
• September 7 – Almon W. Babbitt, Mormon pioneer and first secretary/treasurer of Utah Territory (born 1812)
• October 19 – William Sprague III, politician from Rhode Island (born 1799)
• November 9 – John M. Clayton, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1829 to 1836, 1845 to 1849 and 1853 to 1856 (born 1796)

• Timeline of United States history (1820–1859)

•   Media related to 1856 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons