1860
Lincoln Elected
Running on a platform of no new slave states, Abraham Lincoln won the presidency with forty percent of the vote in a four-way race. Seven Southern states began preparing to secede before he was even inaugurated. He had spoken, two years before, of a house divided. It was about to collapse.
Garibaldi Lands at Marsala
With a thousand red-shirted volunteers on two rickety steamers, Giuseppe Garibaldi landed on the western tip of Sicily and, in three months, overran the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. He handed it to Victor Emmanuel in a handshake at Teano and retired, famously, to a farm on the island of Caprera. Italy was nearly whole.
Summer Palace Burned
Lord Elgin's troops entered Beijing and, on the orders of the British commander, looted and burned the Yuanmingyuan - the Qing emperors' exquisite garden-palace of European follies, lakes, and pavilions. It was a deliberate act of cultural vandalism meant to punish the court for mistreating prisoners. China has not forgotten it.
South Carolina Secedes
In Charleston, a convention voted unanimously to dissolve South Carolina's union with the United States. Six more Deep South states followed within weeks, and in February they formed the Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis at their head. Lincoln, still a private citizen in Springfield, watched his country break.
Treaty of Turin
As the price of French help in expelling Austria from Italy, Napoleon III took Nice and Savoy. Garibaldi, born in Nice, never forgave Cavour. The plebiscites were stage-managed. The Italian peninsula was now mostly united, but its most romantic general had lost his hometown to the French in a diplomatic trade.