In Ripon, Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party met
to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into
the western territories.

The Whig Party, which was formed in 1834 to oppose the
“tyranny” of President Andrew Jackson, had shown itself
incapable of coping with the national crisis over slavery.

By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in
the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a
new party. One such meeting, in Wisconsin on March 20,
1854, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of
the Republican Party.

Alvan Earle Bovay
(July 12, 1818 – January 13, 1903)

Horace Greeley
(February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872)

On March 19, 2003, the United States, along with coalition
forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiated war on
Iraq. Just after explosions began to rock Baghdad, Iraq’s
capital, U.S. President George W. Bush announced in a
televised address, “At this hour, American and coalition
forces are in the early stages of military operations to
disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world
from grave danger.”

President Bush and his advisors built much of their case
for war on the specious claim that Iraq, under dictator
Saddam Hussein, possessed or was in the process of
building weapons of mass destruction.

No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. The
U.S. declared an end to the war in Iraq on December 15,
2011, nearly ten years after the fighting began. 

President George Bush (right) speaks to Donald Rumsfeld
and Paul Wolfowitz during a visit at the Pentagon on March
25, 2003.

A riot brook out in Harlem when local residents suspect that a
Black boy has been beaten, and possibly killed, by a white
business owner. Although the rumors turn out to be false,
the riot highlighted the struggles of Harlem’s historically Black community against discrimination during the Great Depression.

On March 19, 1957 – Elvis Presley put a $1,000 down payment on a
$102,500, 13.8 acre mansion in Memphis, Tennessee and called it
"Graceland."  

  
The mansion is the second-most-visited house in America after       
the big white one on Pennsylvania Avenue.