The atoll was discovered July 5, 1859 by Captain N.C. Middlebrooks, though he was most commonly known as Captain Brooks, of the sealing ship Gambia. The islands were named the "Middlebrook Islands" or the "Brook Islands". Brooks claimed Midway for the United States under the Guano Islands Act of 1856, which authorized Americans to temporarily occupy uninhabited islands to obtain guano.

In 1858 John Beck, a member of the original Cherokee party of 1849-1850, became a principal promoter of a new expedition to the Rockies, led by William Green Russell. In this venture were included Cherokee Indians from the West, a smaller group of experienced prospectors from Georgia, several parties from Missouri, and a group from Lawrence, who had set out by themselves to investigate the rumor of gold in the Pike's Peak region. After a considerable amount of unsuccessful prospecting the Cherokee and Missouri companies abandoned their search and left for home, with the exception of a small group under Russell who in July found gold in paying quantities on Cherry creek, a branch of the South Platte.

By July 1814, Napoleon had been defeated in Europe, and the arrival of seasoned British veterans in Canada was imminent. Prodded by Secretary of War John Armstrong, Jr. and eager to win a decisive victory in Canada before British reinforcements arrived. The Americans began training their army under the command of Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott, which were to form Maj. Gen. Jacob Brown's Army of the North.

After Gen. Winfield Scott had captured Fort Erie on July 3 and more militia units arrived under Peter B. Porter, Maj. Gen. Jacob Brown's army began advancing along the Niagara River into Upper Canada. Gen. Phineas Riall commanded an army of British regulars, militia and some Iroquois warriors. Riall planned to launch a surprise attack on the dismissible American militia units and send them back to the American side.

By early afternoon on July 5, Maj. Gen. Jacob Brown, Commander of the American Army of the North, has had enough of the snipers in the forest who have been harassing his pickets all morning. From his American front line, now north of Street's Creek, Brown summons Peter B. Porter who has just marched up from Fort Erie with over 1,000 men.

Porter was ordered to prepare his 350 warriors, 200 militia, and 60 regulars to enter the forest and flush out the snipers. He was not thrilled with the prospect of sacrificing his brigade to what could be a British trap, but he was aware that his reputation has suffered of late, and that a victory in battle would be just what's needed to salvage it.

The snipers hidden amongst the trees were actually small groups of over-enthusiastic tribesmen and militia acting at their own discretion. They accompanied John Norton on a reconnaissance of the American position earlier in the day, but decided to go ahead and rattle the American pickets. Brown pulled his left flank back to avoid the sniping. This led Norton to believe that the Americans were weak on this side. Norton estimated the American numbers, and returned across the Chippawa, unaware that Porter's force had just arrived. The British did not realize that their force of 2,000 was outnumbered by about 1,500.

Based on Norton's inaccurate information and his own scout's reports, Gen. Phineas Riall devised a plan. Norton would lead a combined force of British light infantry, militia, Iroquois and other tribesmen through the woods to flank the Americans. Meanwhile, the remainder of the British would cross the Chippawa and surprise the Americans head on. Riall had reason to be confident about a frontal assault; experience had shown American regulars to be ineffective against well-drilled British soldiers. He gave the order to move out at roughly the same time that Porter entered the woods.

On the south side of Street's Creek, Gen. Winfield Scott was putting his men through the maneuvers they had been executing every day for months. Scott had already assumed there would not be any battle since it was late afternoon. Only when word of the the intensity of the battle in the woods reached him did Scott have a change of heart. When the Americans out front discovered Riall's position just ahead, the British lost their element of surprise.

Wasting no time, Scott marched his men out to meet the British as Porter's men came bursting from their short but bloody engagement with Norton's brigade in the woods. The commanders of both armies were somewhat bewildered by the quick developments, but both realized that a clash was now inevitable. Scott's men advanced in an orderly fashion despite fire from Norton's force in the woods to their left and the screaming artillery shells being lobbed by the British. Riall believed these grey-clad troops to be only Buffalo militia. As they pushed forward steadily, filling the gaps where men have fallen from British fire, Riall was shocked to admit that these must be well-trained regulars. The American line held so strongly that Riall exclaimed "Those are regulars by God." In fact, there was a blue cloth shortage and the grey uniforms were issued to the regulars.

The British were astonished to find the Americans adhering strongly to the rules of European-style warfare. The armies were separated by only 100 meters and fired volleys into each other, but Scott's men did not yield. The crack American artillery had silenced the British forward cannon as Scott's solid line performed an unorthodox U-shaped maneuver to outflank the British on both ends. Despite Riall's riding up and down the lines encouraging the troops, it was the British who began to give way. As Scott shouted the order to charge with fixed bayonets, Riall opted for a full withdrawal.

In less than half an hour, the British had gone from mounting a confident surprise attack to a retreat across the Chippawa. The Americans did not pursue since Riall still held a strong position across the river. The Americans had met a superior British force in a classic field battle and emerged victorious.

The Battle of Chippawa, and the subsequent Battle of Plattsburgh, proved that American regular units could hold their own against British regulars if properly trained and well led. The American army, modeled and drilled according to French Revolutionary standards, and was becoming a respectable fighting force with new and capable leaders such as Brown and Scott, who were to emerge from the war as national heroes.

The Battle of Chippawa was a decisive victory for the American army, which allowed for the invasion of Canada along the Niagara River.

Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891), was an American showman who is best remembered for his entertaining hoaxes and for founding the circus that eventually became Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. Barnum is the title of an award winning Broadway musical based on P. T. Barnum's life and exploits. He is also represented in the Hollywood film "Gangs Of New York."

Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut, the son of inn- and store-keeper Philo Barnum (1778-1826) and third great grandson of Thomas Barnum (1625-1695), the immigrant ancestor of the Barnum family in North America. Barnum first started as a store-keeper, and was also involved with the lottery mania then prevailing in the United States. After failing in business, he started a weekly paper in 1829, The Herald of Freedom, in Danbury, Connecticut. After several libel suits and a prosecution which resulted in imprisonment, he moved to New York City in 1834. In 1835 began his career as a showman with his purchase and exhibition of a blind and almost completely paralyzed African-American slave woman, Joice Heth, claimed by Barnum to have been the nurse of George Washington, and to be over a hundred and sixty years old.

With this woman and a small company he made well-advertised and successful tours in America until 1839, though Joice Heth died in 1836, when her age was proved to be not more than eighty. After a period of failure he purchased Scudder's American Museum, at Broadway and Ann Street, New York City, in 1841. Renamed "Barnum's American Museum" with a considerable addition of exhibits, it became one of the most popular showplaces in the United States. He made a special hit in 1842 with the exhibition of Charles Stratton, the celebrated midget "General Tom Thumb", as well as the Fiji Mermaid which he exhibited in collaboration with his Boston counterpart Moses Kimball. His collection also included the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker. In 1843 Barnum hired the traditional Native American dancer Do-Hum-Me. During 1844-45 Barnum toured with Charles Stratton in Europe and met with Queen Victoria. A remarkable instance of his enterprise was the engagement of Jenny Lind to sing in America at $1,000 a night for one hundred and fifty nights, all expenses being paid by the entrepreneur. The tour began in 1850, and was a great success for both Lind and Barnum.

Barnum retired from the show business in 1855, but had to settle with his creditors in 1857, and began his old career again as showman and museum proprietor. In 1862 he discovered the giantess Anna Swan but on July 13, 1865, Barnum's American Museum burned to the ground. Barnum quickly reestablished the Museum at another location in New York City, but this too was destroyed by fire in March 1868. In Brooklyn, New York in 1871 with William Cameron Coup, he established "P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome", a traveling amalgamation of circus, menagerie and museum of "freaks", which by 1872 was billing itself as "The Greatest Show on Earth". It went through a number of variants on these names: "P.T. Barnum's Traveling World's Fair, Great Roman Hippodrome and Greatest Show On Earth", and after an 1881 merger with James Bailey and James L. Hutchinson, "P.T. Barnum's Greatest Show On Earth, And The Great London Circus, Sanger's Royal British Menagerie and The Grand International Allied Shows United", soon shortened to "Barnum & London Circus". He and Bailey split up again in 1885, but came back together in 1888 with the "Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show On Earth", later "Barnum & Bailey Circus", which toured around the world. The show's primary attraction was Jumbo, an African elephant he purchased in 1882 from the London Zoo.

Barnum built four mansions in Bridgeport, Connecticut during his life: Iranistan, Lindencroft, Waldemere and Marina. Iranistan was the most notable: a fanciful and opulent splendor with domes, spires and lacy fretwork, inspired by the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, England. This mansion was built 1848 but burned down in 1857.

Barnum died on April 7, 1891 and is buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport, Connecticut. A statue in his honor was erected in 1893 at Seaside Park, by the water in Bridgeport. Barnum had donated the land for this park in 1865. His circus was eventually sold to Ringling Brothers on July 8, 1907 for a price of $400,000.

Barnum wrote several books, including The Humbugs of the World (1865), Struggles and Triumphs (1869), and The Art of Money-Getting (1880).

Mass publication of his autobiography was one of Barnum's more successful methods of self-promotion. The autobiography was so popular that some people made a point of acquiring and reading each edition. Some collectors were known to boast they had a copy of every edition in their library. Barnum eventually gave up his claim of copyright to allow other printers to publish and sell inexpensive editions. At the end of the 19th century the number of copies printed of the autobiography was second only to the number of copies of the New Testament printed in North America.

Often referred to as the "Prince of Humbugs", Barnum saw nothing wrong in entertainers or vendors using hype (or "humbug", as he termed it) in their promotional material, just as long as the public was getting good value for its money. However, he was contemptuous of those who made money through fraudulent deceptions, especially the spiritualist mediums popular in his day. Prefiguring illusionists Harry Houdini and James Randi, Barnum publicly exposed "the tricks of the trade" used by mediums to deceive and cheat grieving survivors. In The Humbugs of the World, he offered a $500 reward to any medium who could prove their claimed power to communicate with the dead without trickery.

Barnum was significantly involved in the politics surrounding race, slavery, and sectionalism in the period leading up the American Civil War. As mentioned above, he had some of his first success as an impresario through his slave Joice Heth. Around 1850, he was involved in a hoax about a weed that would turn black people white.

Barnum was involved (both as performer and promoter) in blackface minstrelsy. According to Eric Lott, Barnum's minstrel shows were often more double-edged in their humor than most at this period. While still replete with racist stereotypes, Barnum's shows also satirized white racial attitudes, as in a stump speech in which a black phrenologist (like all performers in the show, actually a white man in blackface) made a dialect speech paralleling and parodying lectures given at the time to "prove" the superiority of the white race: "You see den, dat clebber man and dam rascal means de same in Dutch, when dey boph white; but when one white and de udder's black, dat's a grey hoss ob anoder color."

Promotion of minstrel shows led indirectly to his sponsorship in 1853 of H.J. Conway's politically watered-down stage version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin; the play, at Barnum's American Museum, gave the story a happy ending, with Tom and various other slaves freed. The success of this Uncle Tom led, in turn, to his promotion of a production of a play based on Stowe's Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. By 1860, Barnum had become a Republican.

While he claimed "politics were always distasteful to me," Barnum was elected to the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as the Republican representative for Fairfield and served two terms. In the debate over slavery and African-American suffrage with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Barnum spoke eloquently before the legislature and said, in part, "A human soul is not to be trifled with. It may inhabit the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hotentot - it is still an immortal spirit!" He ran for the United States Congress in 1867 and lost. In 1875, Barnum was elected mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut for a one year term and worked vigorously to improve the city water supply, bring gaslighting to the streets, and strictly enforce liquor and prostitution laws. Barnum was instrumental in starting Bridgeport Hospital, founded in 1878, and served as its first president. P.T. Barnum died in 1891.

Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (July 5, 1801 – August 14, 1870) was the first senior officer of the U.S. Navy during the American Civil War. He was the first rear admiral, vice admiral, and full admiral of the Navy. He is remembered in popular culture for his possibly apocryphal order at the Battle of Mobile Bay, usually paraphrased: "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!".

Farragut was born to Jorge and Elizabeth Farragut at Campbell's Station, near Knoxville, Tennessee, where his father was serving as a cavalry officer in the Tennessee militia. Jorge Farragut Mesquida (1755 – 1817), a Spanish merchant captain from Minorca, had previously joined the American Revolutionary cause. David's birth name was James, but it was changed in 1812, following his adoption by future naval Captain David Porter in 1808 (which made him the foster brother of future Civil War Admiral David Dixon Porter).

David Farragut entered the Navy as a midshipman on December 17, 1810. In the War of 1812, when only 12 years old, he was given command of a prize ship taken by USS Essex and brought her safely to port. He was wounded and captured during the cruise of the Essex by HMS Phoebe in Valparaiso Bay, Chile, on March 28, 1814, but was exchanged in April 1815. Through the years that followed, in one assignment after another, he showed the high ability and devotion to duty that would allow him to make a great contribution to the Union victory in the Civil War and to write a famous page in the history of the United States Navy.

In command of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, with his flag on the USS Hartford, in April 1862 he ran past Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip and the Chalmette, Louisiana, batteries to take the city and port of New Orleans, Louisiana, on April 29 that year, a decisive event in the war. His country honored its great sailor after New Orleans by creating for him the rank of rear admiral on July 16, 1862, a rank never before used in the U.S. Navy. (Before this time, the American Navy had resisted the rank of admiral, preferring the term "flag officer", to separate it from the traditions of the European navies.) Later that year he passed the batteries defending Vicksburg, Mississippi. Farragut had no real success at Vicksburg, where one makeshift Confederate ironclad forced his flotilla of 38 ships to withdraw in July 1862.

He was a very aggressive commander but not always cooperative. At the Siege of Port Hudson the plan was Farragut’s flotilla would pass by the guns of the Confederate stronghold with the help of a diversionary land attack by the Army of the Gulf, commanded by General Nathaniel Banks, to commence at 8:00 am March 15, 1863. Farragut unilaterally decided to move the time table up to 9:00 pm, March 14th and initiate his run past the guns before Union ground forces were in position. By doing so the uncoordinated attack allowed the Confederates to concentrate on Farragut’s flotilla and inflict heavy damage on his warships.

Farragut’s battle group was forced to retreat with only two ships able to pass the heavy cannon of the Confederate bastion. After surviving the gauntlet Farragut played no further part in the battle for Port Hudson and General Banks was left to continue the siege without advantage of naval support. The Union Army made two major attacks on the fort and both were repulsed with heavy losses. Farragut’s flotilla was splintered yet was able to blockade the mouth of the Red River with the two remaining warships, but not efficiently patrol the section of the Mississippi between Port Hudson and Vicksburg. Farragut’s decision thus proved costly to the Union Navy and the Union Army which suffered the highest casualty rate of the Civil War at the Battle of Port Hudson.

Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, 1863, leaving Port Hudson as the last remaining Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. General Banks accepted the surrender of the Confederate garrison at Port Hudson on July 9, 1863 ending the longest siege in US military history. Control of the Mississippi River was the centerpiece of Union strategy to win the war and with the surrender of Port Hudson the Confederacy was now severed in two.

On August 5, 1864, Farragut won a great victory in the Battle of Mobile Bay. Mobile, at the time was the Confederacy's last major port open on the Gulf of Mexico. The bay was heavily mined (tethered naval mines were known as torpedoes at the time). Farragut ordered his fleet to charge the bay. When the monitor USS Tecumseh struck a mine and sank the others began to pull back.

Farragut could see the ships pulling back from his high perch, lashed to the rigging of his flagship the USS Hartford. "What's the trouble?" was shouted through a trumpet from the flagship to the USS Brooklyn. "Torpedoes!" was shouted back in reply. "Damn the torpedoes!" said Farragut, "Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!" The bulk of the fleet succeeded in entering the bay. Farragut then triumphed over the opposition of heavy batteries in Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines to defeat the squadron of Admiral Franklin Buchanan.

He was promoted to vice admiral on December 21, 1864, and to full admiral on July 25, 1866, after the war.

Admiral Farragut's last active service was in command of the European Squadron, with the screw frigate Franklin as his flagship, and he died at the age of 69 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York.