None of a series of A.J. Davis's consultations over state capitols have apparently resulted in buildings entirely as he had planned: the Indiana State House, Indianapolis (1831 – 35) had elicited calls for his advice and designs in building other state capitols in the 1830s.

Delegate Edward Ralph May delivers a speech on behalf of African-American suffrage, to the Indiana Constitutional Convention, on October 28, 1850.

He is the only delegate to cast a vote in favor of permitting African American suffrage.

Richard J. Gatling patents the Gatling Gun on November 4, 1862, and founds the Gatling Gun Company in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Gatling had invented the screw propeller for steamboats by the age of twenty-one, only to discover it had recently and independently been patented by John Ericsson.

The North Carolina native has worked as a fisherman, court clerk, teacher, and storekeeper.

While running his own store, he invented a "wheat drill", a planting device, and manufactured these for sale.

By 1845 he was earning enough from this device to devote himself to selling and marketing it full-time.

In 1861, he designed the Gatling gun, a gunpowder field weapon that uses multiple rotating barrels turned by a hand crank.

Unlike earlier weapons, such as the mitrailleuse, which had limited capacity and long reloading times, the Gatling gun is reliable, easy to load, and has a high firing rate: 350 rounds a minute.

The name of the Greenback Party, which had initially been an agrarian organization associated with the policies of the Grange, refers to the non-gold backed paper money, commonly known as "greenbacks," issued by the North during the American Civil War and shortly afterward.

The party opposes the deflationary lowering of prices paid to producers entailed by a return to a bullion-based monetary system, the policy favored by the dominant Republican Party.

Continued use of unbacked currency, it is believed, will better foster business and assist farmers by raising prices and making debts easier to pay.

The two-year-old party, which opposes retiring the greenbacks and favors issuing more of them, nominates eighty-five-year old Peter Cooper as their first presidential candidate in May 1876.