1867 in the United States
Encyclopedia
Incumbents
- PresidentPresident of the United StatesThe President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
: Andrew JohnsonAndrew JohnsonAndrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...
(DemocraticDemocratic Party (United States)The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
/National UnionNational Union Party (United States)The National Union Party was the name used by the Republican Party for the national ticket in the 1864 presidential election, held during the Civil War. State Republican parties did not usually change their name....
/none) - Vice PresidentVice President of the United StatesThe Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
: vacant - Chief JusticeChief Justice of the United StatesThe Chief Justice of the United States is the head of the United States federal court system and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Chief Justice is one of nine Supreme Court justices; the other eight are the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States...
: Salmon P. ChaseSalmon P. ChaseSalmon Portland Chase was an American politician and jurist who served as U.S. Senator from Ohio and the 23rd Governor of Ohio; as U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln; and as the sixth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.Chase was one of the most prominent members... - Speaker of the House of RepresentativesSpeaker of the United States House of RepresentativesThe Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, or Speaker of the House, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives...
: Schuyler ColfaxSchuyler ColfaxSchuyler Colfax, Jr. was a United States Representative from Indiana , Speaker of the House of Representatives , and the 17th Vice President of the United States . To date, he is one of only two Americans to have served as both House speaker and vice president.President Ulysses S...
(RRepublican Party (United States)The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
-Indiana) - CongressUnited States CongressThe United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
: 39th39th United States CongressThe Thirty-ninth United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1865 to March 4, 1867, during the first month of...
(until March 4), 40th40th United States CongressThe Fortieth United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1867 to March 4, 1869, during the third and fourth...
(starting March 4)
January–March
- January 1 – The John A. Roebling Suspension BridgeJohn A. Roebling Suspension BridgeThe John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge spans the Ohio River between Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky. When the first pedestrians crossed on December 1, 1866, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world at 1,057 feet main span. Today, many pedestrians use the bridge to get between...
opens between Cincinnati, OhioCincinnati, OhioCincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
and Covington, KentuckyCovington, Kentucky-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 43,370 people, 18,257 households, and 10,132 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,301.3 people per square mile . There were 20,448 housing units at an average density of 1,556.5 per square mile...
, becoming the longest suspension bridge in the world. - January 8 – African-American men are granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia.
- February 7 – West Virginia UniversityWest Virginia UniversityWest Virginia University is a public research university in Morgantown, West Virginia, USA. Other campuses include: West Virginia University at Parkersburg in Parkersburg; West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Montgomery; Potomac State College of West Virginia University in Keyser;...
is established in Morgantown, West VirginiaMorgantown, West VirginiaMorgantown is a city in Monongalia County, West Virginia. It is the county seat of Monongalia County. Placed along the banks of the Monongahela River, Morgantown is the largest city in North-Central West Virginia, and the base of the Morgantown metropolitan area...
. - February 7 – Laura Ingalls WilderLaura Ingalls WilderLaura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder was an American author who wrote the Little House series of books based on her childhood in a pioneer family...
is born near Pepin, WisconsinPepin, WisconsinPepin is a village in Pepin County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 837 at the 2010 census. The village is located within the Town of Pepin.-History:... - March – The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is established (it opens for classes on March 2, 1868).
- March 1 – NebraskaNebraskaNebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
is admitted as the 37th U.S. stateU.S. stateA U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
. - March 30 – AlaskaAlaskaAlaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
is purchased for $7.2 million from Alexander II of RussiaAlexander II of RussiaAlexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
, about 2 cent/acre ($4.19/km²), by United States Secretary of StateUnited States Secretary of StateThe United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
William H. SewardWilliam H. SewardWilliam Henry Seward, Sr. was the 12th Governor of New York, United States Senator and the United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson...
. The news media call this "Seward's Folly."
April–June
- June 15 – The Atlantic Cable Quartz LodeAtlantic Cable Quartz LodeThe Atlantic Cable Quartz Lode is a gold mine in Deer Lodge County, Montana. The mine is located in the southwestern area of Montana, between Drummond and Anaconda along the Pintler Scenic Route on Montana Highway 1, east of Georgetown Lake....
mine is named in MontanaMontanaMontana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...
. - June 29 – Kidder massacreKidder MassacreThe Kidder Massacre of 29 June 1867 refers to a Sioux and Northern Cheyenne war party's killing of United States Second Lieutenant Lyman Kidder, along with an Indian scout and ten enlisted men in Sherman County, Kansas, near Goodland, Kansas.-Background:...
: A SiouxSiouxThe Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
and CheyenneCheyenneCheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains, who are of the Algonquian language family. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taeo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese .The Cheyenne are thought to have branched off other tribes of Algonquian stock inhabiting lands...
war party kills U.S. Second Lieutenant Lyman Kidder, along with an Indian scout and ten enlisted men in Kansas.
July–September
- July 2 – The first elevated railroad in the United States begins service in New York.
- July 17 – In Boston, Massachusetts, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine is established as the first dental school in the United States.
- September 30 – The United States takes control of Midway IslandMidway AtollMidway Atoll is a atoll in the North Pacific Ocean, near the northwestern end of the Hawaiian archipelago, about one-third of the way between Honolulu, Hawaii, and Tokyo, Japan. Unique among the Hawaiian islands, Midway observes UTC-11 , eleven hours behind Coordinated Universal Time and one hour...
.
October–December
- October 21 – Manifest DestinyManifest DestinyManifest Destiny was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent. It was used by Democrat-Republicans in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.Advocates of...
– Medicine Lodge TreatyMedicine Lodge TreatyThe Medicine Lodge Treaty is the overall name for three treaties signed between the United States government and southern Plains Indian tribes in October 1867, intended to bring peace to the area by relocating the Native Americans to reservations in Indian Territory and away from European-American...
: Near Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas, a landmark treaty is signed by southern Great PlainsGreat PlainsThe Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...
Indian leaders. The treaty requires Native American Plains tribes to relocate to a reservation in western OklahomaOklahomaOklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
. - November 15 – Former MinnesotaMinnesotaMinnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
farmer Oliver Hudson KelleyOliver Hudson KelleyOliver Hudson Kelley is considered the "Father" of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry.-Biography:In Boston, he moved to the Minnesota frontier in 1849, where he became a farmer...
founds the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (better known today as The Grange). - December 2 – In a New York CityNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
theater, British author Charles DickensCharles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
gives his first public reading in the United States.
Undated
- Yellow feverYellow feverYellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....
kills 3,093 in New Orleans. - The Prohibition National Committee is formed in the United States.
- At historic Fountain PointFountain PointFountain Point is an historic landmark located in Suttons Bay Township, Michigan, which is part of Leelanau County and the Leelanau Peninsula. Its name is derived from a fountain of sparkling artesian spring water, situated on a large point on Lake Leelanau, which has been continuously gushing...
, MichiganMichiganMichigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, an artesian water spring gushes continuously till the present day. - 1867–1873 – ChineseChinese peopleThe term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
, ScandinaviaScandinaviaScandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
n and IrishIrish peopleThe Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
immigrants lay 30000 miles (48,280.2 km) of railroad tracks in the USA. - Clarke School for the DeafClarke School for the DeafClarke Schools for Hearing and Speech, formerly Clarke School for the Deaf, is a private school located in Northampton, Massachusetts that specializes in educating deaf children using the oral method through the assistance of hearing aids and cochlear implants...
in Northampton, MassachusettsNorthampton, MassachusettsThe city of Northampton is the county seat of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of Northampton's central neighborhoods, was 28,549...
opens its doors for the first time, becoming the first school for the deaf in the United States to teach deaf children how to communicate with others using the "oral method".