1863
Confederate forces under General Bragg move south January 3 after defeating a Union Army under General Rosecrans at Stones River (Murfreesboro), Tennessee, as Federal reinforcements pour in from Nashville. Union spy Pauline Cushman, 29, obtains a room at the Evans House, a hotel in Shelbyville, where she quickly makes friends with a Confederate captain of engineers. Posing as an actress in search of her older brother in the Confederate Army, she steals plans and drawings for defense fortifications, smuggles some out in the handles of butcher knives and others inside the craw of a chicken that a woman farmer carries across the lines. Discovered and court-martialed, Cushman is found guilty, but Federal troops arrive and release her before she can be hanged, and she is commissioned a major in the Union Army.
A court martial finds General Fitz-John Porter guilty January 21 of misconduct in last year's (second) Battle of Bull run (see 1862). Porter has claimed that General Pope's orders were vague, contradictory, and impossible to execute, but he was relieved of his command in November and is now discharged from the army. He promptly undertakes efforts to clear his name. His case will finally be reviewed in 1879, the review will support his claim, and he will be reappointed in 1886.
President Lincoln relieves General Burnside of command January 25 and puts General Hooker in charge of the Army of the Potomac.
Mosby's Rangers led by Confederate cavalry officer John Singleton Mosby, 29, operate behind Union lines in Virginia and capture Union Brig. Gen. Edwin H. Stoughton, 25, with 100 of his men March 9 at Fairfax Court House. The exploit wins Mosby a promotion to captain and gains recruits for his nine-man force of irregulars, but Union counterintelligence director LaFayette C. Curry raises a battalion of cavalry that will serve chiefly as a counter-guerrilla force (see 1862; "Northwest Conspiracy," "greenback raid,"
Union forces suffer defeat at Chancellorsville, Virginia, from May 1 to May 5. The incompetent General Hooker has 130,000 men to General Lee's 60,000 and crosses the Rappahannock River upstream from Fredericksburg with the intention of advancing on Richmond, and although Lee divides his army while still in contact with the enemy he prevails; Union casualties total 16,792 (General Thomas F. Meagher's Irish Brigade is decimated and he resigns his commission), Confederate casualties 12,754, but the South loses one of its best generals. "Stonewall" Jackson is wounded by one of his own sentries May 2. His arm is amputated May 3, and he receives a letter from Robert E. Lee a few days later saying, "You are better off than I am, for while you have lost your left, I have lost my right arm." Jackson dies of pneumonia May 10 saying, "Let us cross the river and rest in the shade." He is replaced as commander of the 2nd Corps by Jeb Stuart.
Former congressman Clement L. (Larid) Vallandigham, 42, makes speeches accusing Republicans of wanting to end slavery only to further their aim of establishing a dictatorship; he thereby violates an order issued April 13 by General Ambrose E. Burnside, and a company of Ohio Volunteer Infantry dispatched by special train to Dayton, Ohio, May 5 breaks into Vallandigham's home, arrests him at 3 o'clock in the morning, and takes him in his nightshirt to Burnside's headquarters at Cincinnati for trial by a military commission on charges of "treasonable utterances." Riots break out at Dayton, fires destroy an entire city block, troops brought in from Columbus and Cincinnati restore order, and President Lincoln gives orders to Secretary of War Stanton May 19 that the "Copperhead" Vallandigham is to be taken "beyond the military lines of the United States and not . . . permitted to return under threat of arrest." Federal troops in Tennessee turn Vallandigham over to the Confederate Army May 25, President Davis gives orders in June that he is to be guarded as an "alien enemy" and incarcerated at Wilmington, North Carolina, but "Peace Democrats" in Ohio that month nominate him for governor (see
The Battle of Champion's Hill in Mississippi May 16 ends in victory for Union forces under General Grant over the Confederate forces of Philadelphia-born General John C. (Clifford) Pemberton, 48, who leaves 5,000 troops to make a stand on the Big Black River while he withdraws the main body of his troops to Vicksburg. Some 10,000 Union troops under the command of General Grant win the Battle of the Big Black River May 17, inflicting severe losses and taking 1,700 prisoners of war. The survivors fall back in disorder to Vicksburg, and Grant lays siege to that city, which Jefferson Davis has ordered Pemberton to hold at all costs.
News of Stonewall Jackson's death reaches Belle Boyd at Mobile, Alabama. She hurries back to Martinsburg, Virginia, and when Union forces attack Winchester June 14 she is only four miles away (see 1862). An order for her arrest is issued July 23, and she is held under house arrest owing to the grave illness of her mother, but when her mother improves she is taken to Carroll Prison at Washington and then to the Old Capitol Prison. After engineering the escape of three other prisoners in October, she is removed December 1 to Fortress Monroe, where she meets with General Benjamin F. Butler, known in the South as "Beast" Butler (see 1862).
West Virginia enters the Union June 20 as the 35th state, having seceded from Virginia in 1861. The new state's constitution calls for gradual emancipation of slaves.
The Territory of Idaho is formed from parts of the Dakota, Nebraska, Utah, and Washington territories.
Arizona is created as a separate territory cut from the New Mexico Territory (see
President Lincoln replaces Hooker June 28 with Spanish-born General George (Gordon) Meade, 46, who triumphs a few days later at Gettysburg. The Battle of Gettysburg in eastern Pennsylvania July 1 to 3 marks the turning point of the war as Southern troops are routed after the heroic Pickett's Charge of July 3. Richmond-born General George E. (Edward) Pickett, 38, leads his 4,500 muskets plus 10,000 men from General A. P. Hill's command from Seminary Ridge across an open plain raked by Union musket and artillery fire from three sides and ascends the slant of Cemetery Hill. Some 6,000 Southerners fall, and the Confederate advance into the North is doomed. General Daniel E. Sickles disobeys Meade's orders, loses most of the officers and one-third of the men in his Third Corps, and suffers a wound that requires amputation of his right leg below the knee. Some Southerners blame Jeb Stuart for going off on a raid instead of deploying his cavalry to gather intelligence and act as a screen for the advancing Confederate forces. Meade's 95,000-man army loses 3,155 killed, 14,529 wounded, 5,365 missing; Lee's 75,000 man army 3,903 killed, 18,735 wounded, 5,425 missing.
Vicksburg, Mississippi, falls to Grant July 4 after a short siege in which Grant's 75,000-man army has suffered 9,362 casualties (Confederate losses are about 1,000 killed, 29,000 captured [and paroled]). General Pemberton accepts Grant's terms of surrender, Union forces capture 172 Confederate guns and gain control of the Mississippi, cutting Confederate supply lines. President Lincoln announces, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."
Conscription for the Union Army begins July 11 under legislation passed March 3 giving exemption to any man who pays $300 to hire a substitute. Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg earlier in July have sealed the fate of the Confederacy, many Northerners see no point in joining the army, only the rich can afford $300 for a substitute, and many working men resent having to fight for the emancipation of slaves who may come north and take away the unskilled jobs on which their families depend. Draft riots break out in several cities, and the worst riot in U.S. history begins at New York on Sunday, July 12, when an angry crowd mills about the door of the recruiting office on Third Avenue. Before more than 40 or 50 names have been drawn, a paving stone crashes through the window, and Irishmen pour out of the infamous Sixth Ward east of Broadway shouting, "Kill the rich!", "Kill the niggers!", and "Down with the Black Republican nigger lovers!" Mobs attack various targets, notably the 27-year-old Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th streets. The 200 orphans are evacuated by courageous neighbors through the back doors before they can be harmed, but the building is burned and blacks throughout the city are set upon and killed. Mayor Opdyke refuses to make any deals with the rioters, who come out of the Five Points bent on violence; he abandons City Hall to the mob and takes refuge in the St. Nicholas Hotel as the city verges on anarchy. Police Superintendent John Kennedy tries to stop the mob single-handedly and is lucky to escape with no worse than a severe beating. Rioters tear up railroad tracks and burn 43 buildings, including hotels, between 46th Street and the Cooper Union in Astor Place; the Dead Rabbits from the Five Points join with their traditional rivals, the Bowery B'hoys, to prevent firemen from reaching the blazes. They sack stores such as Brooks Brothers, and create general chaos in their battles with police before the secretary of war orders the Seventh Regiment home to protect the city (recalled from Gettysburg, the troops march down Third Avenue, scattering the rioters). By the time the disturbance is suppressed July 17 at least 18 blacks (and possibly 24) have been lynched, many more are reported missing, and a total of at least 100 (and possibly as many as 1,200) people have been killed and thousands injured (the Bowery toughs take care of their own dead and wounded, so the official counts may be understated). Archbishop Hughes, now 66, addresses the riot participants July 17 at the request of Governor Seymour, who helps put down the disorders but is widely (if falsely) suspected of having encouraged them. Now a city of 800,000 with some 200,000 of its inhabitants Irish, New York suffers more than $2 million in property damage.
Federal troops attack Battery Wagner in South Carolina at dusk July 18, sustaining 1,515 casualties including Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, 25, whose 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry gains the parapet and holds it for an hour before falling back, losing nearly half its number.
Congressman John J. Crittenden dies at Frankfort, Kentucky, July 26 at age 75. His son Thomas is a major general in the Union Army, another son is a major general in the Confederate Army; Confederate Senator William L. Yancey dies at Montgomery, Alabama, July 27 at age 48.
Conscription at New York resumes quietly August 19, with a blind man drawing names out of a wooden box at the office of the provost marshal, Sixth District, at 185 Sixth Avenue, and although men of means find it easy to avoid the draft by paying for substitutes, and many New Yorkers oppose President Lincoln (telegraph pioneer Samuel F. B. Morse supports slavery and calls Lincoln "imbecile & bloodthirsty"), New York State will have contributed 475,000 men to the Union Army by 1865—more than any other state (New Yorkers constitute one sixth of the army), and New York City alone will have contributed 116,000 at a cost of $14.5 million.
Quantrill's Raiders burn Lawrence, Kansas, August 21. Led by former schoolteacher and professional gambler Captain William C. Quantrill, 26, who helped capture Independence, Missouri, last year and was mustered into the Confederate Army with his men, the 450 raiders include Jesse (Woodson) James, 15, his brother Frank, and Thomas Coleman "Cole" Younger, 19, who ride into Lawrence at dawn, kill 180 men, women, and children, sack the town, and burn most of its buildings, but Kansas contributes a greater percentage of its male population to the Union Army than does any other state (see crime,
The Battle of Gettysburg and fall of Vicksburg seem to doom the Confederacy's chances, but Rose Greenhow sails for Europe in August to raise money for the Southern cause (see 1862). Her book My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule in Washington enjoys brisk sales abroad, and she is presented at court both at London and Paris (where she is given a private audience with Napoleon III) (see
Former secretary of war and governor of Virginia John B. Floyd dies at his adopted daughter's house outside Abingdon, Virginia, August 26 at age 57, having served as a major general in the Confederate Army but come to grief from exposure to the elements on Big Sandy River.
"Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet," writes President Lincoln August 26 in a letter to James C. Conkling.
President Lincoln dispatches former Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad president John Murray Forbes to England on an unofficial mission to make an offer for ships known as Laird rams being built for the Confederacy. Now 50, Forbes will soon join with some others to build a cruiser larger than the Confederate ship Alabama with a view to selling it to the Union at cost.
The Battle of Chicamauga in northern Georgia September 19 and 20 pits 62,000 Union soldiers against 65,000 Southerners and ends in an empty victory for Confederate troops under General Bragg. While North Carolina-born General Leonidas Polk, 57, fails to support them, James Longstreet and Tennessee-born Nathan Bedford Forrest, 42, send Union forces under General Rosecrans retreating headlong to Chattanooga (Forrest will gain fame for his statement that he got there "fastest with the mostest"). Virginia-born Union general George H. Thomas, 47, stands firm (earning the sobriquet "Rock of Chicamauga"), Bragg fails to follow up, and his costly success serves little purpose. Confederate losses total 2,132 dead, 14,674 wounded versus 1,656 Union dead, 9,756 wounded. Bragg takes thousands of prisoners.
President Lincoln dedicates a national cemetery at Gettysburg November 19 and makes an eloquent 272-word address that will be memorized by generations of schoolchildren:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Clergyman-orator (and former Massachusetts governor) Edward Everett, now 68, has delivered the main address but writes to Lincoln the next day, saying, "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."
The Battle of Chattanooga November 23 to 25 ends with the Confederates fleeing in disorder toward Chickamauga. Bragg has withdrawn from Lookout Mountain to Missionary Ridge, Grant has sent Union troops under Generals Hooker, Ohio-born William Tecumseh Sherman, 43, and General Philip H. (Henry) Sheridan, 32, to drive the rebels from the ridge. Union losses (dead and wounded): 5,824 out of 56,359 effectives; Confederate losses 6,667 out of 64,165.
Gen. Thomas F. Meagher returns to duty in December and is given command of the military district of Etowah, with headquarters at Chattanooga.
The Greek Assembly chooses Britain's Prince Alfred to succeed the deposed Otto I (see
Polish patriot Marian (Melchior) Langiewicz, 35, leads an insurrection against Russian rule (see 1815; Czartoryski,
Italian revolutionary and historian Giuseppe La Farina dies at Turin September 5 at age 48.
Denmark's Frederik VII dies at Glücksberg Castle November 15 at age 55 after a 15-year reign and is succeeded by his cousin, 45, who will reign until 1906 as Kristian IX. The duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, 34, denies Danish sovereignty and proclaims himself Frederik VIII (see
Egypt's Ottoman viceroy (khedive) Mohammed Said (Said Pasha) dies at Alexandria January 18 at age 40 after an 8½-year reign in which he has granted a concession for construction of the Suez Canal, decreased the influence of village headmen (sheikhs), encouraged the development of individual land ownership, and tried without success to bar importation of slaves from Sudan. He is succeeded by his 33-year-old cousin, who will reign until 1879 as Ismail Pasha. The new khedive makes a speech about the need for economy but sets out to complete the modernization of Egypt; by year's end he is hopelessly in debt and will go further into debt as he bribes newspapers to favor his vanity and buys jewels to adorn the wives in his harem (see Suez Canal, 1875).
Afghan forces under the command of Dost Mohammed Khan's son-in-law capture Herat in early June, but Dost Mohammed dies at the city June 9 at age 69 (approximate) after a 37-year reign that was interrupted from 1839 to 1841 (see 1857). Having maintained his country's independence during a period when Britain and Russia were competing avidly for control of Central Asia, he is succeeded by his son Afzal, but other members of the family will drive Afzal and his son Abdor Rahman, now 19, into exile in 1869. Abdor Rahman will remain at Samarkand until 1880, when he will return following the death in 1879 of his cousin Shir Ali.
Timbuktu falls to the Islamic army of the West African Tukolor leader Umar Tal (see 1860), but nomadic Tuareg warriors defeat the Tukolors and force them to retreat. Helped by Fulani and Moorish troops, the Tuaregs proceed to destroy Umar Tal's army and lay siege to the city of Hamdalahi, where he has taken refuge (see
Madagascar's Radama II is assassinated after a 2-year reign in which he has alarmed members of the nobility by favoring French interests. His widow will reign until 1868 under the name Rashoherina.
Cambodia's uncrowned king Norodom accepts French protection early in the year, having been induced to do so by naval officer Ernest Doudart de Lagrée, 39, and Roman Catholic missionary Jean-Claude Miche, who have gained his confidence (see Vietnam, 1862), but Norodom signs a secret treaty with Siam August 11 before the agreement with the French is ratified at Paris; the treaty makes Norodom Siam's viceroy and governor of Cambodia, Siam acquires the Cambodian provinces of Batdâmbâng and Siemréab, but the French will try to stop Siam from asserting further claims (see
Vietnamese diplomat Phan Thanh Gian proposes another treaty with the French, promising an annual tribute, recognizing southern Vietnam as a French protectorate, and offering commercial settlements and land around Saigon in return for a cessation of further French colonization efforts and a return of the three southern provinces that were ceded last year. Paris gives approval to the treaty (see
Xenophobic Japanese nationalist revolutionaries headed by Koshaku Yamagata Aritomo, 24, open fire May 10 on Western ships moving through the strait that separates Honshu from Kyushu (see Hisamitsu, 1862). Enraged at the growth of foreign influence under the Tokugawa shōgunate, they shout, "Revere the emperor!" "Drive out the barbarians" ("Sonnō jōi"). The feudal head of Chōshu Province closes the strait, and the shōgunal regent Keiki Tokugawa agrees to expel all foreigners June 25, but he does not make good on his promise and criticism of the shōgunate increases. The feudal head of Satsuma Province in Kyushu effects a coup d'état at the imperial court in Kyoto and forces the regent to reverse his policy. Koshaku Sanjo Sanetomi finds sanctuary in Chōshu (see
China's Taiping rebels lose Suzhou (Soochow) to Qing (Manchu) forces led by Zeng Kuofan and the British general Charles G. Gordon, 30 (see 1862;
General Sir Colin Campbell, Baron Clyde, dies at Chatham, Kent, August 14 at age 70 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
New Zealand's Maori chieftain Wiremu Kingi leads his people in a new conflict with British colonial authorities (see Land Act, 1862). He gains recognition of the legitimacy of his claims to Waitara lands, but hostilities in the Waikato War will continue until next year, and Kingi will not submit to colonial authority until 1872.
French forces occupy Mexico City June 7, and a group of exiled Mexican leaders meet under French auspices in July to adopt an imperial form of government for their country (see 1862). They offer the Mexican throne to Austria's 31-year-old Archduke Maximilian von Hapsburg, brother of the emperor Franz Josef (see
New Granada changes its name to the United States of Colombia under terms of a new Liberal constitution which calls for 2-year presidential terms (see
The Emancipation Proclamation issued last year by President Lincoln takes effect January 1, freeing nearly 4 million U.S. slaves but not those in Union-held areas. When the proclamation is instrumented universally in 1865, some 385,000 slaveowners will lose human property valued at $2 billion, but while half of all white families in South Carolina and Mississippi own slaves and 12 percent of all slaveowners have more than 20 slaves, 75 percent of all free Southerners have no direct connection with slavery.
The National Women's Loyalty League is founded May 14 to oppose slavery.
Surinam in South America abolishes slavery July 1, but Dutch colonial authorities place former slaves under government supervision for a 10-year period, during which time they are to perform labor under contract and other contract laborers are to be recruited from the East Indies to work in the sugar fields.
Shoshone tribesmen in what later will be Idaho attack mining camps and mule trains carrying gold bound for the U.S. Mint at San Francisco. Union troops under the command of Colonel Edward Patrick Connor retaliate January 29 with a massacre of men, women, and children on the Bear River, where the whites have killed the game on which the tribe has depended for its livelihood. The Ruby Valley Treaty signed with the Shoshone, Washoe, and other tribes in the Nevada Territory gives more than 23 million acres to the tribes but most of it is desert; the white man receives rights to build railroads across the Native American lands, which account for 86 percent of the Territory (see
Tribal leaders of the Nez Percé in the Northwest are forced to sign a treaty agreeing to vacate lands coveted by the whites (see 1877).
Kit Carson reaches Fort Defiance in Arizona Territory July 20 with federal troops that have been joined by a band of Ute tribesmen. He begins to resettle Navajo and Apache tribespeople on a reservation at Fort Sumner in New Mexico. All captives who surrender voluntarily are to be taken to the reservation to become farmers, all males who resist to be shot and their livestock and food supplies destroyed (see 1862;
Quaker minister Elizabeth Leslie Comstock travels through the North, ministering to hospital patients, prison-camp inmates, and refugee slaves (see 1854). Now 47, she will campaign after the war in behalf of prison reform, women's rights, and home-mission welfare work.
Philadelphia-born Quaker orator Anna (Elizabeth) Dickinson, 20, speaks in May at the Great Hall of New York's Cooper Union after lecture tours through New Hampshire and Connecticut, stirs an audience of 5,000, and pockets a fee of $1,000 for her eloquence in the causes of women, blacks, interracial marriage, and an end to double standards. An anonymous pamphlet appears on New York area newsstands December 25: "Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro"; written by two journalists at a pro-Democratic newspaper, the work introduces the word miscegenation, explaining that it derives from the Latin miscere (to mix) and genus (race). Some abolitionists applaud the argument that "science has demonstrated that the intermarriage of diverse races is indispensable to a progressive humanity," but congressmen denounce the pamphlet, whose authors have produced it in an effort to turn voters against President Lincoln.
President Lincoln proclaims a general suspension of the writ of habeas corpus September 15 (see 1862). He limits his order to prisoners of war, spies, and "aiders or abettors" of the enemy, but some 13,000 Americans will be held prisoner without benefit of habeas corpus before hostilities have ended (see Milligan,
The fundamental principles of an international Red Cross movement to aid wounded soldiers and other victims of war are established in February by a five-man committee formed at Geneva in response to Henri Dunant's 1862 appeal. Dunant—the man in the bloodstained linen suit—has toured the capitals of Europe and become a celebrity with his plea for a corps of volunteers with no affiliation to any country's military (see
Explorers John Hanning Speke and James A. Grant reach Gondokoro in southern Sudan in February and meet with explorers Samuel (White) Baker, 41, and Florence von Sass (see 1862). A merchant's son who has lived on Mauritius and Ceylon, the London-born White came to Africa 2 years ago with von Sass (who will become his second wife) and has been exploring Nile tributaries near the border between Sudan and Ethiopia. Supplied with maps furnished by Speke, Baker and von Sass leave in February to investigate Speke's suggestion that another large lake may lie beyond Lake Victoria (see
Explorer John M. Bozeman undertakes to lead a caravan of settlers and freighters to Montana Territory (see 1862). Scared off by a Sioux raiding party, the caravan takes the usual southern route through Bridger's Pass to Fort Hall, but Bozeman presses on along the risky route along the Powder River that he took last year and reaches Virginia City without being harmed (see 1865).
The New York Stock & Exchange Board changes its name January 29 to the New York Stock Exchange, having operated since 1817 as the Stock and Exchange Board.
The National Banking Act approved by Congress February 25 and signed into law by President Lincoln aims to raise money to finance the Union war effort, establish a uniform national currency (see Legal Tender Act, 1862), and provide a dependable market for government bonds. The act makes it possible for five or more persons with total capital of $50,000 or more ($100,000 in large cities) to form a bank and receive a federal charter if the bank purchases U.S. bonds equal in value to one-third of the bank's initial capitalization. The Treasury will engrave the money for the bank and call them national bank certificates, their value will be equal to 90 percent of the market value of the U.S. bonds purchased by the bank, the bank can then use the certificates for loans and other commercial transactions, and owners of the certificates will earn a profit as they appreciate in value. A bank will also receive interest payments in gold from bonds it bought from the federal government. The Treasury issues "five twenties" (6 percent bonds callable in 5 years and maturing in 20), but demand for the bonds will rise and fall depending on the Union's military fortunes. By 1865 there will be 1,500 national banks, about 800 of them having given up their state charters, the rest being new banks.
First National Bank of New York is founded in the basement of a building at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street by local entrepreneur John Thompson, 61, who publishes the Thompson Bank Note Detector (see Chase, 1877; First National City, 1955). The bank has a capital of $100,000 and is soon followed by the Second National Bank, under the Fifth Avenue Hotel, with a capital of $200,000; and the Third National Bank, with a capital of $300,000.
The First National Bank of Chicago is founded.
A new gold rush begins in May as prospectors discover gold at Alder Gulch in the Idaho Territory.
The Troy, New York, Collar Laundry Workers headed by Irish-born laundress Kate Mullaney strike for higher wages. The women work 12- to 14-hour days at temperatures close to 100° F. and earn scarcely $2 to $3 per week (see 1866).
A report published by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th earl of Shaftesbury, reveals that children as young as 4 and 5 are still working at some British factories from 6 o'clock in the morning to 10 at night (see 1847). Now 62, Cooper inherited his title when his father died in 1851.
The General German Workers' Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein, or ADV) founded at Leipzig May 23 elects Ferdinand Lassalle president for a 5-year term. Now 38, he was asked in December of last year to write a program for the workers' general congress, seized upon the opportunity to organize a "Suffrage Army," and wrote, "Organize yourselves as a general German workingmen's association to agitate legally and peacefully, but untiringly and ceaselessly, for the introduction of universal and direct suffrage in all German provinces! This is the banner you must raise! This is the sign under which you will be victorious!" (but see
Wall Street hears about the Union victory at Gettysburg even before the news reaches President Lincoln, New York becomes second only to London as a financial center, and new after-hours exchanges open in uptown hotels and elsewhere amidst a frenzy to speculate. Prices on the New York Stock Exchange (and in unofficial trading) plummet on news of Union victories and rise when Confederate troops prevail; speculators act on the presumption that a longer war will benefit industry and railroads.
Shovel manufacturer Oliver Ames dies at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, September 11 at age 74, having turned over his business 19 years ago to his sons Oakes and Oliver, Jr., who reorganized the 89-year-old family firm under the name Oliver Ames and Sons and have obtained government contracts to supply shovels, swords, and other equipment. Oakes's 32-year-old son Oliver III inherits a ninth-part interest in the firm and becomes an active partner, avoiding military service by hiring a substitute; merchant and onetime seacaptain William F. Sturgis dies at Boston October 21 at age 81, having amassed a fortune in the fur and Chinese opium trades.
The International Machinists and Blacksmiths Union adopts a resolution at Boston in the fall demanding an 8-hour day at a time when most of its members are obliged to work 12 hours per day 6 days per week. New London, Connecticut-born machinist Ira Steward, 32, has been agitating for shorter hours since age 20, was dismissed by the Draper Machine Company because of his "peculiar views," and has secured passage of the resolution; he gains support from Boston abolitionist and reformer Wendell Phillips, 51, to start the Grand Eight Hour League, whose secretary is Amesbury, Massachusetts-born shoemaker George E. (Edwin) McNeill, 26; similar organizations spring up throughout America, and Steward obtains large appropriations from his union and from the Boston Trades' Assembly to finance lobbying efforts in state legislatures; six states will adopt 8-hour laws but find them hard to enforce (see federal employees, 1868).
France's Credit Lyonnaise Bank is incorporated.
Britain and France sign commercial treaties with Belgium to begin a period of free trade. The River Scheldt reopens to free navigation for the first time since 1648.
Singer Manufacturing Company is incorporated at New York in June by sewing machine inventor I. M. Singer and Edward Clark, who split 4,100 of the 5,000 shares between them (see
The Travelers Insurance Compamy chartered June 17 at Hartford, Connecticut, by local businessman James Goodwin Batterson, 41, is the first U.S. accident insurer. Batterson has traveled in England earlier in the year and observed the system of ticket insurance being introduced there to protect against railway accidents, and he has raised $250,000 to start the company in an upstairs room with a pine desk and some old chairs. Asked at the post office by banker James E. Bolter what he will charge to insure him against an accident on his way from the post office to his home, where he plans to have lunch, Batterson quickly replies, "Two cents." He writes his first policy there in the post office and pockets the two pennies, and they will be kept as souvenirs in the company's home office.
A Russian fleet sails into New York harbor in September on a goodwill mission, Admiral Lisovski and his officers receive a warm welcome, and before they leave they donate $4,760 to the city to buy fuel for the poor who have not participated in the city's wartime economic boom and are being squeezed by inflation.
Some 72 ships from New York arrive at Metamoros, Mexico, carrying wagons, medical supplies, uniforms, and other cargo that will be transshipped to Confederate ports, and some New Yorkers reap large profits by such trade.
New York merchant A. T. Stewart pays income taxes on an income of $1,843,637, slightly more than William B. Astor or Cornelius van Derbilt, and even though the tax rate is low the revenue produced is considerable (see 1862). War profits have enabled some people to create large fortunes almost overnight: several hundred New Yorkers are estimated to be worth at least $1 million, and some as much as $20 million.
R. H. Macy holds his first clearance sale (see 1860). Macy has acquired the leases of neighboring stores, expanded his wares to include clothing, jewelry, dolls, toys, plants, and toiletries in a maze of salesrooms, has accepted mail orders since 1861, and promises free delivery to customers in Brooklyn, Hoboken, and Jersey City (see
John D. (Davison) Rockefeller enters the kerosene business at age 24. Having prospered as a Cleveland produce merchant, the upstate New York-born Rockefeller and his English-born partner Maurice B. Clark pool their $4,000 in savings to buy a half interest in the lard-oil refinery of Samuel Andrews and build a petroleum refinery at Cleveland (see 1860). The Cleveland area has 20 refineries by mid-year (it costs as little as $1,000 to build a small one and hire the employees needed to run it). Rockefeller will later say that he was talked into the investment by Clark's brothers, James and Richard. The 22-year-old R. G. Dun & Company credit agency was taken over 4 years ago by Robert Graham Dun and reports in June that Rockefeller "is not much of a businessman, but had some capital, it is said, advanced by his father, who is reputed well off" (see 1865).
Nearly 500,000 barrels of petroleum are shipped out of New York in the course of the year.
The world's first underground railway (subway) system opens January 10 (see 1853). Yorkshire-born civil engineer John Fowler, 45, has worked on most of its extensions, and despite sulfurous fumes from its coke-burning locomotives the steam-powered London Underground carries 9.5 million passengers in its first year; excavated from the surface by a cut-and-cover procedure rather than tunneled, it is roofed with girders or brick arches and will grow to cover 257 miles of track with 278 stations. Work will begin in 1866 on the City of London and Southwark Subway (later the City and South London Railway), using a tunneling shield that minimizes disruption of street traffic (see 1890; Tower Subway,
President Lincoln signs a bill passed last year that guarantees builders of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads $16,000 for every mile of track laid on the plains, $32,000 per mile for tracks laid through inter-mountain stretches, and $48,000 per mile for track laid through the mountains. The bill also provides for extensive land grants along the railroads' rights of way.
Central Pacific Railroad construction begins February 22 with ground-breaking ceremonies at Sacramento, California (see
Cornelius van Derbilt gains control of the New York and Harlem Railroad (see 1862;
The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad is organized November 24 by Pennsylvania-born Kansas abolitionist Cyrus K. (Kurtz) Holliday, 37, of Topeka with State Senator S. C. Pomeroy of Atchison and other promoters who rename a company formed earlier as the Atchison and Topeka. They lobby in the state legislature for federal land grants and county bond issues (see
The Milwaukee Road (Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad) has its beginnings in the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, which incorporates the Milwaukee and Mississippi founded in 1851. The road will be the first to reach Minneapolis and St. Paul (in 1867), enter Chicago on its own rails in 1873, adopt the name Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul in 1874, reach Omaha in 1882, and by 1887 will reach Kansas City (see
Union Pacific Railroad construction begins December 2 with ground-breaking ceremonies at Omaha in Nebraska Territory (see 1862). New Jersey investor John I. Blair, now 61, will personally finance construction of the first 100 miles west from Omaha (see 1865; Crédit Mobilier,
New Zealand gets her first railroad as a state-owned line opens between Christchurch and Ferrymead.
Twin-screw steamers appear on the high seas but Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Sunderland, and other British ports will produce hundreds of iron windjammers in the next two decades while U.S. ships will continue to be made of the wood that North America's vast forests make cheap and abundant.
Connecticut-born New York Times technical adviser Alexander L. (Lyman) Holley, 31, purchases U.S. rights to the Bessemer process for steel making that he learned about last year while on a business trip to England. He will make a deal with holders of potentially conflicting patents and by 1865 will have a steel plant in operation at Troy, New York, making steel rails that will provide the basis for America's steel industry.
Wyandotte Iron Works in Michigan pours the first Kelly-process steel. William Kelly's 1857 patent for the "pneumatic process" will come under the control of the only U.S. company licensed by Henry Bessemer, and the Bessemer name will come into exclusive use for the process (see 1856). Kelly will receive less than 5 percent of the royalties paid to Bessemer (see oxygen furnace,
The Saucon Iron Co. founded in 1857 at South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, hires John Fritz of Cambria Iron, who has pioneered in making Bessemer steel. The company will change its name to Bethlehem Steel Co. in 1899 and to Bethlehem Steel Corp. in 1919 (see 1886).
The Solvay process employed in a new plant at Couillet, near Charleroi, is cheaper and more effective than the 1791 Leblanc process for obtaining soda (sodium carbonate) from salt (sodium chloride). Belgian industrial chemist Ernest Solvay, 25, and his brother Alfred dissolved salt in water 2 years ago, saturated it with ammonia, and allowed it to trickle down a tower full of perforated partitions. Carbon dioxide produced by heating limestone to quicklime is blown into the bottom of the tower to produce sodium bicarbonate which is heated to make sodium carbonate, or soda, which will be widely used not only to make glass and soap but also in paper, bleaches, water treatment, and petroleum refining (see Mond,
Cotton textile production begins in Japan. The Japanese will be the world's largest exporters of cotton goods by 1932.
Congress charters a National Academy of Sciences March 3 to advise the U.S. government in scientific matters and promote scientific research (see AAAS, 1848). Physicist-educator Alexander Dallas Bache, now 57, and botanist Asa Gray, now 52, play leading roles in organizing the academy (see NRC, 1916).
The Naturalist on the Amazon by H. W. Bates is published at London. Bates, now 38, returned in 1859 with 8,000 new insect species (see 1848).
The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man by Sir Charles Lyell endorses the views of Charles Darwin without reservation, creating a public stir by challenging literal interpretations of the Bible (see Haeckel, 1862; 1866).
Anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen describes for publication the first known fossil bird (Archaeopteryx lithogrphica), which was discovered in limestone deposits dating to the Late Jurassic Period (163 to 144 million B.C.) in upper Bavaria and which Owen has obtained for the British Museum, but it will be determined in 1954 that he has mistaken the dorsal for the ventral and missed the fossil's two most salient features, that the natural cast of its brain case was like that of a reptile and that its flat breastbone proved that the bird could not fly but only glide.
Astronomer-optician Giovanni Battista Amici dies at Florence April 10 at age 77; chemist Eilhardt Mitscherlich at Schönberg, outside Berlin, August 28 at age 69.
General Surgical Pathology and Therapeutics (Allgemeine chirurgische Pathologie und Therapie) by Prussian-born Zürich surgeon Theodor Billroth, 34, pioneers modern abdominal surgery. Billroth will move to the University of Vienna in 1867 and found a surgical clinic.
The Parasites of Man (Die menschlichen Parasiten) by German zoologist (Karl Georg Friederich) Rudolf Leuckart, 40, initiates the modern science of parasitology. Leuckhart describes the complicated life cycles of the tapeworms, liver flukes, and other multicellular, wormlike phyla that produce such human diseases as trichinosis (see Zenker, 1860).
A scarlet fever epidemic in England takes more than 30,000 lives.
A 12-year worldwide cholera epidemic begins (see 1866).
Hindu philosopher and religious reformer Maharishi Debendranath Tagore, now 46, establishes a retreat in rural Bengal that he calls "Abode of Peace" (Shantiniketan). An educational center there will become an international university (see 1854; Sen, 1866).
A Jesuit church catches fire in Chile December 8, worshipers panic, and about 2,500 die.
France's Napoleon III appoints scholar Victor Duruy minister of education. Now 61, Duruy will propose free, compulsory education. The emperor will not support the idea, it will fail, but Duruy will succeed in introducing secular secondary education for girls, reorganize teacher training, add modern languages and contemporary history to lycée and college curricula, and begin extension-course programs in the provinces.
Le Petit Parisian begins publication under the name Le Petite Presse; it will be France's largest paper by 1910 with 1.5 million circulation (see 1944). Advertising will not develop in France as in Britain and America; French newspapers will be obliged to support themselves by offering favorable publicity to any political group that will pay.
The Boston Morning Herald that began publication in 1846 uses woodpulp paper for the first time in any U.S. paper January 15. The four-page, eight-column paper sells for 3¢ per copy, and the Herald will continue as such until July 9, 1967.
Union troops seize the offices of the Chicago Times June 3 and destroy part of that day's issue (see
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer begins publication at the West Coast city (seeTimes, 1896).
Nonfiction: Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation by actress Fanny Kemble is adapted from her diaries of 1838-1839. Now 53, Kemble has written accounts of slavery that are credited with dampening British interest in intervening on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War. She has bought a cottage at Berkshire, Massachusetts, and although she will make frequent trips home will not return to England to live until 1877.
Fiction: Former Mississippi riverboat pilot Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 25, adopts the pen name "Mark Twain" in a letter written January 31 and published in the Territorial Enterprise 4 days later at Carson City, Nevada. Born in Florida, Missouri, Clemens came west by stage from St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1861 with his brother Orion, who had been appointed secretary of the Nevada Territory. Clemens worked for a few weeks for Orion, failed as a prospector, and in September of last year took a job as a reporter for the paper, and uses as his nom de plume the cry used by Mississippi riverboat leadsmen to indicate a 12-foot depth of water. Twain will move to San Francisco next year to work for the San Francisco Call and write short stories; "The Man Without a Country" by Boston-born author Edward Everett Hale, 41, whose story in the Atlantic Monthly is about one Philip Nolan, who has been exiled for his part in the treason of Aaron Burr but has requested that he be memorialized with the epitaph, "He loved his country as no other man has loved her;/ but no man has deserved less at her hands" (Hale has been inspired by the treatment of Ohio "Copperhead" and alleged traitor Clement L. Vallandigham); Romola by George Eliot; Five Weeks in a Balloon (Cinq Semaines en Ballon) by French novelist Jules Verne, 35; The House by the Churchyard by former Irish Evening Mail editor Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, 49, who has withdrawn from society following the death of his wife and taken to writing stories of the supernatural; Held in Bondage by English novelist Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramée), 24; The Canadians of Old (Les Anciens Canadiens) by Quebec author Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, 76, whose romantic-historical novel is set in 1760 at the time of the British conquest and reflects a distrust of English Canada.
Philologist-folklorist Jacob L. C. Grimm dies at Berlin September 20 at age 78; novelist William Makepeace Thackeray at London December 23 at age 52.
Poetry: Tales of a Wayside Inn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow includes "Paul Revere's Ride." Friends gathered at the Red-Horse Inn at Sudbury some 20 miles from Cambridge tell tales, the landlord going first: "Listen, my children and you shall hear/ Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,/ On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy Five;/ hardly a man is now alive/ Who remembers that fabulous day and year"; The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: "When all the world is young, lad,/ And all the trees are green;/ And every goose a swan, lad,/ And every lass a queen;/ Then hey, for boot and horse, lad,/ And round the world away;/ Young blood must have its course, lad,/ And every dog its day."
Poet-lexicographer Clement Clarke Moore dies at Newport, Rhode Island, July 10 at age 83; poet-playwright-novelist Alfred, comte de Vigny, of cancer at Paris September 17 at age 69.
Painting: Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Edouard Manet is exhibited May 15 at the Salon des Refuses in Paris and creates a furor with its depiction of a nude woman picknicking with two clothed men.
Other paintings: Mlle. Victorine in the Costume of an Espada and Olympia by Manet, whose model for all three works is redhead Victorine Meurent, a painter herself, who will live until 1928; Man with Hoe by Jean-François Millet (see Markham, 1899); Icebergs by Frederick E. Church. Eugène Delacroix dies at Paris August 13 at age 65.
James A. McNeill Whistler discovers Japanese ukiyoe prints at London. He will promote Japanese art in Paris and adopt a Japanese butterfly seal to sign his work (see
The Winged Victory of Samothrace turns up in excavations at the Greek city of Samothrace. The Louvre at Paris will exhibit the statue into the 21st century.
Theater: Lady Audley's Secret by English melodramatist Colin H. Haslewood 5/25 at London's Royal Victoria Theatre (it is based on last year's novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon).
Actor Charles Wyndham resigns from the Union Army and joins a Washington, D.C., stock company headed by actor John Wilkes Booth (see
Playwright Friedrich Hebbel dies at his native Vienna December 13 at age 50, having received the Schiller Prize on his 50th birthday in March.
First performance: Missa Solemnis in A flat major by the late Franz Schubert 1/1 at Leipzig.
Opera: Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers) 9/10 at the Théâtre-Lyrique, Paris, with music by French composer Georges (Alexander César Leopold) Bizet, 25. Clara Kellogg sings the role of Marguerite in the 1859 Gounod opera Faust 11/25 at New York's Academy of Music. It will be her most famous role until her retirement in 1887.
Popular songs: "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" by Louis Lambert (Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore). He has adapted the song "Johnny Fill Up the Bowl" which may have been adapted from the song "Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye"; "Just Before the Battle, Mother" by George Frederick Root; "The Battle Cry of Freedom" by George Frederick Root is a huge success and will be sung for well over a century; "Weeping, Sad and Lonely, or When This Cruel War Is Over" by Henry Tucker, lyrics by Charles Carroll Sawyer; "The Rock Island Line" by Confederate soldiers: "Now the Rock Island Line/ It is a mighty good road, Oh the Rock Island Line/ It is the road to ride" but while the lyrics say, "She runs down to New Orleans" the Rock Island will in fact never go beyond Eunice, Louisiana (see transportation,
A new Football Association established in England draws up definitive rules for "soccer" (see rugby, 1823). It will be called "association" in Britain and "football" in most other countries, and the game remain popular throughout Europe and South America (see U.S. football, 1869; World Cup,
The first major U.S. racetrack for flat racing opens at Saratoga Springs, New York, which will become the center of American horse racing (see Travers Stakes,
Former British heavyweight champion John Gully dies at Durham March 9 at age 79. Heavyweight Tom King wins the world championship December 8 at Wadhurst, Kent, defeating the U.S. titleholder John C. Heenan in 24 rounds. Heenan retires at age 30.
The first four-wheeled roller skates are patented by New York inventor James L. Plimpton, whose small boxwood wheels are arranged in pairs and cushioned by rubber pads, making it possible to maintain balance while executing intricate maneuvers (see
General Tom Thumb is married February 10 at New York's Grace Church on Broadway and 10th Street to Lavinia Warren (Mercy Bunn), who stands two feet eight inches in height (see 1842). Heavily promoted by showman P. T. Barnum, the wedding attracts huge crowds that jam the streets (the wedding party stands on a grand piano to receive guests at the Metropolitan Hotel).
Britain's Prince of Wales is married March 10 to Princess Alexandra of Denmark.
Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase's beautiful Cincinnati-born daughter Katherine Jane "Kate" turns 23 August 13 and is married November 12 to the rich and handsome Sen. William Sprague, now 33 (D. R.I.), who served with distinction at the Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) as an aide to General Burnside and has been in the Senate since March 4. His family's cotton mills have prospered from war orders and his wife will use his vast fortune to advance her father's political career.
London inventor and rubber manufacturer Frederick Walton receives a patent December 19 for linoleum (see 1860). Scottish entrepreneur Michael Nairn at Kirkaldy will develop a faster process to solidify linseed oil, using large cylindrical kettles in which the oil will be stirred at high temperatures, but all linoleum production will be based essentially on Walton's invention.
Munich's Propylaeon is completed after 17 years' work to Greek Revival designs by court architect Leo von Klenze.
The Capitol dome at Washington is capped December 2 to complete the great structure on which work has continued through the war by order of President Lincoln (see 1857). When the wooden dome completed in 1824 was removed as a fire hazard in 1856 and replaced with a temporary roof, the New York foundry Janes, Fowler, Kirtland & Company offered to build a new dome at 7¢ per pound. Having unified the work of the Capitol's three previous architects William Thornton, Benjamin Latrobe, and Charles Bulfinch, architect Thomas U. Walter has designed the cast-iron dome, which is based on Michelangelo's dome for St. Peter's Basilica at Rome but rises 287-feet high, having been shipped in pieces from the Bronx and bolted together (see fresco, 1865). Congress next year will create the National Statuary Hall, authorizing each state to install two statues, and when it is finished in 1866 the 8,909,202-pound dome will have cost more than $620,000. The Capitol will be landscaped with terraces designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.
New York's Central Park Commission reports, "If all the applications for the erection and maintenance of towers, houses, drinking fountains, telescopes, mineral water fountains, cottages, Eolian harps, gymnasiums, observatories, and weighing scales, for the sale of eatables, velocipedes, perambulators, indian work, tobacco and segars, iceboats and the use of the ice for fancy dress carnivals were granted, they would occupy a large portion of the surface of the park, establish a very extensive and very various business, and give to it the appearance of the grounds of a country fair, or of a militia training ground."
California settler Thomas Baker wins a contract to reclaim the swampy land of the Kern River delta. Having failed to strike it rich in the gold rush there 12 years ago, he will be granted part of the newly-drained land, sell part of it, survey the site of a town that will be called Bakersfield, and plants corn, beans, and potatoes. Oil will be discovered in the area in 1865, but Kern County will remain a major producer of almonds, apples, carrots, citrus fruit, cotton, and zucchini, becoming America's third-largest agricultural producing county.
The Marsh reaper patented in 1858 goes into production at Plano, Illinois. Improvements have been made in the machine, and further refinements will bring it to perfection by 1878 (see Appleby binder, 1869; Deering,
Widescale rustling (theft) begins on the Texas plains as cattle there are hit by the worst winter in years.
An epidemic of cattle disease in Britain over the next 4 years will boost meat prices and will cause a boom in imports of tinned meats from Australia (see 1866).
The British epizootic strikes hardest at Dutch cows that have proved the sturdiest milkers for keeping in urban milk sheds but are the breeds most susceptible to disease. British dairymen are compelled to make wider and more efficient use of milk trains (see 1844), develop water coolers on farms and at milk depots, and use tinned-steel churns for transporting milk from the trains to urban markets.
Paris physician Casimir Davaine shows that sheep probably come down with anthrax because of microorganisms in their blood (see medicine,
English gardeners at Kew, outside London, record a blight of some kind that affects imported U.S. grape vines. French wine growers near Arles, in Provence, see leaves on their vines wither and drop; new shoots have no vigor, the grapes do not ripen, and within 3 years most of the vines will be dead (see 1865).
Disruption of sugar plantations in the South sends U.S. sugar prices soaring and brings a vigorous increase in sugar planting in the Hawaiian Islands, dependent for years on the whaling industry that is now in a decline as a result of the growing use of kerosene for lamp oil (see energy, 1859).
President Jefferson Davis urges Southerners to plant corn, peas, and beans. His April message gives priority to food crops over cotton and tobacco.
Richmond has bread riots in April and Mobile in September as the Union starves the South. Vicksburg, Mississippi, is starved out July 4.
Union forces cut the South off from its salt deposits on the Louisiana Gulf Coast and destroy all its salt works in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. Salt from wells in the area of Syracuse, New York, and Saginaw, Michigan, keep the North well supplied.
Sutlers provide Union troops with canned meat, oysters, condensed milk (see Borden,
Bay Sugar Refining Company is founded by German-born entrepreneur Claus Spreckels, 35, who has prospered as a San Francisco grocer and brewer since 1856 (see 1868).
Confederate troops eat the meat-and-vegetable stew "burgoo" created by Lexington, Kentucky, chef Gus Jaubert but there is widespread hunger in the South.
Granula is introduced by Dansville, New York, sanatorium operator James Caleb Jackson, 52, who has baked graham flour dough into oven-dried bread crumbs to create the first cold breakfast food (see nutrition [Graham],
La Villette opens at Paris. The central, hygienic slaughterhouse has been designed by Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann, prefect of the Seine since 1852.
Perrier water is introduced commercially by Source Perrier, which bottles the French spring water that bubbles up from a spring near Nimes. The water contains calcium and sparkles because of its natural carbon dioxide content.
Toronto brewer Eugene O'Keefe resigns from his O'Keefe & Company to start a new brewery. He will build a large plant in 1879 that will make his name familiar among beer drinkers.
The Great American Tea Company founded in 1859 grows to have six stores and begins selling a line of groceries in addition to tea (see A&P, 1869).
President Lincoln proclaims a national Thanksgiving Day October 3 and sets aside the last Thursday in November to commemorate the feast given by the Pilgrims in 1621 for their Wampanoag benefactors (see Washington, 1789). The president has acted partly in response to a plea from Godey's Lady's Book editor Sarah Josepha Hale, now 74, who has campaigned since 1846 for Thanksgiving Day commemorations and by 1852 had persuaded people to celebrate Thanksgiving on the same day in 30 of the 32 states, in U.S. consulates abroad, and on U.S. ships in foreign waters (see Roosevelt,
The Cunard Line enters the immigrant trade with low rates for passengers aboard its new screw-propeller transatlantic ships as potato rot hits Ireland once again, restimulating the exodus to America (see
President Lincoln asks Congress December 8 to establish a system for encouraging immigration.
