1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870
Washington demands removal of French forces from Mexico February 12 (see 1865). Having failed to gain U.S. recognition, the emperor Maximilian sends his wife, Carlota (originally Charlotte), to seek aid from Pope Pius IX and Napoleon III, but the daughter of Belgium's king soon finds that her husband's cause is hopeless (see 1867).
The bodies of 2,011 unidentified Civil War soldiers are buried in a mass grave at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac from Washington, D.C. A granite sarcophagus calls the entombed a "noble army of martyrs," all were killed in battles in the nearby Manassas area, but it has been impossible to determine who fought on which side (one third of the war's casualties were never identified) (see Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, 1921).
Mexican War hero and 1852 presidential candidate Winfield Scott dies at West Point May 29 at age 79; former U.S. secretary of war Lewis Cass at Detroit June 17 at age 83; former U.S. Navy commander (and governor pro tem of California) Robert F. Stockton at his native Princeton, New Jersey, October 7 at age 71.
Radical Republicans sweep the mid-term elections in November despite efforts by President Johnson to rally support for his southern Reconstruction policies (see 1865). He has called the radical Republicans "disunionists" in a February 22 speech and denounced that faction's leaders, Congress has passed a Freedmen's Bureau Bill in February and a Civil Rights Bill in April over his vetoes, Southerners say Johnson has usurped states' rights, and his proposals to give emancipated slaves full rights as citizens have caused convulsions in the South while making even many northerners uncomfortable (see 1867).
Prussia declares a general amnesty that permits fugitives from the repression that followed the 1848 revolution and the 1849 republican uprising to return home without fear of reprisal, even if they have been condemned to death in their absence.
Europe goes to war for 7 weeks beginning June 16 as Prussian minister-president Count Otto von Bismarck-Schönhausen, now 51, orders General Edwin Hans Karl, Freiherr von Manteuffel, 57, to launch an attack on Austrian forces from Schleswig (see Convention of Badgastein, 1865). Bismarck has formed an alliance with the new kingdom of Italy, whose royal family wants to drive the Austrians out of Venetia; Bavaria sides with Austria, and the war soon widens as French, Austrian, Hanoverian, Italian, and Prussian forces engage in combat for supremacy in Central Europe, fighting in three theaters with railroads and telegraphic communications playing an important part for the first time in a European war as they did in the American Civil War.
The (second) Battle of Custozza June 24 pits an 80,000-man Italian army against 60,000 Austrians 12 miles southwest of Verona. Archduke Albrecht defeats Gen. Alfonso di La Marmora's columns piecemeal as they emerge from the hills and drives them back across the Mincio River into Lombardy before they can be deployed, killing and wounding 3,800 and taking 4,300 prisoners; Austrian casualties total 4,600, killed and wounded.
Prussia demands that Hanover remain unarmed and neutral but that country's George V refuses June 29. Now 55, the king lost the sight of one eye in an accident when still a boy and has been totally blind since 1833. Prussia annexes Hanover in September.
The Battle of Sadowa (Königgrätz) July 3 ends in a stunning defeat for 271,000 Hapsburg troops—one Saxon and seven Austrian corps plus four cavalry divisions. Standing erect and firing muzzle-loaders, the Austrian and Saxon infantrymen are easy targets for the Prussian infantrymen of Helmuth Karl Bernhard, Graf von Moltke, 66, who are equipped with breech-loading needle guns that can be discharged from prone positions and fire three to four times faster (see technology, 1848). Austrian Field Marshal Ludwig von Benedek, 62, is able to disengage and withdraw south of the Elbe, but his slightly outnumbered army has sustained major casualties: 13,000 killed, 18,393 wounded, 13,000 taken prisoner, and 174 guns captured. Some 40 French soldiers are killed or wounded and 20,000 taken prisoner; Prussian casualties total 1,935 killed, 7,237 wounded, 3,573 captured. The Austrian artillery has proved superior, and the Prussians will upgrade their artillery in the next few years as they try to gain recognition and respect that will give them authority equal to that of Britain.
Austrian forces defeat Italians on both land and sea, but Venetia (including Venice) is ceded to Italy July 3 (it was ceded earlier by Austria to France).
Italian statesman Luigi C. Farini dies at Quarto August 1 at age 53.
The Treaty of Prague August 23 ends the 7-week European war, terminates the Germanic Confederation of 1815, and incorporates Hanover, Electoral Hesse, Frankfurt, and Nassau into Prussia, which excludes Austria from territory north of the Main.
A Cretan insurrection against Ottoman rule fails to gain any direct support from the Greek prime minister Aléxandros Koumoundhouros (see 1861). He does try to make anti-Turkish alliances with Egypt, Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania (see 1868).
The first king of Romania is recognized October 24 by the Ottoman sultan Abdul Aziz and begins a reign that will continue until 1914 (although Romania will not obtain full independence until 1878). Conservatives and Liberals who want a foreign prince have kidnapped Alexander Guza and forced him to abdicate, a new constitution has been introduced in July based on the liberal but undemocratic Belgian charter of 1831, Prince Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, 27, has been proclaimed king of Wallachia and Moldavia, and he has arrived at Bucharest after traveling incognito across Austria.
France withdraws her troops from Rome in December.
Japan's shōgun Iemochi Tokugawa dies of beriberi in August at age 20 as forces favoring a restoration of power to the emperor increase in strength (see 1865); Iemochi's regent Keiki Tokugawa, now 28, finally gains the shōgunate that he was denied in 1858 and makes efforts to gain French support. Son of the late reformer Nariaki Tokugawa of Mito, Keiki wants to restore the imperial power and will reign only briefly as Yoshinobu Tokugawa—the nation's last shōgun. Samurai swordsman Ryoma Sakamoto, 30, has been conspiring with other rebels against the Tokugawa shogunate and persuades leaders of the Satsuma clan to end their historical enmity toward the rival Chōshu clan; one of the first Japanese to wear Western boots and to take his bride on a wedding trip, Sakamoto forges the Satsuma-Chōshu Alliance, uniting the country's two large feudal domains (hans), and when the shōgunate tries to block foreign aid to the Chōshu he obtains Satsuma assistance to obtain British arms for the Chōshu (see Meiji Restoration, 1867).
Korea's king Kojong and his father begin vigorous implementation of a xenophobic policy aimed at expelling French and U.S. missionaries from the country (see 1864). China's Qing dynasty officials do not interfere (see 1882).
Peru declares war on Spain and defeats the Spanish fleet off Callao with help from her allies (see 1865). Spanish intervention ceases, and Madrid will make no further efforts to reassert hegemony over any of its former American colonies, but the treaty formally ending hostilities will not be signed until 1879.
Coalition forces devastate Paraguay, slaughtering much of her army, but lose 4,000 men September 22 when they attack an entrenched position at Curupaití (see 1865; 1867).
Former U.S. Navy officer and California governor Robert F. Stockton dies at his native Princeton, New Jersey, October 7 at age 71, having served as president of the Delaware and Raritan Canal Co. that he helped to found in 1846.
Congress passes a Civil Rights Act April 9 over President Johnson's veto to secure for former slaves all the rights of citizenship intended by the Thirteenth Amendment. Johnson has defied Congress in his hostility to the rights of black people (see politics, 1867).
Reconstruction begins in the South, accompanied by racial conflicts. Memphis has a race riot from May 1 to 3 as Irish police and firefighters join with other white citizens in an attack on black Union troops and civilians, burning 12 schools and four churches: 46 blacks and five whites are killed. Congressional hearings held after the Memphis riot produce testimony from several black women that they were brutally raped by their white attackers. Efforts to introduce black suffrage into the Louisiana constitution produce a July 30 race riot at New Orleans that leaves 34 blacks and three white radicals dead and more than 100 injured before federal troops can suppress the violence.
The U.S. Supreme Court sets limits to the authority of martial law and to suspension of habeas corpus rights in time of war in the case of Ex parte Milligan (see 1864; Ex Parte Vallandigham, 1864), but it does not hand down its April 3 opinion until December 17: "Martial law can never exist where the courts are open in the proper and unobstructed exercise of their jurisdiction." The issue of whether Congress or the president has the right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus remains unresolved.
A law enacted by the Georgia state legislature December 28 authorizes a convict leasing system that will lead to similar "Black Code" laws in other Southern states (see 1865). Operators of coal mines in northwestern Georgia, plantation owners, and other private entrepreneurs have pushed for the legislation, which applies only to prisoners serving terms of less than 10 years, and since the only whites serving time in prison have been convicted of serious crimes and have been sentenced to more than 10 years the prisoners farmed out are virtually all blacks. Those who hire them from the state have little or no concern with their physical welfare, and they receive such brutal treatment at the hands of overseers that many will either die or deliberately maim themselves in order to avoid work details. Few will escape.
The American Equal Rights Association founded May 10 at New York is an outgrowth of the Woman's Rights Society (see 1848; Anthony, 1869).
Elizabeth Cady Stanton runs for Congress as an independent, opposing Republican protectionist economic policies, accusing Republicans of helping the rich at the expense of the masses and trying to establish a new aristocracy, and opposing woman suffrage bills presented by Democrats.
Oglala Sioux warriors under the command of Red Cloud attack settlers in Montana Territory near Fort Phil Kearny December 21 (see 1865). Opening the Powder River area to white emigrants threatens the natives' rich hunting grounds, and what will be remembered as the Fetterman Massacre brings a temporary halt to white settlement (see 1867).
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded by New York shipbuilder's son Henry Bergh, 43, who serves as first president. Chief object of the society is to stop the abuse of horses (see philanthropy [ASPCC], 1874).
A French expedition leaves Saigon in June with orders to explore the Mekong River. Led by Doudart de Lagreé, its second in command is naval officer Francis Garnier, 26, and although the expedition will find that the river is unnavigable to anything but small boats it will succeed in mapping the territory and become the first European group to enter China's Ya-nan (Yunan) Province from the south. Lagrée will die in March 1868 and Garnier will lead the party back home 3 months later (see politics, 1873).
Geodesist Sir George Everest dies at London December 1 at age 76. He was knighted in 1861 and Peak XV in the Himalayas was renamed in his honor last year.
The Funding Act approved by Congress April 12 provides for the conversion of short-term securities into long-term bonds.
London has a Black Friday May 11 as financial panic hits the city.
Postwar economic depression begins in the United States as prices begin a rapid decline following the Civil War's inflation (see Black Friday, 1869).
Congress votes July 1 to impose a 10 percent tax on state bank notes in an effort to drive state banks out of business (see 1865), but it votes July 13 to reduce wartime taxes.
Troy, New York, iron moulders go on strike and receive $1,000 from the women of the growing Collar Laundry Workers Union (see 1863). When New York bricklayers walk off the job later in the year, they receive $500 from Kate Mullaney's laundry workers (see 1868).
The National Labor Congress convenes August 20 at Baltimore, forms the National Labor Union, and advocates an 8-hour workday at a time when 10, 12, and even more hours is standard. President of the union is William H. Sylvis, 38, who early in 1861 called for a national convention of workingmen to oppose the impending civil war. Sylvis has helped reorganize the Iron-Moulders' Union and will use Washington lobbyists to promote the interests of his 600,000-member National Labor Union until his death in July 1869 (see Knights of Labor, 1869).
Pennsylvania-born merchant William Andrews Clark, 27, travels by horseback in the fall from Virginia City in Montana Territory to the Pacific Coast, where he purchases a large stock of goods that he takes to a new store that he sets up at the mining camp of Elk City. Clark joined the gold rush to Montana 3 years ago, washed out $1,500 in gold, used it to ship a load of provisions from Salt Lake City to a store that he started at Virginia City, found that miners were willing to pay high prices for tobacco, located a good supply of it at Boise City, bought several thousand pounds, hauled it to Last Chance Gulch (later Helena), sold it at high profit, and has become rich (see bank, 1870).
Horses provide virtually all the power for urban transit and for agricultural production in most of the world.
An internal combustion engine patented by Nikolaus Otto will sell by the thousands in the German states and in England in the next 10 years (see 1861). Otto has read about a four-stroke engine patented in 1862 by engineer Alphonse (-Eugène) Beau de Rochas, now 51, who has seen the importance of compressing the fuel-air mixture before combustion. Otto obtains backing from engineer-businessman Eugen Langen, 33, and shares patent rights with his brother William, but his engine is heavy, weak, seven feet tall, and has limited commercial applicability (see 1877; transportation, 1873; Dugald Clerk, 1881).
Telegraphy pioneer Werner von Siemens develops the first practical dynamo-electrical machine (see 1847). It permits production of electricity in great quantity.
Atlantic Petroleum Storage Co. is founded at Philadelphia July 1. It will be incorporated in 1870 and acquired by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Co. trust (see Richfield, 1911).
The first U.S. oil pipeline connects Pithole, Pennsylvania, with a railroad five miles away (see 1864).
Sperm oil for lighting and lubrication sells for $2.25 per gallon, up from 43¢ in 1823 (seeScientific American, 1857). The high price of sperm oil creates a growing demand for kerosene and petroleum.
The steamship London sinks in a storm off Land's End January 11, taking 220 lives; the immigrant ship Monarch of the Seas sinks at Liverpool March 19, killing 738.
Eleven clipper ships compete in the Great Tea Race from Fuzhou (Foochow) to London; skippers crowd on sail to minimize spoilage of the China tea in their warm holds, but the voyage still takes close to 3 months.
Thomas Cook initiates a system for providing hotel accommodations to implement the Cook's Tours he began in 1856 (see 1851; Khartoum, 1884).
Construction of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads begins to pick up speed (see 1863). Neither road has laid more than 40 miles of track by the start of the year, but the pace increases to one mile per day as Thomas C. Durant brings in wooden ties from Minnesota, brings discipline to the Union Pacific's workforce, and has his men work 12 hours per day, with mobile dormitories and mess halls. Sharpshooters kill buffalo (bison), deer, and antelope to put meat on the table (flour, beans, and other foodstuffs are carried along in railcars), and the sharpshooters also hold off the Plains Indians, whose attacks have retarded progress through Nebraska Territory, accounting more than accidents for the deaths of railway workers. When heavy snows in the Sierra delay construction of the Central Pacific, Charles Crocker orders miles of wooden sheds built to permit operations to continue as his Chinese workers dig tunnels inch by inch through solid rock (see 1869).
Stagecoach operator Ben Holladay sells the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express to Wells, Fargo & Co. along with his Holladay Overland Stage Co. (see Wells, Fargo, 1844; Holladay, 1862). Wells, Fargo will continue stagecoach operations until 1869.
Locomotive builder Matthias W. Baldwin dies at Philadelphia September 7 at age 72.
The French Army adopts a musket that represents an improvement on the breech-loading Prussian needle gun used by the Prussians at the Battle of Sadowa. Gunsmith Antoine Alphonse Chassepot, 33, has developed the new weapon.
The Skoda works that will supply European armaments in future wars is founded by Czech engineer Emil von Skoda, 27, who takes over a machine works at Pilsen. He will develop it into a factory famous for its cannon and other artillery.
The Winchester Repeating Arms Co. founded at New Haven, Connecticut, by Oliver Winchester introduces the M1866 rifle, an improved version of the Henry Rifle patented in 1860. It fires a .44 rim-fire cartridge (see 1873).
Swedish engineer Alfred Bernhard Nobel, 33, perfects dynamite, harnessing the power of nitroglycerin introduced by Ascanio Sobrero in 1847. Having studied mechanical engineering in the United States, Nobel mixes nitro with absorbent diatomaceous earth to create a relatively safe and transportable blasting powder that will supplant black powder. Nobel will patent his invention next year, and by the time dynamite goes into commercial production the world will be at peace, but the explosive will be widely used in mining and construction (see 1875; 1901; du Pont, 1880).
Biologist Ernst Haeckel enlarges on Charles Darwin's ideas of evolution in his General Morphology of Organisms (Generelle Morphologie der Organismen), which tries to explain both organic and inorganic nature under the same physical laws (see 1862; Lyall, 1863). Speculating that the lowest creatures emerged spontaneously through combinations of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and sulfur, Haeckel portrays them as protoplasm without nuclei, and when deep-sea dredgings bring up no such structureless organisms he will continue to argue that such "monera" exist. Ignoring the work published by Karl Ernst von Baer in 1828, Haeckel includes drawings that purport to show that the embryos of fish, amphibians, birds, and mammals look virtually identical in an early stage of development (an international team of scientists will check the drawings in the 1990s and find that the embryos are, in fact, significantly different from each other). His claim that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" will prove erroneous, but for all his errors, and despite the opposition of his colleagues, Haeckel will raise important biological questions and stimulate further investigations (see 1869).
Egyptologist Karl Lepsius returns to Egypt and discovers the Canopus Decree, whose inscriptions are similar to those of the Rosetta Stone discovered in 1799 and translated by the late Jean-François Champollion in 1821 (see Lepsius, 1843).
Mathematician and philosopher William Whewell falls from his horse and dies at Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, March 6 at age 71; mathematician Nikolai Brashman dies at Moscow May 13 at age 69; mathematician Bernhard Riemann goes to Italy to recuperate from pleurisy complicated by tuberculosis but dies at Sealasca July 20 at age 39.
A cholera epidemic takes 120,000 lives in Prussia and 110,000 in Austria.
Cholera strikes London in an epidemic that takes 5,548 lives; an epidemic at Bristol is arrested through measures instituted by physician William Budd, 55, who also stamps out an epizootic of rinderpest in British livestock (see 1873; Snow, 1853)
Cholera kills some 50,000 Americans. New York has 2,000 fatalities and creates the first U.S. municipal board of health; the city has had recurring epidemics of cholera, scarlet fever, smallpox, typhoid fever, typhus, and yellow fever, which will grow more severe in the next 7 years in Baltimore, Boston, Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Washington as well.
English physician Thomas C. (Clifford) Allbut, 30, at Leeds invents the clinical thermometer (see Florey, 1714). His mercury thermometer is 18 inches long; when placed under a patient's arm it takes nearly 30 minutes to heat up for a temperature reading ("normal" human body temperature is in the neighborhood of 98.6° F.). Oral and rectal thermometers will later give readings in just a minute or two (see 1990).
An essay by English physician J. (John) Langdon Down, 38, describes a congenital mental retardation marked by a sloping forehed, small ear canals, grey or very light yellow spots at the periphery of the iris (Brushfield spots), a flat nose, low-set ears, short broad hands with a single palmar crease, and a generally dwarfed physique. The retardation may be moderate to severe; Down calls it "mongoloid idiocy."
A London dispensary for women opens under the direction of local physician Elizabeth Garrett, now 31, who pioneers the admission of women to the professions, including medicine. The extent of female invalidism, Garrett argues, is much exaggerated by male physicians: women's natural functions are not all that debilitating, she says, pointing out that among the working classes women continue to work during menstruation "without intermission, and, as a rule, without ill effects" (see Jacobi, 1877; but see also Maudsley, 1870).
Physician Thomas Hodgkin dies at Jaffa, Palestine, April 5 at age 67.
The Western Health Reform Institute is founded at Battle Creek, Michigan, by Seventh Day Adventist prophet Ellen Gould White (née Harmon), 38, whose sanitarium treatment combines vegetarian diet and hydrotherapy with some accepted medical methods. White, who espouses many of the ideas promoted by Sylvester Graham in the 1830s, puts patients with high blood pressure on a diet of grapes—and only grapes (10 to 14 pounds of grapes per day). Underweight is considered a mark of poor health, a belief that will persist for the next half century and more, so underweight patients are given 26 feedings per day, forbidden to engage in any physical activity (not even brushing their teeth), and obliged to lie motionless in bed with sandbags on their abdomens to aid the absorption of nutrients. White's "sanitorium," or "San," will incubate the infant U.S. breakfast-food industry (see religion, 1876; Post, 1893).
Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes enters the convent of Saint Gildard at Nevers, where she will die of tuberculosis in 1879 despite administration of water from the grotto at Lourdes (see 1858). Reports of cures from the grotto will nevertheless continue to attract sick, blind, and infirm visitors.
Philadelphia's Reform Jewish Congregation Keneseth Israel invites Prussian-born rabbi Samuel Hirsch, now 51, to succeed David Einhorn as its head (see Nonfiction, 1842). Judaism is not law in Hirsch's view but rather doctrine (Lehre), and its symbolic ceremonies should adapt themselves to change. He will remain chief rabbi at the Philadelphia congregation for 22 years (see 1869).
Cincinnati's Plum Street Temple is completed for the city's B'nai Yeshurun congregation, whose Austrian-born rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, 47, is pioneering a reform movement in U.S. Judaism by abandoning dietary laws and other Orthodox practices such as segregating women, wearing beards, and keeping heads covered (see Berlin, 1815). The Moorish building with its twin minarets seats 1,400 (see 1883).
The Society of Brahma of India (Bharatvarsiya Brahmo Samaj) is founded by Calcutta-born Hindu philosopher and social reformer Keshab Chunder Sen, 27, who at age 19 joined the Society of Brahma that was founded in 1828 but has broken with fellow reformer Maharishi ("Great Sage") Debendranath Tagore, now 59 (see 1863). Both have tried to increase literacy rates and make education affordable to everyone, both have spoken out strongly against suttee (self-immolation by widows, who throw themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres), and Tagore has tried to erase Hindu idolatry and practices that he considered divisive and undemocratic, but while Tagore has remained a staunch Hindu, Sen has become convinced that only Christian doctrine can revitalize Hindu society (see 1872).
Beirut's American University is founded under the name Syrian Protestant College. The school will be renamed in 1920 and its graduates will include presidents, prime ministers, cabinet members, and ambassadors of several Middle Eastern nations.
The University of Ottawa is founded in Ontario.
The Great Eastern sets sail July 13 under the command of Captain James Anderson with a new Atlantic Cable and reaches the Newfoundland fishing village of Heart's Content 13 days later, having averaged 120 miles per day while laying the first successful undersea cable between Europe and the Western Hemisphere (she then moves to the site at which last year's cable was lost, retrieves it from a depth of 16,000 feet, splices on additional cable, and establishes a second undersea connection between the hemispheres September 8). Telegraph service over the 1,686 nautical miles of the first line begins July 27 with the message, "A treaty of peace has been signed between Austria and Prussia," but because of a gap in the link between Newfoundland and the mainland it takes another 24 hours for the message to reach Washington, D.C. Cyrus W. Field and John Pender of the Atlantic Telegraph Co. have financed the new line, with backing from Peter Cooper and other investors, but only the very rich can afford to send messages at $1 per letter, payable in gold (a working man typically earns $20 per month); Field receives a unanimous vote of thanks from Congress, and engineer Daniel Gooch is made a baronet for his contribution to the venture (see 1869).
Western Union Telegraph absorbs two smaller telegraph companies to gain control of 75,000 miles of wire and become the first great U.S. industrial monopoly (see 1856; 1881).
The Hartford Courant begins publication on a daily basis to succeed the weekly Connecticut Courant that began 73 years ago.
The Times of London begins using the Walter rotary press that prints quickly and simultaneously on both sides of a roll of paper (see Bullock, 1865).
Nonfiction: The Crown of Wild Olive by John Ruskin; The Modern Law of War (Das moderne Kriegsrecht) by Swiss author Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, 58; The Higher Education of Women by English reformer (Sarah) Emily Davies, 36.
French-Canadian historian François-Xavier Garneau dies at his native Quebec February 3 at age 56.
Fiction: War and Peace (Voina i Mir) by Russian novelist Count Leo (Lev Nikolaevich) Tolstoy, 38, is published in its first installment. Tolstoy lives on his country estate Yasnaya Polyana, whose serfs he has liberated in accordance with the 1861 Emancipation Act, and will complete his long novel about the 1812 Napoleonic invasion in 3 years; Crime and Punishment (Prestuplertie i Nakazaniye) by Fedor Dostoievsky; The Gambler (Igrok) by Dostoievsky, who has dictated the novel in 1 month to fulfill an obligation to a publisher (he will marry the stenographer Anna Snitkina, now 20, next year and she will bear him children as he gambles away the little money they have); Toilers of the Sea (Les travailleurs de la mer) by Victor Hugo; Felix Holt the Radical by George Eliot.
Poetry: Le Parnasse contemporain by French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, 24; Les épreuves by Sully Prudhomme, whose 1865 collection won such approval that he gave up his law studies to pursue a literary career; "Thyrsis" by Matthew Arnold; "Snow-bound" by John Greenleaf Whittier begins, "The sun that brief December day/ Rose cheerless over hills of gray"; Battle-Pieces and Aspects of War by Herman Melville, now 47, who is appointed a deputy inspector of customs at the port of New York (he will retain the position until the end of 1885); "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman, whose elegaic ode commemorates Lincoln.
Poet-novelist Thomas Love Peacock dies in his cottage at Lower Halliford, Chertsey, January 23 at age 80.
Juvenile: The Dove in the Eagle's Nest by Charlotte M. Yonge.
Painting: The Fifer by Edouard Manet; Flight of Crows by Jean-François Millet; Sleep by Gustave Courbet; The Petition to the King, Princess Sabra Drawing the Lot, and five other paintings by English painter Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 30, whose oil paintings have been commissioned by book illustrator and watercolorist Myles Birket Foster to depict the story of St. George and the Dragon; A Storm in the Rocky Mountains by Albert Bierstadt, now 36, who has come to America and gone West after seeing photographs of the Yosemite Valley by Carleton E. Watkins displayed in a New York gallery; Prisoners from the Front by Winslow Homer, who depicts a Union general receiving three Confederate soldiers captured at the Battle of Spotsylvania and produces a series of drawings for Harper's Weekly.
Theater: Ours by Thomas W. Robertson 9/15 at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, London, with Marie Wilton, Marie Larkin, and London-born actor Squire Bancroft, 25.
Opera: The Brandenburgers in Bohemia (Branibori v Cechach) 1/5 at Prague's National Theater with music by Bedrich Smetana; Barbe-bleu (Bluebeard) 2/5 at the Théâtre des Variétés, Paris, with Hortense Schneider creating the role of Boulotte, music by Jacques Offenbach, libretto by Paris-born playwrights Ludovic Halévy, 32, and Henri Meilhac, 35; La Vie Pariesienne 10/31 at Théâtre du Palais Royale, Paris, with music by Offenbach, libretto by Halévy and Meilhac; The Bartered Bride (Prodana Vevesta) 5/30 at Prague's National Theater, with music by Bedrich Smetana; Mignon 11/17 at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, with music by French composer Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas, 55, libretto based on the Goethe play Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre.
Broadway musicals: The Black Crook 9/12 at Niblo's Garden, with a Faustian plot by actor-playwright Charles M. Barras, 40, and a cast of 100 dancing girls that includes Italian-born dancer Marie Bonfanti, 19, in pink tights (clergymen denounce their costumes and indelicate postures as does James Gordon Bennett in his New York Herald), music adapted from various sources, 474 performances. The first true Broadway musical, it runs 5½ hours on opening night, will make Barras a fortune, tour for more than 40 years, and see many revivals.
Popular songs: "Come Back to Erin" by London songwriter Claribel (Charlotte Allington Barnard); "When You and I Were Young, Maggie" by Detroit composer J. A. Butterfield, lyrics by Canadian-born journalist George Washington Johnson of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer; "We Parted by the River" by U.S. songwriter William Shakespeare Hays.
Estley Organ Co. is founded at Brattleboro, Vt., by local plumber-investor Jacob Estley, with engineer Levi K. Fuller, 25. The firm will grow to have sales of more than 1,800 instruments per month.
G. Schirmer Co. is founded at New York by German-born music publisher Gustave Schirmer, 37.
The New York Athletic Club is founded June 17 by John G. Babcock (who has invented the sliding seat for rowers), Henry E. Buermeyer, and William B. Curtis. They will introduce the first spiked shoes at the club's first open indoor competition November 11, 1868, at New York's Empire Skating Rink.
Vassar College undergraduates form two baseball teams. Baseball remains an amateur sport, even for men (professional ball will not begin until 1869), and although female professionals will barnstorm the country in the 1890s, the women's game will gradually become softball.
Three schooners race from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, to Cowes on the Isle of Wight in the first transatlantic yacht race. Ranging in length from 32 to 32.6 meters, the Fleetwing, Vesta, and Henrietta compete under rules established by the New York Yacht Club; newspaper publishing heir apparent James Gordon Bennett sails his Henrietta to victory after a 13-day voyage.
Prague-born chess master Wilhelm Steinitz, 30, wins the world championship from Adolph Anderssen and will hold the title until 1894. Steinitz learned the game from a schoolmate at age 12, moved to England in 1862, and will move to America in 1883, defeating all challengers.
Union veterans decorate the graves of fallen comrades with flowers May 5 at Waterloo, New York, beginning the celebration of what will become known as Decoration Day, or Memorial Day. General John A. Logan of Illinois founds the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), which will grow to become a politically powerful veterans' organization, and orders G.A.R. posts to decorate the graves of Union soldiers May 30 (see 1868).
The Morris chair introduced by English craftsman-poet William Morris, now 32, is a reclining chair with a bar-and-notch arrangement that permits its back to be tilted to a 45-degree angle or folded flat to facilitate shipment (see 1875).
Thieves board a Ohio & Mississippi passenger train bound from Cincinnati to St. Louis October 6 outside Seymour, Indiana, in what some will call the first recorded train robbery (but see 1865). The masked bandits enter an Adams Express Co. car, point guns at Adams Express employee Elem Miller, demand keys to the two safes on board, empty the contents of one safe, throw the other off the train, and make a clean getaway. Other such robberies follow in the ensuing weeks as gangs derail trains by placing objects on the tracks and swarm through the cars robbing passengers of money and valuables (see Jesse James, 1872).
Dublin's Hotel Gresham opens in Upper O'Connell Street under the ownership of an Englishman who competes with the Russell facing St. Stephen's Green, and the Royal Hibernian in Dawson Street (it added the "Royal" after a visit from the late George IV).
A salmon cannery opens on the Columbia River as does San Francisco's first salmon cannery (see 1864; 1878).
Texas rancher Oliver Loving hears that some 8,000 Native Americans have been settled on a reservation at Fort Sumner in New Mexico Territory and will need beef (see Loving, 1861). Now 53, he joins with Illinois-born rancher Charles Goodnight, 30, to drive longhorns overland from Fort Belknap on what later will be called the Goodnight-Loving Trail, following the path of the Butterfield Overland Mail to the Pecos and on to a point outside Denver, where the two men sell the animals to the army for $12,000 in gold (8¢ per pound), far more than they would have fetched in Texas. Having discovered that livestock can survive the cold of the northern Great Plains and eat the grasses there, Goodnight returns with his gold to Weatherford for a second herd and reunites with Loving at Bosque Grande, about 40 miles south of Fort Sumner (see 1867).
Texas ranchers drive cattle north for the first time on the Chisholm Trail, named after the Cherokee scout Jesse Chisholm. The longhorns arrive at Abilene, Kansas, for shipment by rail to points east (see 1867; 1871; 1885).
The 4-year-old Department of Agriculture issues the first U.S. crop report, compiled by field workers who have worked to determine the nation's production of various crops.
French vineyards at Floirac in the Gironde district notice decay in their vines (see 1865; 1867).
Les Halles reopens at Paris after 10 years' work to serve as the city's (and nation's) food market (see 1110; 1969).
Washburn, Crosby Co. erects its first flour mill on the Mississippi in Wisconsin. Former Maine timber baron Cadwallader C. Washburn, 48, served as a major general in the Union Army, has settled in Wisconsin, and becomes a miller. The hard-kernel winter wheat grown on the plains produces a flour that is darker than most consumers prefer (see 1857), but Washburn will find that the LeCroix middlings purifier, introduced last year, produces flour that is not only as white as any but has baking properties which are in some ways superior (see 1871).
British imports of tinned meat total 16,000 pounds as the continuing epizootic keeps domestic meat and dairy prices high (see 1865).
Colman's Mustard receives a royal warrant from Queen Victoria (see 1814). So popular is the condiment that four trains are sometimes required to carry one day's output from the Norwich factory. Jeremiah Colman has his own trains with his bull emblem emblazoned on the sides of the cars, and he is so well known that the Post Office will deliver to his factory an envelope with a drawing of a large bull's head above the word England.
Henri Nestlé formulates a combination of farinaceous pap and milk for infants who cannot take mother's milk and starts a firm under his own name to produce the new infant formula (see 1861; 1875; Liebig, 1867).
Gail Borden adopts the trademark Eagle Brand to protect his condensed milk from competitors who have appropriated the name Borden (see 1861). Borden has made a fortune supplying his product to the Union Army; his plant at Elgin, Illinois, produces condensed milk at a rate of 300,000 gallons per year (see 1875).
More than 90 percent of Britain's tea still comes from China.
Cadbury's Cocoa Essence is introduced by Richard Cadbury, 31, and his brother George, 27, who have been running their father's Birmingham business and come close to failing but are saved by the new product, which they advertise as "Absolutely Pure: Therefore Best" (see 1847). They have produced the first pure cocoa to be sold in Britain by squeezing out excess cocoa butter to leave a pure, concentrated powder that need not be adulterated with the potato and sago flour used in all British cocoa powders until now to counteract the natural fats (see van Houten, 1828). The cocoa butter made available by the process enables Cadbury Brothers to increase production of chocolate candy (see 1875; human rights, 1901).
Jack Daniel's Tennessee Sour Mash whiskey is introduced at Lynchburg by local distiller Jack Newton Daniel, 17, who has learned his craft from a Methodist preacher who took him in after his father died. Daniel will form a company in 1875, buy a large farm to grow his own corn, and limit production to produce relatively small daily batches (see square bottle, 1897).
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