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The U.S. Senate votes 35 to 16 January 13 that President Johnson's temporary dismissal of Secretary of War Stanton last August violated the Tenure of Office Act; the president dismisses Stanton permanently February 18. Johnson's efforts to "protect" Southern whites against racial equality and his otherwise moderate treatment of the former Confederate states have antagonized Radical Republicans, led by House Ways and Means Committee chairman Thaddeus Stevens (R. Pa.), now 75, who is so frail that he must be carried into the House by supporters; he has proposed more severe Reconstruction measures in the South while President Johnson has sided with the Democrats in favoring more lenient treatment, as proposed by the late President Lincoln. Rep. George Sewall Boutwell (R. Mass.), 50, and Rep. Benjamin F. Butler (R. Mass.), now 49, help lead the attack on the president. Congress restores Stanton to office and the House votes February 24 for a resolution to impeach Johnson for "high crimes and misdemeanors." (Squabbles within the Republican ranks aborted two impeachment attempts last year; the 126-to-47 vote comes after just 3 days of debate.) The 11 articles of impeachment deal almost exclusively with the Tenure of Office Act, the Senate is sworn in as a court March 6, but when the substantive part of the trial begins March 30, with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding, a mass of other charges are brought forward; 37 days of speeches ensue, with Rep. Butler saying at one point, "By murder most foul he succeeded to the presidency and is the elect of an assassin to that office." Johnson makes a secret promise to moderate Republicans that he will not stand in the way of their Reconstruction plans if acquitted, and although he enjoys little popularity in the country, seven Republicans join with Democrats May 16 to acquit him; influenced by sculptor Vinnie Ream, 21, Sen. Edmund G. Ross (R. Kan.) casts the deciding vote for acquittal, and the 35-to-19 decision fails by that one vote to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority. (Sen. Ross is ostracized for his action, which will later be credited with having preserved constitutional government in the United States.)
Former president James Buchanan dies at his Wheatland estate near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, June 1 at age 77; former director of Union intelligence General LaFayette C. Baker at Philadelphia July 3 at age 41; Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R. Pa.) at Washington, D.C., August 11 at age 76. He is buried at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, amid the graves of blacks, "that I might illustrate [as he has written in his own epitaph] in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life—Equality of Man before his Creator."
Military rule continues in the South, and Congress votes in June to authorize readmission of the seven Confederate states on condition that black suffrage be retained. Radical Republicans have opposed reunification of the country pending guarantees of full civil and voting rights for freed slaves. President Johnson issues a second proclamation of amnesty, permitting the return of former Confederate officials (such as diplomat James Mason, who has been in Canada since 1866).
A Tory government headed by Benjamin Disraeli comes to power in Britain February 29. Crimean War cavalry officer James G. Brudenell, 7th earl of Cardigan, dies at his Deene Park, Northamptonshire, home March 28 at age 70 from injuries sustained in a riding accident. Parliament passes an Irish Reform Bill and a Scottish Reform Bill July 13, but the Liberal Party scores sweeping victories in the general elections in November. Disraeli resigns December 2, and William E. (Ewart) Gladstone, 59, begins a ministry that will continue until 1874. Gladstone's family fortune was based on slave labor, he has cloaked himself in a mantle of morality, and he opposes the imperialist policies of Disraeli, which many Britons support as a means of expanding trade while bringing peace, order, stability, and civilization to the "benighted heathen."
Irish-born writer-orator Thomas D'Arcy McGee is assassinated at Ottawa April 7 at age 42, having played a conspicuous role in the movement that led to last year's confederation of the Canadian colonies. He has evidently made disparaging remarks about Canada's Fenians (Irish nationalists).
Spain's prime minister Ramon Maria Narvaez, duque de Valencia, dies at Madrid April 23 at age 68 and a revolutionary proclamation issued at Cádiz September 18 by Admiral Juan Bautista Topete y Carballo, 47, ends absolutist rule. The press has attacked Isabella II for making her court favorite (an actor) Spain's minister of state, and the Battle of Alcolea September 28 ends in defeat for her general Manuel Pavía y Lacy, now 44, who has tried to seize a strategic bridge at Alcolea and been badly wounded by troops under the command of Marshal Juan Prim y Prats, 54. Isabella II flees to France September 29, her enemies declare her deposed, and Marshal Prim forms a provisional government October 5 under the regency of Francisco Serrano y Dominguez. Isabella has twice exiled engineer Práxides Mateo Sagasta, now 43, for opposing her, but he returns to help overthrow her. The new regime annuls reactionary laws, abolishes the Jesuit order and other religious orders, and establishes universal suffrage and a free press; the third Carlist pretender, Don Juan de Borbón, abdicates his claims in favor of his 20-year-old son Carlos María de los Dolores de Borbón y Austria-este, duque de Madrid (Don Carlos) (see 1870).
Greece's George I responds to British pressure in January and dismisses his prime minister Aléxandros Koumondhouros, who has mobilized troops following a new Cretan revolt against Ottoman rule once again (see 1866). Koumondhouros has headed six ministries and will head three more between 1870 and 1882.
The Serbian prince Michael III Obrenovic is assassinated at Kosutnjak, outside Belgrade, the night of June 10 at age 43 (see 1860). Having freed Serbia from Ottoman rule, organized a conscript army (supplied by the Russians), instituted the rule of law, reformed the judicial system, established a state mortgage bank and the first Serbian coinage since medieval times, Michael is succeeded by his cousin Milan, 13, who will gain full independence for Serbia, take the title king in 1882, and reign until 1889, but the Balkan League that Michael has founded in an effort to unite all southern Slavs against the Turks soon collapses (see 1876).
Liechtenstein disbands her 80-man army and declares permanent neutrality, having regained complete independence since the dissolution of the German Confederation (see 1719; 1919).
Russian forces under the command of General Konstantin Petrovich Kaufmann, 50, occupy Samarkand. Formerly governor general of Lithuania, Kaufmann was transferred last year to Turkistan as that region's first Russian governor general, and he makes the khanate of Bukhara north of the Afghan border a Russian protectorate, extending the czar's domain toward the east and posing a threat to British ambitions in Central Asia (see 1873).
Japan's Meiji Restoration formally ends the Tokugawa shōgunate that has held power since 1603 (see 1867). Troops under the command of radical samurai leader Takamori Saigo, 39, seize control of the shōgun's palace gates at Edo before dawn January 3, the coup d'état has the support of Satsuma and Choshu leaders, of Issei Maebara, Tomomi Iwakura, Toshimichi Okubo, 36, and the feudal lord Koshaku Shimazu Hisamitsu (who has come under the influence of his vassals Saigo and Okubo), they overthrow the Tokugawa family and return power to the emperor in the person of the 15-year-old Mutsuhito, who signs a Charter Oath April 6 promising to be guided in his rule by a deliberative assembly responsive to public opinion. "We shall summon assemblies, and in ruling the nation we shall have regard to public opinion . . . Knowledge will be sought out among the nations of the world, and thus the well-being of the empire will be ensured." Yoshinobu Tokugawa accepts the change in regime, but his advisers do not; their forces are defeated July 4 in the Battle of Ueno at Edo, which is renamed Tokyo (eastern capital) in November after Takamori Saigo defeats the last supporters of the shōgunate in the north. Yoshinobu Tokugawa forces the shōgunal forces to surrender and is allowed to retire to Mito; the imperial family moves from Kyoto and takes over Kyuju Palace, a fortress-castle in the center of Tokyo that has been used by shōguns for centuries, but the proimperial samurai loyalist Ryoma Sakamoto is murdered by proshogunal samurai at Kyoto December 10 at age 31 (see 1869).
Explorer-diplomat Ernest Doudart de Lagrée dies on an expedition in northern Ya-nan (Yunan) Province March 12 at age 44, having secured French suzerainty over Cambodia.
The rajah of Sarawak Sir James Brooke dies at Burrator, Devon, June 11 at age 65 after a 27-year reign (see 1850). His Somersetshire-born nephew Sir Charles (Anthoni Johnson) Brooke, 39, has adopted his uncle's surname and will reign until his death in 1917 (see British protectorate, 1888).
Siam's Phra Chom Klao Mongkut (Rama IV) dies at his native Bangkok October 15 at age 63 after a 17-year reign in which he has opened his country to Western influences and initiated reforms. He leaves generous bequests to Anna Leonowens and her son Lewis, although the king's executors will withhold those bequests. The king's own 15-year-old son Somdeth Phra Paraminda Maha Chulalongkorn studied under Mrs. Leonowens from 1862 to 1867 and promised her that if he ever became king he would rule over "a free, not an enslaved, nation." He is crowned November 11 after recovering from the same fever that killed his father and will reign until 1910 as Rama V, abolishing the feudal system and slavery, improving the country's laws and education, introducing the telegraph (1883), opening the first Siamese railroad, and visiting European capitals (1897).
The Ethiopian emperor Theodore is defeated April 10 in the Battle of Arogee by an Anglo-Indian force under Sir Robert Napier, 58. Theodore commits suicide, the British reach Magdala April 13, and they free traders, missionaries, and envoys imprisoned since 1864 by the cruel and eccentric Theodore. Ethiopia falls into anarchy following the withdrawal of Napier, who will be created first Baron Napier of Magdala by Queen Victoria (see 1872).
Lesotho's King Moshoeshoe I persuades the British crown to make his remaining realm a protectorate (see 1838). His country will not gain independence until 1960.
The British annex Basutoland following defeat of the Basutos by the Orange Free State, whose leaders protest the British action. Transvaal forces attempt to occupy Delagoa Bay but withdraw under pressure from the British (see 1871).
Madagascar's Merina queen Rashoherina dies after a 5-year reign and is succeeded by Ranavalona II, who will reign as queen until 1883. True power remains in the hands of her husband and first minister, Rainilaiarivony, a Christian who was married to Rashoherina, signs a commercial treaty with Paris, will sign a similar treaty in 1877 with Britain, and will retain power until 1896 by marrying Ranavalona's successor, outlawing polygamy and the slave trade, promulgating new legal codes, and encouraging the spread of education and the Protestant religion. Paris recognizes Merina (Hova) supremacy in Madagascar August 8.
Puerto Ricans take up arms against the Spanish colonial government (see 1809), but the El Grito de Lares revolt that begins September 23 is quickly suppressed and reprisals are taken against all liberals on the island (see 1898).
Cubans begin a 10-year war with Spain, which has not adopted some promised reforms and will continue to permit slavery on the island until the 1880s. Corrupt Spanish administrators have levied high taxes, allowed no political representation, and ruled inefficiently; landowners in the eastern provinces have united behind Bayamo-born planter Carlos Manuel de Céspedes (y Borja del Castillo), 49, who declares independence in October with "The Cry of Yara" ("El Grito de Yara") and moves out October 10 with a poorly armed group of 147 men. Dominican-born farmer Máximo Gómez y Báez, 31, enlists as a sergeant in the rebel army, which has 12,000 volunteers by the end of the month (Céspedes favors only gradual emancipation and allows slaves to join his ranks only with their masters' permission); by 1870 Gómez will be commander in chief, directing guerrilla forces against the well-equipped Spaniards (see 1869).
Argentina's president Bartolomé Mitre leaves office after a 6-year term in which he has suppressed the rural bosses (caudillos), established new courts, organized public finances, increased foreign trade, extended the postal service and telegraph lines, and encouraged immigration. Mitre is elected to the Senate, where he will be a leader in championing middle-class interests. He is succeeded as president by educator-author Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, now 57, who ends the war with Paraguay and will devote his 6-year term to building a new, democratic society, establishing primary and secondary schools in a largely illiterate country plus normal schools (teacher's colleges), schools for professional and technical training, libraries, and museums.
Coalition forces occupy Asunción December 31 after 4 years of war. Nearly two-thirds of Paraguay's adult population have died or disappeared; President López remains at large (see 1870).
The Republican Party rejects President Johnson and nominates Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant for the presidency, selecting Schuyler Colfax, 45, of Indiana as his running mate. The Democrats nominate former New York governor Horatio Seymour, 58, but the Republicans "wave the bloody shirt" and label the Democratic Party the party of treason. Grant wins 53 percent of the popular vote with 214 electoral votes to Seymour's 80.
Congress makes retention of black suffrage forever a "fundamental condition" for readmission of the seven former Confederate states to the Union (see Fifteenth Amendment, 1870).
Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is proclaimed July 28 by Secretary of State Seward: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." But suffrage is limited to male citizens, despite the pleadings of Susan B. Anthony, whose cause has been rejected by former allies.
The (second) Fort Laramie Treaty signed April 29 by Lieut. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and other U.S. officials with leaders of the various Sioux tribes will be ratified in mid-February of next year and proclaimed a week later (see 1867). Oglala chief Red Cloud's strategies have succeeded in having the treaty contain provisions mandating withdrawal of U.S. troops from forts along the Bozeman Trail and ceding to the Sioux all of the country north of the North Platte and east of the summits of the Big Horn Mountains, with no whites allowed to occupy land in that country without tribal permission (but see gold discovery at Deadwood Gulch, 1875). The government agrees to provide clothing (or materials from which to make clothing), schools, and money to the tribes, who agree to cease opposition to construction of railroad tracks across the plains. Red Cloud agrees to lay down his arms, pledge himself to peace, and allow federal troops to escort him to the Red Cloud Agency in his native Nebraska (see Pine Ridge, 1878).
Cherokee scout Jesse Chisholm of Chisholm Trail fame dies of food poisoning at his trading camp in Left Hand Spring April 4 at age 61 (approximate) near what later will be Geary, Oklahoma; former Indian agent Kit Carson at Fort Lyon in Colorado Territory May 23 at age 58.
U.S. military authorities force Navajo chiefs to sign a treaty August 12 agreeing to live on reservations and cease their opposition to whites (see 1867). The treaty establishes a 3.5 million-acre reservation within the Navajo Nation's old domains (a small portion of the original Navajo holdings), and while the main reservation will grow to embrace nearly 14.5 million acres (25,000 square miles) reaching out from the Four Corners to include northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Utah, most of it will be desert and semidesert with only 68,000 acres of farmland. The Navajo population has declined from 10,000 to 8,000 during 5 years of military internment; when the survivors return on foot to their homeland, they find that their 200,000 sheep have dwindled to just 940 and that they must learn a new way of life if they are to endure.
The first meeting of Britain's National Society for Woman Suffrage (NSWS) convenes October 30.
Karl Marx writes to a friend December 12, "Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included."
Congress votes February 4 to suspend retirement of greenbacks, leaving $356 billion worth of the paper money in circulation. Excise taxes are removed March 31 on everything but liquor and tobacco, and Congress gives approval June 25 to an 8-Hour Act for government workers, but in private industry most laborers work 10 to 12 hours per day (see 1863).
The 2-year-old National Labor Union admits four women to its Congress and urges women to "learn trades, engage in business, join our labor unions or form protective unions of your own, and use every honorable means to persuade or force employers to do justice to women by paying them equal wages for equal work." The NLU is headed by William H. Sylvis of the Iron-Moulders Union, who praises Kate Mullaney for her "indefatigable exertions on behalf of female laborers," calls her "the smartest and most energetic woman in America," and proposes that she be appointed assistant secretary and national organizer for women, but Mullaney will lead another strike of her laundresses next year, she will lose, and her union will be destroyed despite widespread support from the fledgling labor movement.
U.S. women hired for factory, office, and retail-store jobs during the Civil War continue in such work (New York City alone has nearly 30,000 working women) but are almost universally relegated to menial positions or are paid less than men doing the same work. Elizabeth Cady Stanton founds the Working Woman's Association September 17 with help from militant trades union women attracted by the pro-labor position of her newspaper.
An employment agency for women opens at London, mostly to fill domestic positions.
President Grant owes his election to support from bankers and other creditors who want repayment of bonds in gold and have called the Democrats disloyal for urging payment of the national debt in greenbacks.
U.S. business will use the "due process" clause in the new Fourteenth Amendment to resist governmental intervention (but see 1877).
Metropolitan Life Insurance is founded at New York by a reorganization of National Travelers Insurance, started 5 years ago as National Life & Limb Insurance Co. (see 1879).
Former sea captain and opium trader Augustine Heard dies at his native Ipswich, Massachusetts, September 14 at age 83, having built a fortune in the China trade; banker Jakob (James) Rothschild dies at Paris November 15 at age 76.
Salt Lake City's Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI) opens under the aegis of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Mormons are expected to trade at the new Church-owned store, which will drive most "gentile" merchants out of the Utah Territory.
Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler begins a battle to drive out competition in the chaotic U.S. petroleum industry as Rockefeller develops a huge market for his kerosene by underselling coal oil and whale oil (see 1865). Henry Morrison Flagler, 35, moved west from his native Canandaigua, New York, at age 14 after finishing eighth grade, and has married Mary Harkness, whose uncle Stephen owns a distillery at Bellemore, Ohio, that supplied the whiskey once sold by Clark & Rockefeller in Cleveland; he joined Rockefeller and Andrews last year and when the firm gets into deep difficulties he will persuade Stephen V. Harkness to loan it his entire savings of $70,000 to keep it going, providing the wherewithal to acquire more refineries and pipelines as the firm grows larger and more efficient. With a capacity of 1,500 barrels per day when many competitors refine only one or two barrels, Rockefeller buys his wooden barrels at 96¢ each when other refiners pay $2.50. Roxbury, New York-born financier Jay Gould, now 32, concludes a secret deal with Rockefeller and Flagler whereby they receive a 75 percent rebate on oil shipped through the Erie Railroad or one of its subsidiaries; Rockefeller and Flagler then persuade the new Lake Shore Railroad vice president General J. H. Devereux to let them ship crude oil to Cleveland and refined oil to New York at a rate of $1.65 per barrel, 75¢ less than the official rate, by promising 60 carloads of refined oil per day, enabling the New York Central subsidiary to operate trains made up exclusively of tank cars and reduce its tank-car fleet from 1,800 cars to 600 by cutting the average round-trip time of trains between New York and Cleveland from 30 days to 10. Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler does not yet have enough refining capacity to make good on its promise, but in less than 2 years it will be producing 10,000 barrels per day (see Standard Oil, 1870).
English shipbuilder's son Thomas Henry Ismay, 31, acquires the name White Star Line for £1,000 January 18, salvaging a 23-year-old sailing and steam-packet line that began with the clipper ships Red Jacket, Ellen, and Blue Jacket in 1845, launched its first steamship (the 2,000-ton Royal Standard) in 1863 for the Liverpool-to-Melbourne run, but has gone bankrupt. Ismay and a partner promptly contract with the Belfast shipbuilding firm Harland and Wolff to construct four new ships for the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (White Star's official name) (see R.M.S. Oceanic, 1871).
Jay Gould wrests control of the Erie Railroad from Cornelius Vanderbilt (see 1864). Gould has conspired with his Vermont-born fellow Erie director James Fisk, now 34, and former Erie president Daniel Drew, now 71, to sell off watered stock, bringing New York's Tammany boss William Tweed into their plot and bribing state legislators to block Vanderbilt. The legislature at Albany votes April 20 to give Gould and Fisk full control of the Erie (see commerce, 1869).
The Westinghouse air brake patented in April by upstate New York inventor George Westinghouse, 22, will permit development of modern rail travel, although Cornelius Vanderbilt dismisses it as a "fool idea" and other railroad barons will resist adopting it until Congress passes legislation in 1893 requiring its use. Brakemen continue to jump from car to car and set brakes manually in all kinds of weather, their job requires daredevil agility, and few brakemen live long. They are easily replaced if killed or injured, and it is much cheaper to pay men $1.50 per day than to invest millions of dollars in equipment, but Americans have been horrified at the deaths and injuries caused by train accidents, and wrecks of wooden passenger cars will continue to make rail travel hazardous. Westinghouse invented a device for rerailing derailed cars 3 years ago, has seen compressed air used in European mining operations, and has devised a system that employs a hose running the full length of a train, with each car having its own tank of compressed air. He will make his air brake automatic in 1872, and it will permit an engineer to set the brakes simultaneously throughout a whole train by means of a steam-driven air pump (see Union Switch and Signal, 1882).
An automatic railway "knuckle" coupler patented April 21 by Virginia-born former Confederate Army major Eli H. (Hamilton) Janney, 36, hooks upon impact and is far safer than the link-and-pin coupler that endangers not only the fingers but also the lives of brakemen, who are all too often crushed between cars when trying to connect cars manually. Janney's coupler prevents excess sway of railcars, he will obtain a second patent in April 1873 after making improvements, organize the Janney Car Coupling Company to enforce his patent rights and collect royalties, and obtain additional patents in 1874, 1879, and 1882. His coupler will become standard railway equipment in 1888, although some railroads will resist adopting it until forced to do so by congressional legislation in 1893.
Coil and elliptic railroad car springs invented by U.S. engineer Aaron French, 41, make rail travel more comfortable, but travel by rail remains hazardous.
New York's West Side Elevated Railway opens July 1 between Cortlandt Street and Battery Place.
A bridge spans the Mississippi River at Quincy, Illinois, through the efforts of Chicago, Burlington & Quincy boss James Frederick Joy (see 1854). He has spent $1.5 million on the project in defiance of his critics, and his judgment will be confirmed when the Burlington's business in the Quincy area doubles next year (see Hannibal Bridge, 1869; Eads, 1874).
Atchison Associates is formed in September to build the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (see 1864). The new group will soon run out of money and control will pass to Boston financier Thomas Nickerson. He will be president of the Santa Fe from 1874 to 1880 and will obtain backing from Boston's Kidder, Peabody and from London's Baring Brothers (see pooling agreement, 1880).
London's St. Pancras station opens October 1 as a Midland Railway train pulls in with passengers who find a clock from the 1851 Great Exhibition. Architect William Henry Bralow, now 56, helped Joseph Paxton design the exhibition's Crystal Palace.
The U.S. Government adopts a standard system of screw threads established by Philadelphia machine-tool maker William Sellers, now 44 (see 1864). The Pennsylvania Railroad will follow suit next year, and the Sellers (or United States) Standard will become almost universal.
Cooper Hewitt's New Jersey Steel and Iron Co. builds the first U.S. open hearth steel furnace at Trenton (see 1862).
Boston inventor William H. Remington patents a process for electroplating with nickel. Patent No. 82,877 calls for a solution prepared by dissolving refined nickel in nitric acid, then precipitating the nickel by the addition of carbonate of potash, washing the precipitate with water, dissolving it in a solution of salammoniac, and filtering it (see nickel steel, 1888).
Tungsten steel is invented by English metallurgist Robert F. (Forester) Mushet, 57, whose alloy is much harder than ordinary steel (see 1882).
Clockmaker Chauncey Jerome dies in poverty at New Haven, Connecticut, April 20 at age 72, having gotten involved with shady businessmen in the 1850s with the result that his business failed.
Yale Lock Manufacturing Co. is established in October by Linus Yale in partnership with Pennsylvania-born engineer John H. (Henry) Towne, 50, and builds a factory at Stamford, Connecticut, to produce the new cylinder lock patented by Yale 3 years ago, but inventor Yale dies suddenly of heart failure at New York December 25 at age 47 soon after the plant goes into operation. His lock will be used for well over a century on the doors of houses and business establishments nationwide.
German organic chemists Carl Graebe, 27, and Carl Liebermann synthesize the orange-red dye alizarin that the textile industry will be quick to adopt in place of the natural dye, madder. Graebe will secure a patent on his process in June of next year.
The German Chemical Society is founded by chemist Wilhelm von Hofmann, now 50, whose research in organic chemistry has advanced the aniline dye industry founded by W. H. Perkin in 1857. Hofmann has introduced violet dyes made from rosanaline and will find a way to convert an amide into an amine having one less carbon atom.
Amateur English astronomer Joseph (Normann) Lockyer, 32, discovers a heretofore unknown element in the spectrum of the sun's atmosphere and gives it the name helium. Chemist Edward Franklin has helped Lockyer, who reports to the Academy of Sciences at Paris October 22 that he has found a way to observe solar prominences without an eclipse by using a spectroscope, a discovery made almost simultaneously by French astronomer Pierre (-Jules-César) Janssen, 44 (see Kayser, 1895).
French archaeologist Edouard Armand Isidore Hippolyte Lartet, 67, ventures into a cave near Perigueux and finds four adult skeletons and one fetal skeleton of Cro-Magnon man of the Upper Paleolithic period of 38,000 B.C. (see Neanderthal man, 1856; Java man, 1890).
Baron Jean B. L. Foucault dies of a degenerative disease at Paris February 11 at age 48; mathematician-physicist Julius Plücker at Bonn May 22 at age 66, having in addition to his pioneering work in geometry discovered that cathode rays are diverted from their path by a magnetic field, a principle that will prove vital in the next century to the development of electronic devices.
German physician Adolf Kussmaul, 46, at Freiburg pioneers what later will be called laparoscopic surgery, performing the first esophagogastroscopy procedure on a professional sword swallower (see Desormeaux, 1853; Nitze, 1879). Kussmaul advances the use of endoscopy but will gain a more lasting reputation with his descriptions of voluntary mutism (Kussmaul's aphasia), diabetic coma, limited expansion of the right ventricle (Kussmaul's pulse), and other conditions, including the acquired neuropathy that will be called Guillain-Barré-Strohl syndrome (see Kelling, 1901).
Guy's Hospital, London, physician Samuel Wilks, 44, gives the first clinical description of osteoporosis, a kind of osteitis deformans known also as spongy hypertrophy of the bones (see 1846).
Anesthesiology pioneer William T. G. Morton dies in poverty at New York July 15 at age 48, having exhausted his resources fighting in court against the patent claims of Crawford W. Long, who will survive until 1878.
College of New Jersey president John MacLean resigns as enrollment drops in the wake of the Civil War (the college recruited many students from the South before the war, and some came with their slaves). The board of trustees invite Scottish-born Queens College of Belfast logic and metaphysics professor James McCosh, 57, to take over the presidency at Princeton, and McCosh will serve for 20 years, reviving the school's finances, improving its faculty, erecting new buildings, and elevating its standards.
Hampton Institute has its beginnings in the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute opened at Hampton, Virginia, by Hawaiian-born educator Samuel Chapman Andrews, 29, who has persuaded the American Missionary Society and some private benefactors to fund the purchase of a large estate on which to build a school for academic and vocational education. Andrews saw action at Gettysburg 5 years ago, was made a colonel of the newly-organized black 9th Regiment in 1864, took charge of a black encampment at Hampton in 1866, and has recognized the need to educate emancipated blacks for their new position in life. The state of Virginia will charter his school in 1870 (see Booker T. Washington, 1881).
The Public Schools Act passed by Parliament makes privately endowed schools such as Eton, Harrow, Westminster, and Winchester autonomous.
England's first salaried woman journalist opposes higher education for women. Eliza Linton (née Lynn), 46, characterizes "The Girl of the Period" as "hard, unloving, mercenary, ambitious without domestic faculty and devoid of healthy natural instincts . . . Men are afraid of her; and with reason. They may amuse themselves with her for an evening, but they do not readily take her for life." Linton castigates those of her sex who are "bold in bearing" and "masculine in mind" rather than "tender, loving, retiring, [and] domestic."
The newspaper Revolution begins publication at New York with backing from George Francis Train (see 1867). It will continue for 2½ years, with suffragist Susan B. Anthony as publisher, Elizabeth Cady Stanton writing the editorials, and even the type setting done by women. They use as their slogan, "Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less." Taking up the cause of Hester Vaughan, the paper publishes reports that thousands of infants are being abandoned each year on the city's doorsteps and in alleys.
A patent for a typewriter is issued to Christopher Sholes, Carlos G. Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule (see Sholes, 1867). Businessmen James Densmore and George Washington Yost encourage Sholes to construct a machine whose most commonly used keys will be widely separated on the keyboard to avoid jamming and Sholes aligns the letters in an arrangement that will permit rapid fingering:
QWERTYUIOP
ASDFGHJKL
ZXCVBNM
Densmore and Yost will buy the patent (see 1873).
The Atlanta Constitution begins publication June 16 at the city that has become the state capitol April 20. W. A. Hemphill and James H. Anderson have purchased the newspaper Public Opinion, renamed it, and hired Colonel Carey W. Stiles to edit the morning daily and fight for reestablishment of state government by Georgians. "We return to the Union," the paper editorializes in July, ". . . under a Constitution and a state of government which has no foundations in the affection our people . . . By the enfranchisement of the lowest class . . . and the wholesale disenfranchisement of our best citizens, we have certainly taken a retrograde movement." The paper will win its fight in 1871 with the routing of "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers" (see Grady, 1879; Journal, 1883).
The San Diego Union-Tribune has its beginnings in the San Diego Union founded October 10 near the plaza in the heart of town (seeTribune, 1895).
La Prensa begins publication at Buenos Aires October 18. Argentine publisher Ottavio Paz will make his paper the largest in South America (see 1870).
The Louisville Courier-Journal begins publication November 18 to serve a city whose population has grown to 100,000. It has been created by a merger of two Kentucky newspapers under the editorship of Henry Watterson, who will continue to direct the paper's policy until his death in 1921.
The World Almanac is published for the first time. The New York World has compiled a 108-page compendium of facts (mostly political, with notes on Southern Reconstruction, the impeachment of President Johnson, and the extension of suffrage to blacks in the North), the Almanac has 12 pages of advertising, annual publication will end in 1876, but World publisher Joseph Pulitzer will revive the Almanac in 1886 and it will appear every year thereafter, going to press after the November elections, becoming the World Almanac and Encyclopedia in 1894, the World Almanac and Book of Facts in 1923.
N. W. Ayer & Son is founded by Philadelphia advertising solicitor Wayland Ayer, 20, whose father has little or no part in the new advertising firm set up to represent farm journals and the religious weekly National Baptist (see "open contracts," 1875).
J. Walter Thompson has its beginnings as New York advertising pioneer William James Carlton hires Massachusetts-born Marine Corps veteran James Walter Thompson, 20, who persuades publishers of magazines such as Godey's Lady's Book to let him sell space in all the magazines as if they were one unit. Thompson persuades merchants to buy space in a group of magazines rather than in one at a time. The influx of new advertising enables the publishers to improve the quality of their printing, their paper, and their illustrations and to pay authors and artists better rates while selling their publications at 10¢ or 15¢ as advertising revenues increase their profits (see 1878).
Rand McNally & Co. is founded by Chicago printer William Rand and his former apprentice Irish-born printer Andrew McNally, 31, who 9 years ago assumed management of the Chicago Tribune's job printing shop. Specializing initially in passenger tickets, timetables, and related print jobs, Rand McNally will publish its first map in 1872 when it issues a Railway Guide and the firm will grow to become the world's leading map maker.
Nonfiction: Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (first complete edition, edited by John Bigelow) is published at Philadelphia and London. Franklin began the work in 1771 as a letter to his son William but died in 1790 without having finished it (see 1791); The American Beaver and His Works by anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan; Les Secrets de la prestidigitation et de la magie by Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, now 62, who gives step-by-step lessons.
Fiction: The Idiot (Idiot) by Fedor Dostoievski; The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins; Foul Play by Charles Reade and actor-playwright Dion Boucicault exposes the frauds responsible for the "coffin ships" that endanger the lives of seamen; "The Luck of Roaring Camp" by Overland Monthly editor (Francis) Bret Harte, 32, at San Francisco.
Poetry: Verses on Various Occasions by John Henry Newman, who includes his 1866 poem "The Dream of Gerontius"; The Voice of an Exile (La Voix d'un exile) by French-Canadian poet Louis-Honoré Fréchette, 28, who went to Chicago 2 years ago after being discharged from his journalist position for his liberal views (his verses idealize the French republic and attack the clerical and political dealings in his native Quebec Province); Specimens by Indiana-born Oregon poet Joaquin (originally Cincinnatus Hiner, or Heine) Miller, 31, who went west with his family, settled at Eugene about 16 years ago, made some money operating a pony express station, and in 1863 acquired the local newspaper, in which he published an article defending the legendary California outlaw Joaquín Murieta.
Juvenile: Elsie Dinsmore by Chillicothe, Ohio-born author Martha Farquharson (Finley), 40, who has written Sunday-school books and stories for New York and Philadelphia newspapers but taken up writing children's books to support herself after sustaining a debilitating injury. She will write the seven-volume Mildred series and the 12-volume Pewit's Nest series plus 27 more Elsie novels.
Painting: Portrait of Emile Zola by Edouard Manet; Path Lined With Trees Near Vichy by Jean-François Millet; Morning at Ville-d'Avray by J. B. C. Corot, now 72; Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California by Albert Bierstadt; Dawn of Morning, Lake George by Jasper Francis Cropsey. Emanuel G. Leutze dies at Washington, D.C., July 18 at age 62; William Sidney Mount at his native Setauket, Long Island, November 19 at age 60.
Louis Ducos du Hauron receives a patent November 23 on a process for making color photographs (see motion pictures, 1864). It involves photographing a scene through green, orange, and violet filters, printing the three negatives on thin sheets of bichromated gelatin containing red, blue, and yellow carbon pigments which complement the colors of the negatives, and superimposing the three positives (usually in the form of transparencies) to produce the full-color picture (see 1869).
Theater: Play by Thomas W. Robertson 2/15 at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, London, with Marie Wilton, Lydia Foote, Squire Bancroft, H. J. Montague. The playwright's sister Madge (Margaret Shafto Robertson), now 18, made her London debut 3 years ago in the role of Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet, plays the role of Don Octavio this year in a benefit performance of Colley Cibber's 1702 comedy She Wou'd and She Wou'd Not opposite London-born actor William Hunter (Grimston) Kendal, now 24. They will marry next year. He will excel at costume and set design while choosing plays that provide her with good roles, and their theatrical company will elevate the social responsibility of the acting profession; Diary of a Scoundrel, or Enough Stupidity for Every Wise Man (Na vsyakoso mudresa devolna prostoty) by Aleksandr Ostrovsky 11/1 at St. Petersburg's Alexandrinsky Theater, with Prov Sadovsky.
Actor-theater manager Charles Kean dies at London January 22 at age 57; Adah Menken gives her final performance May 30 at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, collapses during a rehearsal in July, and dies at Paris August 10 at age 33.
Opera: Mefistofele 3/5 at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, with music by Italian composer Arrigo Boito, 26; Hamlet 3/9 at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, with music by Ambroise Thomas; Dalibor 5/16 at Prague, with music by Bedrich Smetana; Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg 6/21 at Munich, with music by Richard Wagner; La Perichole 10/6 at the Théâtre des Variétés, Paris, with Hortense Schneider, music by Jacques Offenbach, libretto by Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac; Geneviève de Brabant 10/22 at New York, with music by Offenbach in the first U.S. performance of the opera which contains an aria that will become the hymn of the U.S. Marine Corps (lyrics beginning, "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli" will be published in 1918).
Composer Gioacchino Rossini dies at Passy, outside Paris, November 13 at age 76 and is buried at Florence's Church of Santa Croce.
First performances: Symphony No. 1 in G minor (Winter Dreams) by Russian composer Petr Ilich Tchaikovsky, 27, 2/15 at Moscow; A German Requiem (Ein Deutsches Requiem) by Johannes Brahms 4/10 (Good Friday) at St. Stephans' Cathedral, Bremen; Symphony No. 1 in C minor by Austrian composer Anton Bruckner, 43, 5/9 at Linz. The work is too difficult for the orchestra but Vienna will hear a revised version in 1891; Concerto No. 2 in G minor for Piano and Orchestra by Camille Saint-Saëns 5/13 at Paris; Tales of the Vienna Woods (Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald) by Johann Strauss 6/9 at Vienna.
The Brahms Lullaby published at Berlin has words from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (the second verse is by George Scherer and a Mrs. Natalia Macfarren writes English lyrics).
Hymns: "Lead, Kindly Light" ("Lux Benigna") by English clergyman-composer John Bacchus Dykes, 45, lyrics by John Henry Newman (see 1833); "Yield Not to Temptation" by U.S. composer Horatio Richmond Palmer, 34; "O Little Town of Bethlehem" by Philadelphia Holy Trinity Episcopal Church organist Lewis H. Redner, 37, lyrics by church rector Philips Brooks, 33.
Popular song: "Sweet By and By" by U.S. composer Joseph P. Webster, lyrics by S. Fillmore.
The All-England Croquet Club founded at Wimbledon holds its first championship matches. Played in England for the past 12 to 15 years by women as much as men, the 13th century game will yield in popularity to tennis in the next 10 years (see 1874; 1897).
Badminton is invented at England's Badminton Hall, Gloucestershire, residence of Henry Charles Fitzroy Somerset, 44, duke of Beaufort, whose late father promoted the Badminton Hunt. Players use light racquets to bat a feathered shuttlecock back and forth across a net.
The first recorded bicycle race is held May 31 over a two-kilometer course in the Parc de St. Cloud outside Paris (see transportation, 1861). About 200 cyclists participate, English cyclist James Moore wins, and he will win the first road race in November of next year, reportedly covering the 83 miles (134 kilometers) from Paris to Rouen in 10 hours, 25 minutes with a 160-pound (73-kilogram) machine equipped with solid rubber tires and ball bearings (see transportation [Starley], 1870).
Americans observe Memorial Day (Decoration Day) May 30 with a gathering of 5,000 at Arlington Cemetery (see 1866). The holiday commemorates the Union dead of the Civil War, New York will make it a holiday in 1873, and every Northern state will have followed suit by 1891.
Train robbers enter an Adams Express car outside Seymour, Indiana, throw the company agent off the train, open the safes, and make off with more than $40,000 (see 1866; Jesse James, 1872).
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's newspaper Revolution does not shy away from reporting incidents of rape, infanticide, prostitution, and wife beating, despite the fact that respectable Americans avoid mentioning such subjects.
A patent on a lawn mower issued January 12 to U.S. inventor Amariah M. Hills covers the design of the first American reel lawn mower (see Budding, 1830). Hills organizes the Achimedean Lawn Mower Co.
The Scotts Co. that will become the world's largest turf and horticultural concern has its beginnings at Marysville, Ohio, where Civil War veteran Orlando McLean Scott has been managing a seed elevator, buys a hardware store and seed business, uses a seed-cleaning machine to remove weeds and inert matter from farm seed, and by the turn of the century will focus on grass seed. An advertisement placed in a farm journal will produce an order for 5,000 pounds of Kentucky bluegrass seed from a New York real-estate firm building a golf course, and within 5 years 20 percent of U.S. golf courses will have grass grown from seed supplied by O. M. Scott & Sons (see Turf Builder fertilizer, 1928).
Earthquakes strike Ecuador and Peru in mid-August, killing 25,000.
John Muir gets his first sight of San Francisco after having journeyed to Cuba, to Panama, across the Isthmus to the Pacific, and thence north to California (see 1864). Muir moves up into the Sierra Nevada and the Yosemite Valley (see 1876).
San Francisco's Golden Gate Park has its beginnings in a sandy stretch of more than 1,000 acres that are set aside for recreational purposes. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted has dismissed the land as completely unsuitable, but a local gardener will plant grasses, lupin, and barley to anchor the soil, lay down two to three feet of imported soil to create a forest, and use cypress trees to protect the land from wind erosion; private citizens will contribute funds to build a 15,000-square-foot conservatory for tropical plants, and by 1879 the park will be resplendent with trees, flowers, footpaths, and waterfalls (see 1893).
The National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry is founded at Washington, D.C., February 19 in the Georgetown home of Oliver H. Kelley, who starts the fraternal organization with six associates (see 1867). Its popular name derives from its lodges, which are designated by an archaic name for barn. Avowedly nonpolitical, the Grange's stated aims are educational and social, with emphasis on reading and discussion to increase farmers' knowledge, but the discussions will inevitably turn to freight rates, high taxes, and politics (see 1873).
U.S. wheat prices fall to 90¢ per bushel in the fall and then to 67¢, down from a wartime high of $4 and a postwar peak of $2.50 (see 1867). The potato beetle has affected some farmers' crops, but so much grain comes out of warehouses that it depresses the price. California wheat grower Hugh J. Glenn has acquired more than 50,000 acres at the northern end of the Sacramento Valley (see 1865); by 1880 he will have 66,000 acres and be producing 1 million bushels per year.
California flour goes not only to the Rockies but also to China, Japan, Britain, and the rest of Europe. The Crimean War and Civil War have stimulated production of California wheat, whose flinty character makes it well suited to shipment overseas.
The Planet Jr. seed planter, patented by Moorestown, New Jersey, inventor Samuel Leeds Allen, 27, consists of two wash basins fastened together with a metal band containing drill-holes (an attached handle permits the planter to be rolled over the ground). Allen will open a factory at Philadelphia in 1880 and expand his line to include a fertilizer driller, wheel hoes, potato diggers, and celery hillers.
The 300,000-acre King-Kenedy ranch in Texas is divided between Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy (see 1860). King prospered through the Civil War by steamboat trade in cotton carried to British ships at Brownsville and will use his fortune to expand the King Ranch on the Neuces River (see Kleberg, 1885).
Montpellier stockbroker Gaston Bazille assembles scientists to discuss the blight affecting French grape vines at the château de Lagoy, a wine estate near Saint Rémy, 15 miles from Arles (see 1863; 1867). The men dig up healthy vines as well as those obviously affected and note the presence of a microscopic insect underground. The yellowish parasitic burrowing plant louse or aphid Daktulospharia vitifolia, which eats away at the roots of grapevines, was identified by Asa Fitch in his 1856 book The Noxious, Beneficial and Other Insects of the State of New York. Bazille, who has invested heavily in vineyards, is told by Jules-Emile Blanchon, professor of pharmacy at Montpellier University, that the cause of the dead and dying vines is an aphid, phylloxera vastatrix ("the devastator"), but its source is not immediately discerned. An official government commission that includes Blanchon will start work next year to deal with the menace to France's wine-grape production (see 1872).
A new mechanical cooler for English trains permits quick-cooled milk to be delivered by rail in new metal containers to cities such as London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow. The milk is far safer than milk from cows kept in town sheds (see 1863).
The first regularly scheduled U.S. dining car goes into service on the Chicago-Alton Railroad. Trains up to now have stopped for passengers to take meals at stations en route, but the available fare has been limited and of poor quality; George M. Pullman's dining car is named the Delmonico for the New York restaurant. Menus on Pullman's Palace Car Company dining cars will rival those at the best hotels of Boston and New York (see 1876).
Claus Spreckels of San Francisco patents a sugar-refining method that takes just 8 hours instead of the usual 3 weeks (see 1863). Spreckels has gone back to Europe to study manufacturing methods. The California Sugar Refinery that he opens will win him the title "Sugar King" (see 1883).
Liverpool meat packer John Morrell opens the first North American Morrell slaughterhouse at London, Ontario, after having opened Irish plants in the 1850s and a New York buying office in 1864 to obtain American bacon (see 1842; Ottumwa, Iowa, 1877).
Chicago meat packer P. D. Armour adds a second plant as business booms (see 1864). Armour moved from Milwaukee last year; he and his partner John Plankinton have invested $160,000 to take over a slaughterhouse on Archer Avenue and set up under the name Armour & Co. (see 1869).
Tabasco Sauce is formulated on Avery Island off Louisiana's Gulf Coast. Former New Orleans banker Edmund McIlhenny fled New Orleans with his wife, Mary (née Avery), when Union troops entered the city in 1862 and settled on his in-laws' 2,500-acre island, where the Avery family operated America's first salt mine (salt was essential for preserving the meat that fed Confederate troops). Union forces took over the island in 1863, the McIlhennys escaped to Texas, and when they returned in 1865 they found their plantation ruined and their mansion looted. Nothing much remained but a crop of red peppers (capsicum frutescens). McIlhenny has crushed the peppers and mixed them with vinegar and salt to create a piquant sauce, aged the mixture for a few days in wooden barrels, siphoned off the liquid, and put up the sauce in empty cologne bottles. Encouraged by the response of friends, he produces 350 bottles for Southern merchants and next year will sell several thousand at $1 each, starting a business in the Cajun condiment that will be popular for generations with seafood, especially shellfish. McIlhenny will soon open a London office to handle a growing European demand for his product.
Commercial production of compressed yeast begins for the first time in America. Charles Fleischmann has emigrated from Hungary and joined his brother Maximilian and Cincinnati yeast maker James F. Gaff to form Gaff, Fleischmann & Co. (see 1865). He sells to Cincinnati housewives from a basket at first, then by horse and wagon (see 1870).
Brewer Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness dies at London May 19 at age 69, having been created a baronet last year.
The New Orleans restaurant Antoine's that opened in 1840 moves to larger space in St. Louis Street. Antoine Alciatore closes his place promptly at 10:30 each evening; music is forbidden; there are no decorations; the color, pattern, and style of table set-ups will never change; and the specialties will include oysters à brochette and chicken Rochambeau (see 1871).
Beijing (Peking) appoints former U.S. minister to China Anson Burlingame, 48, to head a delegation to Europe and the United States for the purpose of making treaties. The Burlingame Treaty signed at Washington July 28 defines mutual rights of immigration and emigration (see Hayes, 1879).
The Revolution runs stories about New York's thinly-disguised abortionist offices and the easy availability of abortifacients, including patent medicines that are often highly alcoholic or laced with laudanum.
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