1869 in the United States

1869 in the United States
Decades:	1840s 1850s – 1860s – 1870s 1880s
Years:	1866 1867 1868 – 1869 – 1870 1871 1872
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37 stars (1867 – 1877)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1865–1918)

Events from the year 1869 in the United States.

Incumbents

• President: Andrew Johnson (Democratic/National Union/none) (until March 4), Ulysses S. Grant (Republican) (starting March 4)
• Vice President: vacant (until March 4), Schuyler Colfax (Republican) (starting March 4)
• Chief Justice: Salmon P. Chase
• Speaker of the House of Representatives:
  • until March 3: Schuyler Colfax (R-Indiana)
  • March 3–March 4: Theodore Medad Pomeroy (R-New York)
  • starting March 4: James G. Blaine (R-Maine)
• Congress: 40th (until March 4), 41st (starting March 4)

Events

March 4: Ulysses S. Grant becomes President

January–March

• January 1 – Sigma Nu, the first anti-hazing Honor/Social Fraternity, is founded.
• January 20 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the first woman to testify before the United States Congress.
• January 21 – The P.E.O. Sisterhood, a philanthropic educational organization for women, is founded at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
• March 4 – Ulysses S. Grant succeeds Andrew Johnson as the 18th President of the United States of America.

April–June

May 10: Golden spike

• April 6 – The American Museum of Natural History is founded in New York.
• May 6 – Purdue University is founded in West Lafayette, Indiana.
• May 10 – The "golden spike" is driven marking the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in Promontory, Utah.
• May 15 – Woman's suffrage: In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.
• May 26 – Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
• June 1 – The Cincinnati Red Stockings open the baseball season as the first fully professional baseball team.
• June 15 – John Wesley Hyatt patents the first plastic, Celluloid, in Albany, New York.

July–September

• September 24 – The Fisk-Gould Scandal (also known as Black Friday) causes a financial panic in the United States.

October–December

December 10: "Equal Rights" motto on Wyoming's seal refers to the territory pioneering women's suffrage.

• November 6 – The first game of American Football between two American colleges is played. Rutgers University defeats Princeton University 6–4 in a forerunner to American football and College football.
• December 10 – The first American chapter of Kappa Sigma is founded at the University of Virginia.
• December 10 – The Wyoming territorial legislature gives women the right to vote, one of the first such laws in the world.

Undated

• James Gordon Bennett, Jr. of the New York Herald asks Henry Morton Stanley to find Dr. Livingstone.
• Southern Illinois University, Carbondale is founded.
• Marcus Jastrow arrives in the United States to become rabbi of Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia.

Ongoing

• Reconstruction era (1865–1877)
• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)

Births

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Deaths

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External links

• Media related to 1869 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons