| Denmark Vesey’s slave rebellion uncovered in Charleston, SC. Vesey and 34 others are executed.
South Carolina adopts the Negro Seaman Law, which places all free Negro sea-men under arrest until their ships leave port.
1823
Monroe Doctrine warns Europe to stay out of the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
Cotton mills in Massachusetts begin producing cloth with water-powered machinery.
The Mormon religion founded by Joseph Smith.
1824
United States agrees to 54º 40′ for the lower limit of Russian possessions in North America.
1825
With the electoral support of Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams is selected by the House of Representatives as president over Jackson, who had initially received the most votes.
Democratic Party is formed with Andrew Jackson at its head.
Congress adopts the Indian removal policy.
The Erie Canal opens an important route connecting New York State with the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys.
The University of Virginia is founded.
Preserving foods in tinned iron cans is first patented in America by Ezra Daggett.
1826
Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die on July 4th.
The Free School Society of New York City is renamed the Public School Society of New York.
American Temperance Society is founded as part of a broad reform movement during the era of the Second Great Awakening. Temperance, the movement to limit alcohol consumption, proves to be one of the most enduring outgrowths of evangelical Christian activism. Temperance grows as a reaction against a huge spike in alcohol consumption during the early nineteenth century. Within five years, there will be 2,220 temperance societies in the United States, with 170,000 members who have taken a pledge of abstinence (sobriety).
1827
United States and Britain agree to joint occupation of Oregon.
Congress gives the president the right to call out the militia.
The first black newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, is published in New York.
The term “technology” is first used.
1828
Andrew Jackson is elected president.
South Carolina declares the national tariff unconstitutional nullification.
1829
The first performance of “Metamora, or, The Last of the Mohicans,” a stage rendition of James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, stars Edwin Forrest, the first actor to earn an international reputation. It is the dramatic sensation of the 1830s.
1830
Robert Y. Hayne debates Daniel Webster over states’ rights and the nature of the Union.
Congress adopts the Indian Removal Act, sending Indians to Oklahoma Territory.
The first functional sewing machine is produced in France by Barthelemy Thimonnier.
Godey’s Lady’s Book is published.
Lion of the West James K. Paulding writes the play “Lion of the West,” starring Nimrod Wildfire, a vernacular character based on Davy Crockett, a sort of anti-European hero whose physical strength can defeat the pretensions of his neighbors. This provides some indication of the increasing importance of the theater as a site of class co-mingling in the 1830s and onward, and an example of the way that the public constructs and celebrates popular characters and celebrities such as Crockett.The final months of the 1830s saw the proliferation of a revolutionary new technology—photography. Hence, the infant industry of photographic portraiture preserved for history a few rare, but invaluable, first images of human beings—and therefore also preserved our earliest, live peek into “fashion in action”—and its impact on everyday life and society as a whole. (Wikipedia)
1831
Nat Turner leads a slave revolt in Virginia.
The Anti-Masonic Party is formed.
Prudence Crandall, a Pennsylvania Quaker, opens a school for black girls in Connecticut.
Supreme Court upholds the removal of the Cherokee nation from Georgia.
1832
Black Hawk War with the Sauk Indians of Illinois commences.
Andrew Jackson reelected as president.
South Carolina Nullification Convention nullifies the 1828 and 1832 Tariffs.
Cholera epidemics sweep American cities.
June 1832 Cholera Epidemic in New York
A cholera epidemic strikes New York City. It has killed some 30,000 in Britain and city officials have tried to prevent its spread by keeping all incoming vessels 300 yards from any dock if the captain suspects there is cholera aboard. The effort is unsuccessful; nearly 3,500 of the city’s 250,000 residents die by September.Brigham Young converts to Mormonism.
December 1, 1832
Bowery Theatre Overcrowded
A theater crowd attending a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard III (in the Bowery, a working-class neighborhood in New York City) is so large that some 300 people overflow onto the stage, examine the actors’ costumes (presumably because they are curious about the detail and the materials employed), race across the stage, and surround Richard and Richmond, forcing them to extend their swordfight for almost fifteen minutes. The rioters make T.D. Rice repeat his famous “Jim Crow” dance (in blackface) twenty times.1833
Oberlin College is established as an abolitionist center.
American Anti-Slavery Society is formed.
Slavery is abolished in the British Empire.
April 9, 1833
First Public Library Founded
The nation’s first tax-supported public library is founded in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
September 3, 1833
Daily Newspapers Begin
The penny press—a one-cent daily newspaper affordable to working-class readers—emerges with Benjamin Day’s New York Sun. Competitors quickly materialize. In 1835 James Gordon Bennett starts the New York Herald, which quickly becomes a leading metropolitan journal.
December 3, 1833
First Women Enrolled at Oberlin College
Oberlin College opens and soon begins enrolling women, becoming the first co-educational college in United States.
May 6, 1833
Andrew Jackson Nose Pulled
Andrew Jackson’s nose is allegedly pulled by a disgruntled former Navy Lieutenant named Robert Beverly Randolph. In response to this insult to Jackson’s honor, the 66-year-old president tries to beat Randolph with his cane, but Randolph flees.
1834
Whig Party is formed.
Senate censures Jackson for killing the National Bank.
First Methodist mission and farming settlement is founded in Oregon.
Cyrus McCormick patents the mechanical reaper
Walter Hunt, an American, produces a hand-cranked sewing machine.
Jacob Perkins patents an early system for refrigeration.
Maria Monk’s Awful Discourses of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal is first published.
The Ursuline Convent in Charlestown near Boston is burned.
Anti-Abolition Riots break out in Northern cities.
1835
Texas revolts against Mexican rule.
An unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Jackson is made.
The Seminole Indian War begins with the massacre of U.S. troops.
Samuel Colt invents the revolving pistol.
1835
New York Sun
Benjamin Day’s paper, the New York Sun, achieves the largest circulation in the world, with 19,360 readers a day.
April 1, 1835
William Gilmore Simms Publishes The Yemassee
William Gilmore Simms, a pro-slavery man of letters, publishes The Yemassee (a story about an Indian war in 1715) and The Partisan, the first in a seven-part series on the American Revolution in South Carolina.
May 6, 1835
The New York Herald
James Gordon Bennett, a Scottish-born newspaper editor in America, launches a new penny paper of four four-column pages called the New York Herald. Though he begins with only $500 in capital and he works out of a cellar on Wall Street, Bennett’s paper quickly rivals Benjamin Day’s Sun and sells 15,000 copies a day within the year.
August 20, 1835
P.T. Barnum Exhibits Joice Heth
P.T. Barnum exhibits Joice Heth, a woman supposedly 161 years old, who claims to have been the nurse of George Washington.
1836
Mexican General Antonio Santa Anna massacres Texans at the Alamo.
Samuel Houston defeats Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto and Texas becomes an independent republic.
Arkansas becomes the 25th state.
Congress forms Wisconsin Territory.
William H. McGuffey publishes the first of his standard elementary school readers.
Virginia Military Institute is founded.
February 19, 1836
P.T. Barnum Hold Public Autopsy
Joice Heth, the elderly slave woman who P.T. Barnum purchased and exhibited as the 161-year-old nurse of George Washington, passes away. Barnum capitalizes on her death by agreeing to a heavily publicized public autopsy on her body that attracted some 1,500 observers. Ostensibly this is in order to determine whether or not Heth was as old as Barnum had claimed. The surgeon presiding over the autopsy says that she probably wasn’t over 80 years old.
September 19, 1836
Transcendental Club Begins
The Transcendental Club begins as an informal discussion group that meets at members’ homes in Boston and Concord. It attracts clergymen, intellectuals, and reformers, most notably Ralph Waldo Emerson, the essayist, lecturer, and poet, who rejects pure reason in favor of a transcendent world beyond, one occupied by ideals, morals, and intuition.
February 23, 1836
Siege of the Alamo
Five thousand Mexican soldiers under General Santa Anna lay siege to the Alamo, an old mission in San Antonio, Texas, that has been occupied by Americans fighting for Texas independence.
March 6, 1836
The Alamo Seized
Mexican forces attack the Alamo mission and its 189 defenders. Only sixteen women, children, and servants survive. Among the slain are frontiersman Davy Crockett (who uses his musket, “Old Betsy,” as a club in his final hours), Jim Bowie (inventor of the Bowie knife), and a group of Texans and American volunteers. “Remember the Alamo” becomes a rallying cry for Sam Houston’s Texan forces,
April 1836
Santa Anna Captured
Fighting in the Texan war for independence ceases after General Santa Anna is taken prisoner; he subsequently buys his freedom.
April 10, 1836
Jewett Murder
On a cold spring night in New York City, 23-year-old prostitute Helen Jewett is found hacked to death by an axe in the Manhattan brothel where she lives. Her corpse is still smoldering from the fire that the murderer set to her mahogany bed. The scandalous crime and subsequent murder trial of Jewett’s regular customer, eighteen-year-old Richard P. Robinson, becomes one of the first salacious murder mysteries to be covered extensively by the press.
Martin Van Buren is elected president.
1837
A general economic depression becomes the Panic of 1837.
Supreme Court membership is increased from seven to nine justices.
Mount Holyoke Seminary for women opens in Massachusetts.
Victoria becomes the Queen of England.
May 10, 1837
Panic of 1837
The economy falls into a depression known as the Panic of 1837. The crisis begins with a financial panic, with the total face value of banknotes in circulation nationwide almost four times the total value of specie (money). Apart from a brief recovery in 1838, the depression will last until 1843.
March 1, 1837
Nathaniel Hawthorne Twice Told Tales
Author Nathaniel Hawthorne earns some measure of fame with the publication of Twice Told Tales.
July 13, 1837
Victorian Era Begins
Britain’s Queen Victoria becomes the first monarch to occupy Buckingham Palace as the so-called “Victorian Era” commences. It will endure until 1901.
Dwight founds Harvard Musical Association
1838
Boston Musical Gazette appears
U.S. troops forcibly remove the Cherokee from Georgia (Trail of Tears).
Congress adopts the “Gag” rule limiting discussion of antislavery.
Congress creates a new patent law to deal with competing claims to inventions.
Some Northern states pass Personal Liberty Laws to obstruct the capture of fugitive slaves.
The Underground Railroad is developed.
Samuel F.B. Morse introduces the Morse code.
1838
Benjamin Day Sells Sun
Benjamin Day sells his wildly successful newspaper, the New York Sun, to his brother-in-law, Moses Yale Beach, for $40,000.
February 24, 1838
Cilley Death Kills Duels
A duel between Maine congressman Jonathan Cilley and Kentucky Representative William Graves results in the death of Cilley, who becomes the last member of the U.S. House to die in a duel. The public outcry over Cilley’s death results in a popular reaction against dueling in the North and the passage of a Maine state law that fines a person $100 for ridiculing anyone who refuses to duel. All of the Supreme Court Justices refuse to attend Cilley’s funeral as a show of protest against the practice.
January 6, 1838
Samuel Morse Demonstrates Telegraph
Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates his telegraph in Morristown, New Jersey.
First McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader is released.
Congress forms Iowa Territory.
1839
The Amistad slave ship is found off Long Island, NY.
Louis Daguerre invents the daguerreotype, the first successful form of photography.
1839
Panic of 1839
Another financial depression inaugurates a recession that endures for two years. Prices fall, as does production.
1839
Realist Painting Reaches Mass
From about 1839 onward, realist painting appeals to a new mass audience. It is influenced by photography, which debuts in France in 1839 and spreads quickly across the globe. Realism employs social and historical narrative (with artists such as Wilkie and Poynter) or serious religious, moral, or social messages (including the pre-Raphaelites, Millet, etc.) often drawn from ordinary life. Realistic novelists present the complete spectrum of social classes and personalities, but retain sentimentality and moral judgment (these include Eliot, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Balzac). See examples such as Oliver Twist and Anna Karenina.
March 23, 1839
O.K. Coined
The Boston Morning Post first prints a hip new buzzword-“O.K.”-after President Martin Van Buren, who was known as “Old Kinderhook” (for Kinderhook, his hometown in New York state) and used to initial “O.K.” in the margins of paperwork that received his approval.
August 19, 1839
Daguerrotype Invented
Louis Jacques Daguerre of France invents the daguerreotype, the first form of photography.
1840
Congress passes the Subtreasury Bill in an effort to stem the effects of the ongoing Panic of 1837.
William Henry Harrison is elected president
New Zealand is founded, as the Treaty of Waitangi is signed by the Māori and British.
August 18, 1840
First Class Photograph
The first “class photograph,” of the Yale College 30th reunion, is taken by American inventor and artist Samuel F.B. Morse.
1841
John Tyler becomes president when Harrison unexpectedly dies of pneumonia.
The Amistad Africans are freed by the Supreme Court.
Immigration to the United States from Ireland and Britain approaches 300,000 in the previous 10 years.
1842
Rhode Island liberalizes voting requirements.
The New York City Public School Department is formed.
Seminoles are defeated and removed to Oklahoma.
The right of workers to strike established by the Massachusetts State Court.
Dr. Crawford Long uses anesthetic gas in his surgery.
April 4, 1841
Tyler Becomes President
John Tyler becomes the first vice-president to become President by succession, taking power upon the death of 68-year-old William Henry Harrison, who infamously dies of pneumonia one month after delivering an hour-and-forty-five-minute inauguration speech outside in a snowstorm. Harrison is the first U.S. president to die in office.
April 10, 1841
Horace Greeley Founds New York Tribune
Journalist Horace Greeley founds The New York Tribune as a paper aligned with the Whig party in response to the sensationalism of the penny press; it promotes the reforms of the day and sets a precedent in literary journalism with the nation’s first regular book-review column (in 1849).
July 1, 1841
Beautiful Cigar Girl Murdered
Mary Cecilia Rogers, the “Beautiful Cigar Girl” who tends the counter at a popular New York City cigar store, mysteriously disappears. Her body is found floating in the Hudson River three days later, badly bruised and waterlogged, just a few feet from the New Jersey shore. The crime becomes a focus of the penny press, popular fiction, and public fascination.
August 21, 1841
Venetian Blind Patented
John Hampson of New Orleans patents the venetian blind.
1842
Benjamin Day Founds Brother Jonathan
Benjamin Day founds the monthly Brother Jonathan. It will later become the first illustrated weekly in America.
January 22, 1842
Charles Dickens Tours America
Thirty-year-old British writer Charles Dickens first journeys to America. Americans are exhilarated to catch a glimpse of the author, already beloved on this side of the Atlantic for Sketches by Boz, The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby. But the tour does not go well; Dickens finds Americans rude and vulgar, and they begin to dislike him in turn, especially after he begins delivering after-dinner speeches chastising them for reading pirated copies of his works. (There is no international copyright law at the time.)
1843
The great migration on the Oregon Trail begins.
Congress finances a telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
Charles Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol.
1843
Vulcanization of Rubber
Around this time period (in the mid-to-late 1840s), the development of the vulcanization process facilitates the production of condoms from crepe rubber, which is a vast improvement from the expensive and ill-fitting predecessors that had to be put on, very carefully, with both hands. Condoms will be used with increasing frequency by the 1870s.1844
Samuel F.B. Morse sends first telegraph message: “What God hath Wrought!”
Uriah Boyden invents a more efficient turbine waterwheel.
Composer Stephen C. Foster gains recognition.
In Philadelphia, two Catholic churches and 30 Irish homes are burned.
Persian Prophet the Báb announces his revelation on May 23, founding Bábísm. He announced to the world of the coming of “He whom God shall make manifest.” He is considered the forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith.
First publicly funded telegraph line in the world—between Baltimore and Washington—sends demonstration message on May 24, ushering in the age of the telegraph. This message read “What hath God wrought?” (Bible, Numbers 23:23)
Millerite movement awaits the Second Advent of Jesus Christ on October 22. Christ’s non-appearance becomes known as the Great Disappointment.
Dominican War of Independence from Haiti.
May 24, 1844
First Telegraph from Washington to Baltimore
Inventor Samuel F.B. Morse transmits the message, ”What hath God wrought!” from Washington to Baltimore as he opens America’s first telegraph line.
The Irish potato famine results in the starvation of a million Irishmen and the forced emigration of two million more; more than one million of those come to the United States. Along with immigration from other European countries and a much smaller number of arrivals from South America, China, and Australia who come to California for the gold rush, the influx of Irish leads to the highest rate of immigration in national history. It also sparks a surge of nativism among Anglo-Saxon Americans who feel threatened by the newcomers.
June 1, 1845
Frederick Douglass Publishes Narrative
Escaped slave, orator, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass publishes his Narrative.
1846 – Elias Howe invents sewing machine.
5b. Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840-1860
by William E. Gienapp, Thomas B. Alexander, Michael F. Holt. 229 pgs.
Ether is used as an anesthetic for the first time, at the office of Boston dentist William Morton.
1845: first American composes Italian-style opera
- Unification of the Kingdom of Tonga under Tāufaʻāhau (King George Tupou I)
- 1845-1846: First Anglo-Sikh War, The first adhesive U.S. Mail postage stamps are issued in 5- and 10-cent denominations.
- 1845–72: The New Zealand Land Wars
- 1845–49: The Irish Potato Famine led to the Irish diaspora.
- 1846–48: The Mexican-American War leads to Mexico’s cession of much of the modern-day Southwestern United States.
- 1846–47: Mormon migration to Utah.
- 1847–1901: The Caste War of Yucatán.
- 1848-1849: Second Anglo-Sikh War
- 1848: The Communist Manifesto published.
- Abolitionist activists and Quakers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott convene the Seneca Falls Convention on women’s rights in a Wesleyan chapel at Seneca, New York. Some 240 people attend, 40 of them men, including famous orator, activist, and runaway slave Frederick Douglass. The Convention passes several resolutions, including one calling for extension of the franchise to women. Its attendees adopt a statement known as the Declaration of Sentiments (or the Seneca Falls Declaration), based on the Declaration of Independence, that calls for the reform of practices that discriminate against women. It will be another 72 years before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment grants women the vote, but this is an essential and an important beginning of the struggle.
- 1848: Revolutions of 1848 in Europe
- 1848: Seneca Falls Convention is the first women’s rights convention in the United States and leads to the battle for suffrage and women’s legal rights.
- 1848–58: California Gold Rush
1849: first important string chamber music group established in America, Henry David Thoreau publishes his classic essay on “Civil Disobedience,” written in response to his arrest and imprisonment a few years prior for refusing to pay his state poll tax as a protest against the Mexican-American War.
The Astor Place riot erupts in New York City over the rivalry between two actors—Edwin Forrest of America and William Charles Macready of England. Macready symbolizes aristocratic snobbery and oppression to many Americans, though not for any ascertainable reasons aside from his English nationality and his appearance at an elite, high-priced theater. A mob of Forrest partisans—primarily working-class men—storm the hated (presumably elitist) Astor Place Opera House in an attack on Macready, who is performing in Macbeth that night; 22 are killed and over 100 injured. The riot becomes an important turning point in the history of theater; soon thereafter, legislators, theater managers, and the police end such uprisings for good and regulate the theater as a primarily middle-class domain.
1850s
By the early 1850s, a few forms of birth control are available (with limited rates of effectiveness), notably the douche & different types of intrauterine devices. Women are also familiar with the rhythm method, in which they only have intercourse during the time of the month when they believe that they are not fertile. But ignorance about the female fertility cycle diminishes the effectiveness of this form of birth control.
1850
Nathaniel Hawthorne Publishes The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet Letter, the tale of a seventeenth-century adulteress named Hester Prynne in a Puritan community.
1850
George Foster Describes New York
George G. Foster’s New York by Gas-Light and Other Urban Sketches shocks and fascinates Victorian readers with lurid tales and vivid descriptions of the urban subculture quickly emerging out of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing metropolis.
1850
Order of the Star-Spangled Banner
The Know-Nothing (or American) Party is founded as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, a nativist organization and secret society in New York under the leadership of James W. Barker.
April 4, 1850
Los Angeles Incorporated
Los Angeles is incorporated as a city.
The Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War
- 1850: The Little Ice Age ends around this time.
- 1851: The Great Exhibition in London was the world’s first international Expo or World’s Fair.
- 1851–52: The Platine War ends and the Empire of Brazil has the hegemony over South America. Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin, initially as a series of articles in an abolitionist newspaper. The book sells 500,000 copies in its first year; next to the Bible, it is the most popular book of the nineteenth century and probably the most important book in American history. During the Civil War, Lincoln meets Stowe in the White House and reportedly says to her: “So you’re the little lady that caused this great big war.”
1852-
August 3, 1852
Harvard beats Yale in First Game
In the first intercollegiate sports event of any kind, Harvard beats Yale in rowing.
1851 Moby Dick Published Herman Melville publishes Moby-Dick.
June 1853
Yellow Fever Epidemic
A Yellow Fever epidemic kills over 10,000 people during the summer in New Orleans, a fatality rate of approximately 22%.
1855
Whitman Publishes Leaves of Grass
The first edition of Walt Whitman’s poetry masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, is published to acclaim from Ralph Waldo Emerson and shock and scorn from most other critics.
Republican Party Founded
The Republican Party is founded in Ripon, Wisconsin, by former members of the Whig and Free-Soil Parties.
August 9, 1854
Thoreau Publishes Walden
Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden: Life in the Woods. The author has spent almost a decade living in a cabin on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s land. The title of the book comes from the name of the pond where Thoreau built the cabin. It extols the virtues of simplicity, nature, and pensive thought.
October 1854
First Detectives Begin in San Francisco
The San Francisco police department establishes one of the first detective units in the country.
1855
Theatre Discourages Working-Class Audience
San Francisco theaters began to issue warning statements on playbills that there will be, owing to the length of the plays, “NO FARCE.” A “sacralization” of the theater takes hold, establishing a reserved middle-class ideal for theater audiences that shapes cultural attitudes and practices. Within a generation (by the 1870s), no such explanations will be offered, nor will they be deemed necessary any longer. The theater will no longer be the province of rowdy working-class audiences who openly recite the Shakespearean lines from memory and express their disapproval if the actors do not pass muster.
April 1, 1856
Western Union Founded
The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, which was established in 1851, changes its name to The Western Union Telegraph Company.
Panic of 1857
A recession strikes the economy, causing mass unemployment that lasts through the winter. Walt Whitman estimates that there are 25,000 jobless and 100,000 others affected in New York City alone.
1858 Baseball Championship Charges Admission
For the first time, fans are charged admission to watch a baseball game. 1,500 spectators pay 50 cents each to see the first game of the national championship series played on a Long Island racecourse (in present-day Corona, Queens). The New York All-Stars beat Brooklyn, 22-18.
March 30, 1858
Pencil with Eraser Patented
Inventor Hyman Lipman of Philadelphia patents the pencil with attached eraser.
July 1, 1858
Natural Selection and Evolution Discussed
Darwin’s theories of natural selection and evolution are first revealed in a meeting of the Linnean Society in London.
August 2, 1858
First Mailboxes Installed
Mailboxes are installed for the first time, on the streets of New York and Boston.
August 16, 1858
Queen Telegraphs President
A telegraphed message from Britain’s Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan is transmitted over the recently laid trans-Atlantic cable.
[edit] 1860s
The first vessels sail through the Suez Canal
Robert Koch discovered the tuberculosis bacilli. In the 19th century, tuberculosis killed an estimated one-quarter of the adult population of Europe.[8]
- 1861–65: American Civil War between the Union and seceding Confederacy
- 1861: Russia abolishes serfdom.
- 1861–67: French intervention in Mexico and the creation of the Second Mexican Empire, ruled by Maximilian I of Mexico and his consort Carlota of Mexico.
- 1862–1877: Muslim Rebellion in northwest China.
- 1863: Bahá’u’lláh declares His station as “He whom God shall make manifest“. This date is celebrated in the Bahá’í Faith as The Festival of Ridván.
- 1863: Formation of the International Red Cross is followed by the adoption of the First Geneva Convention in 1864.
- 1863–1865: Polish uprising against the Russian Empire.
- 1864–66: The Chincha Islands War was an attempt by Spain to regain its South American colonies.
- 1864–70: The War of the Triple Alliance ends Paraguayan ambitions for expansion and destroys much of the Paraguayan population.
- 1865–77: Reconstruction in the United States; Slavery is banned in the United States by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
- 1865-April 9, 1865 Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.
- 1865-April 15, 1865, United States President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated while attending a performance at Ford’s Theater, Washington, D.C..
- Purchase of the great state of Alaska from Russia in 1867,
– |
Historical Fiction Writers Research Blog 
Apr 26, 2010 @ 04:14:15
Hey, I found your blog in a new directory of blogs. I dont know how your blog came up, must have been a typo, anyway cool blog, I bookmarked you. 🙂