Lieutenant Governor of Virginia: John F. Lewis (Republican) (until January 1), John Lawrence Marye, Jr. (Conservative) (starting January 1)
Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin: Wyman Spooner (Republican) (until January 3), Thaddeus C. Pound (Republican) (starting January 3)
Events[]
January–March[]
February 25: Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first African American Congressman.
January 1 – Plans for the Brooklyn Bridge are completed.
January 3 – Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins.
January 10 – John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil.
January 15 – A political cartoon for the first time symbolizes the United States Democratic Party with a donkey ("A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly).
January 26 – Reconstruction: Virginia rejoins the Union.
January 27 – The first college sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, is established at DePauw University.
February 2 – The Cardiff Giant is proven a hoax.
February 3 – The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing African-American males the right to vote, is ratified.[1]
February 9 – The Weather Bureau, later renamed the National Weather Service, is established.
February 10
Anaheim, California is incorporated.
The YWCA is founded in New York City.
February 12 – Women gain the right to vote in Utah Territory. On February 14, in a Salt Lake City municipal election, Seraph Young Ford becomes the first woman in the U.S. to cast her vote.
February 23 – Military control of Mississippi ends and it is readmitted to the Union.
February 25 – Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress.
February 26
In New York City, the first pneumaticsubway is opened.
Wyatt Outlaw, the first African American town commissioner in Graham, North Carolina, is lynched by mob of Ku Klux Klan on Alamance County courthouse square.
March 19 – The Ohio Legislature passes the Cannon Act, thereby establishing the Ohio Agriculture and Mechanical College, later Ohio State University.
March 24 – Syracuse University is established and officially opens.
March 30
The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving blacks the right to vote, is proclaimed by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish.[2]
Texas is readmitted to the Union following Reconstruction.
March 31 – Thomas Mundy Peterson is the first African-American to vote in an election.
April–June[]
April – The Chicago Base Ball Club, later to be known as the Chicago White Stockings, and ultimately the Chicago Cubs, play their first game against the St. Louis Unions of the National Association of Base Ball Players, an amateur league.
May 2 – William J. Seymour, one of the two Primary Founders of American Pentecostalism was born.
June 22 – The U.S. Congress creates the United States Department of Justice.
June 26 – Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States.
June 28 – Congress creates federal holidays (New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day), initially applicable only to federal employees.
July–September[]
July 1 – United States Department of Justice is established.
July 15 – Reconstruction: Georgia becomes the last former Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union, and the C.S.A. is dissolved.
August 15 – Transcontinental Railroad completed in Colorado.
August 17 – First documented climb to summit of Mount Rainier by Medal of Honor winner General Hazard Stevens with P. B. Van Trump.
September 6 – Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming, becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a general election vote legally since 1807.
September 18 – Old Faithful Geyser is observed and named by Henry D. Washburn during the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition to Yellowstone.
October–December[]
October 25 – Eutaw riot: A white mob attacks a group of black citizens, killing as many as four of them, in Eutaw, Alabama.
November 1 – The newly created Weather Bureau makes its first official meteorological forecast: "High winds at Chicago and Milwaukee... and along the Lakes".
December 12 – Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the second black U.S. congressman (following Hiram Rhodes Revels in February).
Undated[]
Underwood Constitution: A controversial revised Constitution of Virginia goes into effect following a drafting convention dominated by the Radical Republicans led by John Underwood.