1860 Feb 22, Shoe-making workers of Lynn, Mass, struck successfully
for higher wages. The strike in Lynn and Natick, Massachusetts, spread
throughout New England and involved 20,000 workers. The strike was for
higher wages and included women. The workers won their major demands.
(HNQ, 8/3/98)(MC, 2/22/02)
1860 Feb 29, Herman Hollerith, inventor of a tabulation mechanism
(1864) that was a forerunner to the computer, was born.
(HN, 2/29/00)(WSJ, 3/21/00, p.A20)
1860 Mar 1, Suzanna Salter, first female mayor, was born.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1860 Mar 6, While campaigning for the presidency, Abraham Lincoln
made a speech defending the right to strike.
(HN, 3/6/99)
1860 Mar 11, Thomas Hastings, architect of the New York Public
Library, was born.
(HN, 3/11/98)
1860 Mar 12, US Congress accepted the Pre-emption Bill. It provided
free land in West for colonists.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1860 Mar 19, William Jennings Bryan, orator, statesman, known
as "The Great Communicator," was born.
(HN, 3/19/98)
1860 Mar 27, M.L. Byrn patented a "covered gimlet screw with a
'T' handle" (corkscrew).
(MC, 3/27/02)
1860 Apr 2, The first Italian Parliament met at Turin. Italy was
unified. The Rothchild banking empire bankrolled Italy's independence.
(AP, 4/2/97)(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)
1860 Apr 3, The US Pony Express mail system began when one horse
and rider carrying a bulging mail pouch began the 10 1/2-day run from San
Francisco, Calif., to St. Joseph, Mo. Riders left St. Joseph, Missouri
and Sacramento, Ca., at the same time. They averaged 12 mph over 75-100
mile segments between 153 (190) change stations. The freight company of
Russell, Majors and Waddell began the service. The enterprise failed after
only 18 months, however, due to mounting financial losses and competition
from the ever-expanding telegraph network. Donald C. Biggs (d.2000 at 72),
prof. of history at SF State, later authored ""The Pony Express: Creation
of the Legend."
(CL, 4/3/96)(SFC, 2/15/97, p.D4) (AP, 4/3/97) (HN, 4/3/98)(HNPD,
4/20/99)(SFC, 6/12/00, p.A24)(AH, 10/01, p.12)(MC, 4/3/02)
1860 Apr 6, Rene Lalique (d.1945), French goldsmith, jeweler,
glassmaker and artist, was born. He helped mold the shape of 20th century
art nouveau, art deco and architectural ornamentation.
(SFC, 3/26/97, z1 p.7)(Hem., 6/98, p.134)(MC, 4/6/02)
1860 Apr 7, W.K. Kellogg was born. He was the brother of Dr. John
Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943), the cereal and health magnate.
(HN, 4/7/99)(http://www.ivu.org/history/adventists/kellogg.html)
1860 Apr 13, 1st Pony Express reached Sacramento, Calif.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1860 Apr 14, First Pony Express rider arrived in San Francisco
with mail originating in St. Joseph, Missouri.
(HN, 4/14/98)
1860 Apr 23, Democratic convention in Charleston, SC, divided
over slavery.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1860 Apr 23, The Pony Express rider missed the boat at Benicia,
Ca. Thomas Bedford, a 34-year-old stable keeper, was hired on the spot
and boarded the ferry Carquinez with his horse. His discovered that his
horse had lost a shoe and borrowed a horse from Martinez blacksmith Casemoro
Briones and delivered the mail to the ferry at Oakland. The mail reached
SF 9 hours and 15 minutes from the time it left Sacramento.
(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A19)
1860 Apr, John Speke and James Grant left England on an expedition
to search for the source of the Nile.
(ON, 10/01, p.9)
1860 May 2, William Maddock Bayliss, British physiologist, co-discoverer
of hormones, was born.
(HN, 5/2/02)
1860 May 11, Giuseppe Garibaldi landed at Marsala, Sicily.
(HN, 5/11/99)
1860 May 15, Ellen Louise Axson Wilson, first wife of President
Woodrow Wilson, was born.
(HN, 5/15/98)
1860 May 18, The Republican Convention in Chicago nominated Abraham
Lincoln for US president in a hastily constructed edifice called the Wigwam.
(Hem., 7/96, p.26)(HN, 5/18/98)
1860 May 21, Willem Einthoven, Dutch physiologist, inventor of
the electrocardiogram, was born.
(HN, 5/21/01)(MC, 5/21/02)
1860 May 21, Phinneas Gage died in SF from a major seizure. Gage
had survived an 1848 blasting accident in Vermont when tamping iron blasted
through his skull. [see Sep 13, 1848]
(ON, 10/02, p.10)
1860 Jun 23, The U.S. Secret Service was created to arrest counterfeiters
and protect the president.
(HN, 6/23/98)
1860 Jul 7, Gustav Mahler, conductor of the Vienna State Opera
House, was born in Kalischat, Bohemia, Austria.
(HN, 7/7/98)(MC, 7/7/02)
1860 Jul 14, Owen Wister (d.1938), novelist, was born in Germantown,
Pa. His 1902 novel "The Virginian" inspired 5 films.
(HN, 7/14/01)(SFC, 1/9/02, p.D8)(AH, 10/02, p.18)
1860 Jul 19, Lizzie Borden, teacher, famous 1892 murder suspect,
was born.
(HN, 7/19/01)
1860 Aug 11, The nation's first successful silver mill began operation
near Virginia City, Nev.
(AP, 8/11/97)
1860 Aug 13, Phoebe Anne Moses, later known as Annie Oakley, a
sharpshooter and entertainer, was born in Drake, Ohio. [see Aug 14]
(HN, 8/13/00)
1860 Aug 14, Phoebe Anne Moses (d.1926), also known as Annie Oakley,
marksman and entertainer, was born. Anne Oakley was born as Phoebe Anne
Oakley Mozee. She became a markswoman and toured with the Buffalo Bill
Wild West Show. [see Aug 13]
(WUD, 1994, p.992)(SFEC, 8/3/97, Z1 p.2)(HN, 8/14/98)
1860 Aug 20, Robert O'Hara Burke led a group of 15 men, 27 camels
and 23 horses out of Melbourne on an expedition to cross Australia.
(ON, 12/01, p.1)
1860 Aug 30, The first British tramway was inaugurated at Birkenhead
by an American, George Francis Train.
(HN, 8/30/98)
1861 Sep 1, Ulysses Grant assumed command of Federal forces at
Cape Girardeau, MI.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1860 Sep 3, Edward Albert Filene, merchant, was born. He established
the US credit union movement.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1860 Sep 6, Jane Addams (d.1935), known for her work as a social
reformer, pacifist, and founder of Hull House in Chicago in 1889, first
American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (1931), was born. "The
essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of one's self."
"You do not know what life means when all the difficulties are removed!
I am simply smothered and sickened with advantages. It is like eating a
sweet dessert the first thing in the morning."
(AHD, 1971, p.15)(AP, 8/28/97)(HN, 9/6/98)(AP, 10/4/98)
1860 Sep 7, Anna Marie Robertson (Grandma Moses, d.1953), American
folk painter, best known for her paintings of rural life, was born. Anna
Mary Robertson began painting at the age of 78. Her primitive and untrained
art holds great appeal in its simplicity. [see 1953]
(MC, 9/7/01)(HN, 9/7/02)
1860 Sep 7, Edith Sitwell, poet, was born.
(HN, 9/7/00)
1860 Sep 7, The Excursion steamer "Lady Elgin" sank and drowned
340 people in Lake Michigan.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1860 Sep 13, John J. Pershing, "Black Jack" who led the campaign
against Pancho Villa in Mexico and Commanded the American Expeditionary
Force in France during World War I, was born.
(HN, 9/13/98)
1860 Sep 14, Hamlin Garland, author, was born. He wrote about
the Midwest in novels such as "A Son of the Middle Border" and "The Book
of the American Indian."
(HN, 9/14/00)
1860 Oct 12, British and French troops captured Beijing.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1860 Oct 13, The 1st US aerial photo was taken from a balloon
over Boston.
(HFA, '96, p.40)(MC, 10/13/01)
1860 Oct 15, 11-year-old Grace Bedell of Westfield, N.Y., wrote
a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, suggesting he could
improve his appearance by growing a beard.
(AP, 10/15/01)
1860 Oct 18, British troops in Beijing, in the Second Opium War,
burned to the ground the Yuanmingyuan, the imperial summer palace built
by the Manchu emperors.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1860 Oct 31, Juliette Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, was born.
(HN, 10/31/00)
1860 Nov 6, Ignace Jan Paderewski, composer, pianist, patriot,
was born in Kurylzwka, Poland. [see Nov 18]
(MC, 11/6/01)
1860 Nov 6, Former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln was elected
16th president. He defeated three other candidates for the U.S. presidency.
He won the US presidential elections with a majority of the electoral votes
in a 4-way race. Following his election South Carolina seceded from the
Union followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and
Texas. Hannibal Hamlin was his vice-president.
(WSJ, 9/19/97, p.A13)(AP, 11/6/97)(HN, 11/6/98)(SFC, 12/21/98,
p.A3)
1860 Nov 13, South Carolina's legislature called a special convention
to discuss secession from the Union.
(HN, 11/13/98)
1860 Nov 18, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, composer and 1st premier of
Poland (1919-20), was born. [see Nov 6]
(MC, 11/18/01)
1860-1861 Nov-Apr. This five month period is described in the 1997 book:
"Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War"
by Maury Klein.
(WSJ, 9/19/97, p.A13)
1860 Dec 18, Edward Alexander MacDowell, American composer (Indian
Suite), was born.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1860 Dec 20, South Carolina became the first state to secede from
the Union.
(AP, 12/20/97)(HN, 12/20/98)
1860 Dec 26, Major Robert Anderson, under cover of darkness, concentrated
his small federal force at Ft. Sumter, SC.
(MC, 12/26/01)
1860 Walter Richard Sickert (d.1942), English Impressionist painter,
was born. In 2002 Patricia Cornwell, crime writer, reported that he was
Jack the Ripper.
(WSJ, 9/27/01, p.A16)(SSFC, 2/24/02, Par p.2)
1860 Frederic Edwin Church created his painting "Twilight in the
Wilderness."
(WSJ, 9/19/02, p.D12)
1860 George Eliot, aka Mary Ann Evans, wrote her novel "The Mill
on the Floss."
(SFC, 10/10/97, p.C1)
1860 Charles Dickens wrote his novel "Great Expectations." It
was made into a 1997 film with the setting transferred to New York and
Florida in the 1990s.
(SFEC,11/23/97, DB p.43)
1860 Gottfried Semper authored "Der Stil."
(WSJ, 1/29/00, p.A24)
1860 The martini drink cocktail was invented.
(SFC,12/24/97, Z1 p.6)
c1860 Golf balls began to be made of guttal percha, a tree sap.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.A12)
1860 The British Open was 1st held at the Old Course in St. Andrew's.
The prize was a red leather belt with a silver buckle. The belt was retired
in 1872 and replaced with a silver claret jug.
(WSJ, 7/21/00, p.W9)
1860 The Woodlawn Vase was created by Tiffany & Co. as a trophy
for the Woodlawn Racing Assoc. in Louisville, Ky. It was buried during
the Civil War and by 1917 was associated with the Preakness.
(WSJ, 11/21/00, p.A24)
1860 Sam Brannan, California's first millionaire, bought the spring
grounds at Indian Springs and built a lavish resort. His name of Calistoga
is the combination of California and Saratoga, a famous New York spa.
(Flyer on Indian Springs, 7/95)(SFEC, 2/22/98, p.T5)
1860 The 95,000 acre Baca Ranch was founded under a land grant
to a Spanish leader. The property contained the Valles Caldera, the collapsed
crater of an ancient volcano. The property was sold to James P. Dunigan,
an oil man, in 1962 for $2.5 mil. It was sold to the US government in 1999
for $101 million.
(SFC, 9/9/99, p.A3)
1860 In New York Bard College began as a small school in Annandale-on-Hudson.
It was next to Montgomery Place, whose landscape was attributed to Andrew
Jackson Downing, America's most famous 19th century landscape architect.
(WSJ, 11/24/98, p.A20)
1860 A US government expedition explored the northwest border
of the Wyoming territory. Ferdinand Hayden (30) served as doctor and geologist.
(ON, 11/02, p.1)
1860 In South Carolina by the time of the Civil War the Ball family
owned some 4,000 slaves who worked 25 plantations along the Cooper River.
The family kept a history and in 1998 descendant Edward Ball published
"Slaves in the Family."
(SFEC, 2/22/98, BR p.1,8)(SFEC, 4/19/98, p.A22)
1860 More laws in California were passed that allowed the enslavement
of Indians.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)
1860 A mattress on the floor of the Tremont House Hotel in Chicago
rented for $2.50 per night.
(Hem., 7/96, p.26)
1860 John and Frank Wyeth established a drugstore in Philadelphia.
It grew to become Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories in 1926 and was later acquired
by American Home Products.
(SFC, 1/21/98, p.B2)
1860 Sewanee Mining Co. was reorganized and incorporated as Tennessee
Coal and Railroad Co.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, R45)
1860 The Great Lakes Brewing Co. was established in Cleveland
and is the oldest licensed saloon there.
(SFC, 6/2/96, p.T-11)
c1860 Mass production of watches began in the US in this decade.
(NG, Mar, 1990, p. 113)
1860 Of the more than 8 million whites in the American South in
1860, those who owned slaves numbered 383,637. Of those, 2,292 were large
planters who held more than 100 slaves.
(HNQ, 6/8/98)
1860 A US federal head count numbered 32,654 men and 1,577 women
in Colorado.
(SFEC, 1/30/00, Z1 p.2)
1860 Edward Lartet, geologist, presented his paper Proofs that
Man Existed with Extinct Animals.
(RFH-MDHP, 1969, p.121-122)
1860 Cinnabar or quicksilver was discovered in the Mayacamas Range
of Calistoga, Ca. The mercury was used to recover gold and silver from
ores by amalgamation, and in the manufacture of explosives, drugs and paints.
(WCG, 7/95, p.22)
1860 The release of carbon into the atmosphere was estimated to
have been about 93 million tons.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.40)
1860 Charles Goodyear (b.1800), inventor or the vulcanization
process for rubber, died. In 2002 Charles Slack authored "Noble Obsession"
an account of his quest to develop a form of rubber impervious to high
temperatures.
(WSJ, 7/31/02, p.D10)
1860 In Australia explorers Burke and Wills disappeared after
spending a final night at Menindee on the Darling River.
(SFEC, 10/11/98, Par p.32)
1860 In Britain Queen Victoria decreed that men who chose to remain
unmarried would not be welcome in Her Majesty's Rifle Corp. She held that
"normal married life improves a man's marksmanship."
(SFEC, 12/15/96, zone 1 p.5)
1860 Thomas Huxley was asked by Bishop Samuel ("Soapy Sam") Wilberforce
whether his ape ancestry resided on his father's side or his mother's side.
Huxley responded that he would prefer descent from an ape rather than from
a man of keen faculties and wide influence who employed his gifts to ridicule
science.
(WSJ, 10/10/97, p.A20)
1860 English inventor Frederick Walton made "linoleum" out of
linseed oil.
(SFC, 2/15/97, p.D4)
1860 In the Convention of Peking China ceded the Kowloon Peninsula
to Britain for all time.
(SFC, 3/11/97, p.A12)(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.A14)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A8)
1860 In China the Taiping Rising marked the first looting of Peking
by the "big-nosed barbarians."
(WSJ, 4/20/95, p. A-13)
1860 Signor Beato (d.1907), photographer, shot views of the Dagu
forts, guarding the approaches to Beijing, with heaps of dead following
their capture by an Anglo-French expedition.
(WSJ, 11/27/00, p.A36)
1860 George Belden Crane decided that German grapes were a better
idea for the Napa Valley than the native Missions.
(WCG, 7/95, p.21)
1860 In France the Yonne Department had almost 99,000 acres of
grapevines for wine. Diseases such as oidium and phyloxera destroyed the
Chablis vines in the late 19th century. The Carmenére grape was
wiped out in France. In 1994 it was found to be thriving in Chile.
(SFC, 7/16/97, Z1 p.4)(WSJ, 12/28/01, p.A17)
1860 Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was born in Pest,
Hungary.
(CNT, Nov., 1994, p.212)
1860 During the excavation of Pompeii Giuseppe Fiorelli got the
idea of pouring liquid plaster into the spaces left by decomposed bodies
in the beds of ashes.
(SFEM, 10/11/98, p.14)
1860 In Mexico City the Hosteria de Santo Domingo restaurant began
serving Chile en Nogada, a chile dish that displays the national colors
(green, white & red).
(WSJ, 9/5/96, p.B1)
1860 Russian pioneers founded Vladivostok.
(SFC, 2/15/97, p.D4)
1860 Savoy was ceded to France.
(WUD, 1994, p.1272)
1860 The Serb King Knez Mihaljo was assassinated.
(SFC, 12/27/96, p.A1,15)
1860s Lone Pine, Ca., was named after a solitary tree.
(SFEC, 8/17/97, p.T3)
1860s Land surveyor William Magee discovered an enormous mass
of rich ore in Northern California and bought the land for an iron mine.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1860s A 1000 Paiutes of Owens Valley, Ca., were forcibly relocated
to Fort Tejon in the Tehachapi Mountains by the US Army.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, Z1 p.6)
1860s Svend Foyn invented the harpoon cannon for whaling.
(SFEC, 1/12/97, zone 3 p.4)
1860s Brown's Celebrated Indian Herb Bitters was a bitters medicine
made at this time. They used a painted amber bottle shaped like an Indian
woman holding a shield. An original sold for $4,800 in 1987.
(SFC,12/17/97, Z1 p.16)
1860s In Britain palace garden parties were begun to extend royal
hospitality to Brits from all walks of life.
(WSJ, 8/9/96, p.A8)
1860s The last African slave ship landed in Cuba in the late 1860s.
(WSJ, 12/1/97, p.A20)
1860s Italian immigration to America slowly began.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.49)
1860s In Malaysia prospectors for tin founded the city of Kuala
Lumpur ("muddy confluence") at the confluence of the Kelang and Gombak
rivers.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.T3)
1860-1865 Anti-slavery, pro-Union guerrillas in Kansas during the American
Civil War were commonly known as Jayhawkers. As a bird, the Jayhawk does
not exist, but Jayhawkers were very real. Jayhawkers coursed about Kansas
and Missouri, impelled by substantially more malice than charity as they
fought their Confederate counterparts, the Bushwhackers, who favored the
Confederacy. Some Bushwhackers were semi-legitimate soldiers, even grudgingly
acknowledged as such by the Confederate Army. Such men as William Quantrill,
"Bloody Bill" Anderson, John Thrailkill, David Pool, Jo Shelby and Jeff
Thompson were in this category. Others were simply banditti with a quasi-military
excuse for vengeful ambush, robbery, murder, arson and plunder.
(HNQ, 5/24/01)(HN, 5/30/01)
1860-1870 The Maoari Wars broke out in New Zealand over issues of land
ownership after colonists flooded the islands.
(NG, Aug., 1974, C. McCarry, p.197)
1860-1870 Lewis Carroll took photographs of Alice Lidell, his inspiration
for Alice In Wonderland.
(WSJ, 9/29/95, p.A-10)
1860-1884 Maria Bashkirtsev, Russian born writer. She studied art in
Paris and wrote "The Journal of a Young Artist." She died of tuberculosis.
(WP, 1951, p.23)
1860s-1890s The Saud family moved to exile in Kuwait when the Ottoman
Empire conquered much of Arabia.
(WSJ, 11/13/01, p.A14)
1860-1900 Baled cotton remained the number one American export item
from 1860 to 1900, rising from $192 million to $243 million. During the
period its proportion of total exports dropped from approximately 60 percent
to about 17 percent, as meat, grain, petroleum products and machinery grew.
(HNPD, 6/13/99)
1860-1910 Auguste Moreau, a French bronze sculptor, worked over this
period. His art included the sculpture "Eglantine" (wild rose), which depicted
a woman draped in a vine of roses. It was used as the design for a clock
c1900. His bronzes were copied in spelter, a soft white metal that's mostly
zinc.
(SFC, 2/18/98, Z1 p.3)(SFC, 3/11/98, Z1 p.5)
1860-1911 Gustav Mahler, Bohemian born composer, wrote 10 symphonies.
(T&L, 10/80, p. 104)
1860-1921 James Gibbons Huneker, American author and critic: "We
are all snobs of the Infinite, parvenus of the Eternal."
(AP, 8/5/98)
1860-1935 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American economist and feminist:
"A concept is stronger than a fact."
(AP, 7/10/97)
1860-1937 Sir James Matthew Barrie, Scottish dramatist-author:
"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story,
and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume
as it is with what he hoped to make it."
(AP, 8/6/97)
1860-1947 Don Simon Iturbi Patino, part Indian Bolivian miner, made
a fortune in tin. While working as a clerk a customer in debt offered him
the deed to an old tin mine. It turned out to be one of the richest deposits
on earth. He served as an ambassador to Spain and France but was shunned
by Bolivian aristocracy
(WSJ, 1/11/98, p.R18)
1860-1949 James Ensor, Belgian painter. He was a master at dredging
disturbing, uncensored images from the depths of the unconscious.
(WUD, 1994 p.475)(WSJ, 6/5/01, p.A23)
1860-1958 Industry burned fossil fuel at a rate that doubled every two
decades or so, injecting a total of more than 76 billion tons of carbon
into the air.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.5)
1861 Jan 2, Helen Herron Taft, First Lady to President Robert
Taft, was born.
(HN, 1/2/99)
1861 Jan 2, The USS Brooklyn was readied at Norfolk to aid Fort
Sumter.
(HN, 1/2/99)
1861 Jan 2, SC seized the inactive Ft. Johnson in Charleston
Harbor.
(MC, 1/2/02)
1861 Jan 2, Frederik Willem IV (65), king Prussia (1840-61) and
Germany (1849-61), died.
(MC, 1/2/02)
1861 Jan 3, Delaware rejected a proposal that it join the South
in seceding.
(HN, 1/3/99)
1861 Jan 3, US Ft. Pulaski & Ft. Jackson, Savannah, were
seized by Georgia.
(MC, 1/3/02)
1861 Jan 5, The merchant vessel Star of the West set sail from
New York to Fort Sumter, in response to rebel attack, carrying supplies
and 250 troops.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1861 Jan 5, Alabama troops seized Forts Morgan & Gaines at
Mobile Bay.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1861 Jan 6, Florida troops seized the Federal arsenal at Apalachicola.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1861 Jan 6, Governor of Maryland sent a message to the people
of Maryland, strongly opposing Maryland's secession from the Union.
(HN, 1/6/99)
1861 Jan 6, NYC mayor proposed that NY become a free city to
continue trading with the North & South.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1861 Jan 9, Mississippi became the 2nd state to secede from
the Union.
(HN, 1/9/98)(AP, 1/9/99)(MC, 1/9/02)
1861 Jan 9, Southern shellfire stopped the Union supply ship
Star of the West from entering Charleston harbor on her way to Fort Sumter.
(HN, 1/9/98)
1861 Jan 10, Ft. Jackson and Ft. Philip were taken over by LA
state troops.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1861 Jan 10, US forts & property were seized by Mississippi.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1861 Jan 10, Florida became the 3rd state to secede from the Union.
(AP, 1/10/98)(HN, 1/10/99)(MC, 1/10/02)
1861 Jan 11, Alabama became the 4th state to secede from the Union.
(AP, 1/11/98)(HN, 1/11/99)
1861 Jan 15, Steam elevator was patented by Elisha Otis.
(MC, 1/15/02)
1861 Jan 19, Georgia became the 5th state to secede from the Union.
(AP, 1/19/98)(HN, 1/19/99)
1861 Jan 21, U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and four
(five) other Southern senators made emotional farewell speeches. Just weeks
after his home state of Mississippi seceded from the Union, Davis prepared
to leave Washington, D.C., and the country he had served as a soldier,
cabinet member and member of Congress. One more time, Davis enumerated
the reasons why the South felt secession was its only recourse: "...when
you deny to us the right to withdraw from a Government which...threatens
to be destructive to our rights, we but tread in the path of our fathers
when we proclaim our independence...." Davis then apologized to any senators
he may have offended, and finished his address by saying, "...it only remains
for me to bid you a final adieu."
(AP, 1/21/01)(HNPD, 1/21/99)
1861 Jan 25, Pres. Lincoln picked Ferdinand Schavers, a black
man, as his first bodyguard. He appointed William H. Seward as his Sec.
of State.
(Hem., 5/97, p.18)(WSJ, 9/19/97, p.A13)
1861 Jan 26, Louisiana became the 6th state to secede from the
Union.
(AP, 1/26/98)(HN, 1/26/99)(MC, 1/26/02)
1861 Jan 29, Kansas became the 34th state of the Union and entered
as a free state.
(HFA, '96, p.22)(AP, 1/29/98)(NH, 7/98, p.28)
1861 Jan, Pres. Lincoln appointed William H. Seward as his Sec.
of State.
(WSJ, 9/19/97, p.A13)
1861 Feb 1, A furious Governor Sam Houston stormed out of a legislative
session upon learning that Texas had voted 167-7 to secede from the Union.
Texas became the 7th state to secede.
(AP, 2/1/97)(HN, 2/1/99)(MC, 2/1/02)
1861 Feb 2, Solomon R. Guggenheim, philanthropist (Guggenheim
Museum NYC), was born.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1861 Feb 2, Mohammed VI, last sultan of Ottoman Empire (1918-22),
was born.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1861 Feb 4, Delegates from six southern states met in Montgomery,
Ala., to form the Confederate States of America. They included Mississippi,
Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. They elected Jefferson
Davis as president of Confederacy.
(AP, 2/4/97)(ON, 11/00, p.1)(MC, 2/4/02)
1861 Feb 4, The Apache Wars began.
(HFA, '96, p.22)
1861 Feb 5, The kinematoscope was patented by Coleman Sellers
in Philadelphia.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1861 Feb 6, The 1st meeting of Provisional Congress of Confederate
States of America.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1861 Feb 6, English Adm. Robert Ritzroy issued the 1st storm
warnings for ships.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1861 Feb 8, Delegates from seceded states adopted a provisional
Confederate Constitution in Montgomery, Ala.
(HN, 2/7/97)(MC, 2/8/02)
1861 Feb 9, Confederate Provisional Congress declared all laws
under the US Constitution were consistent with constitution of Confederate
states. The Congress elected Jefferson Davis president and Alexander H.
Stephens vice president. Jefferson Davis' Mexican War exploits led him
to the Confederate White House. In 2001 William C. Davis authored "The
Union That Shaped the Confederacy: Robert Toombs and Alexander H. Stephens."
(HN, 2/9/97)(AP, 2/9/99)(WSJ, 6/13/01, p.A18)(MC, 2/9/02)
1861 Feb 9, Tennessee voted against secession.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1861 Feb 11, President-elect Lincoln departed Springfield, Ill.,
for Washington.
(AP, 2/11/97)
1861 Feb 11, The US House unanimously passed a resolution guaranteeing
noninterference with slavery in any state.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1861 Feb 12, State troops seized US munitions in Napoleon, Ak.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1861 Feb 13, Abraham Lincoln was declared president.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1861 Feb 15, Alfred North Whitehead (d.1947), English philosopher
(Adv of Ideas) and mathematician: "We think in generalities, but we live
in detail." "I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons
are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't." "It is more
important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true."
(AP, 4/11/97)(AP, 10/5/97)(AP, 9/8/98)(MC, 2/15/02)
1861 Feb 15, Ft. Point was completed & garrisoned. It never
fired cannon in anger.
(440 Int'l., 2/15/99)
1861 Feb 18, Jefferson F. Davis was inaugurated as the Confederacy's
provisional president at a ceremony held in Montgomery, Ala.
(AP, 2/18/98)(HN, 2/18/98)
1861 Feb 18, Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia became the first
King of Italy.
(HN, 2/18/98)(MC, 2/18/02)
1861 Feb 19, Russian Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom.
(HN, 2/19/98)
1861 Feb 20, The Confederacy Dept. of Navy formed.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1861 Feb 20, Steeple of Chichester Cathedral was blown down during
a storm.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1861 Feb 22, Edward Weston left Boston on a bet to walk
to Lincoln's inauguration.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1861 Feb 23, President-elect Lincoln arrived secretly in Washington
to take office after an assassination plot was foiled in Baltimore. Allan
Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, may have saved Abraham
Lincoln's life by uncovering a plot to assassinate the president-elect
in Baltimore, Md. At the detective's suggestion, Lincoln avoided the threat
by secretly slipping through the city at night. A few months later, Pinkerton
joined Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's staff as chief intelligence officer.
Using the name "Major Allen," the private detective remained with McClellan
until late 1862, catching southern spies and running an espionage network
in Confederate territory.
(AP, 2/23/98)(HNPD, 3/22/99)
1861 Feb 23, Texas by popular referendum became the 7th state
to secede from the Union.
(HN, 2/23/98)(MC, 2/23/02)
1861 Feb 26, Ferdinand I, 1st tsar of modern Bulgaria (1908-18),
was born in Vienna.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1861 Feb 27, In the Warsaw massacre Russian troops fired on a
crowd protesting Russian rule over Poland. Five marchers were killed.
(AP, 2/27/98)
1861 Feb 28, The territory of Colorado was established.
(AP, 2/28/98)(HN, 2/28/98)
1861 Mar 2, The Territory of Nevada was created by an act of Congress.
The first elected governor of the state was Henry G. Blasdel. US Congress
created the Dakota & Nevada Territories out of the Nebraska & Utah
territories
(LVRJ, 11/1/97, p.1B)(SFEC, 7/9/00, DB p.67)(SC, 3/2/02)
1861 Mar 2, Government Printing Office in Washington DC purchased
its 1st printing plant.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1861 Mar 3, The serfs of Russia were emancipated by Alexander
II as part of a program of westernization.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1861 Mar 4, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated president.
(AP, 3/4/99)
1861 Mar 4, President Lincoln opened the Government Printing
Office.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1861 Mar 4, Confederate States adopted the "Stars and Bars" flag.
(HN, 3/4/98)
1861 Mar 6, Provisionary Confederate Congress established Confederate
Army.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1861 Mar 8, St. Augustine, Florida, surrendered to Union armies.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1861 Mar 9, First hostile act of the Civil War occurred when Star
of the West fired on Sumter, S.C.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1861 Mar 11, The Confederate convention in Montgomery, Ala., adopted
a constitution.
(AP, 3/11/98)(HN, 3/11/98)
1861 Mar 13, Jefferson Davis signed a bill authorizing slaves
to be used as soldiers for the Confederacy.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1861 Mar 14, Abraham Louis Niedermeyer (58), composer, died.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1861 Mar 16, Maxim Gorky (Gorki), Russian dramatist, was born.
[see 1868]
(HN, 3/16/01)
1861 Mar 16, Arizona Territory voted to leave the Union.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1861 Mar 23, London's 1st tramcars, designed by Mr. Train of New
York, began operating.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1861 Mar 27, Black demonstrators in Charleston staged ride-ins
on street cars.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1861 Apr 5, Gideon Wells, the Secretary of the Navy, issued official
orders for the relief of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, S.C.
(HN, 4/5/99)
1861 Apr 5, Federals abandoned Ft. Quitman, Tx.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1861 Apr 6, Pres. Lincoln dispatched 3 ships and 600 men to Fort
Sumter as a relief expedition carrying provisions. He followed this with
a note to South Carolina Gov. Francis W. Pickens that no arms were included.
(ON, 11/00, p.2)
1861 Apr 8, Elisha G. Otis (50), US elevator builder (Otis), died.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1861 Apr 11, On April 11, 1861, Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard ordered
the Federals under the command of Major Robert Anderson to surrender Fort
Sumter, but Anderson refused. Anticipating war between North and South,
Confederate President Jefferson Davis had ordered Beauregard to clear the
harbor forts in Charleston, South Carolina, of Union troops. For three
long months, Anderson and his besieged troops had waited for reinforcements
at Fort Sumter. Back in Washington, Union naval officer Gustavus Fox raced
against time to organize just such a mission.
(HNPD, 4/12/99)
1861 Apr 12, The Confederates sent a final ultimatum for the surrender
of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, at 12:45 a.m. Upon receiving Anderson's
refusal, Gen'l. Beauregard's artillery began to bombard Fort Sumter at
4:30 a.m. For 34 hours, the Confederates and Federals traded fire before
Anderson surrendered on April 13. The Civil War had begun.
(Hem. 1/95, p. 70)(AP, 4/12/97)(HN, 4/12/98)(HNPD, 4/12/99)
1861 Apr 13, After 34 hours of bombardment, Union-held Fort Sumter
surrendered at 2:30 pm to Confederates under the command of Gen PGT Beauregard.
No Union defenders were killed in the 34-hour rebel assault on Charleston
Harbor's Fort Sumter led by Major Robert Anderson. Likewise, none of the
Confederate attackers were killed in this action. Union Pvt. Daniel Hough
became the war's first official casualty when he was killed by a premature
discharge of a cannon used as a salute in the evacuation ceremonies after
the surrender.
(HN, 4/13/98)(HNQ, 8/31/00)(MC, 4/13/02)
1861 Apr 14, Robert E. Lee resigned from Union army.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1861 Apr 15, Three days after the attack on Fort Sumter, S.C.,
President Lincoln declared a state of insurrection and called out for 75,000
Union volunteers.
(AP, 4/15/97)(HN, 4/15/98)
1861 Apr 15, Samuel (41) and Florence Baker (20) left Cairo to
search for explorers John Speke and James Grant.
(ON, 10/01, p.9)
1861 Apr 16, US president Lincoln outlawed business with confederate
states.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1861 Apr 17, The Virginia State Convention voted to secede from
the Union. , Virginia became the eighth state to secede from the Union.
(AP, 4/17/97)(HN, 4/17/98)
1861 Apr 18, Colonel Robert E. Lee turned down an offer to command
the Union armies.
(HN, 4/18/98)
1861 Apr 18, Battle of Harpers Ferry, VA.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1861 Apr 18, The Kansas Frontier Guards drilled and set up camp
in the East Room of the White House with the mission to protect President
Lincoln from a feared Rebel attack on Washington. The collection of Kansans
in Washington, many office seekers and politicians, were organized and
led by the state's first senator, James Henry Lane, a friend of the president
and former leader of the Free State movement in Kansas. With Virginia's
secession from the Union on April 17, rumors spread of an impending rebel
strike on Washington. Lane organized the force of 50 men and offered their
service to the War Department, arriving in the White House in the evening
of April 18. As additional Union troops entered the city, the Frontier
Guard was dismissed from the White House on April 19. The unofficial unit
was assigned various positions in the city during the following week and,
in a ceremony attended by the president, was disbanded on April 25.
(HNQ, 1/7/99)
1861 Apr 19, President Lincoln ordered the blockade of Confederate
ports.
(HN, 4/19/97)
1861 Apr 19, Baltimore riots resulted in four Union soldiers,
9 civilians killed. The 6th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment, the first
Union troops to pass through pro-secessionist Baltimore, Md., entered Baltimore
expecting trouble. As they marched through the streets on their way to
the defense of Washington, D.C., the troops were attacked by rock-throwing
rioters bearing Confederate flags. Four soldiers and nine civilians were
killed in the daylong melee.
(HN, 4/19/97)(HNPD, 4/23/99)
1861 Apr 20, Robert E. Lee resigned from U.S. Army.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1861 Apr 20, Ohio native Thaddeus Lowe landed in South Carolina
only to be surrounded by a group of incredulous Carolinians who believed
he was a spy. Lowe managed to persuade the crowd that his 500-mile trip
from Ohio was merely an innocent aerial journey to test his strange craft.
He later tried to convince the Union to use his skill as a balloonist.
(HNQ, 4/5/01)
1861 Apr 20, Battle of Norfolk, VA. [see Apr 21]
(MC, 4/20/02)
1861 Apr 21, The Gosport Navy Yard on the Elizabeth River near
Norfolk, Va., was burned and U.S. Navy ships destroyed by Federal troops
carrying out the orders of Commodore Hiram Paulding. With the Confederate
noose tightening around Gosport following Virginia's secession, and Union
defenders dispatched by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles unable to reach
the yard, Paulding determined he must destroy and abandon the installation.
Considered the most extensive and valuable naval shipyard in the Union,
the loss of Gosport and 10 ships docked there, including the Merrimack-later
refitted by the rebels and known as the CSS Virginia-was called by Horace
Greeley as "The most shameful, cowardly, disastrous performance that stains
the annals of the American Navy."
(HNQ, 2/16/01)
1861 Apr 22, Robert E. Lee was named commander of Virginia forces.
(HN, 4/22/98)
1861 Apr 23, Arkansas troops seized Fort Smith.
(AP, 4/23/98)
1861 Apr 23, Battle of San Antonio, TX.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1861 Apr 25, The Richmond Fayette Light Artillery was mustered
into state service and first stationed at the Baptist College artillery
barracks. The unit fought under General Magruder through the battles at
Wynns Mill, Yorktown and Williamsburg. It fought the Maryland campaign
with major General McLaw's Division and was transferred to Major Pickett's
Division and fought at Fredericksburg.
(RC handout, 5/27/96)
1861 Apr 27, President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
(HN, 4/27/98)
1861 Apr 27, West Virginia seceded from Virginia after Virginia
seceded from the Union.
(HN, 4/27/98)
1861 Apr 29, The Maryland House of Delegates voted against seceding
from the Union.
(AP, 4/29/98)(HN, 4/29/98)
1861 Apr, William Woods Averell, recently convalesced Union officer,
was sent out west in civilian garb from Washington, D.C., carrying orders
to a fort commander in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Averell
was to proceed through secessionist lands to Fort Arbuckle in Indian Territory.
Ordinarily, orders to frontier posts were telegraphed to Fort Smith, Arkansas--some
180 miles east of Fort Arbuckle--and a courier dispatched from there. But
with Arkansas likely to secede at any time, such orders might be intercepted
by secessionists.
(HNQ, 5/27/01)
1861 May 5, Peter Cooper Hewitt, electrical engineer, inventor
of the mercury-vapor lamp, was born.
(HN, 5/5/01)
1861 May 6, Arkansas and Tennessee becomes 9th & 10th state
to secede from US. [see Jun 8]
(AP, 5/6/97)(HN, 5/6/98)(MC, 5/6/02)
1861 May 13, Britain declared its neutrality in the American Civil
War.
(HN, 5/13/98)
1861 May 20, North Carolina voted to secede from the Union and
became the 11th and last state to do so.
(AP, 5/20/97)(HN, 5/20/98)
1861 May 20, The capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery,
Ala., to Richmond, Va.
(AP, 5/20/97)
1861 May 23, Virginia citizens voted 3 to 1 in favor of secession,
becoming the last Confederate state.
(HN, 5/23/98)(MC, 5/23/02)
1861 May 23, Pro Union and pro Confederate forces clashed in
Clarksburg, West Virginia.
(HN, 5/23/99)
1861 May 24, General Benjamin Butler declared slaves to be the
contraband of war.
(HN, 5/24/98)
1861 May 24, Shortly after Union troops quietly occupied Alexandria,
Va., 24-year-old Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth and a handful of friends from
the 11th New York Regiment impulsively entered the Marshall Hotel to forcibly
remove a Confederate flag from the roof. Hotel proprietor James W. Jackson
shot and mortally wounded Ellsworth as he descended the stairs, flag in
hand. Jackson himself was then shot by a Union soldier. Only weeks after
the outbreak of the Civil War, both the North and the South had received
the first martyrs to their respective causes.
(HN, 5/24/99)
1861 May, Battery "D" Fifth US Light Artillery had been stationed
at West Point but was moved to Washington, D.C. and assigned to the Army
of the Potomac.
(RC handout, 5/27/96)
1861 May, The 79th Highlander Regiment was mustered into Federal
service with 795 men. It suffered over 558 casualties during the war. After
the regiment fought at the battle of First Bull Run, it adopted standard
Federal uniforms.
(RC handout, 5/27/96)
1861 May, The 7th Regiment of Virginia Volunteers was mustered
into the young Confederacy under the command of Col. James Kemper. It was
part of Pickett's All Virginia Division. The regiment fought in 45 battles,
from First Manassas until Clover Hill, Appomatox Court House in April,
1865.
(RC handout, 5/27/96)
1861 May, The 33rd Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment formed
at Harper's Ferry as part of the Stonewall Brigade under Thomas "Stonewall"
Jackson. It was nicknamed "Jackson's Foot Cavalry" for it's long marches
of 25-30 miles a day.
(RC Handout, 5/27/96)
1861 Jun 1, The US and the Confederacy simultaneously stopped
mail interchange.
(DTnet, 6/1/97)
1861 Jun 1, The first skirmish in the Civil War was at
Fairfax Court House, Arlington Mills, Va.
(DTnet, 6/1/97)(HN, 6/1/98)
1861 Jun 1, British territorial waters & ports were
put off-limits during Civil War.
(DTnet, 6/1/97)
1861 Jun 3, In the first Civil War land battle, Union forces defeated
Confederates at Philippi, in Western Virginia.
(HN, 6/3/98)
1861 Jun 8, Tennessee voted to secede from the Union and joined
the Confederacy. [see May 6]
(AP, 6/8/97)(HN, 6/8/98)
1861 Jun 9, Mary Ann "Mother" Bickerdyke, Civil War hospital worker,
began working in Union hospitals. "The midwife must give way to the physician.
Woman, therefore, must become physician."
(HN 6/9/98)
1861 Jun 10, The Virginia village of Big Bethel became the site
of the 1st major land battle of the Civil War. Private Henry L. Wyatt was
the 1st Confederate soldier killed in a Civil War battle. 18 Union soldiers
were killed.
(AH, 10/01, p.50)
1861 Jun 10, Dorthea Dix, known for her work with the mentally
ill, was appointed superintendent of women nurses for the Union Army.
(HN, 6/10/98)
1861 Jun 11, Union forces under General George B. McClellen repulsed
a Confederate force at Rich Mountain in Western Virginia.
(HN, 6/11/98)
1861 Jun 17, President Abraham Lincoln witnessed Dr. Thaddeus
Lowe demonstrate the use of a hot-air balloon.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1861 Jun 19, Loyal Virginians, in what would soon be West Virginia,
elected Francis Pierpoint as their provisional governor.
(HN, 6/19/98)
1861 Jun 24, Federal gunboats attacked Confederate batteries at
Mathias Point, Virginia.
(HN, 6/24/98)
1861 Jun 29, William James Mayo, co-founder of the Mayo Clinic
in Minnesota, was born.
(HN, 6/29/98)
1861 Jun, James D. Bulloch arrived in London to procure ships
and arms for the Southern Confederacy.
(ON, 7/01, p.6)
1861 Jul 2, Australian explorer Robert O'Hara Burke died near
Cooper's Creek and John King pressed on to look for native Aborigines.
King later returned to William Wills but found him dead. King continued
to survive with the local Aborigines until he was rescued. In 1991 Tom
Bonyhady authored "Burke and Wills: From Melbourne to Myth."
(ON, 12/01, p.5)
1861 Jul 4, In a special session of 27th Congress Lincoln requested
400,000 troops.
(Maggio, 98)
1861 Jul 4, Union and Confederate forces skirmished at Harpers
Ferry, West Virginia.
(HN, 7/4/98)
1861 Jul 9, Confederate cavalry led by John Morgan captured Tompkinsville,
Kentucky. "The Yankees will never take me a prisoner again," vowed Confederate
General John Hunt Morgan.
(HN, 7/9/98)
1861 Jul 14, Union troops tried to force a crossing at Seneca
Falls on the Potomac, northwest of Washington but were repulsed by the
Confederates. A company of the Louisiana Tiger Rifles helped defend the
line.
(HN, 7/14/99)
1861 Jul 18, Union and Confederate troops skirmished at Blackburn's
Ford, Virginia, in a prelude to the Battle of Bull Run.
(HN, 7/18/98)
1861 Jul 20, The Congress of the Confederate States began holding
sessions in Richmond, Va.
(AP, 7/20/97)
1861 Jul 20, The New York Tribune compared Peace Democrats to
the venomous Copperhead snake, which strikes without warning. During the
American Civil War, Northerners who advocated restoration of the Union
through a negotiated settlement with the South was referred to as Peace
Democrats.
(HNQ, 10/9/99)
1861 Jul 20, In the first major battle of the Civil War [see
June 10], Confederate forces repelled an attempt by the Union Army to turn
their flank in Virginia. The battle becomes known by the Confederates as
Manassas, while the Union called it Bull Run. It was fought on Judith
Carter Henry's farm.
(HN, 7/20/98)(HNQ, 5/10/02)
1861 Jul 21, In the first major battle of the Civil War, Confederate
forces repelled an attempt by the Union Army to turn their flank in Virginia.
The battle became known by the Confederates as Manassas, while the Union
called it Bull Run. The 33rd Virginia Infantry held Henry House Hill at
the first Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia, resulting in a Confederate
victory. This was the spot from which Jackson took on the title of "Stonewall"
and his brigade the "Stonewall Brigade." Union forces had 3,000 men killed,
wounded, or missing in action while the Confederates suffered 2,000 casualties.
Bernard Bee coined the nickname associated with Confederate General Thomas
J. "Stonewall" Jackson. At the Battle of First Manassas, it is General
Bee who supposedly rallied his troops by calling out, "Look! There is Jackson
standing like a stone wall. Rally to the Virginians!" Though there is some
controversy about exactly what was said, when Bee said it, and what exactly
he meant by it, the words helped create a legend. Bee couldn't explain
further; he was mortally wounded during the battle and died the next day.
Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell was in command of the Union forces at the First
Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas).
(HT, 3/97, p.48)(AP, 7/21/97)(HN, 7/21/99)(HN, 1/18/00)(HNQ,
7/30/01)(MC, 7/21/02)
1861 Jul 25, The Crittenden Resolution, calling for the American
Civil War to be fought to preserve the Union and not for slavery, was passed
by Congress.
(HN, 7/25/98)
1861 Jul 27, President Abraham Lincoln replaced General Irwin
McDowell with General George B. McClellen as head of the Army of the Potomac.
(AP, 7/27/97)(HN, 7/27/98)
1861 Aug 1, Sally Louisa Tompkins opened Robertson Hospital in
Richmond, Virginia. She ceased operating the hospital on June 13, 1865.
(HNQ, 5/17/01)
1861 Aug 5, The US federal government levied an income tax for
the first time to finance the Civil War. It was 3% of incomes over $800.
(AP, 8/5/97)(HN, 8/5/98)(MC, 8/5/02)
1861 Aug 10, General Nathaniel Lyon died at the Battle of Wilson's
Creek, Missouri. He was the 1st Union general to die in the Civil War.
(HNQ, 6/5/02)
1861 Aug 11, James Bryan Herrick, physician who first described
sickle-cell anemia, was born.
(AP, 8/11/00)
1861 Aug 16, President Lincoln prohibited the states of the Union
from trading with the seceding states of the Confederacy.
(AP, 8/16/97)
1861 Aug 16, Union and Confederate forces clashed near Fredericktown
and Kirkville, Missouri.
(HN, 8/16/98)
1861 Aug 23, Rose O'Neal Greenhow was arrested by Union secret
service operative Allan Pinkerton and held under house arrest for five
months. She had supplied Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard with a warning that Union
General Irvin McDowell was planning an attack on Manassas in July 1861.
Greenhow, a 44-year-old widow with four daughters, was recruited in 1861
to be the operating head of the Confederacy's first spy ring. A Washington
socialite with many friends in high government circles, Rose was perfectly
placed to gather intelligence about Federal troop strengths and movements.
Rose Greenhow was finally released and sent South on June 2, 1862. She
drowned in a shipwreck on September 30, 1864.
(HNQ, 6/9/98)
1861 Aug 27, Union troops made an amphibious landing at Cape Hatteras,
North Carolina.
(HN, 8/27/98)
1861 Aug 27, At the Battle of Cape Hatteras, SC, Union troops
took Fort Clark.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1861 Aug 28, The Battle of Fort Hatteras, NC.
(MC, 8/28/01)
1861 Aug 30, Union General John Fremont declared martial law throughout
Missouri and made his own emancipation proclamation to free slaves in the
state. President Lincoln overruled the general.
(HN, 8/30/98)
1861 Sep 20, Lexington, Missouri, was captured by Union forces.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1861 Sep 3, Confederate forces entered Kentucky, thus ending its
neutrality.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1861 Sep 6, Union General Ulysses S. Grant's forces captured Paducah,
Kentucky from Confederate forces. A lifelong friend and trusted aide of
Ulysses S. Grant, Ely Parker rose to the top in two worlds, that of his
native Seneca Indian tribe and the white man's world at large.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1861 Sep 9, Sally Louisa Tompkins (b.1833) was commissioned as
a Confederate captain of cavalry. Born into a wealthy and altruistic family
in coastal Mathews County, Virginia, Tompkins was destined for a life of
philanthropy. After moving to Richmond, Tompkins spent much of her time
and a considerable portion of her fortune assisting causes she considered
worthy. With the onset of civil war, she labored tirelessly on the behalf
of the South's wounded soldiers, and for this she became the first and
only woman to receive an officer's commission in the Confederate army.
(HNQ, 5/17/01)
1861 Sep 10, Confederates at Carnifex Ferry, Virginia, fell back
after being attacked by Union troops. There were 170 casualties. The action
was instrumental in helping preserve western Virginia for the Union.
(HN, 9/10/98)(MC, 9/10/01)
1861 Sep 13, In the 1st naval battle of Civil War, Union frigate
"Colorado" sank privateer "Judah" off Pensacola, Fla.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1861 Sep 25, Secretary of US Navy authorized the enlistment of
slaves.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1861 Sep 30, William Wrigley, Jr., founder of the Wrigley chewing
gum empire and owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, was born.
(HN, 9/30/98)
1861 Sep, Harry Macarthy delivered a stirring performance of "The
Bonnie Blue Flag" on a New Orleans stage, causing a near riot. Born an
Englishman, he became famous throughout the Confederacy as an entertainer.
Macarthy was a hit, and for the rest of the war, he would do his best to
keep his song and himself popular, taking his show on the road all over
the South and providing diversion for thousands of civilians and soldiers.
He lifted the morale of war-weary Southerners and became the most popular
performer in his adopted country, the Confederate States of America.
(HNQ, 6/14/01)
1861 Oct 4, Frederic Remington (d.1909), American Western painter
and sculptor, was born. He painted "The Fight for the Water Hole."
(AAP, 1964)(WUD, 1994, p.1213)(HN, 10/4/00)
1861 Oct 4, The Union ship USS South Carolina captured two Confederate
blockade runners outside of New Orleans, La.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1861 Oct 6, Naval Engagement at Charleston, SC, the USS Flag vs.
Britain's Alert.
(MC, 10/6/01)
1861 Oct 11, Battle of Dumfries, Va., at Quantico Creek.
(MC, 10/11/01)
1861 Oct 12, The Confederate ironclad Manassas attacked the northern
ship Richmond on the Mississippi River. The Manassas was the Confederacy's
first operational ironclad. Originally a New England tugboat called the
Enoch Train, the ship was refit with iron sheathing and an iron prow for
ramming. The underpowered ship was used in defense of New Orleans, finally
being dispatched by the Union warship Mississippi.
(AP, 10/12/97)(HNQ, 7/12/00)
1861 Oct 15, The British steamship Fingal, purchased by James
D. Bulloch for the US Southern Confederacy, ran into the Austrian brig
Siccardi, which sank with her load of coal in England's Holyhead harbor.
The Fingal quickly sailed for Savannah. The Fingal was later converted
to an ironclad and renamed Atlanta.
(ON, 7/01, p.6)
1861 Oct 16, The Confederacy started selling postage stamps.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1861 Oct 21, Battle of Ball's Bluff, Va., was a disastrous Union
defeat which sparked Congressional investigations.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1861 Oct 22, The 1st telegraph line linking West & East coasts
was completed. [see Oct 24]
(MC, 10/22/01)
1861 Oct 23, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas
corpus in Washington, D.C. for all military-related cases.
(HN, 10/23/98)
1861 Oct 24, West Virginia seceded from Virginia.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1861 Oct 24, Western Union completed the first transcontinental
telegraph line. The first transcontinental telegraph message was sent as
Justice Stephen J. Field of California transmitted a telegram to President
Lincoln. Telegraph lines linked the West Coast to the rest of the country
and made the Pony Express obsolete late in the year.
(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A19)(AP, 10/24/97)(HN, 10/24/98)
1861 Oct 25, Battle of Wilson's Creek in Springfield, Mi.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1861 Oct 26, The Pony Express ended after 18 months of operation.
[see Apr 3, 1860]
(MC, 10/26/01)
1861 Nov 1, Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, 50 year veteran
and leader of the U.S. Army at the onset of the Civil War, retired. Gen.
George B. McClellan was made General-in-Chief of the Union armies.
(AP, 11/1/97)(HN, 11/1/98)
1861 Nov 6, Dr. James Naismith (d. Nov 28, 1939), Canadian physical
education instructor, was born. He invented the game of basketball in 1891.
(DTnet, 11/28/97)(HN, 11/6/99)
1861 Nov 6, Jefferson Davis was elected to a six-year term as
president of the Confederacy.
(AP, 11/6/97)(HN, 11/6/98)
1861 Nov 7, Union General Ulysses S. Grant launches an unsuccessful
raid on Belmont, Missouri.
(HN, 11/7/02)
1861 Nov 7, Union forces capture the Hilton Head-Beaufort-Port
Royal area of Southern Carolina.
(Smith., 4/95, p.14)(HN, 11/7/98)
1861 Nov 8, Union Captain Charles Wilkes of the sloop San Jacinto
seized Confederate commissioners John Slidell and James M. Mason from the
British mail ship Trent. Lincoln's response to uproar: "One war at a time."
The Confederates were released. In 1977 Norman F. Ferris authored "The
Trent Affair: A Diplomatic Crisis."
(HN, 11/6/98)(ON, 1/01, p.7)(MC, 11/8/01)
1861 Nov 10, Robert T.A. Innes, astronomer (Proxima Centauri),
was born in Edinburgh, Scotland.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1861 Nov 11, In China the Qing Dynasty established a new ministry
of foreign affairs. It was housed in a building that had housed the Department
of Iron Coins and was considered as a temporary institution.
(WSJ, 5/16/97, p.A16)
1861 Nov 16, Vaclav Suk, composer, was born.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1861 Nov 18, The first provisional meeting of the Confederate
Congress was held in Richmond.
(HN, 11/18/98)
1861 Nov 18, Poet and abolitionist Julia Ward Howe (inset) accompanied
her husband, Dr. Samuel Howe, to Fort Griffin, Virginia, to review Union
troops defending the capital. The ceremony was cut short when the Federals
were forced to give chase to a nearby party of Confederates. Dr. and Mrs.
Howe returned to their Washington hotel, but Mrs. Howe awoke in the early
morning hours with "long lines" of a poem in her mind. She rose in darkness
and wrote six stanzas of The Battle Hymn of the Republic on her husband's
stationery based on chapter 63 of the Old Testament's Book of Isaiah. In
February 1862, The Atlantic Monthly printed the poem for a $5 payment.
Soon troops all over the North were singing the stirring words to the popular
tune of John Brown's Body, which had been composed in 1852.
(HNPD, 11/20/98)(HNQ, 5/21/02)
1861 Nov 19, Julia Ward Howe wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"
while visiting Union troops near Washington. [see Nov 18]
(HN, 11/19/00)
1861 Nov 26, West Virginia was created as a result of dispute
over slavery with Virginia.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1861 Nov 28, The Confederate Congress admitted Missouri to the
Confederacy, although Missouri had not yet seceded from the Union.
(DTnet, 11/28/97)(HN, 11/28/98)
1861 Nov 30, Harper's Weekly publishes E.E. Beers' "All quiet
along the Potomac."
(MC, 11/30/01)
1861 Nov 30, The British Parliament sent to Queen Elizabeth an
ultimatum for the United States, demanding the release of two Confederate
diplomats who were seized on the British ship Trent.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1861 Dec 1, The U.S. gunboat Penguin seized the Confederate blockade
runner Albion carrying supplies worth almost $100,000.
(HN, 12/1/98)
1861 Dec 4, Lillian Russell, singer and actress, was born Helen
Louise Leonard in Clinton, Iowa. She performed in burlesque and light opera,
debuting in Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore in 1879. Russell was praised
for her voluptuous beauty and was frequently photographed. Women everywhere
tried to emulate her plump physique by buying potions and corsets to accentuate
their curves. Although Russell was the ideal beauty of her time, her 186-pound
figure--which she kept by eating without restraint--would be quite a departure
from today's standard of beauty. Russell later wrote a newspaper column
on health, beauty and love, and she died in 1922.
(HNPD, 12/3/98)
1861 Dec 4, The Federal Senate, voting 36 to 0, expelled Senator
John C. Brekenridge of Kentucky because he joined the Confederate Army.
(HN, 12/4/98)
1861 Dec 5, In the U.S. Congress petitions and bills calling for
the abolition of slavery were introduced.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1861 Dec 5, Gatling gun was patented. [see Oct 30, 1862]
(MC, 12/5/01)
1861 Dec 6, Union General George G. Meade led a foraging expedition
to Gunnell's farm near Dranesville, Va.
(HN, 12/6/98)
1861 Dec 7, USS Santiago de Cuba, under Commander Daniel B. Ridgely,
halted the British schooner Eugenia Smith and captured J.W. Zacharie, a
New Orleans merchant and Confederate purchasing agent.
(HN, 12/7/98)
1861 Dec 8, Aristide Maillol, French painter and sculptor (Seated
Woman), was born.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1861 Dec 8, The American Bible Society announced that it would
distribute 7,000 Bibles a day to Union soldiers.
(HN, 12/8/98)
1861 Dec 8, CSS Sumter captured the whaler Eben Dodge in the
Atlantic. The war began affecting the Northern whaling industry.
(HN, 12/8/98)
1861 Dec 9, U.S. Senate approved the establishment of a committee
that would become the Joint Committee on the Conduct of War.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1861 Dec 10, Kentucky was admitted to the Confederate States of
America.
(HN, 12/10/98)
1861 Dec 11, A raging fire swept the business district of Charleston,
South Carolina, adding to an already depressed economic state.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1861 Dec 13, Battle of Alleghany Summit, WV.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1861 Dec 14, Prince Albert of England, husband of Queen Victoria
and one of the Union's strongest advocates, died in London. The book "Uncrowned
King: The Life of Prince Albert" was later written by Stanely Weintraub.
(WUD, 1994, p.34)(WSJ, 1/26/98, p.A16)(AP, 12/14/98)(HN, 12/14/98)
1861 Dec 17, The Stonewall Brigade began to dismantle Dam No.
5 of the C&O Canal near Martinsburg, W.Va.
(HN, 12/17/98)
1861 Dec 20, Transports were loaded with 8,000 troops in England.
They were setting sail for Canada so that troops would be available if
the "Trent Affair" was not settled without war.
(HN, 12/20/98)
1861 Dec 23, Lord Lyons, The British minister to America presented
a formal complaint to secretary of state, William Seward, regarding the
Trent affair.
(HN, 12/23/98)
1861 Dec 24, The USS Gem of the Sea destroyed the British blockade
runner Prince of Wales off the coast at Georgetown, S.C.
(HN, 12/24/98)
1861 Dec 25, Stonewall Jackson spent Christmas with his wife;
their last together.
(HN, 12/25/98)
1861 Dec 26, Friedrich Engel, German mathematician (group theory),
was born.
(MC, 12/26/01)
1861 Dec 30, Banks in the United States suspended the practice
of redeeming paper money for metal currency, a practice that would continue
until 1879.
(HN, 12/30/98)
1861 Dec, French, British and Spanish troops landed at Veracruz,
Mexico, seeking to force Benito Juarez to resume his financial obligations.
(PCh, 1992, p.485)
1861 Matthew Brady, born in upstate NY around 1823, determined
to make a complete photographic record of the Civil War.
(V.D.-H.K.p.275)
1861 William Wrigley, Jr., was born in Philadelphia. He began
his business career by selling soap manufactured by his father. In 1891,
Wrigley moved to Chicago where he founded and became president of Wm. Wrigley,
Jr. Company, manufacturers of chewing gum, earning him the money
to acquire the Chicago Cubs and to build Wrigley's Stadium. Wrigley is
especially noted for his effective advertising techniques.
(AP, 4/9/00)
1861 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French impressionist painter, entered
the Ecole des Beaux Arts and studied with Charles Gleyre.
(DPCP 1984)
1861 Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted "Fair Rosamund."
(WSJ, 2/9/00, p.W2)
1861 The book "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens was published.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, DB p.43)
1861 Young's "Scientific Secrets" was published. It is a book
of recipes and formulas for furniture polish, beers, wines, and directions
on interpreting flowers' "language."
(CM, 12/94, p.59)
1861 The Donohue House in Elk, California, was built by an Irish
immigrant.
(SFC, 9/1/96, T3)
1861 Col. Agoston Haraszthy, a Hungarian immigrant to the US who
settled in Sonoma, California, was asked by Calif. Governor John Downey
to go to Europe and to find sample cuttings of the best European varieties
of grapes. Haraszthy's methodology, personality and perseverance earned
him the name of Father of California Wines.
(WCG, p.58)
1861 Samuel A. Bishop brought the first herd of 600 cattle to
Owens Valley in mid-east California.
(SFEC, 9/29/96, T7)
1861 Camels were brought to Virginia City, Nevada to carry supplies
and salt for miners at the Comstock Lode.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, DB p.67)
1861 In his first annual message Lincoln argued that "labor is
prior to, and independent of capital. Capital is the fruit of labor, and
could never have existed if labor had not first existed..."
(WSJ, 2/10/95), p.A-8)
1861 General Winfield Scott offered Robert E. Lee, "the very best
soldier I ever saw in the field," command of the Union army, but Lee declined,
deciding to support the Confederacy.
(HNPD, 8/15/99)
1861 The first Confederate flag had three stripes and a circle
of 7 stars in the upper left corner. The commonly seen battle flag of the
Army of Northern Virginia had an 13 stars on an "X" field with 7 stars
along each line of the x.
(WSJ, 2/4/97, p.A20)
1861 Virginia seceded from the Union and moved troops to take
over National Capital. Federal troops were rushed down the Chesapeake-Delaware
Canal and arrived in time to stop Confederate troops from taking Washington
D.C. The Wheeling Conventions declared Virginia's secession from the Union
unconstitutional and named Francis H. Pierpont governor of the Reorganized
Government of Virginia, which was quickly recognized by the federal government.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, representatives of Virginia's western
counties had gathered in the city of Wheeling (as the temporary capital)
to form the Reorganized Government of Virginia. In 1862 a state constitution
was adopted by the convention and on June 20, 1863, West Virginia was admitted
as the 35th state in the Union.
(NG, Sept. 1939, p.379)(HNQ, 6/16/99)
1861 According to Hardee's Tactics, used extensively to instruct
infantrymen in the Civil War, every officer "should, by practice, be enabled,
if necessary," to perform the important function of sounding bugle calls.
This knowledge, so necessary in general instruction, becomes of vital importance
on actual service in the field." Lieutenant Colonel William J. Hardee published
this admonition for career officers of the U.S. Army in 1861. That very
year, the Civil War erupted, and huge numbers of civilians were hastily
made officers. As Hardee (who ultimately became a Confederate lieutenant
general) would have admitted, most of these volunteer officers knew very
few of the dozens of bugle calls, and could not sound any of them. According
to section 55 under "Instruction of the Battalion" in Hardee's Rifle and
Light Infantry Tactics (1862, J.O. Kane edition), "Every officer will make
himself perfectly acquainted with the bugle signals; and should, by practice,
be enabled, if necessary, to sound them.
(HNQ, 9/28/01)
1861 Ardent Confederate Isabelle (Belle) Boyd became one of the
Civil War's most notorious spies. When only 16, she fatally wounded a Union
soldier who entered her family's home in Martinsburg, Virginia (now West
Virginia). During the next year, she regularly provided intelligence to
Rebel commanders. She was arrested several times and twice served sentences
in Washington, D.C., prisons. When captured aboard a Confederate blockade-runner
in 1864, Belle was banished to Canada. While traveling in England to further
the Southern cause, she created a sensation by marrying Sam Hardinge, a
Union officer. A widow with one child by war's end, Boyd published her
memoirs, returned to America and later earned a living by acting and lecturing
on her wartime experiences.
(HNPD, 1/16/99)
1861 Orion Clemens was appointed Secretary of the Territory of
Nevada. He took along his young brother, Sam Clemens (Mark Twain).
(SFEC, 9/17/00, Z1 p.2)
1861 Pres. Lincoln appointed Anson Burlingame, congressman from
Mass., as ambassador to China.
(Ind, 8/11/01, 5A)
1861 Union Major General William T. Sherman battled bitterly with
the press throughout the Civil War, after 1861 news reports called the
nervous, quick-tempered general "insane." Once, when told about reporters
killed by shells, he exclaimed, "Good! Now we'll have news from hell before
breakfast!"
(HNQ, 1/18/02)
1861 Leland Stanford was elected Governor of California.
(Ind, 6/2/01, 5A)
1861 Chicago Mayor John Wentworth fired all the 60 policemen,
3 sergeants and 1 captain as his last official act. For 12 hours the city
was without police as the Board of Commissioners worked to replace them.
(SFC, 3/20/99, p.B4)
1861 James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States, retired
to Wheatland, his Pennsylvania home.
(HNQ, 4/15/01)
1861 The Central Pacific Railroad was founded by Sacramento merchants
Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and Collis P. Huntington.
(SFC, 4/18/98, p.A1)
1861 Milton Bradley launched the board-game industry in North
America.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)
1861 The College of California was founded in Oakland.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, p.W4)
1861 At the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Northern
population was approximately 22 million, while the total Southern population
was about 9 million. Of the total population of 9 million in the 11 seceded
states, 3.5 million were black slaves. The 22 million in the 23 Northern
and border states were augmented during the war by heavy foreign immigration.
(HNQ, 8/8/98)
1861 A fossil of the prehistoric bird Archaeopteryx was discovered
in 150 million-year-old rock in a limestone quarry in Germany.
(Hem., 10/97, p.130)
1861 In Albania the first school known to use Albanian language
in modern times was opened in Shkodra.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1861 In Greenland the first Eskimo newspaper began.
(WSJ, 4/10/00, p.A44)
1861 In India the Murree Brewery Co. Ltd. was founded by British
colonialists. In 1947 it came under the control of Pakistan.
(SFC, 7/10/00, p.A8)
1861 The Risorgimento movement resulted in Italian unification.
The Carbonari was a secret society in early 19th century Italy who advocated
liberal and patriotic ideas and opposed the conservative regimes imposed
on Italy by the Allies who had defeated Napoleon in 1815. As with other
secret societies of the age, the Carbonari had an initiation ceremony,
complex symbols and a hierarchical organization though its exact origins
are left to conjecture. They recruited primarily among nobility, small
landowners and officeholders and may have been an offshoot of the Freemasons.
Their influence is credited with preparing the way for the Risorgimento
movement.
(HNQ, 8/21/00)
1861 Benito Juarez became the president of Mexico. Napoleon III
persuaded Archduke Maximilian of Austria to take the throne of Mexico.
(SCal, May 1995)
1861 In Russia Dmitri Ivanovich Mendelyev, chemist, determined
that the maximum solubility of alcohol in water occurs at a ratio of 40%
to 60%. This became the ideal mixture for sipping vodka for Russians.
(WSJ, 2/2/98, p.A23)
1861-1865 In 1860, Lincoln became the first president elected from the
new Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot by John Wilkes Booth
at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. In 1996 a new
biography of Abraham Lincoln by David Donald was published.
(HN, 2/12/98)(AP, 2/12/98)(AHD, 1971, p.759)(WSJ, 2/10/95, p.A-8)(SFC,
9/1/96, Par. p.12)(HNPD, 2/12/99)(SFC, 4/30/99, p.E9)
1861-1865 The American Civil War. In 1996 "A Short History of the Civil
War" by James L. Stokesbury, Canadian professor, was published. 185,000
black soldiers served in the Colored Troops. In 1997 James M. McPherson
published "For Cause and Comrades," a collection of letters by the men
who fought in the war.
(SFC, 9/1/96, Par. p.12)(SFC, 9/11/96, p.C1)
1861-1865 During the American Civil War, Confederate prisoners who
were pressed into service by the Union to fight against Indians on the
Western frontier were referred to as "Galvanized Yankees.
(HNQ, 8/11/98)
1861-1865 The U.S. Military Railroads` Construction Corps under Herman
Haupt performed spectacular engineering feats during the American Civil
War.
(HNQ, 8/30/01)
1861-1865 The American Civil War left over 600,000 people dead.
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A1)
c1861-1865 Walt Whitman went to Virginia during the Civil War to nurse
his brother George, who had been wounded in battle. Afterward, Whitman
volunteered in army hospitals in Washington.
(HN, 9/5/00)
1861-1865 The Napoleon 12-pounder gun howitzer was the most popular
smoothbore artillery piece employed in the American Civil War (there was
also a 6-pounder Napoleon that was less widely used). The muzzle-loaded
artillery piece-named for French emperor Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III)--was
adopted by the U.S. Army shortly before the Civil War. Confederates captured
a great many Federal pieces, but also copied the design to manufacture
themselves. The cannon fired a variety of ammunition and had a maximum
effective range of between 800 and 1,000 yards.
(HNQ, 12/15/00)
1861-1865 The National Museum of Health and Medicine (NHMH) was founded
in Washington DC to advance medical care during the Civil War.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.T10)
1861-1865 In 2001 Russell F. Weigley won the Lincoln Prize for his
book: "A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History."
(WSJ, 2/15/00, p.A16)
1861-1865 Major Gen'l. Dan Butterfield wrote "Taps" during the Civil
War and created the first military shoulder patches.
(SFC,12/27/97, p.C3)
1861-1865 The mid-downtown park, donated to San Francisco by Mayor John
Geary, became the site of rallies on behalf of the Union that gave the
park its name. Many of the rallies were led by Unitarian minister Thomas
Starr King. The block was renamed Union Square to commemorate the rallies.
(SFEC, 3/15/98, p.W27)(SSFC, 7/21/02, p.F2)
1861-1865 Turin was the capital of Italy.
(WSJ, 8/18/99, p.A17)
1861-1869 William Henry Seward was the American Sec. of State during
these years
(HFA, '96, p.30)(AHD, p.1187)
1861-1876 Abdul Aziz succeeded Abdul Meçid in the Ottoman House
of Osman.
(Ot, 1993, xvii)
1861-1880 Rob Cox tells the story of William Mumler and other photographers
of the dead and living dead in his article The Transportation of American
Spirits: Gender, Spirit Photography and American Culture, 1861-1880 in
Ephemera Journal 7, 1995.
(MT, 10/95, p.10-11)
1861-1920 Louise Imogen Guiney, American poet and essayist: "Quotations
(such as have point and lack triteness) from the great old authors are
an act of filial reverence on the part of the quoter, and a blessing to
a public grown superficial and external."
(AP, 7/9/98)
1861-1925 Rudolf Steiner was a theosophist who saw himself as a bridge
between the scientific and spiritual traditions.
(SFC,12/18/97, p.E1)
1861-1941 Sir Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Nobel Prize-winning poet:
"Each child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man."
(AP, 10/26/00)
1861-1950 Minna Antrim, American writer: "A fool bolts pleasure, then
complains of moral indigestion."
(AP, 5/12/99)