1864: Information and Much More from Answers.com
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Allied German troops cross the Eider River into Schleswig-Holstein February 1 (see 1863). Prussians take the fortress at Düppel by storm April 18, the Danes sue for peace July 12, and Denmark loses half her territory October 30 under terms of a treaty signed at Vienna giving Austria and Prussia joint control of the two former Danish duchies (see Convention of Badgastein, 1865).
Bavaria's Maximilian II dies at his native Munich March 10 at age 52 after a 16-year reign in which Prussia and Austria have stymied his efforts to create a "third force" by allying himself with smaller German states. A staunch supporter of the hereditary prince Frederick of Augustenburg in the dispute over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, Maximilian has introduced ministerial responsibility, ended press censorship, and made Munich an intellectual and artistic center. He is succeeded by his brilliant but insane 18-year-old son, who will reign until 1886 as Ludwig II, living as a recluse and feuding constantly with his ministers and family as he builds endless palaces (see Germany, 1871).
Britain cedes Corfu and other Ionian islands to Greece, having held the islands under a protectorate since 1815 but failed to gain favor among the inhabitants (see 1923).
Russian forces suppress a 17-month Polish insurrection that has spread to Lithuania and White Russia (see 1863). Despite protests from Paris, Polish autonomy is abolished. The Russian language is made obligatory in Polish schools, and proceedings are instituted against Polish Roman Catholic clergymen (see 1918).
St. Petersburg sends diplomat Nikolai, Graf Ignatiev as its minister to Constantinople. Now 32, he has pan-Slavic views that will make him a thorn in the side of Ottoman authorities over the course of the next 17 years as he encourages Christian Slavs throughout the empire to liberate themselves from Muslim rule.
Russia reforms her judiciary, abolishing class courts and setting up new courts modeled on the French system, which employs jury trials for criminal offenses and justices of the peace to deal with minor civil suits. Russia's Zemstvo Law establishes a system of local government boards that can levy taxes for local roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and the like. Peasants, nobility, and townspeople are all to be represented on local zemstvos with no single class to have a majority.
President Lincoln calls February 1 for 500,000 men to serve for 3 years or the duration of the war.
General Sherman succeeds General Grant as commander of the Army of the Tennessee and occupies Meridian, Mississippi, February 14, destroying railroad tracks and supplies.
The Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley rams a torpedo into a Union warship anchored off Charleston the night of February 17, sinking the warship but going down herself along with her captain and crew, who have built their 40-foot-long vessel from an iron boiler, powered it with a hand crank, but have had no extra air supply.
Ulysses S. Grant is commissioned lieutenant general March 9 and given command of all Union armies March 10.
Union fire kills Confederate general A. P. Hill at Petersburg, Virginia, April 2 at age 39.
Generals Grant and Meade start across the Rapidan May 3 to invade the Wilderness. Union and Confederate forces battle indecisively at the first Battle of the Wilderness near Chancellorsville, Virginia, May 5 to 6, and at Spotsylvania Court House May 8 to 12. "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," says Grant May 11 in a dispatch to Secretary of War Stanton. General Jeb Stuart sustains mortal wounds at Yellow Tavern May 11 and dies at Richmond May 12 at age 31.
Some 6,000 Union troops under the command of General Franz Sigel clash with about 4,000 Confederate troops commanded by General John C. Breckenridge in northwestern Virginia, Breckenridge orders the 257 cadets of the 25-year-old Virginia Military Institute (VMI) at Lexington to join him in the fight north of New Market, General Scott Shipp marches the boy-cadets 80 miles in 3 days, and they help Breckenridge defeat Sigel May 15 at the Battle of New Market, capturing a battery, taking prisoners, and forcing Sigel to retreat, but 10 of the cadets are killed, 45 wounded.
The Supreme Court rules unanimously May 15 in Ex parte Vallandigham that it cannot issue a writ of habeas corpus in a military case and has no jurisdiction with regard to the military tribunal that found "Copperhead" Clement L. Vallandigham guilty 11 months ago of making "treasonable utterances." Sent to Bermuda by President Davis last year, Vallandigham traveled from there to Canada, campaigned from there for the Ohio governorship, lost by a vote of 288,000 to 187,000, reenters the United States June 14 in a flimsy disguise, and plunges back into national politics.
Sheridan's cavalry seizes a vital crossroads at Old Cold Harbor, Virginia, May 31 as Grant moves south for an attack on Richmond. Using new repeating carbines and shallow entrenchments, Sheridan's troopers hold back a Confederate counterattack as Grant's VI and XVIII Corps arrive, Grant faces Robert E. Lee for the first time, and Lee's 59,000 men defeat Grant's 109,000 Federals June 1 to 3 at the Battle of Cold Harbor, killing more than 7,000 while losing only 1,500. Confederate general Leonidas Polk dies June 14 at age 58 of wounds suffered at Pine Mountain, Georgia, Union forces besiege Petersburg, Virginia, beginning June 19.
Former Boston mayor and Harvard president Josiah Quincy delivers an address supporting President Lincoln and the Union but dies at Boston July 1 at age 92.
The U.S.S. Kearsarge sinks the C.S.S. Alabama off Cherbourg in June (see 1862; 1871). The Confederate cruiser has never seen a U.S. port, and her cannonballs have bounced off the Kearsarge, whose captain has had his crewmen hang iron anchor chains from her decks to protect her hull. C.S.S. Florida, completed at Liverpool slightly earlier and armed in the Bahamas, continues to threaten Union merchant shipping, but the Union uses subterfuge to capture her in the harbor of Bahia, Brazil, in October after she has destroyed 38 American ships. North Carolina-born Annapolis graduate James I. (Iredell) Waddell, 40, sails for England and takes command in October of the British-built Confederate cruiser Shenandoah; he sails for the Pacific, where he will virtually wipe out the New England whaling fleet, capture more than 30 prizes, commandeer some ships, and burn others. Depredations by the Confederate ships have diverted Union naval vessels from the blockade and driven up insurance rates to such heights that many owners have converted their ships to foreign registry, ending the dominance of the U.S. merchant marine.
The Battle of Kenesaw Mountain in Georgia June 27 ends in defeat for Sherman, who loses 1,999 dead and wounded. Confederate losses total 270.
Indiana-born General Lew (Lewis) Wallace, 37, blocks an attempted raid on Washington, D.C., July 9 (Battle of the Monocacy). Having saved Cincinnati last year, Wallace loses his battle with Virginia-born General Jubal Anderson Early, 47, who has 14,000 men to his 6,050 in the fight three miles south of Frederick, but he gains time for Grant's VI Corps and XIX Corps to arrive from the Army of the Potomac and defend Washington. Early loses fewer than 700 men as compared with 1,880 Union losses.
The Battle of Atlanta begins July 20, with Sherman commanding roughly 100,000 Union troops in a Union army that consists of General George H. Thomas's Army of the Cumberland, Ohio-born General James B. McPherson's Army of the Tennessee, and General John McAllister Schofield's Army of the Ohio. Opposing them is Kentucky-born General John Bell Hood, 33, whose reinforced Army of the Tennessee has about 60,000 men; Hood had an arm mangled last year at Gettysburg, lost a leg at Chicamauga, and must be strapped to his horse. The Confederacy has augmented its army since June with boys of 17 and men aged 45 to 50. McPherson is shot dead outside Atlanta July 22 at age 35. The second Battle of Atlanta (Ezra Church) July 28 ends in another defeat for Hood, who has sustained 10,000 casualties in the two battles with Sherman losing nearly as many.
Union sappers (a regiment of Pennsylvania coal miners) explode a mine beneath the Confederate fort at Petersburg July 30, Union troops rush into the huge resulting crater, but the general in command has failed to provide ladders, the men are trapped in the hole with no means to climb out. Brig. Gen. William Mahone, 37, orders his troops to fire on the bluecoats, and the Federals fall back with 2,864 killed and wounded, 929 missing. A Virginia-born civil engineer and railroad man, Mahone wins promotion in the field to major general (see transportation, 1865).
"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton, go ahead!" orders Union Admiral David Farragut, now 63, at the Battle of Mobile Bay August 5. Defying Confederate torpedoes (mines) that have sunk some Union ships at the narrow entrance to the bay, Farragut's flagship Hartford proceeds into the bay and gains a victory despite the best efforts of Admiral Franklin Buchanan, who continues to fight Union warships with his ram Tennessee after other vessels in his squadron have been captured or disabled. Farragut's victory is the first good news for the Union this year.
The Democratic Party convention at Chicago August 31 nominates George B. McClellan as its presidential candidate with a platform containing a resolution (written at the insistence of Ohio peace-at-any-price "Copperhead" Clement L. Vallandigham) that declares the war a failure that must be ended without delay, but McClellan repudiates the resolution and runs as a "War Democrat." "It is best not to swap horses while crossing the river," President Lincoln has said June 9 in an address to a delegation from the National Union League, he runs for a second term as a Union Party candidate, but although even he does not expect to win as Confederate troops continue to stymie his efforts he gains support from many "War Democrats" as the Union scores solid victories beginning in late summer.
Atlanta falls to Union forces after a 5-week siege, Hood evacuates the city on the night of August 31, and Sherman marches in September 2, capturing the Confederacy's key railway, supply, and medical center; drunken soldiers ride up and down the city's streets, and they burn Atlanta to the ground.
Sheridan defeats Jubal A. Early's Confederate cavalry September 19 at Winchester, Virginia, but 697 Union troops are killed, 3,983 wounded, 338 missing as compared with 276 Confederate dead, 1,827 wounded, 1,818 missing. Sheridan beats Early again September 22 at Fisher's Hill in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.
Confederate spy Rose Greenhow collects her book royalties in gold coin and embarks from England with fresh funds for the Southern cause (see 1863), but her ship is wrecked by a violent storm September 30 and she is drowned near Wilmington, North Carolina, at age 49, pulled down by the leather bag full of gold pieces around her neck.
Union forces prevail in the Battle of Cedar Creek October 19 as Sheridan clears the Shenandoah Valley of Southern troops. The Union has 32,000 troops for the encounter, Early only 21,000, but although Early's first attack routs the Union's VIII Corps and sends the rest of the bluejackets into fighting retreat, Sheridan returns from a command conference at Washington in time to mount a counterattack that drives back the Confederates and captures their supply echelon. Still, the Union suffers 5,672 casualties to Early's 2,910.
Chicago police and Union troops round up some 150 persons suspected of conspiring to release the 8,000 Confederate prisoners at the city's Camp Douglas, arming them, stuffing ballot boxes to defeat President Lincoln in the November presidential election, and force an end to the war on terms acceptable to the Confederacy. Intelligence director LaFayette C. Baker has personally uncovered and broken up the "Northwest Conspiracy," whose terrorist members have plotted to use arson and other means to bring the war to the North. Camp Douglas has been understaffed, many of its internees have escaped by bribing guards, digging tunnels, or simply knocking down walls, the plot to free them is aborted, but by April of next year about 6,000 will have died at the facility of cholera, diphtheria, or other disease and been buried in mass graves in Oakwood Cemetery.
President Lincoln wins reelection in November as Union forces gain the upper hand. Nevada has been admitted to the Union as the 36th state before the election (see commerce [Comstock Lode], 1859), and Montana Territory has been formed out of Idaho Territory May 26 as prospectors flock to the gold fields of Virginia City (see commerce, 1863). The president wins 55 percent of the popular vote, takes 22 of the 25 participating states, and gaining 212 electoral votes to 21 for his Democratic challenger George B. McClellan, who appeared poised to win a few months earlier but has wound up carrying only Delaware, Kentucky, and New Jersey.
Sherman leads his army of 60,000 on a "march to the sea" beginning November 16 and proceeds to cut a mile-wide swath through Georgia, burning farms and factories, seizing foodstuffs, and leaving a wasteland in his wake. The Battle of Franklin November 30 ends in disaster for Hood, who has attempted to strike behind Sherman's lines. Hood makes a frontal assault on Schofield, now 33, south of Nashville and sustains terrible casualties—1,750 dead, including six general officers, 3,800 wounded, while Union losses total 189 dead, 1,033 wounded.
Boston widow Lydia Bixby receives a letter signed A. Lincoln from the Executive Mansion at Washington, D.C., and dated November 21: "Dear Madam,— I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save." Mrs. Bixby is a Confederate sympathizer, she detests Lincoln and destroys the letter (it will later be printed in the Boston Transcript), it was probably written not by Lincoln but rather by his secretary John Hay, and it will turn out that only two Bixby boys died in battle, one having deserted, another been honorably discharged, and a third either deserted or died a prisoner of war.
Union forces use the hand-cranked Gatling gun invented in 1861 to help defeat Hood at the Battle of Nashville in mid-December. General Thomas has 49,773 men to Hood's 31,000, he outflanks the Confederates, whose army falls apart after 1,500 have been killed or wounded and 4,462 taken prisoner. Union casualties total 499 dead, 2,562 wounded.
Sherman occupies Savannah December 22 and sends a dispatch to President Lincoln: "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah."
Former vice president George F. Dallas dies at Philadelphia December 31 at age 72.
A Spanish fleet sets out in April for Peru, where workers attacked Basque immigrants 2 years ago at Talambo (see 1821). Madrid sent an investigator with the title of viceroy, the government at Lima felt slighted at the questioning of its sovereignty and refused to deal with him, the fleet occupies the guano-rich Chincha (Bedbug) Islands 12 miles off the coast, and President General Juan Antonio Pezet obtains their return only by acceding to Spanish demands for an indemnity; his action creates a furor, and hostilities will continue until 1866 (see 1865).
Austria's Archduke Maximilian accepts the throne of Mexico April 10 and reaches Mexico City June 12, having taken the same route used by Winfield Scott in 1847 (see 1863). French troops help to drive Benito Juárez across the northern border into the United States; former president Antonio López de Santa Anna tries to obtain U.S. support for the ouster of Maximilian while also offering his services to Maximilian, but he is rebuffed by both Washington and the French (see 1865).
Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano López declares war on Argentina, whose president Bartolomé Mitre takes command of his country's military with help from former president Justo José de Urquiza. Solano López sends Brazil an ultimatum August 31 demanding that she not intervene in Uruguay; Brazil invades Uruguay's Banda Oriental in October, and López seizes an arms-laden Brazilian steamer November 12 (see 1865).
Irish patriot William Smith O'Brien dies at Bangor, Wales, June 18 at age 60.
The Charlottetown Conference convened September 1 on Canada's Prince Edward Island (PEI) discusses the possibility of a union of the Maritime Provinces. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have each sent five delegates to meet with five from PEI; eight from the Province of Canada arrive September 2 and argue for a union that would include Canada. The Maritime delegates meet by themselves September 7 to discuss the original proposal, they fail to reach agreement, but they reconvene September 10 and 12 at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and from October 10 to October 27 at Quebec, where they draft a constitution for a proposed federal union (see British North America Act, 1867).
The West African Tukolor leader Umar Tal escapes the besieged city of Hamdalahi, holes up in a nearby cave, but is killed February 17 at age 66 (approximate) when Tuareg, Fulani, and Moorish troops blow up the cave with gunpowder.
The "Ever Victorious [British] Army" of General Charles G. "Chinese" Gordon helps Qing (Manchu) forces under Zeng Guofan (Tseng Kuo-fan) capture the Taiping capital of Nanjing (Nanking) and sack the city after a short siege. Hong Xiuquan (Hung Hsiu-chuan) takes poison, more than 100,000 of his followers are killed between July 19 and 21, and the Taiping Rebellion that began in 1850 is ended (see 1860; Korea, 1876; "Open Door Policy," 1899).
British forces return to Bhutan (see 1772). They will defeat a Bhutanese army next year and force the Bhutanese to sign a treaty ceding control of their southern passes to the British and agreeing to accept an annual subsidy in return for letting the British mediate any future dispute with their neighbors.
French forces in Cambodia force Siam to return the royal regalia, and King Norodom is crowned at Oudong in June with French and Siamese officials in attendance (see 1863). He will be installed as king at Phnom Penh in 1866, and Siam will officially acknowledge the French protectorate over Cambodia in 1867.
Vietnam's emperor Tu Duc adds some modifications favoring his country in the treaty proposed last year by Phan Thanh Gian and approved by the French; he reneges on some points, however, and although the new treaty is signed, the French next year will declare that they will abide only by the terms of the original 1862 treaty (see 1867).
British, Dutch, French, and U.S. warships shell the Japanese port of Shimonoseki in August to retaliate for last year's attack on merchant shipping in the strait separating Honshu and Kyushu (Satsuma). The port is largely destroyed, Koshaku Yamagata is wounded, and the strait is reopened to ships of all nations. Revolutionary Issei Maebara, 30, joins the uprising, but the incident forces members of the Sonnō Jōi movement to recognize that their anti-foreign position is hopeless in the absence of weapons equal to those of the Western powers. The shōgun Iemochi Tokugawa's regent Keiki Tokugawa sends a punitive expedition to Chōshu and defeats the rebel forces. A more conservative government is installed, but no sooner have the shōgun's men left than irregulars organized by revolutionary Shinsaku Takasugi, 24, with help from scholar-strategist Masujiro Omura, 40, attack the conservative government's forces in Chōshu, defeat them, and restore a radical group to power (see 1865).
Korea enthrones the boy king Kojong whose father, Taewon-gun (Yi Ha-ung), 43, serves as regent and begins a series of reforms aimed at rationalizing and strengthening the central administration, modernizing and expanding the military, while opposing any concessions to Japan or to the West (see 1866).
German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle dies in a small forest outside Geneva August 31 at age 39 following a duel with Count Yanko von Racowitza of Wallachia, the former fiancé of one Helene von Dönniges, whom Lassalle has met in July but her father has opposed her marrying the German labor movement leader (see 1863). Lassalle has campaigned for universal suffrage but has been unable to win the support at Berlin and in the Rhineland. He is struck in the abdomen during the encounter and dies of his wound.
Confederate Col. W. P. Shingler orders his troops to take no more black prisoners but rather to kill any blacks fighting for the Union, Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest captures Fort Pillow, Tennessee, April 12, and the ensuing carnage will be remembered as the Fort Pillow Massacre. A congressional investigating committee will verify that Forrest's men killed more than 300 black men, women, and children after the surrender of the fort, burning some of them or burying them alive. The Union's use of black troops has outraged the South, but the Confederacy agrees later in the year to treat blacks as prisoners of war rather than slaves.
Huntington, Indiana, lawyer Lambdin P. Milligan delivers a speech before a large political gathering at Fort Wayne August 13, criticizing the Lincoln administration and the state's governor. Arrested on charges of conspiracy against the federal government October 5 and taken to Indianapolis before the military commander of the Indiana district, he goes on trial October 21. A military commission finds him guilty of offering aid and comfort to the rebels and sentences him to death, he contends that the military commission has no authority to try him, and he applies to a federal judge for a writ of habeas corpus (see Lincoln proclamation, 1863; Supreme Court ruling [Ex Parte Milligan], 1866).
Cheyenne dog soldiers (an autonomous military wing of the tribe) go on the warpath in the spring, attacking white settlers on the eastern plains of Colorado Territory; Arapahoe, Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa braves support them, and the economy of the 3-year-old territory comes to a halt as the tribesmen steal horses and mules, butcher cattle, tear down telegraph lines, wipe out wagon trains, and burn down stagecoach stations. Farmers abandon their fields, food prices soar, and wagon trains loaded with gold-mining equipment are unable to leave St. Louis. The territory's military commander Col. John Chivington has been spoiling for revenge ever since a Ute tribesman raped his 17-year-old daughter in Western Colorado 3 years ago, and he issues a call for volunteer "Indian fighters" to sign up for 100-day enlistments; some 700 volunteers ride into the Arapaho-Cheyenne reservation November 29, they see no Cheyenne dog soldiers, and a white flag flies alongside a U.S. flag above the teepee of Chief Black Kettle, with whom Chivington has met in September for inconclusive peace talks, but the troopers attack Black Kettle's 125-teepee encampment on the Sand River, with Chivington shouting, "Remember our murdered women and children!" The volunteers fire wagonloads of anti-personnel cannonballs into the camp, sweep up the creek bed, kill everyone they can find, and after 6 hours have massacred 150 of them, mostly women and children—one quarter of the camp's population. A dozen soldiers are killed, apparently by friendly fire, and Chivington takes three prisoners, all of them children. President Lincoln will replace Colorado's territorial governor, and a congressional inquiry will condemn the Sand River Massacre.
Navajo terrorized by Kit Carson and his men are marched 300 miles to Fort Sumner in New Mexico Territory on the "Long Walk" to the Bosque Redondo concentration camp (see 1863). By December the camp contains 8,354 Navajo plus 405 Mescalero Apache, but 1,200 will escape next year, and Carson will be relieved of his command in the fall of 1866 after a despotic regime in which hundreds have died of disease and starvation (see 1868).
Parliament passes a Contagious Diseases Act, forcing the compulsory registration, licensing, and medical inspection of British prostitutes. The new law makes any woman suspected of prostitution in a garrison or naval dockyard town subject to "inspection" by the morals police for venereal disease; if she is menstruating, she may be detained until an examination is possible. Doctors who perform the examinations are said to rape their patients, and if they decide a woman is diseased she may be held in confinement and treated with mercury until deemed cured. A woman who refuses to submit to examination may be imprisoned at hard labor. More Contagious Diseases Acts will follow in 1866 and 1869 (see 1882).
The Geneva Convention (Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in the Field) signed in August pledges all parties to humanitarian rules respecting prisoners of war, wounded and sick military personnel, civilians in war zones, and neutrality of hospitals, ambulances, and medical staff, with enemy soldiers being entitled to the same medical treatment as troops of one's own country (see 1863). The Swiss government has invited the delegates to the Palais de l'Athenée, where 36 experts and government delegates have met; one man has proposed that medical workers wear white armbands in the field, and another has proposed adding a red cross as a tribute to the Swiss, whose flag bears a white cross on a red field. The convention is signed by representatives of 12 nations, including the United States; it will be expanded in 1907 and 1929 (see 1949; Nobel prize, 1901). The Red Cross is established by the new Geneva Convention, which will be signed by every major world power (see Dunant, 1862). The Italian Red Cross is founded at Rome; the French establish a Société Française de Secours aux blessés militaires, which will be merged into the French Red Cross (see 1865).
English reformer Octavia Hill, 25, establishes a housing project in London's St. Marylebone slum area with funds borrowed from John Ruskin, whom she met at age 14. Hill's sister Miranda, 28, and her other sisters will help her in her work (see Charity Organisation Society, 1869).
Explorer Samuel Baker in Africa discovers a lake (he calls it Albert Nyanza, or Lake Albert) in March and determines that it is one source of the Nile (see 1863). John Hanning Speke's claim that he has found the source of the Nile encounters a challenge back home; he is scheduled to debate the matter publicly with Richard Burton at London September 15, but he is killed that day by his own gun while hunting near Corsham, Wilshire, at age 37. A Walk Across Africa by Speke's erstwhile companion James A. Grant is a journal describing native customs and events of geographic importance encountered on the pair's 2½-year journey.
Explorer Charles Francis Hall returns to the Arctic in search of survivors from the 1845 Franklin expedition (see 1860). He begins a journey by sledge from the north end of Hudson Bay that will take him 3,000 miles in 5 years, during which time he will find some relics of the Franklin party and learn a good deal about their fate (see 1871).
Explorer and army officer Stephen H. Long dies at Alton, Illinois, April 27 at age 80; former explorer and Indian agent Henry R. Schoolcraft at Washington, D.C., December 10 at age 71.
Speculation in gold and securities increases along with inflation in the Union. Gold approaches $175/oz. April 4; it rises to $188/oz. by the time Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase arrives in mid-April to confer with Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke and Assistant Treasurer John J. Cisco, who is in charge of the subtreasury in New York. Chase gives Cooke approval to start selling some of the $6 to $7 million in gold stored by Cisco, and the price drops to $174/oz. By April 21, Cooke has sold about $7 million in gold, but the price has fallen to $160/oz.
A new federal banking law that takes effect June 3 permits creation of banking associations with national charters controlled by a comptroller of the currency in the Treasury Department at Washington, D.C.
A new tariff act approved by Congress June 19 raises rates substantially.
A new Internal Revenue Act approved by Congress June 30 broadens the income tax and imposes other taxes on business.
The price of gold rebounds to a high of $285/oz. in July as Confederate forces under General Jubal Early march through Maryland, falls again in early November as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury John J. Cisco receives authority to resume selling, rises about 12½ percent to $259½/oz. at news of President Lincoln's reelection, but drops soon thereafter to $252/oz. Stock and bond prices have similar wild swings, with frequent—albeit shortlived—panics.
Congress creates the Crédit Mobilier of America through a rechartering of the 5-year-old Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency, formerly controlled by journalist-businessman Duff Green, 72. Union Pacific Railroad promoter Thomas C. Durant is president, and investors include Oakes Ames and his brother Oliver; the new company will build the railroad's first 247 miles, but Durant is less interested in spanning the continent with track than in making money from congressional subsidies and construction contracts (see transportation, 1863; 1867; Williams report, 1862).
The U.S. Mint issues a bronze Indian-head 1¢ piece whose design will remain unchanged until 1909.
The Confederacy suffers wild inflation as $1 billion in paper currency is circulated. Gold value of the paper money falls in the first quarter of the year to $4.60 per $100 while in the North the gold value of the "greenback" falls to 39¢ as of July 11 (see 1863; 1865). Intelligence agents employed by LaFayette C. Baker uncover a major fraud in the Treasury Department and find that prominent Union officials have been trading with the enemy.
U.S. workingmen organize the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the Iron Moulders' International, and the Cigar Makers' National Union (see 1833; 1834; National Labor Congress, 1866).
The International Working Men's Association holds its first meeting September 28 at St. Martin's Hall, London, with representatives of British and French trade unions. A French intermediary has invited Karl Marx to attend as a representative of German workers, and he sits quietly on the platform while others speak, but when various drafts of a proposed constitution for the association are deemed unacceptable he uses his journalistic skills to write a paper in which he emphasizes the political achievements of the cooperative movement and of parliamentary legislation, observing that Britain's proletariat will extend those achievements on a national scale as it gradually increases in political power. Membership in the association will reach close to 800,000 by 1869 as it intervenes successfully in disputes between European trade unions and employers.
Napoleon III acknowledges the right to strike and ends a French ban on workers' associations.
The French bank Société Générale (Pour Favoriser le Dévelopment du Commerce et de l'Industrie en France) is founded at Paris to provide general-banking and investment services (see 1946).
The Bank of California is founded at San Francisco by merchants and bankers who include New Yorker Darius Ogden Mills, 39, who will serve as the bank's president until 1873.
The 1-year-old Travelers Insurance Co. amends its charter to permit accident coverage of any kind, and the enormous success of The Travelers inspires more than a dozen accident insurance companies to start up by year's end (see 1866).
Kamehamea V of the Sandwich Islands sells the Hawaiian island of Niihau to Mrs. Elizabeth Sinclair, an émigrée Scotswoman whose late husband acquired large holdings in New Zealand before being lost at sea. Feeling the property insufficient to keep her large family together, she has sold it, loaded her family, livestock, and movable possessions aboard her own clipper ship, and visited several places before deciding on Hawaii. The 12-mile-long, 46,000-acre island—plus the 65,000-acre Great Makaweli estate on Kaui—will remain in her family for more than a century after Mrs. Sinclair's death in 1890, being used to graze sheep and cattle.
August Unshelm is lost at sea and replaced by Theodor Weber, 20, as manager of Godeffroy und Sohn at Apia, Samoa (see 1857). Weber will overcome Samoan resistance to selling land, buy several thousand acres, plant them with coconut palms and cotton, and bring in labor from other island groups to the north and west. He will phase out oil extraction and instead buy copra, from which oil can be extracted more efficiently by presses in Europe, eliminating the casks that leak rancid coconut oil.
Opium, tea, and textile trader David Sassoon dies at Poona in November at age 72, having established a hugely profitable import-export operation that has made his family the richest in India (it imports more than 20 million pounds [58,681 chests] of opium into China this year, a figure that will rise by 1880 to 105,508 chests). Sassoon's sons Albert (originally Abdullah), 46, and Elias, 44, set up the New Sassoon Co. at Bombay, Albert will build huge textile factories in India to take advantage of cheap labor, Queen Victoria will knight him in 1872, his brother Solomon moves to Hong Kong and will run the operation there until his death in 1894, and the company will take over Albert's business at Shanghai early in the next century (see medicine [Harrison Act], 1914).
A "finder" using a witch-hazel twig divining rod discovers petroleum along Pennsylvania's Pithole Creek (see 1865; Drake, 1859).
The Kansas state legislature helps the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe by accepting a federal land grant February 9 and voting to allow railroads to select additional lands within 20 miles of their lines in lieu of lands already held by settlers through preemption. The governor signs a law March 1 allowing counties to vote subsidies of up to $200,000 to railroads (see 1863; Atchison Associates, 1868).
The Chicago North Western Railway incorporated in 1859 acquires the 16-year-old Galena & Chicago Union that first steamed into Chicago in 1848 (see Rock Island, 1872; Supreme Court decision, 1877).
Legislation signed by President Lincoln July 2 establishes the Northern Pacific Railroad Co. to be built between Lake Superior and Puget Sound, with much of its route to follow that of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 60 years ago. Financing for the new line is not immediately available (see 1870).
Cornelius Vanderbilt (he has changed his name from van Derbilt) decides to merge his New York & Harlem line with the New York and Hudson River line in order to end their ruinous competition (see 1862). Now 70, he travels to Albany and begins bribing legislators to support a consolidation bill. Erie Railroad president Daniel Drew persuades the legislators to sell Hudson River Railroad stock short, promising to make them rich. Vanderbilt is out of the city when he hears that Drew and his confederates are trying to drive down the price of the stock, he gives orders to buy, and he acquires all the stock there is, plus another 27,000 shares, which Drew's confederates James Fisk and Jay Gould have had printed. When Drew and the Albany legislators cannot deliver the stock they have sold there is chaos. Vanderbilt raises money by mortgaging other properties and winds up owning 137,000 shares—27,000 more than actually exist. The short sellers come to him for stock, Vanderbilt demands $1,000 per share, many brokerage houses face bankruptcy, but Vanderbilt's ally Leonard W. (Walter) Jerome, 45, persuades him to accept $285 per share so that they can deliver. Many are driven to bankruptcy, nevertheless, and Vanderbilt winds up not only with a profit of more than $3 million (he would have made $25 million had all the legislators been able to deliver) but also with control of the New York and Hudson. The Commodore makes his son William Henry Vanderbilt chief operating officer of the Hudson River line (see 1865).
George M. Pullman and Ben Field of Chicago patent a railway sleeping car with upper berths that fold into its ceiling (see 1858). Pullman has poured his entire savings of $25,000 into developing the Pioneer, the first true sleeping car with convertible berths; lighted by candles and heated by stoves at both ends, it provides luxurious accommodations for 24 passengers but costs far more than other sleeping cars and is too wide to clear many bridges and station platforms (see 1865).
London's Charing Cross railway station opens near Trafalgar Square.
The Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. chartered at the end of 1840 advertises fares from Southampton to Bombay via Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, and Aden (where passengers board a second steamer after traveling overland from Alexandria): £100 for a single berth in general cabin, £250 for a married couple in a reserved cabin, £50 for a child aged 3 to 9 traveling with a parent, £50 for a European servant, £25 for a native servant. Ships range in tonnage from 1,124 to 2,152, with engines that develop from 210 to 500 horsepower; the company claims to have an experienced surgeon aboard every ship.
The French Line paddlewheeler Washington arrives at New York in June to begin 110 years of service between New York and the Channel ports by the Compagnie Génerale Transatlantique.
English inventor James Slater patents a precision-made drive chain that was foreseen by Leonardo da Vinci. It will find uses in industrial machinery and in bicycles (see Renold, 1880; transportation [Starley], 1870).
The May issue of the Journal of the Franklin Institute at Philadelphia carries an article ("A System of Screw Threads and Nuts") by local inventor William Sellers, now 39 (see 1862; Whitworth, 1841). Sellers addresses the need for a generally accepted standard (see 1868).
The Lee Arms Co. is founded at Milwaukee by Scottish-born gunsmith James Paris Lee, 33, who has obtained a government contract to produce rifles employing a box magazine that he has invented and a bolt action that permits rapid firing. Lee will move in 1875 to the federal arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts, and supervise production of his breechloading single-shot rifle (see Lee-Enfield, 1895).
A cotton-thread mill opens at Newark, New Jersey, under the direction of George and William Clark, grandsons of Patrick and James (see 1806). The Civil War has cut Britain off from U.S. cotton, and the Clarks have had little choice but to move their operation to America. J & P Coats will buy an interest in a Pawtucket, Rhode Island, thread mill in 1869 and merge with Clark in 1952 to create Coats & Clark.
Die Entwicklung der Dipteren by German biologist August (Friedrich Leopold) Weismann, 30, at the University of Freiburg refutes the notion that acquired characteristics can be transmitted to offspring (see Kölreuter, 1761; Lamarck, 1809; 1822). Only variations of the germ plasma can be inherited, says Weismann (see 1892; Mendel, 1865).
German chemist Adolf von Baeyer, 29, synthesizes barbituric acid, the first barbiturate drug (his work will be eclipsed by that of his associate F. A. Kekulé von Stradonitz) (see 1858; 1865).
Chemist-geologist Benjamin Silliman dies at New Haven, Connecticut, November 24 at age 85; mathematician George Boole at Ballin Temple, County Cork, Ireland, December 8 at age 49.
Surgeons on both side in the Civil War dispense morphine regularly to wounded soldiers (see 1803). One surgeon pours doses of the narcotic onto his gloved hands and allows the troops to lick the gloves as he rides past.
"In God We Trust" appears on every piece of U.S. currency for the first time by order of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. The first U.S. coins were inscribed in 1787 with the words, "Mind Your Business," the words "E Pluribus Unum" ("From Many, One") were inscribed beginning 5 years later, Christian clergymen have lobbied the government to have coins as well as bank notes acknowledge divine protection, but they have not succeeded (see 1908).
"Apologia pro Vita sua" by Roman Catholic priest John Henry Newman responds to an anti-Catholic piece by Charles Kingsley in Macmillan's Magazine with an examination of the logical and psychological grounds of all religions (see 1845). Now 63, Newman writes a cogent essay that appears in seven parts between April 21 and June 2, devastates his critics, and ends with the words, "Away with you, Mr. Kingsley, and fly into space."
The Labor Question and Christianity (Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christentum) by the bishop of Mainz Wilhelm E. Ketteler advocates labor associations and draws praise May 23 from socialist Ferdinand Lassalle in a meeting at Rondsdorf (see 1869).
Swarthmore College is founded outside Philadelphia by Quakers and abolitionists who include James Mott (see 1833). Named for Swarthmore Hall, home of Society of Friends founder George Fox, its campus has on it the birthplace of the late painter Benjamin West, whose house was built in 1724, and enrollment will ultimately grow to exceed 1,400. The college is open to women as well as men; by 1879 nearly half of all U.S. colleges will be coeducational.
The Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Co. is founded April 7 through a merger of Britain's Gutta Percha Co. and the steel-wire manufacturing firm Glass, Elliot & Co. Cotton merchant John Pender is chairman of the new enterprise, which aims to make another effort to lay a transatlantic cable (see 1858; 1865).
Penman Platt Rogers Spencer dies at his Geneva, Ohio, home May 16 at age 63, having established the semi-angular "Spencerian" script style of penmanship that some of his six sons will continue to teach in schools across the country.
R. R. Donnelley & Sons has its beginnings in a Chicago print shop opened by Canadian-born saddler's apprentice Richard Robert Donnelley, whose enterprise will be destroyed by fire in 1871 but whose son Reuben H. will turn the company into a publisher of mail-order catalogues and directories (see 1886).
Nonfiction: The Maine Woods by the late Henry David Thoreau; The Nasby Papers by Ohio journalist "Petroleum V. Nasby" (David Ross Locke), 31, who bought the Toledo Blade in 1861 and since March of that year has been publishing "letters" over the signature Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby, "late pastor uv the Church uv the New Dispensation, Chaplain to his excellency the President, and p.m. at Confederate x roads, kentucky," attacking slavery, "Copperheads," and the Democratic Party. Locke writes in the humorous fashion of his time, embodying in Nasby all the characteristics of cowardice, dishonesty, dissolution, hypocrisy, and intemperance that he despises; Hospital Sketches by Germantown, Pennsylvania-born writer Louisa May Alcott, 32, whose father, Amos Bronson Alcott, failed in his Fruitlands commune experiment of 1844 and who was herself forced for a time to perform menial work in order to support her family (she has lately been working as a nurse in a military hospital).
Publisher Louis-Christophe-François Hachette dies at Paris July 31 at age 64, having pressed for an international copyright convention.
Fiction: Letters From the Underground (Zapiski zi podpoiya) by Russian novelist Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoievsky, 42, who was convicted of conspiracy in 1849, sentenced to be shot, reprieved at the last moment, sent to Siberia for 5 years, has had his review in the Times suppressed, and has lived abroad to escape his financial troubles; Journey to the Center of the Earth (Voyage au Centre de la Terre) by Jules Verne; Renée Mauperin by French novelist Jules de Goncourt, 42; The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope; Can You Forgive Her? by Trollope is the first of six Palliser novels; Clara Vaughan by English novelist R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore, 39; Jean Rivard, the Economist (Jean Rivard, l'économiste) by Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, who portrays French-Canadian rural life.
Nathaniel Hawthorne dies at Plymouth, New Hampshire, May 19 at age 59.
Poetry: Dramatis Personae by Robert Browning, whose poem "Rabbi Ben Ezra" contains the lines, "Grow old along with me!/ The best is yet to be,/ The last of life, for which the first was made"; Enoch Arden by Alfred Tennyson; In War Time by John Greenleaf Whittier, whose poem "Barbara Frietchie" contains the lines, "'Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,/ But spare your country's flag,' she said." It is based on an apocryphal story that is widely believed.
Poet John Clare dies of a paralytic seizure at Northampton, England, May 20 at age 72. He has been confined since 1841 at St. Andrew's asylum but has continued to write visionary lyrics; Walter Savage Landor dies at Florence September 17 at age 89.
Painting: The Dead Toreador by Edouard Manet; Souvenir of Mortefontaine and The Evening Star by J. B. C. Corot; Oedipus and Sphinx by Jean-August-Dominique Ingres, now 84; 1814 by Ernest Meissonier; Hommage à Delacroix by French painter (Ignace) Henri (Joseph Theodore) Fantin-Latour, 28.
French physicist-inventor Louis Ducos du Hauron, 26, receives a patent March 1 for a device that can take and project motion pictures, but he does not build the device (see Muybridge, 1873; color photographs, 1868).
Britons B. J. Sayce, 27, and William Blanchard Bolton, 16, describe the preparation of a photographic emulsion of silver bromide in collodion (see Archer, 1851). But the Sayce-Bolton process leaves nitrates in the emulsion (see 1874; Maddox, 1871).
Calcutta-born English housewife Julia Margaret Cameron (née Pattle), 46, produces a photographic portrait of a little girl and proclaims it her "first success." She moved with her husband (a retired colonial official) to the Isle of Wight in 1860 to be near the poet Alfred Tennyson, was given a camera last year, converted a chicken coop into a studio, turned a coal bin into a darkroom, and will become Britain's best-known photographer, not only capturing the likenesses of such notables as Tennyson, Charles Darwin, actress Ellen Terry, Mrs. Herbert Duckworth, and Alice Liddell (for whom mathematician Charles Dodgson is now writing his Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), but also portraying allegorical, religious, and sentimental scenes.
New York society photographer Matthew B. Brady travels through the war-torn South with a wagonful of equipment to record scenes of the conflict (see 1850). Now 41, he learned to make daguerreotypes from Samuel F. B. Morse in 1840, switched to the new wet-plate process 9 years ago, and has poured all his money into training 20 assistants, who will help him make photographic record of the war since his own eyesight has been so bad since 1851 that he cannot focus well. Illustrated weeklies such as Harper's and Frank Leslie's publish hundreds of sketches and drawings of Civil War battles, sieges, and bombardments, but no magazine or newspaper has the equipment or technique needed to make halftone blocks for printing photographs (see 1880; Ives, 1886).
Theater: The Ticket-of-Leave Man by Tom Taylor 2/15 at London's Olympic Theatre introduces the detective "Nailer" Hawkshaw. Taylor has adapted a French melodrama, giving his hero a name that will become generic for any great sleuth.
Poet-playwright Imre Madách dies at his native Alsósztregova, Hungary, October 4 at age 41.
Opera: La Belle Helène 12/17 at the Théâtre des Variétés, Paris, with Hortense Schneider creating the title role, music by Jacques Offenbach.
Composer Giacomo Meyerbeer dies at Paris May 2 at age 72.
Ballet: The Humpbacked Horse 12/15 (12/3 Old Style) at St. Petersburg's Bolshoi Theater, with choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon based on Russian folk dances, music by Cesare Pugni.
Popular songs: "Beautiful Dreamer" by the late Stephen C. Foster, who has died in obscurity January 13 at age 37 in the charity ward of New York's Bellevue Hospital a few days after writing the song. Proceeds from Foster's songs averaged the not inconsiderable sum of $1,371.92 per year from 1849 to 1860, but Foster became ill and alcoholic and his death was hastened by poverty and drink; "All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight" by John Hill Hewitt, now 63, lyrics by Lamar Tontaine; "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" by Boston songwriter Walter Kittredge, 31, who wrote it one evening last year after receiving his draft notice but was rejected by the army for reasons of health; "When the War is Over, Mary," by John Rogers Thomas, lyrics by George Cooper; "Wake Nicodemus!" by Henry Clay Work; "Come Home, Father" by H. C. Work, whose new temperance song will be included in performances of Ten Nights in a Barroom (see 1854); "Der Deitcher's Dog" ("Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?") by Septimus Winner, who has adapted a German folk song.
Baltimore piano maker William Knabe dies at age 61, having lost his best market since the outbreak of war 3 years ago.
The Travers Stakes has its first running at the year-old Saratoga racetrack at Saratoga Springs, New York.
Gloucestershire-born cricket player William Gilbert Grace, 16, plays his first county match, beginning a 43-year career that will make him famous as the greatest all-around cricketer ever. Grace will revolutionize the game as a batsman, attracting thousands with his prowess as he becomes a celebrity Empire-wide, not for his Bristol medical practice but for his performance in the test matches at Lord's (see 1787; the Ashes, 1882).
Massachusetts-born inventor Ebenezer Butterick, 41, opens New York offices at 192 Broadway to market paper patterns for men's shirts and children's clothing (see retail, trade [Mrs. Demorest], 1860). A tailor and shirtmaker, Butterick devised a paper pattern for a man's shirt about 20 years ago; he or his wife, Ellen, saw a need for graded patterns that would permit shirts to be reproduced in vast quantities; they began marketing cardboard-template patterns in mid-June 1863, soon diversified into patterns for boys' suits (known as "Garibaldi suits"), and have given up cardboard in favor of tissue paper (see 1867).
French perfumer Pierre Guerlain dies after a 34-year career in which he was appointed Perfumer to the Court of Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie (in 1853). His capable sons Aime and Gabriel take over the business, and it will remain in family hands into the 21st century.
Vigilantes at Virginia City in Montana Territory seize Illinois-born gunfighter and murderer Jack Slade, 39, at a saloon March 10, drag him outside, and hang him. A veteran of the Mexican War, he came to town 3 years ago with a record of vicious behavior in other parts of the West and has been notorious for his drunken brawling and reckless gunplay.
Architect Leo von Klenze dies at Munich January 27 at age 79.
The Dale Dike on England's Humber River crumbles March 18, drowning some 240 people.
A cyclone destroys most of Calcutta October 1, killing an estimated 70,000.
Man and Nature by Woodstock, Vermont-born pioneer ecologist George Perkins Marsh, 63, of the U.S. foreign service warns that "the ravages committed by man subvert the relations and destroy the balance which nature had established . . .; and she avenges herself upon the intruder by letting loose her destructive energies . . . When the forest is gone, the great reservoir of moisture stored up in its vegetable mould is evaporated . . . There are parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe, where the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon . . . The earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitants" (see agriculture, 1874).
Congress protects California's Yosemite Valley, passing a bill in June at the urging of Frederick Law Olmsted to preserve the valley with its Mariposa Grove of giant Sequoia trees as the first U.S. national scenic reserve "for public use, resort, and recreation." President Lincoln signs the measure, having been impressed by photographs taken in 1861 by Carleton E. Watkins (see 1890; Yellowstone, 1872).
Chicago designates Lincoln Park as such. The 120-acre cemetery will have most of its graves removed and be expanded to embrace more than 1,000 acres of woodlands, bridle paths, playgrounds, golf courses, yacht basins, gardens, and museums.
The London fish-and-chips shop opened by Joseph Malines will be followed by many more in the next few years as steam trawlers are developed that can carry fish packed in ice. Taken from the North Sea, the fish will be kept chilled from the moment of catch until delivery to city retailers, who will deep-fry fish fingers and serve them in newspaper with deep-fried potatoes, all liberally doused with vinegar (see 1902).
The first U.S. salmon cannery opens on California's Sacramento River at Washington in Yolo County. Hapgood, Hume & Co., founded by Scotsmen William and George Hume in partnership with Hapgood, packs 2,000 cases, and although half spoil because the cans have not all been properly sealed, the cannery will soon be followed by others at San Francisco and at the mouth of every river north to Alaska (see 1866).
Irish-born California speculator James Irvine joins with San Francisco sheep ranchers Benjamin and Thomas Flint and Llewellyn Bixby as a silent partner to buy most of the huge but drought-stricken Rancho San Joaquin, paying José Sepulveda $18,000 for 50,000 acres. Irvine came to California from New York in quest of gold 15 years ago, had no luck, sold groceries and other supplies to miners, and earned enough to invest in real estate. Sepulveda received his land (originally owned by the San Juan Capistrano mission) as a grant from the Mexican government in 1837 but has lost as much as 75 percent of his vast cattle herd since 1861 as a result of heavy rains followed by drought; now 60, he has gone heavily into debt, and interest rates as high as 7 percent per month have forced him to sell. The buyers know the location of springs on the property, they profit from high wool prices (driven up by the shortage of cotton), will add to the property in 1866 by acquiring for $7,000 the 47,000-acre Rancho Lomas de Santiago granted to Teodosio Yorba during the Mexican War in 1846, and in 1868 will add 13,000 acres from the older Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana (see 1878; transportation, 1874).
U.S. wheat prices climb to $4 per bushel and food prices rise as European crops fail and the North ships wheat to hungry Europe.
Virginia's Shenandoah Valley is the breadbasket of the South. Sheridan has 50,000 troops and orders to "eat out Virginia clear and clean . . . so that crows flying over it for the balance of this season will have to carry their provender with them." Loss of the Shenandoah Valley as a food source forces the South to tighten its belt.
A grasshopper plague in the Great Plains shortens the U.S. wheat crop.
France's lentil industry moves to Lorraine, where colder weather kills off the insect pests that have ruined lentil crops for years.
Armour Packing Co. has its beginnings in a Milwaukee pork-packing firm started in partnership with John Plankinton by local commission merchant Philip Danforth Armour, 32, who has made nearly $2 million in 90 days selling short in the New York pork market. Armour is a former New York butcher who went to California in his teens, dug sluiceways for gold miners at $5 to $10 per day, saved $8,000 in 5 years to give himself the wherewithal to start his business at Milwaukee, and has traveled to New York, where he found pork selling at $40 per barrel. Foreseeing a Union victory as General Grant prepared to march on Richmond, Armour sold short at more than $33 per barrel, covered his sales at $18 per barrel, and has made a fortune (see 1868).
McDougall flour is introduced in Britain, where it will become the nation's leading brand of household flour.
Heineken beer gets its name as Dutch entrepreneur Gerard Adrian Heineken persuades his mother that there would be fewer drunks in the street if the Dutch could drink a good beer instead of gin, receives financial backing from her, acquires the 272-year-old De Hooiberg brewery at Amsterdam, and develops a special yeast that will give his beer a distinctive taste. Heineken will open a second brewery, at Rotterdam, in 1874.
Pabst beer has its beginnings as German-born brewer Frederick Pabst, 28, and an associate succeed in taking control of Milwaukee's Empire Brewery, which produces 4,895 barrels per year. It costs $1 to produce a barrel of beer, which can now be shipped by rail over long distances, thanks to pasteurization, and sold for $8. Formerly a Great Lakes steamboat operator, Captain Pabst was married 2 years ago to Marie Best, whose German-born grandfather, Jacob, started Milwaukee's Best Brewery in 1844, and became a partner of Marie's father, Phillip, who has sold the enterprise to his sons-in-law Pabst and Emil Schandein. They will incorporate as Phillip Best Brewing Co. in 1873, and Schandein will survive until 1888 (see 1889; Schlitz, 1856; Pabst Blue Ribbon, 1893).
European immigrants pour into the United States to take up free land under the 1862 Homestead Act and fill farm and factory jobs left vacant by Union Army draftees and Americans gone West both to avoid the draft and claim free land.
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