1862: Information from Answers.com
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1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870
President Lincoln issues General War Order No. 1 in January, requiring General McClellan to advance without further delay (see 1861). Detective Alan Pinkerton travels south disguised as a Major E. J. Allen and supplies reports that exaggerate the size of Confederate troop concentrations; discouraged from taking decisive action. McClellan stalls, preparing a plan that calls for a landing on the Yorktown peninsula and subsequent approach to Richmond.
The Union gains its first important success in the west January 19 as Mill Springs, Kentucky, falls to a cavalry force commanded by Brig. Gen. of Volunteers George Henry Thomas, 45. Former president John Tyler has won election to the Confederate Congress but has died at Richmond January 18 at age 71 before he could take his seat. Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland fall in February to U.S. forces under Ohio-born brigadier general Ulysses S. (originally Hiram Ulysses) Grant, 39, who wins promotion to major general of volunteers (his fellow Galena, Illinois, townsman Elihu Washburne has promoted Grant's career with congressional bills that previously promoted him to lieutenant general). Kentucky-born Confederate general Simon Bolivar Buckner, 38, has been in command at Fort Donelson.
Jefferson Davis is inaugurated at Richmond February 22 as president of the Confederate States of America.
Santa Fe falls March 4 to Confederate forces under Henry Hopkins Sibley but Southern hopes of taking over the Southwest are dashed March 27 at the Battle of Glorieta. Union forces stop Sibley in Apache Canyon at Pidgin's Ranch near Glorieta Pass.
The Battle of Elkhorn Tavern (Pea Ridge) in Arkansas March 7 to 8 is a bloody encounter that ends in defeat for 16,000 Confederate troops under the command of Generals Earl Van Dorn, 41, Sterling Price, and Benjamin McCulloch. They attack an 11,000-man Union force commanded by General Samuel Curtis, who are nearly overwhelmed but manage to rally on the second day and force the Confederates to retreat, dashing their hopes of regaining control of Arkansas.
The Army of the Potomac lands on the Yorktown Peninsula in March under the command of General McClellan, but although his forces far outnumber those of the Confederates he remains overcautious and makes little progress.
The world's first naval battle between ironclad ships occurs March 8. The Confederacy has burned the wooden frigate U.S.S. Merrimac, raised her from the bottom, found her hull intact, refitted her with an ironclad superstructure four inches thick, equipped her bow with an iron ram that can punch holes in other ships, given her a total of 10 cannon, and renamed her C.S.S. Virginia; commanded by former U.S. Naval Academy superintendent Franklin Buchanan, now 61, she has steamed across the Chesapeake Bay, sunk U.S.S. Cumberland, and set fire to U.S.S. Congress in Hampton Roads, fears have spread in the North that she may destroy the Union's wooden fleet, but she is forced to withdraw March 9 after an engagement with the Union's ironclad U.S.S. Monitor, built at New York by engineer John Ericsson, now 58, with a revolving gun turret containing just two cannon. The French produced the first ironclad warship in 1859, but Ericsson's turret breaks with anything seen in the past by enabling a ship to fire broadsides without first maneuvering into the proper position, and the battle in Hampton Roads makes all other countries recognize for the first time that the days of wooden naval vessels are numbered (the Monitor will sink in a gale off Cape Hatteras early next year and her wreckage will not be discovered until 1974).
Rose Greenhow goes on trial for treason March 25 (see 1861). General McClellan says she "knows my plans better than Lincoln or the cabinet, and has four times compelled me to change them." Lacking solid evidence of her guilt, the judges release her to Confederate officials across the Potomac and order her to remain away from Washington. Greenhow goes to Richmond, where President Jefferson Davis awards her $2,500 for her services, saying, "But for you there would have been no Battle of Bull Run." The information she has amassed will be instrumental in gaining further victories for Confederate generals (see 1863).
Union Army raiders led by Captain James J. Andrews steal the Confederate locomotive the General April 1 and race the Western and Atlantic wood burner north in an effort to cut the rail lines and thus isolate General P. G. T. Beauregard's army at Chattanooga. Confederate soldiers give chase in the locomotive the Texas and catch the raiders.
The Battle of Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing) begins April 6 on the Tennessee River. General Grant's Army of the Tennessee prepares to advance on the vital Confederate railway junction at Corinth; when combined with the Army of the Ohio, commanded by Ohio-born General Don Carlos Buell, 44, the Union has combined forces of 62,000 men; Kentucky-born General Albert Sydney Johnston has only 44,000 but attacks before Buell arrives. The Confederates drive back Grant's troops but Johnston takes a bullet in a femural artery and bleeds to death at age 58 in the mass slaughter. General Beauregard succeeds to the command, he waits in vain for General Earl Van Dorn, and finally retreats to Corinth; both sides claim victory April 7, but General Grant has lost 13,047 men, the South 10,694.
Island Number 10 below Cairo, Illinois, on the Mississippi falls to Union forces April 7. Louisville-born Brig. Gen. of Volunteers John Pope, 40, begins a successful effort to split the Confederacy by gaining control of the entire length of the Mississippi.
The Union Navy under the command of Captain David Glasgow Farragut silences Confederate guns below New Orleans April 25; General Benjamin F. Butler enters the city May 1 with occupation forces that rule with a heavy hand; a woman on a balcony in the French Quarter dumps the contents of a chamber pot on Farragut's head; and General Butler issues an order May 15 that any woman who persists in insulting Union soldiers "shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman plying her avocation." He intends the humiliating order to intimidate civilians into compliance with occupation orders, but it is interpreted as giving license to his troops to treat ladies as prostitutes. Lord Palmerston delivers a message to the House of Commons calling Butler's conduct "infamous," but U.S. ambassador to Britain Charles Francis Adams, now 54, protests that the Confederacy holds 2 million women in slavery.
Confederate forces under "Stonewall" Jackson and Richard B. Ewell take Fort Royal, Virginia, May 23 with help from spy Belle (originally Isabelle) Boyd, 18, of Martinsburg, the "Siren of the Shenandoah." Familiar with every inch of the countryside, she has engaged in systematic pilfering of Union sabers, pistols, and ammunition, which are sorely needed by the Rebels and have been smuggled through the Southern lines.
Confederate forces evacuate Corinth May 29, giving up not only their sole direct east-west rail link between Richmond and the Mississippi but also the north-south axis of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad.
General McClellan finally ends his long delay and sends Union forces up the peninsula between the James and York Rivers toward Richmond. The outnumbered Confederates under Joseph Eggleston Johnston and Robert E. Lee are obliged to pull back, but "Stonewall" Jackson diverts much of the Union strength to the Shenandoah Valley. General McClellan engages General Joseph E. Johnston in the Battle of Fair Oaks (Seven Pines) that rages six miles east of Richmond from May 31 to June 1. Johnston is severely wounded in the first day of fighting, and Confederate casualties exceed 6,000, Union casualties 5,000. Federal troops are withdrawn from the peninsula after sustaining heavy losses in the Seven Days' Battle from June 25 to July 1 at Mechanicsville, Gaines' Mill, White Oaks Swamp, and Malvern Hill.
Yankee sympathizer Elizabeth Van Lew, 44, at Richmond uses her high social position to obtain valuable information for the Union, which she openly supports. She and her rich mother have freed their own slaves and purchased those of others in order to free them (see 1865).
Former president Martin Van Buren dies at his native Kinderhook, New York, July 24 at age 79.
The Confederate cruiser Alabama moves down the Mersey River July 29 with a British crew. Georgia-born seaman James D. (Dunwoody) Bulloch arrived at Liverpool in June of last year, designed the 900-ton, 230-foot steam-powered barkentine, initially called simply No. 290, as a commerce raider, and has had her built at Liverpool's Laird shipyards despite Britain's Foreign Enlistment Act, which forbids construction of warships for belligerents. Bulloch follows her to the Azores, where she is completed and equipped with guns that will be used under the command of Rear Admiral Raphael Semmes, 53, to destroy or capture 64 Union merchant ships with a combined value of more than $6.5 million (see 1864).
Union authorities arrest Belle Boyd July 30 by order of Secretary of War Stanton and take her to Washington, where she is held in the Old Capitol Prison until August 29, when she is released—perhaps to break her ties with other Confederate sympathizers in the Capitol—and sent south with some 200 other prisoners aboard the steamship Juniata down the Potomac.
The Second Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) ends August 30 in defeat for the Union as 20,000 Confederates under "Stonewall" Jackson and South Carolina-born General James Longstreet, 41, repulse General Pope's 60,000 Federals. New Hampshire-born Brig. Gen. Fitz-John Porter, 39, has distinguished himself in the Peninsular Campaign but fails August 29 to comply with Pope's order to attack Jackson's right flank; Pope blames the loss of the battle on Porter's disobedience (see 1863). New York-born Brig. Gen. Philip Kearney unwittingly crosses Confederate lines while on a reconnoitering mission near Chantilly, Virginia, and is killed September 1 at age 48.
The Union Army's IX Corps enters Frederick, Maryland, under the command of Wheeling, Virginia-born Mexican War veteran General Jesse (Lee) Reno in pursuit of Confederate forces; the Corps moves out September 13, and Reno is killed September 14 at age 39 while leading his men at South Mountain. Reno, Nevada, will be named in his honor.
The Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) in Maryland September 17 turns into the biggest 1-day bloodbath in U.S. history. General Lee makes his first effort to carry the war into the North. His handsome horse Traveller is known throughout North and South, but his 38,000-man army is outgunned and outnumbered by General McClellan's 75,000 Union troops. Indiana-born General Ambrose E. (Everett) Burnside, 38, blunders late in the day by trying to send his 10,000 men across a narrow bridge (instead of marching them en masse through the chest-high waters of Antietam Creek) against Lee's right flank; 400 Confederate riflemen pick them off as they stumble over the bodies of their fallen comrades and slip on the blood; the outcome is indecisive, but General Joseph Hooker, 47, wins his nickname "Fighting Joe" (camp followers of Hooker's Massachusetts division are called "Hooker's girls," or simply "hookers"). Union casualties are 12,401 dead and wounded, Confederate casualties 10,318; Lee's army is so diminished that he falls back across the Potomac to Virginia, and McClellan passes up the opportunity to pursue him. McClellan's critics charge that the "Little Napoleon"'s goal is not to win the war and crush any possibility of secession but merely to settle the conflict on the basis of "the Union as it was," with slavery permitted to continue in the South.
A Confederate force commanded by North Carolina-born General Braxton Bragg, 45, threatens Cincinnati in the most ambitious strategic offensive into a western border state but retires after an indecisive engagement at Perryville, Kentucky, October 8 with Union troops under General Don Carlos Buell. Civilians help the military cope with thousands of casualties while Bragg withdraws southward, and Buell is relieved of his command for not having promptly pursued Bragg, who enjoyed some success at Shiloh in April.
President Lincoln relieves Genereal McClellan of his command November 7 and puts the Army of the Potomac under the far less capable and equally timid General Burnside. McClellan shrugs off suggestions that he lead his troops into Washington, D.C., take over the government in a coup d'détat, and make peace with the South. Allan Pinkerton resigns and is succeeded as chief of the U.S. Federal Detective Police and head of the federal secret service by Stafford, New York-born detective LaFayette C. (Curry) Baker, 36, who was arrested as a Union spy at Richmond last year but escaped. Adopting the motto "Death to Traitors," Baker will employ hundreds of agents to infiltrate the civil and military governments of both the Union and Confederacy, deploying them in two forces and keeping their identities secret even from each other (see 1863).
General Lee hands General Burnside a bad defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg that begins December 13. Burnside tries to cross the Rapahannock and advance on Richmond with 120,000 men, Lee opposes him with 78,000, Lee has the support of his lieutenant generals "Stonewall" Jackson and James Longstreet, Confederate artillery and riflemen cut down the advancing Union army, and many of the wounded freeze to death during the night. General Lee says to General Longstreet, "It is well that war is so terrible—else we should grow too fond of it." The Union sustains 12,600 casualties, the Confederates 5,300; Burnside withdraws.
General Grant is surprised at Holly Springs, Mississippi, December 20 by a Confederate force under General Van Dorn that captures a huge supply of stores, takes 1,500 prisoners, and burns more than 4,000 bales of cotton. Grant's bay horse Cincinnati is no match for General Lee's horse Traveller.
General Buell's Ohio-born replacement William S. (Starke) Rosecrans, 43, skirmishes with General Bragg for 4 days in the Battle of Murfreesboro (Stones River) beginning December 31 as both sides try to break the stalemate that has existed in the central Kentucky and Tennessee area. Bragg has 34,000 men, Rosecrans 44,000 after being reinforced, and although the encounter is indecisive and leaves both sides exhausted it leaves the Union forces in a stronger position, despite the loss of 12,906 men (Confederate casualties number 11,739).
London decides not to recognize the Confederacy, on which Britain depends for cotton. The British are dependent on the North for grain exports.
Britain and Spain withdraw their troops from Mexico April 8 when it becomes clear that France's Napoleon III intends to establish a Catholic Latin empire in Mexico with the blessing of Pope Pius IX. The Battle of Puebla May 5 (Cinco de Mayo) ends in a slaughter of crack French troops by Mexican irregulars under the command of mestizo officer Porfirio Díaz, 31, and General Ignacio Zaragoza, but Puebla falls to General Achille Bazaine after a 2-year siege, opening the way for a French advance on Mexico City (see 1863).
Britain proclaims the colony of British Honduras (later Belize) (see 1836). Guatemala has challenged British occupation of the area, Mexico has asserted claims to part of it, and although a treaty signed 3 years ago between Britain and Guatemala defined the small country's borders, the treaty's final article bound both parties to establish "the easiest communication" between Guatemala and what now becomes British Honduras; when no such route is developed Guatemala will claim that the entire treaty is invalid and assert her claim to the entire territory, but Britain will make British Honduras a crown colony in 1871 (see name change, 1973).
Paraguay's dictator Cárlos Antonio López dies at Asunción September 10 at age 75 after an 18-year rule in which he has involved his country in international affairs; he has officially abolished slavery and torture, but both continue to exist. His megalomaniac son Francisco Solano López, 36, becomes president, makes himself absolute dictator, and begins a disastrous 8-year rule (see 1864).
Former Russian foreign minister Karl Robert Vasileyvich, Graf Nesselrode dies at St. Petersburg March 23 (March 11 Old Style) at age 81. Russian forces in Central Asia capture the fortress of Bishkek built 37 years ago by the Uzbek (Kokand) khanate of Kokand in the mountains of what later will be Kyrgyzstan; a Mongolian tribe (the Oirots) conquered the region in the late 17th century, the Russians have been moving in since 1855, and they will complete their defeat of the khanate in 1876 (see 1926).
Greeks depose their 47-year-old king Otto I October 23 after a 29-year reign that has alienated the Greeks and provoked an assassination attempt on his wife, Amalie. Admiral Konstantinos Kanáris, now 71, is a member of the provisional government that revolts against Otto, who takes refuge with his queen aboard a British warship and returns to Bavaria (see 1863).
Admiral Louis-Adolphe Bonard captures Vietnam's Vinh Long Province in March and goes to Saigon June 5 to negotiate a peace treaty with the court of Annam (see 1861). The Treaty of Saigon signed later in the month gives France her first foothold in Indochina, ceding her control not only of Saigon and three of the southern provinces of what the French now call Cochinchina but also a voice in Vietnam's foreign relations. Former government official Phan Thanh Gian, now 66, has fought as a common soldier in the Quang Nam region, gained the respect of officers and fellow soldiers, been recalled to court (having offended the former emperor Minh Mang and been expelled for pointing out errors and shortcoming in imperial edicts), and signs the treaty, hoping that the French will keep out of the rest of Vietnam if allowed to have Gia Dih and Dinh Thong (later May Tho). The treaty opens three ports to trade, allows missionaries to do their work freely, and provides a large cash indemnity. Emperor Tu Duc will reluctantly ratify the treaty in April of next year, and Admiral Bonard will serve as France's first official military governor of Cochinchina until then, setting up schools to teach his officers the Vietnamese language and instituting French-language courses in school curriculums, but missionaries will oppose him, and the mandarins will encourage revolts against French rule (see 1863).
Former British viceroy to India Charles J. Canning, earl Canning, dies at his native London June 17 at age 49. He left India in March, having presided over the transfer of government from the British East India Company to the crown, remodeled the Indian Army by bringing more Europeans into its ranks, encouraged railroad development, and helped found the universities of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras.
New Zealand's Native Land Act legalizes private land transactions between settlers and the Maori, whose resentment of the settlers has led to war and will provoke further hostilities as the Maori continue to lose their best land (see 1861; 1863).
The Japanese emperor tries to reassert authority over the Tokugawa shōgunate that has ruled the country since 1600. Kyoto-born courtier Koshaku Sanjo Sanetomi, 24, delivers a message ordering the shōgun to expel all foreigners from the country. Followers of the feudal lord Koshaku Shimazu Hisamitsu, 44, attack four Britons Sepember 14 as the men ride past their lord's procession without paying proper respects, one of the Britons is killed, two are wounded. London demands a large indemnity, guardians of the boy shōgun Iemochi Tokugawa agree to pay £100,000, but the lord's clan refuses to pay even a shilling. British forces show their power by destroying part of the han capital, Kagoshima, and Hisamitsu abandons his belligerence, offering to pay £25,000 and to punish the perpetrators if they can be found. Hisamitsu became head of the huge Satsuma han (fiefdom) 4 years ago and has demanded that the corrupt shogunate increase the power of the emperor; his clan leader Keiki Tokugawa is appointed shōgunal guardian, and Hisamitsu works to discourage extremist leaders who want to overthrow the shōgunate and restore the emperor to power (see 1863).
Chinese forces led by U.S. military adventurer Frederick Townsend Ward win victories over the Taiping rebels, but Ward is mortally wounded September 20 at age 31 (see 1863).
Legislation signed by President Lincoln April 16 abolishes slavery in the District of Columbia, where slave trading has been illegal since September 1850, and legislation signed June 19 abolishes slavery in U.S. territories.
The Woman's Loyal National League mounts a petition to end slavery; it has been organized with help from Elizabeth Cady Stanton's husband, Henry.
Mary Todd Lincoln becomes an abolitionist, diverting funds that had been allocated to her for soldier care to her work in behalf of "all the oppressed colored race." She is the first president's wife to welcome blacks as White House guests, letting a Sunday School festival group use the South Lawn for a picnic and ordering the staff to "have everything done in the grand style" for them.
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union," writes President Lincoln August 22 in a letter to Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, "and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."
An emancipation statement signed by President Lincoln September 22 declares that "all persons held as slaves" within areas "in rebellion against the United States, are, and henceforth shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons." "In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and we preserve," Lincoln has said in his annual message to Congress. Having made emancipation a war aim, he has issued the statement in part at the urging of his wife, Mary, who has insisted that he do it not just for reasons of political necessity but as a matter of right (see 1863).
The first U.S. regiment of ex-slaves is organized at Boston in November. Commander of the First Regiment of South Carolina volunteers is Colonel Thomas Wentworth Storrow Higginson, 38, formerly pastor of the Free Church at Worcester, who in 1854 purchased axes and led the unsuccessful effort to liberate the fugitive slave Anthony Burns.
Chiricahua and Mimbreno Apache led by Cochise hold Apache Pass with 500 warriors against 3,000 California volunteers under General James Carleton until forced out by artillery fire. The aged Mangas Coloradas is captured and killed, and Cochise leads his followers deep into the Dragoon Mountains from which he continues raids that will terrorize white settlers until 1871 (see 1861).
A Sioux uprising begins in Minnesota August 17 under the leadership of Little Crow. The insurrection is suppressed, 306 tribesmen are sentenced to death, and 38 are hanged December 26 on a huge scaffold at Mankato.
"Un Souvenir de Soverino" by Swiss businessman-philanthropist Henri Dunant, 34, is a pamphlet urging the creation of volunteer societies to help the wounded on battlefields (see politics [Clausewitz], 1833). After the Battle of Solferino in 1859, Dunant entered Castiglione, found thousands of wounded soldiers dying on straw that was spread throughout the village, sent for medical dressings, and enlisted the help of local women and two English gentlemen tourists; he describes a battlefield that is black with congealed blood and littered with splintered bone fragments, severed body parts, wounded men crawling toward pools of bloody mud to slake their thirst, and Lombard peasants ripping boots from the feet of corpses (see international Red Cross, 1863).
Polar explorer Sir James C. Ross dies at Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, April 3 at age 61.
Explorer John Hanning Speke confirms July 28 that Lake Victoria is the source of the Nile—the world's longest river (see 1858). Supported by the Royal Geographical Society, he and his Scottish companion James A. (Augustus) Grant, 35, find the river's exit from the northern coast of the lake and give it the name Ripon Falls, but when their party tries to follow the river's course it is blocked by an outbreak of tribal fighting and forced to take a different route (see 1863).
Explorer and fur trader Simon Fraser dies at St. Andrews West, Canada West, August 18 at age 86.
Georgia-born explorer John M. Bozeman, 27, sets out with a partner late in the year from the Montana gold town of Bannack, crosses the Continental Divide at what later will be called Bozeman Pass, and is attacked by Sioux when he enters the eastern foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, an area reserved by treaty to the Native Americans. The two men continue south and east on foot to the North Platte and Fort Laramie (see 1863).
The U.S. monetary system "is unfitted for a commercial country like ours," laments Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch (see 1842; Coinage Act, 1792). Banks suspended specie payment at the end of last year, more than 1,600 financial institutions are printing money, more than half the paper money in circulation is counterfeit, people distrust such currency, it is heavily discounted by banks and merchants, and ordinary citizens hoard gold and silver coins. McCulloch urges issuance of "greenbacks" to help finance the war effort, which is costing the federal government $500 million per year. "A currency of uniform value throughout the entire country is greatly to be desired," says the governor of Illinois. "It tends to the more perfect regulation of our system of trade and commerce, [and] obviates ruinous differences in the rate of exchange." Congress authorizes creation of a central bank and new, federally-backed paper notes, the Legal Tender Act approved by Congress February 25 is signed into law by President Lincoln, and the Bureau of Printing and Engraving begins turning out paper bills that are colored green to help discourage counterfeiting. The new law provides for the issuance of $150 million in paper money ("greenbacks") and $500 million in 6 percent bonds. The greenbacks are the first national paper money in the United States, Congress votes July 11 to issue an additional $150 million in greenbacks, but while they will facilitate interstate trade and bring a boom to the economy, the paper money will lose value drastically next year when Union prospects for victory dim (see 1864; National Banking Act, 1863; Secret Service, 1865; Supreme Court decisions, 1870; 1871).
The Homestead Act voted by Congress May 20 declares that any U.S. citizen, or any alien intending to become a citizen, may have 160 acres of Western lands absolutely free (except for a $10 registration fee) provided he make certain improvements and live on the tract for 5 years. Enacted to redeem an 1860 Republican campaign promise after years of excessive land speculation, the law is to become effective January 1.
U.S. women take the places of men in factories, arsenals, bakeries, retail shops, and government offices throughout the Union and the Confederacy as military draft calls create male labor shortages.
New York workers stage walkouts to demand higher pay as prices rise. Bakers, boatbuilders, journeymen shipjoiners, journeymen house painters (who receive 17½¢ per hour), journeymen coppersmiths (who get $1.75 per day at best), hack drivers (who get $9 per week), and sign painters all feel squeezed, as do longshoremen, but when Irish laborers employed by the Manhattan Gas Company at the foot of 14th Street and the East River refuse to return to work after a few days unless some of their discharged colleagues are rehired they are simply replaced by German laborers.
England's Lancashire textile mills shut down as they run out of Southern lint from which they have been cut off by the Civil War.
An English Wholesale Society is established to supply the scores of cooperative societies that have sprung up along lines established in 1844 by the Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale, but most workers are restrained from joining such societies by the fact that they owe money to local tradespeople and must continue to live on credit.
A second London Great International Exhibition includes a display of Japanese arts and crafts that stir demand for Japanese silks, prints, porcelains, bronzes, lacquer ware, and bric-a-brac (see 1863).
Merchant John Perkins Cushing dies at his Watertown, Massachusetts, home April 12 at age 74, having amassed a fortune in the Chinese opium trade.
A revised federal income tax law signed by President Lincoln July 1 raises funds for the pursuit of the war against the Confederacy (see 1861). Lincoln has pressed for progressive taxation, so it levies 3 percent on incomes from $600 to $10,000 and 5 percent on incomes above $10,000, but dividends on railroad company stock are tax exempt to encourage railway development (see 1872).
Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase finds it difficult to finance the Union Army and appoints Philadelphia banker Jay Cooke special agent to sell government securities in October (see 1861). Cooke establishes a nationwide syndicate of salesmen as subagents, and by January 1864 they will have sold more than the $500 million worth of bonds and notes authorized by Congress (but see 1873).
John Hancock Life Insurance Company is founded by Boston entrepreneurs along lines laid down last year by a nonforfeiture law enacted through the efforts of reformer Elizur Wright, 58.
Henry B. Hyde's 3-year-old Equitable Life Assurance Company employs hundreds of agents and writes nearly $2 million in new policies as the Civil War makes Americans more aware of life's jeopardies. All New York life insurance companies enjoy nearly twice the business seen in any previous year, but Equitable grows much faster than its rivals (Hyde himself will avoid the draft quite legally by hiring a substitute for $800).
U.S. wool production will climb from 40 million pounds per year to 140 million in the next few years as the nation's woollen mills fill Union Army contracts and pay dividends of 10 to 40 percent.
New York department store king A. T. Stewart contributes $100,000 to the Union cause and sells uniforms at cost to the Union Army (see 1846). Stewart has introduced a revolutionary one-price system with each item carrying a price tag, an innovation that permits him to employ women sales clerks, who can be hired more cheaply than men. Having amassed a fortune of $50 million, Stewart gives a 10 percent discount to wives and children of clergymen and schoolteachers.
The world's largest department store opens in New York's 10th Street. Merchant A. T. Stewart has employed James Bogardus, now 62, to design the eight-story structure, which is also the world's largest building with a cast-iron front (see real estate, 1849). It has a central court, a huge skylight, a grand stairway leading up from the spacious ground floor, and elevators to make the upper floors accessible (see Otis, 1861; Wanamaker, 1896).
Coal prices reach $7.50 per ton at New York in September, up from $4.50 earlier in the year. Heating one's house becomes far costlier, and coal dealers warn that prices may rise to $10 or even $12 as winter wears on.
New York's Common Council passes an ordinance on the evening of April 21 authorizing the New York & Harlem Railroad to build a street railway down Broadway to the Battery (see 1858). The news reaches Wall Street April 22, and although stock in the company has been under pressure, it shoots up to $75 per share. Cornelius van Derbilt owns 55,000 shares, having used some of the $20 million he acquired in shipping and Civil War profiteering to invest more than $2.5 million; he has been bribing members of the Common Council to secure their votes. The stock keeps rising until it reaches par before backing off; now 67, van Derbilt gains support from his rival Daniel Drew, now 64, to win election in May to the presidency of the New York & Harlem, but Drew then suggests to the councilmen that they can all get rich if they join him in selling the stock short, and then revoking permission for the street railway. Van Derbilt's crew begins tearing up the street June 25 pursuant to the Council's ordinance and the company's stock hits 110, but the councilmen vote to revoke the franchise and the stock promptly drops to 72. Waiting for the price to fall further, the councilmen are shocked to see it rising. Van Derbilt buys stock, squeezing the short sellers as the price rises to 80, 95, 108, 125, 150. As the warrants come due, the short sellers have to produce stock or go to jail, and they are obliged to buy at the Commodore's price: $180 per share. By July 4 they are out of pocket as much as $70 for every share they have pledged, and van Derbilt will have unchallenged control of the New York & Harlem by next year. He uses some of his profits to buy stock in the nearly bankrupt Hudson River Railroad that runs parallel to the Harlem line before branching off to follow the river up to East Albany (see 1864).
Civil engineer and bridge builder Charles Ellet, Jr. dies as his boat touches shore at Cairo, Illinois, June 21 at age 52, having taken a Confederate bullet in the knee. He has been scathing in his criticism of General McClellan, has remodeled nine river boats into rams on the Ohio, and has sunk four Confederate gunboats before Memphis, forcing the surrender of that city; his body is removed to Philadelphia for burial from Independence Hall.
The Illinois Central facilitates Union troop movements with its north-south line (see 1850). The company will sell off 800,000 acres of its land to settlers.
The Pacific Railway Act approved by Congress July 1 authorizes the Union Pacific Railroad Company to build a line from Nebraska Territory to California. Promoters who include Massachusetts-born New York stock speculator Thomas C. (Clark) Durant, 42, envision a line that will be built westward along the 41st parallel and connect with the Central Pacific chartered last year to create a transcontinental railroad. The Union Pacific's builders receive congressional authority to take the timber, stone, and any other needed material from public lands along the right of way they have been granted. Congress agrees to loan the railroad builders money (at high rates of interest), the railroads will issue bonds to fund the loans, and the bonds will all be repaid within 30 years; Congress specifies that all the steel for the rails must come from U.S. steel mills. Investors in the Union Pacific include Massachusetts shovel makers Oakes Ames, now 58, and his brother Oliver, now 54, of Oliver Ames & Sons (see 1803); Oakes wins election in November to the House of Representatives, having invested also in the Central Pacific, but North Carolina-born civil engineer Jesse L. (Lynch) Williams, 55, reports to the secretary of the interior November 14 that the real cost of building and equipping the railroad is far lower than the government subsidy (see 1863; commerce [Crédit Mobilier], 1864).
Congress promises up to 100 million acres of federal lands to the Union Pacific, the Central Pacific, and other railroads that will connect the Mississippi with the Gulf and Pacific coasts (see 1863). The freighting firm Russell, Majors, and Waddell has gone bankrupt financing the Pony Express, which Western Union put out of business last year with its telegraph. Missouri entrepreneur Ben Holladay, 42, buys the firm at public auction in March and thus acquires the Central Overland, California, and Pikes Peak Express with its government contract for hauling overland mail between Missouri and the Pacific Coast, a contract that will soon be worth more than $1 million per year in federal subsidies as Holladay puts the stagecoach runs on schedule, builds new way stations, improves equipment, upgrades personnel and passenger accommodations, and extends his runs into the mining districts of Colorado, Idaho, and Montana Territory. The "Napoleon of the Plains" will make a fortune in the next 4 years before he sells out in anticipation of the transcontinental railroad (see 1863).
Inventor Etienne Lenoir builds the first motor vehicle with an internal-combustion engine (see energy, 1861). He has adapted his engine to run on liquid fuel and uses his vehicle to make a journey of 10 kilometers (six miles), but it takes him between 2 and 3 hours (see energy [Daimler], 1882).
French engineer Alphonse (-Eugène) Beau de Rochas, 46, receives a patent on a four-stroke internal-combustion engine. He has seen the importance of compressing the fuel-air mixture before combustion.
Scottish shipowner Donald Currie, 37, establishes the Castle Line to operate sailing ships between Liverpool and Calcutta (Kolkata). Formerly employed by the Cunard Line, Currie will begin sending ships to South Africa in 1872 (see Union-Castle, 1900).
German steelmaker Alfred Krupp introduces the Bessemer steelmaking process into Continental Europe (see 1856; 1869).
New York industrialists Abram Stevens Hewitt, 40, and Edward Cooper, 38, of the iron-making firm Cooper, Hewitt fire up the first American open-hearth steel furnace (see Siemens, Martin, 1861).
Inventor Joseph R. Brown devises a universal milling machine (see gear cutter, 1855; micrometer caliper, 1867).
Pennsylvania-born inventor William Sellers, 37, patents an innovative spiral-geared planer. He secured U.S. rights 2 years ago to a steam injector devised by French inventor Henry Giffard and is gaining prominence for his own machine-tool inventions, which will include hydraulic machinery, rifling machines, riveters, steam hammers, and turntables (see 1868).
Revolver inventor Samuel Colt dies at Hartford, Connecticut, January 10 at age 47. Officers on both sides of the Civil War carry sidearms produced by Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company; inventor Isaac Babbitt of Babbitt metal fame dies in a Somerville, Massachusetts, mental hospital May 26 at age 62. The Union Navy employs his journal box and other inventions, for whose use he was awarded $20,000 by Congress.
Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Angstrom, 48, discovers that the sun is made of hydrogen and other elements. He has pioneered in astronomical spectroscopy.
German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, 28, at Jena publishes a monograph expressing agreement with Charles Darwin's 1859 work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (see 1866; Huxley, 1860; Lyell, 1863).
"Local Asphyxia and Symmetrical Gangrene of the Extremities" by French physician Maurice Raynaud, 30, attributes the symptoms to an arrest of the passage of blood to the affected parts as a result of a spasm of the arterioles. Raynaud's disease (or syndrome) will prove to be one of childhood or early adulthood, affecting females more often than males.
The Snellen eye chart devised by Dutch ophthalmologist Hermann Snellen, 28, at Utrecht will remain in use into the 21st century for measuring visual acuity. A patient taking the test covers one eye and reads aloud the letters C, D, F, L, O, P, T, Z (or numbers) and then repeats with the other eye, beginning with the large top line and continuing down as the letters diminish in size.
Physician and reformer Thomas Wakley dies at London May 16 at age 66, having published the Lancet since 1823 and seen Parliament pass a Food and Drugs Act 2 years ago, but British medicine remains badly in need of reform.
Ergotism breaks out in Finland, where rye bread is a major component of peasant diets.
Women on both sides of the U.S. War of Secession scrape lint and roll bandages for the wounded, mostly in haphazard fashion. Northern women hold charity fairs to benefit the Sanitary Commission.
Religious leader and social reformer Lyman Beecher dies at the Brooklyn, New York, home of his preacher son Henry Ward Beecher January 10 at age 87.
"The Education of Women, and How It Would Be Affected by University Examinations" (essay) by Irish-born London journalist Frances Cobbe (née Power), 40, points out that at the University of Padua "women learned and taught by the side of Galileo, Petrarch, and Columbus."
Welsh-born Singapore schoolteacher Anna (Harriette) Leonowens (née Crawford), 27, arrives in Bangkok at the invitation of King Mongkut to take up a position as governess to his children, bringing along her own 6-year-old son, Lewis, but leaving her 7-year-old daughter, Avis, in Singapore. Anna's parents sailed for India when she was 6, leaving her behind; her father died fighting for the queen, her mother remarried. Anna rejoined her mother at Bombay (Mumbai) when she was 15; Anna married Major Thomas Lewis Leonowens in 1851 and returned with him to England and then accompanied him to Singapore 6 years ago, and lost her fortune in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 as banks failed throughout India. Major Leonowens died after a tiger hunt in 1858, and Anna opened a school for officers' children in Singapore, attracting the attention of the Siamese consul, who had been instructed to secure an English governess. After lengthy negotiations, Anna received a letter in March from King Mongkut saying, "We are in good pleasure and satisfaction in hearing that you are willingness to undertake the education of our beloved royal children . . . We hope that in doing your education on us and on our children (whom English call inhabitants of benighted land) you will do your best endeavor for knowledge of English language, science, and literature, and not for conversion to Christianity." The king of Siam, she finds, is quixotic and unpredictable; she indignantly rejects suggestions that she join his harem and will remain at his court until 1867.
The Morrill Land-Grant Act passed by Congress July 2 provides funds to start U.S. land-grant colleges for the scientific education of farmers and mechanics. Iowa is the first state to accept the funds, and Iowa State University will have its beginnings in a model farm opened at Ames in 1864 (see 1890).
Women supplant men in school-teaching positions as more men are called up to serve in the Union and Confederate armies.
Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli builds an early version of a fax machine based on the apparatus patented by Alexander Bain in 1843. Caselli's "pantelegraph" includes a synchronizing mechanism and will be used by the French Post & Telegraph agency to transmit facsimile messages between Paris and Marseilles (see Korn, 1906).
Nonfiction: London Labour and the London Poor by sociologist (and former Punch magazine coeditor) Henry Mayhew, now 50, evokes the sights and sounds of Dickensian London (fourth volume, the first having appeared in 1851).
Philosopher-naturalist-pencil maker Henry David Thoreau dies of tuberculosis at his native Concord, Massachusetts, May 6 at age 44.
Fiction: Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, whose 10-volume work has been inspired in part by the work of the late detective Eugène François Vidocq and depicts the injustice of French society. Now 60, Hugo has been living on the island of Guernsey since his banishment by Napoleon III in 1848; Fathers and Sons (Otzi i Deti) by Ivan Turgenev introduces the term "nihilism," meaning a belief in nothing and a total rejection of established laws and institutions; Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope.
Poetry: Goblin Market and Other Poems by English poet Christina Georgina Rossetti, 31, gives the Pre-Raphaelites their first great literary success. Rossetti's brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 34, is a leader of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and its rebellion against the Royal Academy of Art but his wife of 2 years succumbs to an overdose of the laudanum she has been taking to dull the pain of her tuberculosis; Last Poems by the late Elizabeth Barrett Browning; "Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth" by the late Arthur Clough. His final stanza ends, "But westward, look, the land is bright."
Painting: Potato Planters by Jean-François Millet; La Musique aux Tuileries by Edouard Manet; Iphigeneia by Anselm Feuerbach; Cotopaxi by Frederick Edwin Church; Richmond Hill and Autumn Foliage in the White Mountains by Jasper Francis Cropsey.
Theater: East Lynne, or The Elopement 4/21 at Boston. An adaptation of last year's novel by Ellen Price Wood, whose story has been serialized in the Baltimore Sun; the melodrama will be revived perennially and be the most popular play in U.S. stage history; Mazeppa 6/16 at New York's New Bowery Theater, with Louisiana-born poet-actress Adah Isaacs Menken, 27, strapped half naked to a horse in a melodramatic adaptation of the 1819 Byron poem that creates a sensation.
Playwright and former prime minister Francisco Martínez de la Rosa dies at Madrid February 7 at age 74.
Opera: Beatrice und Benedict 8/9 at Baden-Baden, with music by Hector Berlioz, libretto from the Shakespeare play Much Ado about Nothing of 1599; La Forza del Destino 11/10 at St. Petersburg's Imperial Italian Theater, with music by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto from the 1835 Saavedra play Don Alvaro, a la fuerze del sino.
Composer Fromental Halévy dies at Nice March 17 at age 62, having written 39 operas.
Ballet: Parisian Market (Le Marché des Paris) (originally Doch' farasna) 1/30 (1/18 Old Style) at St. Petersburg's Bolshoi Theater, with Mariya Surovshchikova, choreography by her husband, Marius Petipa, music by Cesare Pugni.
First performances: Scenes from Goethe's Faust by the late Robert Schumann, in January at Cologne; Wallenstein's Camp (Valdstynov Tabor) by Czech pianist-composer Bedrich Smetana, 37, 1/5 at Prague, a symphonic poem based on the 1798 Schiller play.
Kochel (K.) listings for the works of the late Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart appear in Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichniss by Austrian musicographer-naturalist Ludwig Ritter von Kochel, 62, whose catalogue has an appendix listing lost, doubtful, or spurious Mozart compositions. German music scholar Alfred Eisenstein will revise the work for a 1937 reissue.
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" appears in the February Atlantic Monthly with lyrics by Julia Ward Howe, 43, who married educator Samuel Gridley Howe, now 60, in 1843 and assists him in publishing the Boston abolitionist journal the Commonwealth, which is dedicated also to prison reform, improved care for the feeble-minded, and abolition of imprisonment for debt. Howe's verse is set to the tune "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah," attributed to one William Steffe.
Waltzes: "Perpetuum Mobile" and "Motor Waltz" by Johann Strauss in Vienna.
Popular songs: "We Are Coming, Father Abraham 300,000 More" by Irish-born bandmaster Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, 33, of the 24th Massachusetts Regiment, lyrics by Delaware Quaker abolitionist James Sloan-Gibbons, 52; "We've a Million in the Field" by Stephen Foster; "The Bonnie Blue Flag" by English-born actor Harry B. McCarthy, 27, who sang his verses to the melody of "The Irish Jaunting Cart" last year at Jackson, Mississippi (they have been revised by Mrs. Annie Chambers-Ketchum and the song will be the Confederacy's national anthem).
The Baldwin piano has it beginnings in a Cincinnati music shop opened by local music teacher Dwight Hamilton Baldwin, 41, who gives up teaching, loads six reed organs onto a rented spring wagon, and begins selling the instruments door to door. Baldwin will soon have branch offices at Louisville and Indianapolis and will begin manufacturing pianos in 1890.
Retired minstrel-show pioneer Edwin P. Christy jumps from a New York City window in a fit of depression May 21 and dies at age 46.
"Taps" is composed early in July by Army of the Potomac chief of staff General Daniel Butterfield, 31, who writes the notes at Harrison's Landing in Virginia. His bugle call is to be played at lights out and at funerals.
The first Monte Carlo gambling casino opens in Monaco under the direction of the former manager of the casino at Bad Hamburg (see 1878). Monaco sells Menton and Roquebrune to France.
Siam's King Mongkut writes to President Lincoln offering a gift of some elephants. The president declines the offer, saying that his political jurisdiction "does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant."
The Morrill Land-Grant Act gives the states 11 million acres of federal lands to sell, nearly twice the acreage of Sen. Justin Morrill's home state of Vermont which becomes a vast sheep pasture as U.S. clothing makers shift from cotton to wool.
Nearly 470,000 settlers will apply for homesteads in the next 18 years under terms of the Homestead Act. Roughly one-third of these will actually receive land but while a farmer can make a living on 80 acres in the East, land in the West is generally so arid that even 160 acres will rarely permit economically viable agriculture (see 1909).
Congress creates an independent U.S. Department of Agriculture (see 1889).
The U.S. Produce Exchange is organized at New York (see Chicago Board of Trade, 1865).
The new Department of Agriculture gives horticulturist William Saunders an appointment at Washington (see Patrons of Husbandry, 1855). He will import 12 seedless-orange trees from Bahia, Brazil, in 1871 and all first growths of this variety in Florida and California will be propagated from these trees (see navel oranges, 1875).
The Northern Spy apple variety discovered by a farmer at West Bloomfield in western New York will become as popular as the Baldwin, Winesap, Rhode Island Greening, Seek-No-Further, Rome Beauty, and other New York favorites (year approximate).
British crops fail and hunger is widespread, especially in Lancashire, where thousands of mill hands have been thrown out of work by the cut-off of cotton from America. The Lancashire & Salford Provident Society issues tickets good for provisions as the Cotton Famine brings working-class people to the edge of starvation.
The British government asks physician Edward Smith to investigate the health of Lancashire cotton workers who have lost their jobs because of the Cotton Famine. He finds that while the poor consume more cheap foods such as bread and potatoes and less meat and milk, they still spend some money on small quantities of the expensive foods rather than buying more of the cheap, filling foods, which they eat in large enough quantities to avoid feeling actively hungry. Dr. Smith notes that many mothers are not aware that milk is as necessary for their children after weaning as before and that many infants are fed chiefly on bread, warm water, and sugar, to which a little milk is sometimes added. Families average one pint of milk per week instead of the two to three per day recommended for infants (see 1875).
Iowa widow Annie Wittenmyer (née Turner), 35, works with the Sanitary Commission to devise a system for feeding Union soldiers in field hospitals. Women volunteers have scrounged milk, eggs, and vegetables for soldiers too sick to eat the regular pork-and-beans ration, but Wittenmyer's system ends confusion by establishing a diet kitchen in each hospital, with "dietary nurses" who provide appropriate meals for every patient (see 1871).
Union forces destroy Confederate salt works on Chesapeake Bay (see 1863).
Confederate troops adopt peanuts as a cheap coffee substitute. Union troops, who call the peanut a "goober pea," carry it to the North, where it will become popular as a snack food.
Refrigerators manufactured by Daniel Siebe to the designs of Scottish-born Australian printer and inventor James Harrison go on exhibit at the International Exhibition. Harrison is not familiar with work by the late Jacob Perkins but has used ether to clean metal type and noticed a cooling effect. He has started a company at Bendingo, Victoria, and his are the first mechanical refrigerators actually to be sold (see 1857; Linde, 1873).
Gulden's Mustard is introduced by New York entrepreneur Charles Gulden, whose Elizabeth Street shop has easy access to dockside sources of mustard seed, spices, and vinegar.
English entrepreneur Henry Rowntree, 24, takes over the chocolate and cocoa manufacturing interests of William Tuke & Sons. He will buy a foundry at York in 1864, convert it to cocoa manufacture, and go into business with his brother Joseph, now 26, in 1869, launching an enterprise that will compete with Cadbury's (see 1887).
Bacardí Company is founded in February at Santiago de Cuba by Catalan immigrant Facundo Bacardí Massó, 46, who emigrated from Spain in 1830 at age 14 and became a Cuban wine merchant. He buys a bat-infested rum distillery and before his death in 1887 will divide the business among his children, giving his sons Facundo and Emilio and his daughter Amalia each 30 percent, his son José 10 percent.
Congress prohibits distillation of alcohol without a federal license, but "moonshiners" continue to make whiskey.
An Internal Revenue Act passed by Congress in July to finance the war effort taxes beer at $1 per barrel and imposes license fees on tavern owners. The new law taxes malt and distilled liquor at the rate of $2 per gallon, but Sen. John Sherman (R. Ohio) has tipped off Cleveland banker-distiller Stephen V. (Vanderburg) Harkness, 34, about the impending tax, Harkness has stockpiled wine and whiskey, and when the revenue act passes he sells his inventory of spirits at a $300,000 profit.
The U.S. Navy abolishes its rum ration September 1 through the influence of Rear Admiral Andrew Hull Foote, 56, an ardent temperance advocate who has made his ship the first in the navy to stop issuing rum rations. The ration will later be revived.
"Grape Culture, Wines, and Wine-Making with Notes upon Agriculture and Horticulture" by Agoston Haraszthy is published as a report to the California State Senate and Assembly (see 1861). Count Haraszthy has traveled through Europe with his son Arpad and gives descriptions of what he saw in his investigations.
California's Korbel winery is founded near Santa Rosa in the Russian River Valley by three Czech brothers who log mature redwoods off some hillsides and plant vineyards from which Korbel will produce Champagne-like sparkling wines.
The Martini cocktail is created according to one account by San Francisco bartender Jerry Thomas. When a traveler asks him for a cool and refreshing drink, Thomas mixes a dash of bitters, two dashes of maraschino, an ounce of Old Tom Gin, a wine-glass of vermouth, and two small lumps of ice, shakes the mixture thoroughly, strains it into a cocktail glass, and serves it with a quarter-slice of lemon. When the traveler announces that he is about to leave for the town of Martinez, 40 miles distant, Thomas (who will also be credited with inventing the Tom and Jerry cocktail) decides to name his creation the Martini.
Lorenzo Delmonico opens a third New York café-restaurant at Fifth Avenue and 14th Street, where he has acquired the Grinnell mansion to keep up with society's move uptown (see 1837; Baked Alaska, 1867).
The Homestead Act, war-inflated farm prices, and exemption from military service for foreigners spur U.S. immigration.
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