1870

Events from the year 1870 in the United States.
==Incumbents==
===Federal Government===
* President: Ulysses S. Grant (R-IL)
* Vice President: Schuyler Colfax (R-IN)
* Chief Justice: Salmon P. Chase (OH)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: James G. Blaine (R-ME)
* Congress: 41st
==Events==
===January - March===
* January 1 – Plans for the Brooklyn Bridge are completed.
* January 3 – Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins.
* January 10 – John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil.
* January 15 – A political cartoon for the first time symbolizes the United States Democratic Party with a donkey ("A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly).
* January 26 – Reconstruction: Virginia readmitted to the U.S.
* January 27 – The first college sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, is established at DePauw University.
* February 2 – The Cardiff Giant is proven a hoax.
* February 3 – The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing African-American males the right to vote, is ratified.
* February 9 – The Weather Bureau, later renamed the National Weather Service, is established.
* February 10
** Anaheim, California is incorporated.
** The YWCA is founded in New York City.
* February 12 – Women gain the right to vote in Utah Territory. On February 14, in a Salt Lake City municipal election, Seraph Young Ford becomes the first woman in the U.S. to cast her vote.
* February 23 – Reconstruction: Mississippi readmitted to the U.S.
* February 25 – Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress.
* February 26
** In New York City, the first pneumatic subway is opened.
** Wyatt Outlaw, the first African American town commissioner in Graham, North Carolina, is lynched by mob of Ku Klux Klan on Alamance County courthouse square.
* March 19 – The Ohio Legislature passes the Cannon Act, thereby establishing the Ohio Agriculture and Mechanical College, later Ohio State University.
* March 24 – Syracuse University is established and officially opens.
* March 30
** The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving blacks the right to vote, is proclaimed by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish.
** Reconstruction: Texas readmitted to the U.S.
* March 31 – Thomas Mundy Peterson is the first African-American to vote in an election.
===April - June===
* April 1 – The Chicago Base Ball Club, later to be known as the Chicago White Stockings, and ultimately the Chicago Cubs, play their first game against the St. Louis Unions of the National Association of Base Ball Players, an amateur league.
* May 2 – William J. Seymour, one of the two Primary Founders of American Pentecostalism was born.
* June 22 – The U.S. Congress creates the United States Department of Justice.
* June 26 – Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States.
* June 28 – Congress creates federal holidays (New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day), initially applicable only to federal employees.
===July - September===
* July 1 – United States Department of Justice is established.
* July 15 – Reconstruction: Georgia becomes the last former Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union, and the C.S.A. is dissolved.
* August 15 – Transcontinental Railroad completed in Colorado.
* August 17 – First documented climb to summit of Mount Rainier by Medal of Honor winner General Hazard Stevens with P. B. Van Trump.
* September 6 – Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming, becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a general election vote legally since 1807.
* September 18 – Old Faithful Geyser is observed and named by Henry D. Washburn during the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition to Yellowstone.
===October - December===
* October 25 – Eutaw riot: A white mob attacks a group of black citizens, killing as many as four of them, in Eutaw, Alabama.
* November 1 – The newly created Weather Bureau makes its first official meteorological forecast: "High winds at Chicago and Milwaukee... and along the Lakes".
* December 12 – Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the second black U.S. congressman (following Hiram Rhodes Revels in February).
==Memoriam==
* January 17 – Alexander Anderson, illustrator (aged 94; Jersey City, NJ, USA)
* January 25 – David Bates, poet (aged 60; Philadelphia, PA, USA)
* March 26 – Pierre Soulé, U.S. Senator from Louisiana in 1847 and from 1849 to 1853 (aged 68; New Orleans, LA, USA)
* March 28 – George Henry Thomas, general (aged 53; San Francisco, CA, USA)
* April 15 – Emma Willard, women's rights activist and educationalist (aged 83; Troy, NY, USA)
* April 26 – Zerah Colburn, locomotive designer and technical journalist (suicide) (aged 38; Belmont, MA, USA)
* May 9 – Lawrence Brainerd, U.S. Senator from Vermont from 1854 to 1855 (aged 76; St. Albans, VT, USA)
* June 9 – Charles Dickens, English writer and social critic (aged 58; Higham, England, UK)
* June 11 – William Gilmore Simms, Southern poet, novelist and historian (aged 64; Charleston, SC, USA)
* June 17 – Jérôme Napoléon Bonaparte, agriculturalist, nephew of Napoleon I (aged 64; Baltimore, MD, USA)
* June 27 – Cyrus Kingsbury, Congregationalist missionary to Cherokee and Choctaw tribes (aged 83; Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory (Now OK), USA)
* July 13 – Daniel Sheldon Norton, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1865 to 1870 (aged 41; Washington, DC, USA)
* August 14 – David Farragut, flag officer of the United States Navy during the American Civil War (aged 69; Kittery, ME, USA)
* September 12 – Fitz Hugh Ludlow, author and explorer (aged 34; Geneva, Switzerland)
* October 3 – Joseph Mozier, sculptor best known for his work in Italy (aged 58; Faid, Switzerland)
* October 12
** Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, minister and hymn writer (aged 61; Cambridge, MA, USA)
** Robert E. Lee, General of the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War (aged 63; Lexington, VA, USA)
* December 5 – David G. Burnet, politician (aged 82; Galveston, TX, USA)
* December 16 – Byron Kilbourn, surveyor, railroad executive and politician (aged 69; Jacksonville, FL, USA)
* December 28 – Wilson Lumpkin, U.S. Senator from Georgia and Governor of Georgia from 1831 to 1835 (aged 87; Athens, GA, USA)
==External links==
* 1870 in the United States
Category:United States History: Volume 10