1859

Events from the year 1859 in the United States.
==Incumbents==
===Federal Government===
* President: James Buchanan (D-PA)
* Vice President: John C. Breckinridge (D-KY)
* Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney (MD)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: James Lawrence Orr (D-SC)
* Congress: 35th (until March 4), 36th (starting March 4)
==Events==
===January - March===
* January 1 – Minting of Indian Head cent begins.
* January 10 – Lucy Cobb Institute opens in Athens, Georgia.
* January 28 – The city of Olympia is incorporated in the Territory of Washington.
* February 14 – Oregon admitted becomes the 33rd U.S. state.
* February 27 – U.S. Congressman Daniel Sickles shoots dead Philip Barton Key for having an affair with his wife.
* March 2 – The Great Slave Auction begins, the largest single sale of slaves in U.S. history, with more than 400 people sold, takes place near Savannah, Georgia.
* March 3 – The Great Slave Auction ends.
* March 21 – The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania issues the charter establishing the Zoological Society of Philadelphia, the first organization of its kind in the United States and founder of the nation's first zoo.
===April - June===
* April 4 – The song Dixie is written, probably by Dan Emmett.
* June 8 – The discovery of the Comstock Lode in the western Utah Territory (present-day Nevada) sets off a rush of prospectors to the area.
* June 15 – The so-called Pig War border dispute between the Americans and the British on the San Juan Islands begins with the shooting of the namesake pig; the episode is resolved in October without human bloodshed.
===July - September===
* July 1 – The first intercollegiate baseball game is played, between Amherst and Williams Colleges.
* July 2 – Pike's Peak Gold Rush begins in the Colorado Territory.
* August 27 – Edwin Drake drills the first oil well in the United States, near Titusville, Pennsylvania, starting the Pennsylvanian oil rush.
* September 1 – Joshua Abraham Norton proclaims himself "Emperor of the United States" in San Francisco.
===October - December===
* October 16 – Militant abolitionist leader John Brown raids the Harpers Ferry Armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in an unsuccessful bid to spark a general slave rebellion.
* October 18 – Troops under Colonel Robert E. Lee overpower John Brown at the Federal arsenal.
* November 1 – The current Cape Lookout, North Carolina, lighthouse is lighted for the first time (its first-order Fresnel lens can be seen for 19 miles).
* December 2 – John Brown is hanged at Charles Town, West Virginia for his October 16 raid on Harpers Ferry.
==Memoriam==
* January 28 – William H. Prescott, Hispanist historian (aged 62; Boston, MA, USA)
* January 29 – William Cranch Bond, astronomer (aged 69; Cambridge, MA, USA)
* February 25 – Edward A. Hannegan, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1843 to 1849 (aged 51; St. Louis, MO, USA)
* February 27 – Philip Barton Key II, United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, murdered (aged 40; Washington, DC, USA)
* March 19 – Oliver H. Smith, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1837 to 1843 (aged 64; Charlestown, IN, USA)
* March 30 – James Matthews Legaré, poet and inventor (aged 35; Aiken, SC, USA)
* April 14 – George M. Bibb, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1811 to 1814 (aged 82; Washington, DC, USA)
* May 6 – Littleton Waller Tazewell, lawyer, plantation owner and politician (aged 85; Norfolk, VA, USA)
* June 8 – Walter Hunt, inventor (aged 62; New York City, NY, USA)
* July 30 – Richard Rush, 8th United States Attorney General and 8th United States Secretary of the Treasury (aged 78; Philadelphia, PA, USA)
* August 2 – Horace Mann, educator and abolitionist (aged 63; Yellow Springs, OH, USA)
* August 15 – Nathaniel Claiborne, politician (aged 81; Rocky Mount, VA, USA)
* September 2 – Delia Bacon, playwright and writer on the Shakespeare authorship question (aged 48; Hartford, CT, USA)
* September 16 – David C. Broderick, U.S. Senator from California from 1857 to 1859 (aged 39; San Francisco, CA, USA)
* November 28 – Washington Irving, author (aged 76; Tarrytown, NY, USA)
* December 2 – John Brown, abolitionist, hanged (aged 59; Charles Town, VA (Now WV), USA)
==External links==
* 1859 in the United States
Category:United States History: Volume 8