1870

Events from the year **1870 in the United States**.

Governors
* Governor of Alabama: William Hugh Smith (Republican) (until November 26), Robert B. Lindsay (Democratic) (starting November 26)
* Governor of Arkansas: Powell Clayton (Republican)
* Governor of California: Henry Huntly Haight (Democratic)
* Governor of Connecticut: Marshall Jewell (Republican) (until May 4), James E. English (Democratic) (starting May 4)
* Governor of Delaware: Gove Saulsbury (Democratic)
* Governor of Florida: Harrison Reed (Republican)
* Governor of Georgia: Rufus Bullock (Republican)
* Governor of Illinois: John M. Palmer (Republican)
* Governor of Indiana: Conrad Baker (Republican)
* Governor of Iowa: Samuel Merrill (Republican)
* Governor of Kansas: James M. Harvey (Republican)
* Governor of Kentucky: John W. Stevenson (Democratic)
* Governor of Louisiana: Henry C. Warmoth (Republican)
* Governor of Maine: Joshua Chamberlain (Republican)
* Governor of Maryland: Oden Bowie (Democratic)
* Governor of Massachusetts: William Claflin (Republican)
* Governor of Michigan: Henry P. Baldwin (Republican)
* Governor of Minnesota: William R. Marshall (Republican) (until January 9), Horace Austin (Republican) (starting January 9)
* Governor of Mississippi: Adelbert Ames (Military) (until March 10), James L. Alcorn (Republican) (starting March 10)
* Governor of Missouri: Joseph W. McClurg (Republican)
* Governor of Nebraska: David Butler (Republican)
* Governor of Nevada: Henry G. Blasdel (Republican)
* Governor of New Hampshire: Onslow Stearns (Republican)
* Governor of New Jersey: Theodore Fitz Randolph (Democratic)
* Governor of New York: John Thompson Hoffman (Democratic)
* Governor of North Carolina: William Woods Holden (Republican) (until December 15), Tod Robinson Caldwell (Republican) (starting December 15)
* Governor of Ohio: Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican)
* Governor of Oregon: George L. Woods (Republican) (until September 14), La Fayette Grover (Democratic) (starting September 14)
* Governor of Pennsylvania: John W. Geary (Republican)
* Governor of Rhode Island: Seth Padelford (Republican)
* Governor of South Carolina: Robert Kingston Scott (Republican)
* Governor of Tennessee: Dewitt Clinton Senter (Republican)
* Governor of Texas: vacant (until January 8), Edmund J. Davis (Republican) (starting January 8)
* Governor of Vermont:
	+ until February 7: Peter T. Washburn (Republican)
	+ February 7-October 6: George W. Hendee (Republican)
	+ starting October 6: John Wolcott Stewart (Republican)
* Governor of Virginia: Gilbert Carlton Walker (Democratic)
* Governor of West Virginia: William E. Stevenson (Republican)
* Governor of Wisconsin: Lucius Fairchild (Republican)

Lieutenant Governors
* Lieutenant Governor of Alabama:
	+ until August 21: Andrew J. Applegate (Republican)
	+ August 21-November 26: vacant
	+ starting November 26: Edward H. Moren (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas: James M. Johnson (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of California: William Holden (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: Francis Wayland III (Republican) (until May 4), Julius Hotchkiss (Democratic) (starting May 4)
* Lieutenant Governor of Florida:
	+ until month and day unknown: William Henry Gleason (Republican)
	+ month and day unknown: Edmund C. Weeks (Republican)
	+ starting month and day unknown: vacant
* Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: John Dougherty (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: William Cumback (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Iowa: John Scott (Republican) (until month and day unknown), Madison Miner Walden (Republican) (starting month and day unknown)
* Lieutenant Governor of Kansas: Charles Vernon Eskridge (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: Preston H. Leslie (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana: Oscar J. Dunn (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: Joseph Tucker (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Michigan: Morgan Bates (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota: Thomas H. Armstrong (Republican) (until January 7), William H. Yale (Republican) (starting January 7)
* Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi: Ridgley C. Powers (Republican) (starting month and day unknown)
* Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: Edwin Obed Stanard (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Nevada: James S. Slingerland (political party unknown)
* Lieutenant Governor of New York: Allen C. Beach (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina: Tod R. Caldwell (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Ohio: John C. Lee (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Pardon Stevens (political party unknown)
* Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: Lemuel Boozer (Republican) (until December 3), Alonzo J. Ransier (Republican) (starting December 3)
* Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee: Dorsey B. Thomas (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Texas: vacant
* Lieutenant Governor of Vermont:
	+ until February 7: George W. Hendee (Republican)
	+ February 7-October 6: vacant
	+ starting October 6: George N. Dale (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Virginia: John F. Lewis (Republican) (until January 1), John Lawrence Marye Jr. (Conservative) (starting January 1)
* Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin: Wyman Spooner (Republican) (until January 3), Thaddeus C. Pound (Republican) (starting January 3)

## 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)