1859 in the United States
Events from the year 1859 in the United States.Incumbents
Federal Government
Lieutenant Governors
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 is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state.
- February 27 - U.S. Congressman Daniel Sickles shoots Philip Barton Key for having an affair with his wife.
- 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
- June 8 - The discovery of the Comstock Lode in the western Utah Territory 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 by the death of the namesake pig.
July–September
- July – Pike's Peak Gold Rush begins in the Colorado Territory.
- July 1 - The first intercollegiate baseball game is played, between Amherst and Williams Colleges.
- August 27 - Edwin Drake drills the first oil well in the United States, near Titusville, Pennsylvania, starting the Pennsylvanian oil rush.
- September - Joshua Abraham Norton proclaims himself "Emperor of the United States" in San Francisco.
- September - Solar storm of 1859, aka the Carrington Event, a powerful geomagnetic solar storm
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.
- December 2 - John Brown is hanged for his October 16 raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
Undated
- The Rancho Rincon de Los Esteros Land Grant is confirmed to Rafael Alvisa,.
- The University of Michigan Law School is founded.
- Approximate date - The song Dixie is written, probably by Dan Emmett.
Ongoing
- Bleeding Kansas
Births
- January 6 - Duncan U. Fletcher, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1909 to 1936
- January 9 - Carrie Chapman Catt, women's suffrage leader
- January 12 - Henry Heitfeld, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1897 to 1903
- February 22 - Samuel D. Nicholson, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1921 to 1923
- February 25 - John Burke, 24th Treasurer of the United States
- March 12 - Abraham H. Cannon, Mormon apostle
- April 12 - Junius George Groves, slave-born potato farmer
- May 12 - William Alden Smith, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1907 to 1919
- July 31 - Theobald Smith, bacteriologist
- August 15 - Charles Comiskey, baseball baseman, manager and owner
- September 16 - Frank R. Gooding, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1921 to 1928
- September 17 - Billy The Kid, Old West gunfighter
- October 20 - John Dewey, educator born in Vermont
- November 1 - Charles Brantley Aycock, 50th Governor of North Carolina
Deaths
- January 28 - William H. Prescott, Hispanist historian
- January 29 - William Cranch Bond, astronomer
- February 25 - Edward A. Hannegan, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1843 to 1849
- February 27 - Philip Barton Key II, United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, murdered
- March 19 - Oliver H. Smith, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1837 to 1843
- March 30 - James Matthews Legaré, poet and inventor
- April 14 - George M. Bibb, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1811 to 1814
- June 8 - Walter Hunt, inventor
- July 30 - Richard Rush, 8th United States Attorney General and 8th United States Secretary of the Treasury
- August 2 - Horace Mann, educator and abolitionist
- August 15 - Nathaniel Claiborne, politician
- September 2 - Delia Bacon, playwright and writer on the Shakespeare authorship question
- September 16 - David C. Broderick, U.S. Senator from California from 1857 to 1859
- November 28 - Washington Irving, author
- December 2 - John Brown, abolitionist, hanged
