1860 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President: James Buchanan
• Vice President: John C. Breckinridge
• Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: William Pennington
• Congress: 36th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 10 - The Pemberton Mill collapses in Lawrence, Massachusetts, killing 145 workers.
• February 22 - The New England Shoemakers Strike of 1860 begins in Lynn, Massachusetts
• February 26 - 1860 Wiyot Massacre: 80 to 250 Wiyot people were killed on Indian Island, near Eureka, California.
• February 27 - Abraham Lincoln gives his Cooper Union speech.

  April–June

• April 3 - The Pony Express begins its first run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.
• May 1 - A Chondrite type meteorite falls to earth in Muskingum County, Ohio near the town of New Concord.
• May 6 - The Paiute War begins as Northern Paiutes raided Williams Station in Utah Territory.
• May 9 - The U.S. Constitutional Union Party holds its convention and nominates John Bell for President of the United States.
• May 12 - Paiute War - First Battle of Pyramid Lake: American vigilantes seek out the Paiutes and are soundly defeated. Disorganized and outnumbered, nearly all of the vigilantes are killed or wounded.
• May 18 - Abraham Lincoln is selected as the U.S. presidential candidate for the Republican Party.
• June 2–4 - Paiute War – Second Battle of Pyramid Lake: A well-organized force of militia and U.S. Army soldiers seek out the Paiutes and defeat them in the final battle of the war.

  July–September

• August - The Paiute War ends with an informal ceasefire.
• August 25 - The Stone's Prairie Riot takes place in Payson and Plainville, Illinois between the Republican Wide Awakes and armed Democratic supporters of Stephen A. Douglas.
• September 7 – The Lady Elgin is accidentally rammed and sunk in Lake Michigan; more than 400 drown.

  October–December

• November 6 - U.S. presidential election: Abraham Lincoln beats John C. Breckinridge, Stephen A. Douglas, and John Bell and is elected as the 16th President of the United States, the first Republican to hold that office.
• December 18
• *Senator John J. Crittenden proposes the so-called Crittenden Compromise hoping to resolve the U.S. secession crisis.
• *Texas Rangers defeat a band of Comanches at the Battle of Pease River; Cynthia Ann Parker is recaptured and returned to her family after 24 years.
• December 20 - South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States.
• December 24 - South Carolina issues the "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union", analogous to the United States Declaration of Independence.

  Undated

• Augustana College is founded in Chicago, Illinois, United States by Swedish immigrants. The college moves to Paxton, Illinois, in 1862, and to its eventual home in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1875.
• Sedalia, Missouri is incorporated.
• The American South has c. 4 million slaves.
• 1860–1900 - 14 million immigrants come to the United States.

  Ongoing

• :Category:Secession crisis of 1860–61|Secession crisis

  Births

• January 1 - Dan Katchongva, tribal leader and activist
• January 25 - Charles Curtis, 31st Vice President of the United States from 1929 to 1933; U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1915 to 1929
• February 28 - Carl Georg Barth, mathematician and mechanical engineer
• February 29 - Herman Hollerith, pioneer of automated data processing
• March 2 - Susanna M. Salter, first woman mayor in the U.S.
• March 5 - Sam Thompson, baseball player
• March 8 - James A. Hemenway, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1905 to 1909
• March 11 - Thomas Hastings, architect
• March 19 - William Jennings Bryan, politician
• April 7 - Will Keith Kellogg, industrialist, founder of the Kellogg Company
• May 15 - Ellen Axson Wilson, First Lady of the United States from 1913 to 1914 as wife of Woodrow Wilson
• May 16 - Herman Webster Mudgett, serial killer
• June 22 - Tom O'Brien, baseball player
• July 3 - Charlotte Perkins Gilman, feminist novelist
• July 14 - Owen Wister, Western fiction writer and historian
• July 19 - Lizzie Borden, murder suspect
• August 13 - Annie Oakley, West show performer
• August 15
• * Henrietta Vinton Davis, elocutionist, dramatist and impersonator
• * Florence Harding, née Kling, First Lady of the United States from 1921 to 1923 as wife of Warren G. Harding
• September 5 - Andrew Volstead, politician
• September 6 - Jane Addams, social worker, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931
• September 7 - "Grandma Moses", born Anna Mary Robertson, folk painter
• September 13 - John J. Pershing, general
• October - William Edward White, African American baseball player
• October 12 - Chester I. Long, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1903 to 1909
• October 31 - Juliette Gordon Low, founder of Girl Scouts
• November 2 - Soapy Smith, con artist and gangster
• December 4 - Lillian Russell, singer and actress
• December 18 - Edward MacDowell, pianist and composer
• December 28 - Harry B. Smith, songwriter
• December 31
• * Joseph S. Cullinan, industrialist, founder of Texaco
• * John T. Thompson, U.S. Army officer, inventor of the Thompson submachine gun

  Deaths

• January 5 - John Neumann, first United States bishop to be canonized
• January 13 - William Mason, politician
• January 18 - John Nelson, lawyer
• February 25 - Chauncey Allen Goodrich, lexicographer
• April 6 - James Kirke Paulding, writer and United States Secretary of the Navy
• May 9 - Samuel Griswold Goodrich, children's author
• May 10 - Theodore Parker, preacher, Transcendentalist and abolitionist
• May 21 - Phineas Gage, improbable head injury survivor
• May 31 - Peter Vivian Daniel, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court from 1841 to 1860
• June 6 - Henry P. Haun, U.S. Senator from California from 1859 to 1860
• July 1 - Charles Goodyear, inventor
• September 12 - William Walker, filibuster, briefly President of Nicaragua, executed
• September 19 - Thomas D. Rice, actor and dancer
• September 29 - Chapin A. Harris, physician and dentist
• October 3 - Rembrandt Peale, portrait painter and museum keeper
• October 25 - James "Grizzly" Adams, mountain man and bear trainer