1870 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Ulysses S. Grant
• Vice President: Schuyler Colfax
• Chief Justice: Salmon P. Chase
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: James G. Blaine (R-Maine
• Congress: 41st

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

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.
• January 26 - Reconstruction: Virginia rejoins the Union.
• 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 – 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 - Military control of Mississippi ends and it is readmitted to the Union.
• 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.
• 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.
• *Texas is readmitted to the Union following Reconstruction.
• March 31 - Thomas Mundy Peterson is the first African-American to vote in an election.

  April–June

• April - 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.
• 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, 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.

  Undated

• Underwood Constitution: A controversial revised Constitution of Virginia goes into effect following a drafting convention dominated by the Radical Republicans led by John Underwood.

  Ongoing

• Reconstruction era
• Gilded Age

  Births

• January 9 - Joseph Strauss, bridge engineer
• January 11 - Alexander Stirling Calder, sculptor
• January 13 - Ross Granville Harrison, physiologist
• January 23 - William G. Morgan, inventor of volleyball
• February 20 - Jay Johnson Morrow, military engineer and politician, 3rd Governor of the Panama Canal Zone
• February 26 - John S. Cohen, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1932 to 1933
• March 5 - Frank Norris, journalist and naturalist novelist
• March 13
• * William Glackens, realist painter
• * Seale Harris, physician
• April 4
• * Curtis Hidden Page, New Hampshire educator and politician
• * George Albert Smith, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• April 17 - Ray Stannard Baker, journalist and modern historian
• May 19 - Albert Fish, serial killer
• May 24 - Benjamin N. Cardozo, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
• July 9 - Mathew Beard, supercentenarian
• July 25 - Maxfield Parrish, illustrator
• August 3 - Carrie Ingalls, younger sister of author Laura Ingalls Wilder
• August 20 - Edward Stanley Kellogg, 16th Governor of American Samoa
• August 25 - Mihran Kassabian, radiologist
• September 2 - James Bert Garner, chemical engineer and inventor
• September 21 - Elmer Darwin Ball, entomologist
• September 25 - James A. Hawken, schoolteacher
• September 30 - Thomas W. Lamont, banker
• October 7 - Uncle Dave Macon, banjo player and singer-songwriter
• November 2 - Joseph J. Sullivan, gambler
• December 12 - Walter Benona Sharp, oil pioneer
• December 23 - John Marin, modernist painter
• Robert Ames Bennet, Western and science fiction writer
• Hulburd Steel, New York City marine artist

  Deaths

• January 17 - Alexander Anderson, illustrator
• January 25 - David Bates, poet
• March 26 - Pierre Soulé, U.S. Senator from Louisiana in 1847 and from 1849 to 1853
• March 28 - George Henry Thomas, general
• April 15 - Emma Willard, women's rights activist and educationalist
• April 26 - Zerah Colburn, locomotive designer and technical journalist
• May 9 - Lawrence Brainerd, U.S. Senator from Vermont from 1854 to 1855
• June 11 - William Gilmore Simms, Southern poet, novelist and historian
• June 17 - Jérôme Napoléon Bonaparte, agriculturalist, nephew of Napoleon I
• July 13 - Daniel Sheldon Norton, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1865 to 1870
• June 27 - Cyrus Kingsbury, Congregationalist missionary to Cherokee and Choctaw tribes
• August 14 - David Farragut, flag officer of the United States Navy during the American Civil War
• September 12 - Fitz Hugh Ludlow, author and explorer
• October 3 - Joseph Mozier, sculptor best known for his work in Italy
• October 12
• * Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, minister and hymn writer
• * Robert E. Lee, General of the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War
• December 5 - David Gouverneur Burnet, politician
• December 16 - Byron Kilbourn, surveyor, railroad executive and politician
• December 28 - Wilson Lumpkin, U.S. Senator from Georgia and Governor of Georgia from 1831 to 1835