1878 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Rutherford B. Hayes
• Vice President: William A. Wheeler
• Chief Justice: Morrison Waite
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Samuel J. Randall
• Congress: 45th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

• January 28 - The Yale News becomes the first daily college newspaper in the United States.
• February 18 - The Lincoln County War begins in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
• February 19 - The phonograph is patented by Thomas Edison.
• February 23 - Bland–Allison Act, leading to first minting of the Morgan dollar.
• February 28 - Mississippi State University is created by the Mississippi Legislature.
• March 26 - University of California, Hastings College of the Law is founded.
• April 4 - The Gunfight at Blazer's Mill occurs in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
• May 2 - The Washburn "A" Mill in Minneapolis, Minnesota explodes, killing 18.
• June 18 - Posse Comitatus Act signed into law to limit the powers of the federal government of the United States in using the United States Army to enforce domestic policy within the U.S.
• July 12 - begins in New Orleans. It will eventually kill 4,500 people.
• July 26 - In California, the poet and American West outlaw calling himself "Black Bart" makes his last clean getaway when he steals a safe box from a Wells Fargo stagecoach. The empty box is found later with a taunting poem inside.
• August 9 - The Wallingford Tornado of 1878, the deadliest tornado in Connecticut history, destroys the town of Wallingford, killing 34 people and injuring 70 or more.
• September 30 - The ship Priscilla arrives in Hawaii from Funchal, Madeira, marking the beginning of the Portuguese immigration to the Hawaiian Islands.
• October 1 - Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University opens as Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.
• November 18 - Soprano Marie Selika Williams becomes the first African American artist to perform at the White House.

  Undated

• Yellow fever in Mississippi Valley kills over 13,000.
• U.S. arbitration rejects Argentine claims to Paraguay's part of the Chaco region.
• The Johns Hopkins University Press, America's oldest university press, is established
• Albert Augustus Pope's Pope Manufacturing Company begins producing the Columbia high-wheel bicycle outside Boston, signalling the beginning of a bicycle craze in the U.S.
• The Remington No. 2 typewriter, the first with a shift key enabling production of lower as well as upper case characters, is introduced.
• Champlain College, in Burlington, VT is founded.

  Ongoing

• Gilded Age
• Depression of 1873–79

  Sport

• October 2 – The Buffalo Bisons of the International League defeat the National League champion Boston Red Caps behind the pitching of Pud Galvin to become Baseball's First Undisputed Champion

  Births

• January 6 - Carl Sandburg, poet and historian
• January 9 - John B. Watson, psychologist
• January 29 - Walter F. George, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1922 to 1957
• February 1 - Hattie Caraway, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1931 to 1945
• February 18 - Kate Gordon, psychologist
• February 27 - Alvan T. Fuller, Governor of Massachusetts from 1925 to 1929
• February 28 - Hugh A. Butler, U.S. Senator from Nebraska from 1941 to 1954
• March 31 - Jack Johnson, boxer
• April 28 - Lionel Barrymore, actor
• May 5 - Edward Gay II, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1918 to 1921
• May 21 - Glenn H. Curtiss, aviation pioneer
• May 25 - Bill Robinson, African American tap dancer
• June 3 - Barney Oldfield, automobile racer and pioneer
• June 4 - Thomas D. Schall, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1925 to 1935
• June 12 - James Oliver Curwood, novelist and conservationist
• July 3 - George M. Cohan, singer, dancer, composer, actor and writer
• July 12 - Claude C. Bloch, admiral
• July 29
• * Don Marquis, author
• * James M. Slattery, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1939 to 1940
• August 2 - Nathan L. Bachman, U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1933 to 1937
• August 4 - Ernest Lundeen, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1937 to 1940
• August 28 - George Whipple, pathologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1934
• August 31 - Frank Jarvis, track athlete
• September 14 - Scott Loftin, U.S. Senator from Florida in 1936
• September 20 - Upton Sinclair, novelist
• October 2 - Richard Spikes, African American inventor
• October 16 - Maxie Long, track athlete
• October 17 - Louise Dresser, actress
• October 18 - Blind Uncle Gaspard, Cajun vocalist and guitarist
• October 19 - Alphonse Picou, jazz clarinettist
• November 17 - Grace Abbott, social worker and activist
• November 23 - Ernest King, Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations during World War II
• December 1 - Nathaniel Baldwin, inventor and Mormon fundamentalist
• C. Louise Boehringer, educationalist

  Deaths

• February 11 - Charles Magill Conrad, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1842 to 1843
• March 6 - Asa Biggs, U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1855 to 1858
• March 29 - Mark Hopkins, Jr., entrepreneur
• May 25 - John Scott Harrison, member of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio, son of William Henry Harrison, father of Benjamin Harrison
• June 16 - Crawford Long, American surgeon and pharmacist
• June 27 - Sidney Breese, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1843 to 1849
• October 5 - George Boyer Vashon, African-American attorney, educationalist, abolitionist, essayist and poet
• November 16 - Sarah Harris Fayerweather, African-American whose 1832 admission to a Connecticut school resulted in the first integrated schoolhouse