was elected President of the USA.
24/8/1868, George J Adler, US lexicographer (born 1821) died.
29/7/1858, US diplomat Townsend Harris persuaded Japan to grant further trade privileges to the USA.
25/7/1868. President Johnson signed an Act creating the territory of Wyoming.
9/7/1868, The US passed the Fourteenth Amendment, during the period of ‘reconstruction’ following the conclusion of the Civil War. It guaranteed equality before the law for Blacks and Whites alike, specifically including ex-slaves here, and prohibited any State from ‘abridging their privileges’ or denying them ‘equal protection of the laws’. However, due to the fact that corporations are also ‘persons’ before the law, the 14th Amendment began to be used for purposes it was not intended for. The 14th Amendment was used to shield companies from government regulation, and even, before the 1950s, to justify racial discrimination because it contained the words ‘separate but equal’. Later, in the 1980s, it was still being used to block so-called ‘positive discrimination’ in favour of racial minorities.
23/5/1868, Kit Carson, US soldier and fur trapper who did much to open up the West to White settlers, died (born 24/12/1809).
25/2/1868, Andrew Johnson, 17th US President 1865-69, was impeached.
28/8/1867, The Midway Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, were claimed for the US by Captain Reynolds.
1/5/1867. The Confederate leader Jefferson Davies walked out of a Virginia courtroom, free after 2 years in prison. But he still faced treason charges, as well as involvement in the assassination of President Lincoln.
1/3/1867, Nebraska became the 37th State of the Union.
12/2/1866. Invoking the Monroe Doctrine, the USA called for the withdrawal of French troops from Mexico. Maximilian, having failed to secure recognition of his regime from the US, now sought help from Napoleon III and the Pope, but his cause was hopeless.
24/12/1865, The Klu Klux Klan was founded in the US by six men in Pulaski, Tennessee.
18/12/1865. Slavery was officially abolished in the USA with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, signed on 1/2/1865. See 16/6/1858. The slave trade to the United States had been prohibited in 1807 but slavery continued in the southern States as the cotton trade grew. The publication of Harriet Beecher’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 convinced many of the evils of slavery but Northerners were still reluctant to back a full abolitionist policy. But they did not wish to see slavery spread from the South either and this led to the American Civil War of 1861-65 after the election of Abraham Lincoln as president. Slaves were freed in areas joining the Northern side and in all areas after the 13th Amendment was passed.
8/7/1865. Four of the conspirators involved in the murder of President Lincoln (see 15/4/1865) were hanged. Another three were sentenced to life imprisonment.
26/5/1865. The Confederate Army under General Kirby Smith surrendered in Texas, fully ending the American Civil War.
10/5/1865. Jefferson Davies, Confederate President of the USA, was taken prisoner by Union forces in the American Civil War.
27/4/1865, In the US, the paddle steamer Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River, killing 1,600 people on board.
26/4/1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, died of a bullet wound incurred whilst resisting arrest in a burning barn on a farm near Bowling Green, Virginia.
9/4/1865. The American Civil War ended when General Robert E Lee surrendered his Confederate army to General Ulysses S Grant at the Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The 27,000-strong Confederate army was effectively beaten but was seeking to gain access to a railway which could have taken them south to join with General Johnson’s forces in North Carolina. But Union forces blocked this move. The Confederate soldiers were allowed to keep their horses and small arms, on condition that they did not take up arms against the North again. This surrender effectively ended a conflict that had set brother against brother, and taken over half a million lives. 5/4/1865. Union troops