This Year in History:
1868
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
In an event that heralds the birth of modern Japan, patriotic samurai from Japan’s outlying domains join with anti-shogunate nobles in restoring the emperor to power after 700 years. The impetus for the coup was a fear by many Japanese that the nation’s feudal leaders were ill equipped to resist the threat of foreign domination. […]
On February 23, 1868, William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois is born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Du Bois would become a brilliant scholar, an influential proponent of civil rights and a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Du Bois’ childhood was happy, but during adolescence he became aware of a […]
The U.S. House of Representatives votes 11 articles of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson, nine of which cite Johnson’s removal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The House vote made President Johnson the first president to be impeached in U.S. history. At the outbreak of the […]
For the first time in U.S. history, the impeachment trial of an American president gets underway in the U.S. Senate. President Andrew Johnson, reviled by the Republican-dominated Congress for his views on Reconstruction, stood accused of having violated the controversial Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress over his veto in 1867. At the outbreak […]
On May 5, 1868, Martha Jones of Amelia County, Virginia is believed to be the first Black woman to receive a U.S. patent for inventing a machine that husks and shells corn all in one procedure. The Patent No. 77,494 granted to Jones three years after the Civil War for her “Improvement to the Corn […]
On May 16, 1868, the U.S. Senate votes against impeaching President Andrew Johnson for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” He would not be fully acquitted of all charges until 10 days later, on May 26, 1868. In February 1868, the House of Representatives charged Johnson with 11 articles of impeachment for vague “high crimes and misdemeanors.” […]
At the end of a historic two-month trial, the U.S. Senate narrowly fails to convict President Andrew Johnson of the impeachment charges levied against him by the House of Representatives three months earlier. The senators voted 35 guilty and 19 not guilty on the second article of impeachment, a charge related to his violation of […]
By proclamation of General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, the first major Memorial Day observance is held to honor those who died “in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” Known to some as “Decoration Day,” mourners honored the Civil War dead by decorating their graves with flowers. On […]
Attempting to convince local Native Americans to make peace with the United States, the Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet meets with the Sioux leader Sitting Bull in present-day Montana. A native of Belgium, De Smet came to the United States in 1821 at the age of 20. He became a novice of the Jesuit order in […]
July 28, 1868: Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including formerly enslaved people—is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution. Secretary of State William Seward issues a proclamation certifying the amendment. Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts […]
Early in the morning on September 17, 1868, a large band of Cheyenne and Sioux stage a surprise attack on Major George A. Forsyth and a volunteer force of 50 frontiersmen in Colorado. Retreating to a small sandbar in the Arikaree River that thereafter became known as Beecher’s Island, Forsyth and his men succeeded in […]
The first volume of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved children’s book Little Women is published on September 30, 1868. The novel will become Alcott’s first bestseller and a beloved children’s classic. Like the fictional Jo March, Alcott was the second of four daughters. She was born in Pennsylvania but spent most of her life in Concord, […]
Without bothering to identify the village or do any reconnaissance, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads an early morning attack on a band of peaceful Cheyenne living with Chief Black Kettle. After the government convicted Custer of desertion and mistreatment of soldiers earlier that year in a military court, it suspended him from rank and […]
An angry group of vigilantes yank the brothers Frank, William, and Simeon Reno from their Indiana jail cell and hang them, after a guard they had shot during an earlier train robbery died of his wounds. Although the Reno gang—which included another brother, John, as well—had a short reign of terror, they are credited with […]
