Also Within this year in history

The 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1868, granting citizenship and extending rights to formerly enslaved people. President Andrew Johnson narrowly survived conviction in his impeachment trial, and Americans elected Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant to succeed him. The Meiji Restoration began in Japan, marking an end to the nation’s feudal era and the rise of rapid modernization. Thomas Edison filed his first patent (for a vote recorder), and Louisa May Alcott published the first volume of “Little Women.”

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