Also Within This Year in History:
1877
After the highly contested 1876 U.S. presidential election, the Compromise of 1877 put Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House. In exchange, post-Civil War federal oversight of Southern affairs known as Reconstruction ended—and, with it, any effort toward protecting Black citizens’ civil and political rights. The first general strike in U.S. history—by more than 100,000 workers—halted the nation’s railroads. Thomas Edison demonstrated his latest invention, the phonograph, while in Moscow, Tchaikovsky’s opera “Swan Lake” premiered in Moscow.
On January 8, 1877, Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse and his men—outnumbered, low on ammunition and forced to use outdated weapons to defend themselves—fight their final losing battle against the U.S.…
On March 3, 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes is sworn in as the 19th president of the United States in the Red Room of the White House. Two days later, Hayes…
Henry Ossian Flipper, born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia, in 1856, becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York…
On July 9, 1877, the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club begins its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon, then an outer‑suburb of London. Twenty‑two amateurs showed up to…
Having refused government demands that they move to a reservation, a small band of Nez Perce tribesmen clash with the U.S. Army near the Big Hole River in Montana. The…
Though only a teenager at the time, Billy the Kid wounds an Arizona blacksmith who dies the next day. He was the famous outlaw’s first victim. Just how many men…
Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse is fatally bayoneted by a U.S. soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. A year earlier, Crazy Horse was among the Sioux…
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce peoples surrenders to U.S. General Nelson A. Miles in the Bear Paw mountains of Montana, declaring, “Hear me, my chiefs: My heart is sick…
On October 10, 1877, the U.S. Army holds a West Point funeral with full military honors for Lieutenant‑Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Killed the previous year in Montana by Sioux and…
On November 17, 1877, the publication Scientific American enthuses about Thomas Edison‘s new invention: the phonograph, a way to record and play back sound. Calling it a “wonderful invention,” the…
