Timeline from 1870 to 1880

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Updated on April 24, 2021

1870

1870: Thomas Nast, the star political cartoonist of Harper's Weekly, began a campaign of lampoon the corrupt "ring" that secretly ran New York City. Nast's biting depictions of the Tweed Ring helped bring down Boss Tweed.
February 3, 1870: The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave the right to vote to Black men, became law when the required number of states ratified it.
June 9, 1870: Charles Dickens, British novelist, died at the age of 58.
July 15, 1870: Georgia became the last of the Confederate states to return to the Union.
July 19, 1870: The Franco-Prussian War began. The war was provoked by Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian leader, as part of his plan to unite Germany.
October 12, 1870: Robert E. Lee, Confederate general in the Civil War, died at the age of 63 at Lexington, Virginia.

1871

January 1871: Italian troops led by Giuseppe Garibaldi briefly fought against Prussians in France during the Franco-Prussian War.
March 26, 1871: The Paris Commune, a temporary government formed after an uprising during the Franco-Prussian War, was proclaimed in Paris.
May 28, 1871: The Paris Commune was suppressed as the French Army took over the city during what becomes known as "The Bloody Week."
Summer 1871: Photographer William Henry Jackson takes a number of photographs on the Yellowstone Expedition. The scenery he captured was so remarkable that it led to the creation of the National Parks.
July 15, 1871: Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln, died in Chicago at the age of 18. He was buried beside his father in Springfield, Illinois.
October 8, 1871: The Great Chicago Fire broke out. It destroyed much of the city of Chicago, and a persistent rumor was that it was caused by Mrs. O'Leary's cow.
October 27, 1871: William M. "Boss" Tweed, the leader of the legendary New York political machine Tammany Hall, was arrested on multiple charges of corruption.

November 10, 1871: The journalist and adventurer Henry Morton Stanley located David Livingstone in Africa, and said the famous greeting: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume."

January 6, 1872: Notorious Wall Street character Jim Fisk was fatally shot in a Manhattan hotel lobby. As he died, his partner Jay Gould and Boss Tweed stood vigil at his bedside. Legendary detective Thomas Byrnes apprehended Fisk's assassin.
March 1, 1872: Yellowstone National Park was established as the first National Park in the United States.
April 2, 1872: Samuel F.B. Morse, American artist, and inventor of the telegraph and Morse Code, died at the age of 80 in New York City.
Spring 1872: After supervising work on the Brooklyn Bridge in the caisson under the East River, Washington Roebling came to the surface too quickly and was stricken with "the bends." He would be in poor health for years afterward.
June 1, 1872: James Gordon Bennett, who in many ways invented the modern newspaper by founding the New York Herald, died in New York City.
November 5, 1872: President Ulysses S. Grant wins a second term in the election of 1872, defeating legendary newspaper editor turned candidate Horace Greeley.
November 29, 1872: Horace Greeley, who weeks earlier lost the presidential election, died in New York City.

March 4, 1873: Ulysses S. Grant took the oath of office for the second time as he began his second term as President of the United States.
April 1, 1873: The steamship Atlantic struck rocks on the coast of Canada, and at least 500 passengers and crew perished in one of the worst maritime disasters of the 19th century.
May 4, 1873: David Livingstone, Scottish explorer of Africa, died in Africa of malaria at the age of 60.
September 1873: A stock market crashed sets off the Panic of 1873, one of the great financial panics of the 19th century.

January 17, 1874: Chang and Eng Bunker, conjoined twins who became famous as the Siamese Twins, died at the age of 62.
March 11, 1874: Charles Sumner, Massachusetts senator who in 1856 had been beaten in the U.S. Capitol in an event leading up to the Civil War, died at the age of 63.
March 8, 1874: Millard Fillmore, former president of the United States, died at the age of 74.
November 1874: The Greenback Party was established in the United States. Its constituencies were the farmers and workers adversely affected by the Panic of 1873.

April 21, 1875: Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish political leader, was elected to the British House of Commons.
May 19, 1875: Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of Abraham Lincoln, was judged to be insane in a trial instigated by her son, Robert Todd Lincoln.
July 31, 1875: Andrew Johnson, who became president following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, died at the age of 66.

March 10, 1876: Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful telephone call, saying, "Watson, come here, I need you."
April 10, 1876: Alexander Turney Stewart, renowned New York City merchant, died.
June 25, 1876: General George Armstrong Custer, commander of the 7th Cavalry, is killed, along with more than 200 of his men, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
July 4, 1876: The United States celebrated its centennial with celebrations in cities and towns across the country.
August 2, 1876: Wild Bill Hickok, gunfighter and lawman, was shot and killed while playing cards in Deadwood, Dakota Territory.
August 25, 1876: The first crossing of the unfinished Brooklyn Bridge was accomplished by its master mechanic, E.F. Farrington, riding on a wire strung between its towers.
November 7, 1876: The United States presidential election of 1876 was disputed and became the most controversial American election until the election of 2000.

January 4, 1877: Cornelius Vanderbilt, known as "The Commodore," died in New York City. He was by far the wealthiest person in the United States.
Early 1877: An electoral commission was formed to settle the disputed presidential election of 1876 results in the Compromise of 1877. Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the election, and Reconstruction was effectively brought to an end.
March 4, 1877: Rutherford B. Hayes was inaugurated as president, and comes into office under a cloud of suspicion, being called "His Fraudulency."
May 1877: Sitting Bull led followers into Canada to escape the U.S. Army, and Crazy Horse surrendered to U.S. troops.
June 21, 1877: Leaders of the Molly Maguires, a secret society of coal miners in Pennsylvania, were executed.
July 16, 1877: A strike in West Virginia set off the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which spread nationwide and spurred violent clashes in American cities.
September 5, 1877: Crazy Horse was killed at an army base in Kansas.

February 19, 1878: Thomas A. Edison patented the phonograph, which would rank as one of his most important inventions.
April 12, 1878: William M. "Boss" Tweed, the legendary head of Tammany Hall, died in jail in New York City at the age of 55.
Summer 1878: The head of the Statue of Liberty was displayed in a park in Paris during an international exhibition.
November 1878: The Second Anglo-Afghan War began when British troops began invading Afghanistan.

April 30, 1879: Sarah J. Hale, a magazine editor who urged President Lincoln to make Thanksgiving an official holiday, died at the age of 90.
August 21, 1879: Villagers at Knock, in rural Ireland, saw visions of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and St. John the Evangelist. The village became a place of Catholic pilgrimage afterward.
October 1879: In Ireland, following mass meetings held earlier in the year, the Land League was formed to organize tenant farmers.