1865 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President: Abraham Lincoln , Andrew Johnson
• Vice President:
• * until March 4: Hannibal Hamlin
• * March 4–April 15: Andrew Johnson
• * starting April 15: vacant
• Chief Justice: Salmon P. Chase
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Schuyler Colfax
• Congress: 38th, 39th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 13 - American Civil War: The Second Battle of Fort Fisher begins when United States forces launch a major amphibious assault against the Confederate stronghold of Fort Fisher, North Carolina.
• January 15 - American Civil War: United States forces capture Fort Fisher.
• January 31 - American Civil War: Confederate General Robert E. Lee becomes general-in-chief.
• February 17 - American Civil War: Columbia, South Carolina burns as Confederate forces flee from advancing Union forces.
• February 22 - Tennessee adopts a new constitution that abolishes slavery.
• March 3 - The U.S. Congress authorizes formation of the Freedmen's Bureau.
• March 4 - President Abraham Lincoln begins his second term.
• March 13 - American Civil War: The Confederate States of America agrees to the use of African American troops.
• March 18 - American Civil War: The Congress of the Confederate States of America adjourns for the last time.
• March 19 - American Civil War: The Battle of Bentonville begins; by the end of the battle on March 21 the Confederate forces retreat from Four Oaks, North Carolina.
• March 21 - The University of Kansas was founded when the Board of Regents held its first meeting.
• March 25
• * American Civil War: In Virginia, Confederate forces capture Fort Steadman from the Union. Lee's army suffers heavy casualties during the Battle of Fort Stedman—about 2,900, including 1,000 captured in the Union counterattack. Confederate positions are weakened. After the battle, Lee's defeat is only a matter of time.
• * The "Claywater Meteorite" explodes just before reaching ground level in Vernon County, Wisconsin; fragments having a combined mass of 1.5 kg are recovered.

  April–June

• April 1 - American Civil War: Battle of Five Forks - In Petersburg, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins his final offensive.
• April 2 - American Civil War: "Evacuation Sunday" - Confederate President Jefferson Davis and most of his cabinet flee the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, which is taken by Union troops the next day.
• April 3 - American Civil War: Richmond is captured by Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant.
• April 9 - American Civil War: General Robert E. Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the Civil War.
• April 14
• * Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: Actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shoots and mortally wounds U.S. President Abraham Lincoln while Lincoln is attending an evening performance of the farce Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C..
• * U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and his family are attacked in his home by Lewis Powell.
• April 15 - President Lincoln dies of his gunshot wound early this morning and Vice President Andrew Johnson becomes the 17th President of the United States.
• April 18 - Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his entire cabinet arrive in Charlotte with a contingent of 1,000 soldiers.
• April 26
• * American Civil War: Confederate States Army General Joseph E. Johnston surrenders to Union Army Major General William Tecumseh Sherman at Durham Station, North Carolina.
• * Union cavalry corner John Wilkes Booth in a Virginia barn, and cavalryman Boston Corbett fatally shoots the assassin.
• April 27
• * The steamboat Sultana, carrying 2,300 passengers, explodes and sinks in the Mississippi River, killing 1,800, mostly Union survivors of the Andersonville Prison.
• * Governor of New York Reuben Fenton signs a bill formally creating Cornell University.
• May 4 - American Civil War: Lieutenant General Richard Taylor, commanding all Confederate forces in Alabama, Mississippi, and eastern Louisiana, surrenders his forces to Union General Edward Canby at Citronelle, Alabama, effectively ending all Confederate resistance east of the Mississippi.
• May 5
• * Jefferson Davis meets with his Confederate Cabinet for the last time, in Washington, Georgia, and the Confederate Government is officially dissolved.
• * In North Bend, Ohio, the first train robbery in the United States takes place.
• May 10
• * American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is captured by Union troops near Irwinville, Georgia.
• * Worcester Polytechnic Institute is founded in Massachusetts.
• May 12-13 - American Civil War: Battle of Palmito Ranch - In far south Texas, more than a month after Confederate General Lee's surrender, the last land battle of the Civil War with casualties ends with a Confederate victory.
• May 23 - Grand Review of the Armies: Union Army troops parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to celebrate the end of the Civil War.
• May 25 - Mobile magazine explosion: 300 are killed in Mobile, Alabama when an ordnance depot explodes.
• May 26 - Indigenous tribes who have supported the Confederate States of America hold the Camp Napoleon Council in Indian Territory.
• June 2 - American Civil War: Confederate forces west of the Mississippi under General Edmund Kirby Smith surrender at Galveston, Texas under terms negotiated on May 26, becoming the last to do so.
• June 19 - American Civil War: Union Major General Gordon Granger lands at Galveston and informs the people of Texas of the Emancipation Proclamation.
• June 23 - American Civil War: At Fort Towson in Indian Territory, Confederate General Stand Watie, a Cherokee Indian, surrenders the last significant Confederate army.

July–September

• July 5 - The U.S. Secret Service is founded.
• July 6 - The Nation political magazine begins publication.
• July 7 - Following Abraham Lincoln's assassination on April 14, the 4 conspirators condemned to death during the trial are hanged, including David Herold, George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell and Mary Surratt. Her son, John Surratt, escapes execution by fleeing to Canada, and ultimately to Egypt.
• July 21 - Wild Bill Hickok – Davis Tutt shootout: In the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots Little Dave Tutt dead over a poker debt in what is regarded as the first true western "fast draw" showdown.
• July 30 - The steamer Brother Jonathan sinks off the California coast, killing 225.
• September 26 - Champ Ferguson becomes the first of two combatants to be convicted of war crimes for actions taken during the American Civil War, found guilty by a U.S. Army tribunal on 23 charges arising from the murder of 53 people as a Confederate guerilla. He is hanged on October 20, two days after the conviction of Henry Wirz.

  October–December

• September 8- 21: Fort Smith Council between U. S. and Native American tribes that had supported the Confederated States of America regarding Reconstruction Treaties.
• October 8 - The 6.3 Santa Cruz Mountains earthquake shook the Central Coast and San Francisco Bay Area of California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII, causing $500,000 in damage.
• October 25 - The paddlewheel steamer SS Republic sinks off the Georgia coast, with a cargo of $400,000 in coins.
• November 6 - American Civil War: Surrender to the British at Liverpool of the commerce raider CSS Shenandoah, the last significant organized Confederate unit.
• November 10 - Captain Henry Wirz, Confederate superintendent of Andersonville Prison is hanged, becoming the second of two combatants, and only serving regular soldier, to be executed for war crimes committed during the American Civil War.
• November 18 - Mark Twain's story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is published in the New York weekly The Saturday Press in its original version as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog".
• December 11 - The U.S. Congress creates the House Appropriations Committee and the Committee on Banking and Commerce, reducing the tasks of the Committee on Ways and Means.
• December 18 - The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is declared ratified by three-quarters of the states of the United States.
• December 21 - The Kappa Alpha Order is founded at Washington and Lee University.
• December 24 - The Ku Klux Klan is formed by six Confederate Army veterans, with support of the Democratic Party, in Pulaski, Tennessee, to resist Reconstruction and intimidate "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags", as well as to repress the freed slaves.

  Undated

• A forest fire near Silverton, Oregon destroys about one million acres of timber.

  Ongoing

• American Civil War
• Reconstruction era

  Births

• January 5 - Johnson N. Camden Jr., U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1914 to 1915
• January 10 - Mary Ingalls, blind older sister of author Laura Ingalls Wilder
• January 28 - Verina Morton Jones, African American physician, suffragist and clubwoman
• February 1 - Henry Luke Bolley, plant pathologist
• February 28 - Alexander Henderson, businessman
• March 19 - William Morton Wheeler, entomologist
• April 28 - Charles W. Woodworth, entomologist
• May 2 - Clyde Fitch, dramatist
• May 3 - Henry Francis Bryan, governor of American Samoa
• May 25 - John Mott, YMCA leader, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• May 26 - Robert W. Chambers, artist
• June 25 - Robert Henri, painter, leader of the Ash Can School
• June 29 - William Borah, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1907 to 1940
• July 14 - Arthur Capper, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1919 to 1949
• August 2 - Irving Babbitt, literary critic
• August 27
• * James Henry Breasted, Egyptologist
• * Charles G. Dawes, 30th Vice President of the United States from 1925 to 1929, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• September 24 - Mollie McConnell, actress
• October 14 - Mary Margaret O'Reilly, Assistant Director of the United States Mint
• October 15 - Charles W. Clark, baritone
• October 17 - James Rudolph Garfield, politician
• October 22 - Raymond Hitchcock, actor
• October 26 - Benjamin Guggenheim, businessman
• November 2 - Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States from 1921 until 1923
• December 19 - Minnie Maddern Fiske, stage actress
• December 20 - Elsie de Wolfe, socialite and interior decorator
• December 25 - Fay Templeton, singer and actress
• Georgiana Simpson, African American philologist

  Deaths

• March 10 - Amy Spain, slave, hanged
• April 2 - A. P. Hill, Confederate general killed in the American Civil War
• April 15 - Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States from 1861 to 1865
• April 26 - John Wilkes Booth, actor and assassin of Abraham Lincoln
• May 20 - William K. Sebastian, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1848 to 1861
• May 21 - Jeremiah Clemens, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1849 to 1853
• July 6 - William Quantrill, Confederate leader during the American Civil War
• June 10 - Mrs Lydia Sigourney, the "Sweet Singer of Hartford", poet
• June 23 - Samuel Francis Du Pont, rear admiral
• July 7
• * George Atzerodt, conspirator with John Wilkes Booth, assigned to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson
• * David Herold, conspirator with John Wilkes Booth
• * Lewis Powell, conspirator with John Wilkes Booth, attempted assassin of William H. Seward
• * Mary Surratt, conspirator with John Wilkes Booth, first woman executed by American federal government
• August 25 - John Drew, Cherokee Confederate colonel of the First Mounted Cherokee Regiment
• November 29 - Isaac A. Van Amburgh, animal trainer
• December 16 - Philip Allen, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island from 1853 to 1859