1867 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Andrew Johnson
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Salmon P. Chase
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Schuyler Colfax
• Congress: 39th, 40th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 1 - The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge opens between Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky, becoming the longest suspension bridge in the world.
• January 8 - African-American men are granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia.
• February 7
• *West Virginia University is established in Morgantown, West Virginia.
• *Laura Ingalls Wilder is born near Pepin, Wisconsin
• March - The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is established.
• March 1 - Nebraska is admitted as the 37th U.S. state.

  April–June

• May 28 - Alaska is purchased for $7.2 million from Alexander II of Russia, about 2 cent/acre, by United States Secretary of State William H. Seward. The news media call this "Seward's Folly."
• June 15 - The Atlantic Cable Quartz Lode mine is named in Montana.
• June 29 - Kidder massacre: A Sioux and Cheyenne war party kills U.S. Second Lieutenant Lyman Kidder, along with an Indian scout and ten enlisted men in Kansas.

  July–September

• July 2 - The first elevated railroad in USA begins service in New York.
• July 17 - In Boston, Massachusetts, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine is established as the first dental school in the United States.
• September 30 - The United States takes control of Midway Island.

  October–December

• October 18 - U.S. takes formal possession of Alaska from Russia, paying $7.2 million.
• October 21 - Manifest Destiny - Medicine Lodge Treaty: Near Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas, a landmark treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. The treaty requires Native American Plains tribes to relocate to a reservation in western Oklahoma.
• November 15 - Former Minnesota farmer Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry.
• December 2 - In a New York City theater, British author Charles Dickens gives his first public reading in the United States.
• December 18 - 49 people are killed in a train crash in Angola, New York.

  Undated

• Yellow fever kills 3,093 in New Orleans.
• At historic Fountain Point, Michigan, an artesian water spring gushes continuously until the present day.
• 1867–1873 - Chinese, Scandinavian and Irish immigrants lay of railroad tracks in the United States.
• Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts opens its doors for the first time, becoming the first school for the deaf in the United States to teach deaf children how to communicate with others using the "oral method".

  Ongoing

• Reconstruction era

  Births

• January 1 - Lew Fields, vaudeville performer
• January 8 - Emily Greene Balch, writer and pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• January 14 - James H. Hughes, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1937 till 1943
• January 17 - Louise Upton Brumback, landscape painter
• February 3 - Charles Henry Turner, African American entomologist
• February 7 - Laura Ingalls Wilder, novelist
• February 8
• * William Michael Crose, U.S. Navy commander and Governor of American Samoa
• * Kirtland I. Perky, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1912 till 1913
• February 27 - Irving Fisher, economist
• March 4 - Charles Pelot Summerall, U.S. Army general
• March 6 - Samuel Cody, aviation pioneer
• March 10 - Lillian Wald, nurse
• March 21 - Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., theatrical producer
• March 25 - Gutzon Borglum, artist, sculptor, creator of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial
• March 29 - Cy Young, Major League Baseball pitcher
• April 16 - Wilbur Wright, aviation pioneer
• May 21 - Augustus Owsley Stanley, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1919 to 1925
• May 29 - Charles A. Rawson, U.S. Senator from Iowa in 1922
• June 8 - Frank Lloyd Wright, architect
• July 31 - S. S. Kresge, retailer
• September 5 - Amy Beach, classical composer and pianist
• October 6 - George Horace Lorimer, newspaper editor
• October 21 - Aldred Scott Warthin, cancer geneticist
• October 31 - David Graham Phillips, journalist and novelist
• November 16 - William F. Kirby, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1916 till 1921
• November 24
• * Possible date - Scott Joplin, ragtime composer
• * Frank L. Smith, elected U.S. Senator from Illinois in 1926
• December 23 - Madam C. J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, African American entrepreneur and philanthropist
• December 30 - Simon Guggenheim, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1907 till 1913

  Deaths

• January 20 – Nathaniel Parker Willis, author, poet and editor
• February 2 – Forceythe Willson, poet
• March 8 – Charles Farrar Browne, humorist
• March 16 – Benjamin Hanby, songwriter
• March 29 – George R. Riddle, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1864 to 1867
• April 3 – George W. Randolph, lawyer, planter, Confederate general, 3rd Confederate States Secretary of War
• May 11 – Joseph A. Wright, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1862 to 1863
• May 27 – Thomas Bulfinch, collector of myths and legends
• July 3 – Lazarus W. Powell, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1859 to 1865
• July 31 – Catharine Sedgwick, novelist
• September 3 – James A. McDougall, U.S. Senator from California from 1861 to 1867
• September 23 – Michael O'Laughlen, Conspirator in the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
• September 29 – Sterling Price, 11th Governor of Missouri, United States Army brigadier general in the Mexican–American War, Confederate Army major general in the American Civil War
• October 7 – Henry Timrod, poet
• November 19 – Fitz-Greene Halleck, poet
• December 3 – Margaret Lea Houston, First Lady of the Republic of Texas