1872 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Ulysses S. Grant
• Vice President: Schuyler Colfax
• Chief Justice: Salmon P. Chase
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: James G. Blaine
• Congress: 42nd

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

• January 2 - Brigham Young is arrested for bigamy.
• January 3 - First patent list issued by the U.S. Patent Office.
• February 13 - Rex, the most famous parade on Mardi Gras, parades for the first time in New Orleans for Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich of Russia.
• February 20 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.
• March - One of the first Personal Liberty League formed in the United States in response to the threat posed to the liquor industry by the growing political strength of the temperance movement.
• March 1 - Yellowstone National Park is established as the world's first national park.
• March 5 - George Westinghouse patents the air brake for railways.
• March 26 - The 7.4–7.9 Lone Pine earthquake shakes eastern California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X. Twenty-seven people were killed and fifty-six were injured.
• May 10 - Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman nominated for President of the United States.
• May 22 - Reconstruction: President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act of 1872 into law restoring full civil rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers.
• June 4 - Two men lead investors to land near the Wyoming-Colorado border claiming to have found diamonds there, starting a diamond craze in the western US.
• August - Aaron Montgomery Ward issues the first Montgomery Ward mail order catalogue from Chicago.
• September 4 - The New York Sun breaks the story on the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal
• September 26 - The first Shriners Temple is established in New York City.
• October 1 - The Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College begins its first academic session.
• October 2 - Morgan State University founded.
• November - Ulysses S. Grant defeats Horace Greeley in the U.S. presidential election
• November 2 - Spiritualist, suffragette, and Free Love advocate Victoria Woodhull publishes shocking allegations in Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly claiming in "The Beecher-Tilton Scandal Case" article that Henry Ward Beecher had committed adultery with Theodore Tilton's wife. The subsequent trials and hearings, in the words of Walter A. McDougall, "drove Reconstruction off the front pages for two and a half years" and became "the most sensational 'he said, she said' in American history".
• November 5 - Women's suffrage: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time.
• November 7 - The Mary Celeste sets sail from New York, bound for Genoa.
• November 9 - Great Boston Fire of 1872: In Boston, Massachusetts, a large fire begins to burn on Lincoln Street. The two-day event destroyed about 65 acres of city, 776 buildings, much of the financial district and caused US$60 million in damage.
• November 28 - The geologist Clarence King uncovers the diamond hoax in Wyoming in The New York Times.
• November 29 - Indian Wars: The Modoc War begins with the Battle of Lost River.
• December 4 - The crewless American-owned ship Mary Celeste is found by the British brig Dei Gratia in the Atlantic.
• December 9 - P. B. S. Pinchback takes office as Governor of Louisiana, the first African American governor of a U.S. state.

  Ongoing

• Reconstruction era
• Gilded Age
• The Wheeler Survey of the southwestern US, 1872–1879

  Births

• January 4 - Albert Tyler, pole vaulter and educator
• January 20 - Julia Morgan, California architect
• January 31 - Zane Grey, Western novelist
• February 1 - Jerome F. Donovan, politician
• February 9 - Charles Klauder, university architect
• March 3 - Willie Keeler, baseball player
• March 6 - Ben Harney, ragtime pianist and songwriter
• March 14 - William Emerson Brock, U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1929 to 1931
• March 15 - Harry Holman, character film actor
• April 5 - Samuel Cate Prescott, food scientist and microbiologist
• April 23 - Nathan Philemon Bryan, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1911 to 1917
• April 29 - Harry Payne Whitney, businessman and horse breeder
• May 16 - John O'Connell, baseball player
• May 21 - Henry E. Warren, inventor
• May 26 - Zachary Taylor Davis, Chicago architect
• May 31 - Charles Greeley Abbot, astrophysicist
• June 13 - Thomas N. Heffron, film director
• June 27 - Paul Laurence Dunbar, African American poet, novelist, playwright and publisher
• July 4 - Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States from 1923 to 1929, 29th Vice President of the United States from 1921 to 1923
• July 8 - John H. Bankhead II, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1931 to 1946
• August 2 - George E. Stewart, U.S. Army officer, Medal of Honor recipient
• August 10 - William Manuel Johnson, African American dixieland jazz double-bassist
• August 15 - Rubin Goldmark, composer
• August 26:
• *Joseph Taylor Robinson, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1913 to 1937
• *James J. Couzens, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1922 to 1936
• September 20 - Walter E. Scott, "Death Valley Scotty", confidence trickster
• September 28 - Charles F. Watkins, physician
• October 10 - Arthur Talmage Abernethy, journalist, scholar, theologian and poet, 1st North Carolina Poet Laureate from 1948 to 1953
• October 11 - Harlan F. Stone, 12th Chief Justice of the United States from 1941
• October 15 - Edith Wilson, wife of Woodrow Wilson, First Lady of the United States,
• November 2 - John N. Heiskell, U.S. Senator from Arkansas in 1913
• November 7 - Leonora Speyer, née von Stosch, classical violinist and poet
• November 11 - Maude Adams, stage actress
• December 9 - Thomas W. Hardwick, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1914 to 1919
• December 17 - Walter Loving, African American military bandleader

  Deaths

• January 4 - Arnold Naudain, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1830 to 1836
• January 7 - James Fisk, financier
• January 9 - Henry Halleck, general
• January 21 - Thomas Bragg, U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1859 to 1861, 2nd Confederate States Attorney General
• January 25 - Richard S. Ewell, Confederate general
• February 7 - James W. Grimes, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1859 to 1869
• March or April - Mercator Cooper, sea captain
• March 31 - Samuel Henry Dickson, poet, physician, writer and educator
• April 2 - Samuel Morse, inventor of the Morse code
• April 9 - Erastus Corning, businessman and politician
• April 10 - John Mix Stanley, painter
• May 17 - Eduard Sobolewski, violinist, composer and conductor
• August - Asa Whitney, merchant and promoter of the first transcontinental railroad
• August 11 - Lowell Mason, organist and composer
• September 18 - Augustus Seymour Porter, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1840 to 1845
• September 22 - Garrett Davis, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1861 to 1872
• October 10 - William H. Seward, United States Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869
• November 5 - Thomas Sully, portrait painter
• November 6 - George Meade, Civil War general
• November 16 - William Gilham, military writer
• November 29 - Horace Greeley, newspaper editor and presidential candidate
• December 23 - George Catlin, painter specializing in portraits of Native Americans
• Henry Howard Brownell, poet and historian