1882 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Chester A. Arthur
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Morrison Waite
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: J. Warren Keifer
• Congress: 47th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 2
• * The Standard Oil Trust is secretly created to control multiple corporations set up by John D. Rockefeller and his associates.
• * Oscar Wilde arrives in the United States for an extended lecture tour.
• January 5 - Charles J. Guiteau is found guilty of the assassination of James A. Garfield, despite an insanity defense raised by his lawyer.
• March 18 - Morgan Earp is assassinated by outlaws while playing billiards in Tombstone, Arizona.
• March 22 - Polygamy is made a felony by the Edmunds Act passed by the United States Congress.
• March 29 - The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization, is incorporated in New Haven, Connecticut by Father Michael J. McGivney.

  April–June

• April 3 - Old West outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back of the head and killed by fellow outlaw Robert Ford in his home at St. Joseph, Missouri for reward.
• May 6 - The Chinese Exclusion Act is the first significant law that restricts immigration into the U.S.
• June 30 - Charles J. Guiteau, the assassin of President James A. Garfield, is hanged.

  July–September

• August 3 - The U.S. Congress passes the 1882 Immigration Act.
• August 5 - Standard Oil of New Jersey is established.
• September 4 - Thomas Edison starts the U.S.'s first commercial electrical power plant, lighting one square mile of lower Manhattan.
• September 5 - The first United States Labor Day parade is held in New York City.
• September 30 - The Vulcan Street Plant, the first hydroelectric central station to serve a system of private and commercial customers in North America, comes on stream in Appleton, Wisconsin.

  October–December

• October 5 - The Society for Ethical Culture of Chicago is founded by Felix Adler.
• October 16 - The New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad runs its first trains over the entire system between Buffalo, New York, and Chicago. Nine days later the Seney Syndicate sells the road to William Henry Vanderbilt for US$7.2 million.
• November 14 - Franklin Leslie shoots Billy Claiborne dead in the streets of Tombstone, Arizona.
• December 22 - First string of Christmas lights created by Thomas Edison.

  Undated

• Carolyn Merrick is elected president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

  Ongoing

• Gilded Age
• Depression of 1882–85

  Sport

• October 7 – The Chicago White Stockings even their series with the Cincinnati Red Stockings with a 2–0 victory. Cincinnati will drop out of the series under threats of expulsion by the American Association.
• December 6 – The National League formally admits the New York Gothams and the Philadelphia Quakers.

  Births

• January 6 - Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
• January 30 - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States from 1933 to 1945
• July 22 - Edward Hopper, painter
• July 26 - Dixie Bibb Graves, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1937 to 1938
• September 12 - George L. Berry, U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1937 to 1938
• October 5 - Robert Goddard, rocket scientist
• October 14 - Éamon de Valera, third President of Ireland

  Deaths

• January 3 - Clement Claiborne Clay, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1853 to 1862, Confederate States Senator from Alabama from 1862 to 1864
• January 30 - Henry Whitney Bellows, clergyman of the Unitarian Church
• February 25 - James Bates, U.S. Representative from Maine from 1831 to 1833
• March 4 - Milton Latham, U.S. Senator from California from 1860 to 1863
• March 24 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet and professor, dies of peritonitis in his Cambridge home
• April 27 - Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist and poet
• June 30 - Charles Guiteau, Assassin of President James A. Garfield
• July 16 - Mary Todd Lincoln, First Lady of the United States
• July 19 - George N. Stearns, founder of E. C. Stearns & Company
• August 8 - Gouverneur K. Warren, civil engineer and Union Army general in the American Civil War
• August 16 - Benjamin Harvey Hill, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1877 to 1882
• November 5 - Robert Woodward Barnwell, U.S. Senator from South Carolina from 1862 to 1865
• November 8 - Richard Arnold, Union Army brigadier general
• December 10 - Alexander Gardner, Scottish-born Civil War photographer
• December 12 - Robert Morris, abolitionist and one of the first African American lawyers