This Year in History:
1867
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On January 8, 1867, African American men gain the right to vote in the District of Columbia despite the veto of its most powerful resident, President Andrew Johnson. The Republican-controlled senate overrode Johnson by a vote of 29-10 three years before a constitutional amendment granted the right to vote to all men regardless of race. […]
U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward signs a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska for $7 million. Despite the bargain price of roughly two cents an acre, the Alaskan purchase was ridiculed in Congress and in the press as “Seward’s Folly,” “Seward’s icebox,” and President Andrew Johnson’s “polar bear garden.” Inuit and […]
Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, installed as emperor of Mexico by French Emperor Napoleon III in 1864, is executed on the orders of Benito Juarez, the president of the Mexican Republic. In 1861, the liberal Mexican Benito Juarez became president of a country in financial ruin, and he was forced to default on his debts to […]
The autonomous Dominion of Canada, a confederation of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the future provinces of Ontario and Quebec, is officially recognized by Great Britain with the passage of the British North America Act. July 1 will later become known as Canada Day. During the 19th century, colonial dependence gave way to increasing autonomy […]
On September 25, 1867, the pioneering cattleman Oliver Loving dies from gangrene poisoning in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. A few weeks before, Loving had been trapped by 500 Commanche braves along the Pecos River. Shot in the arm and side, Loving managed to escape and reach Fort Sumner. Though the wounds alone were not fatal, […]
On October 18, 1867, the U.S. formally takes possession of Alaska after purchasing the territory from Russia for $7.2 million, or less than two cents an acre. Indigenous peoples settled the unforgiving territory thousands of years earlier. The Alaska purchase comprised 586,412 square miles, about twice the size of Texas, and was championed by William […]
On November 15, 1867, the first stock ticker is unveiled in New York City. The advent of the ticker ultimately revolutionized the stock market by making up-to-the-minute prices available to investors around the country. Prior to this development, information from the New York Stock Exchange, which has been around since 1792, traveled by mail or […]
Former Minnesota farmer Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Grange, which became a powerful political force among western farmers. Though he grew up in Boston, Kelley decided in his early twenties that he wanted to become a farmer. In 1849, he booked passage on a steamboat for St. Paul, Minnesota. Though the Minnesota area was dominated […]
Future entrepreneur, philanthropist and self-made millionaire Madam C.J. Walker is born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana. Walker’s parents, sharecroppers who had been enslaved, died when she was seven. Walker eventually left Louisiana and spent her twenties in St. Louis, Missouri. While working as a laundress for about a dollar a day to support herself […]
