This Year in History:
1870
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
Angered over a card game dispute, 16-year-old John Wesley Hardin shoots Benjamin Bradley dead in the street. Although less famous than Billy the Kid, Jesse James, or Wyatt Earp, John Wesley Hardin is believed to hold the gunslinger’s record for killing the most men in the shortest period. From the time he first killed in […]
On January 15, 1870, the first recorded use of a donkey to represent the Democratic Party appears in Harper’s Weekly. Drawn by political illustrator Thomas Nast, the cartoon is entitled “A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion.” The jackass (donkey) is tagged “Copperhead Papers,” referring to the Democrat-dominated newspapers of the South, and the dead […]
Declaring he did not care whether or not it was the rebellious band of Native Americans he had been searching for, Major Eugene Baker orders his men to attack a sleeping camp of peaceful Blackfeet along the Marias River in northern Montana. The previous fall, Malcolm Clarke, an influential Montana rancher, had accused a Blackfeet warrior named […]
Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Natchez, Mississippi, is sworn into the U.S. Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in Congress. During the Civil War, Revels, a college-educated minister, helped form African American army regiments for the Union cause, started a school for freed men, and served as a chaplain for the […]
Following its ratification by the requisite three-fourths of the states, the 15th Amendment, granting African American men the right to vote, is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution. Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment reads, “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the […]
While visiting Marathon, Greece, Lord Muncaster of Britain is kidnapped by brigands, almost resulting in war. The pirates, led by Takos Arvanitakis, were experienced in kidnapping and had used it as a lucrative source of income for many years. However, their capture of Lord Muncaster and a group of English tourists proved to be more […]
On April 13, 1870 the Metropolitan Museum of Art is officially incorporated in New York City. The brainchild of American expatriates in Paris and a number of wealthy New Yorkers, the Met would not put on an exhibition until 1872, but it quickly blossomed into one of the world’s premier repositories of fine art, a […]
A huge section of the city of Constantinople, Turkey, is set ablaze on June 5, 1870. When the smoke finally cleared, 9,000 homes were destroyed and 2,000 people were dead. A young girl was carrying a hot piece of charcoal to her family’s kitchen in an iron pan when she tripped, sending the charcoal out […]
General Robert Edward Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, dies at his home in Lexington, Virginia. He was 63 years old. Lee was born to Henry Lee and Ann Carter Lee at Stratford Hall, Virginia, in 1807. His father served in the American Revolution under George Washington and was later a […]
