President:
Pres: Abraham Lincoln begins second term, Assassinated
Pres: Andrew Johnson
General
- Crime: Wild Bill wins first showdown
Lincoln assassinated
- Culture: Establishment of Atlanta U, Shaw U, Virginia Union U for African-Americans
Immigration to US begins to increase again
- Education: Purdue U at Cornell U, U of Maine, and U of Kentucky founded
Yale U opens first Department of Fine Arts
- Law: 13th Amendment abolishes slavery
Freedmen's Bureau (Bureau of Freed Slaves) provides assistance to former slaves
- Military: Johnston surrenders to Sherman
Jefferson Davis captured
End of Civil War - Reconstruction begins
- Natives: Yahi Massacres start until 1871
Treaties with Apache, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes
- Paranormal: Abraham Lincoln given premonition of his death a few days before
East
- Massachusetts: MIT founded
- New York: Atlantic cable finally completed
Convention of 91 clubs in New York starts professional baseball
First woman professor of astronomy at Vassar – Maria Mitchell
Abolitionist James Miller McKim founds "The Nation" newspaper
- Pennsylvania: First oil pipeline
- Washington D.C.: Lincoln assassinated by Booth in Ford's Theater
Education becomes mandatory
Midwest
- Illinois: Union stockyards open in Chicago
- Ohio: First train robbery in North Bend
- Wisconsin: Tornado
South
- General: 1700 die in explosion of the "Sultana" on Mississippi River
Jefferson Davis appoints Robert E Lee as General-in Chief
Jefferson Davis captured and imprisoned
- Louisiana: Last surrender in Shreveport
- South Carolina: Union fleet takes Charleston
- Tennessee: KKK forms
- Virginia: Richmond durrenders to Grant
Lee surrenders at Appomattox ending Civil War
West and Pacific
- California: Quake estimated at 6.5
"SF Examiner" and "SF Chronicle" founded
Chinese "coolie" laborers imported to US for railroad construction
- Hawaii: First Chinese laborers arrive
- Utah: Day of mourning in Utah as Lincoln dies
Utes forced to Uintah Reservation
Black Hawk War begins to 1872