1860s

The 1860s was the ten-year period from the years 1860 to 1869.

The abolition of Slavery in the United States led to the breakdown of the Atlantic slave trade, which was already suffering from the abolition of slavery in most of Europe in the late 1820s and 1830s. In the United States, civil war between the Confederate States of America and the Union states led to massive deaths and the destruction of cities such as Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; Richmond, Virginia; and Atlanta, Georgia. Sherman's March to the Sea was one of the first times America experienced total war, and advancements in military technology, such as iron and steel warships, and the development and initial deployment of early machine guns added to the destruction. After the American Civil War, turmoil continued in the Reconstruction era, with the rise of white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the issue of granting Civil Rights to Freedmen.

Politics and wars

Emperor Maximilian being executed (1867), marking the end of the Second Mexican Empire

Internal conflicts

American Civil War

• American Civil War fought between the remaining United States of America under President Abraham Lincoln and the self-declared Confederate States of America under President Jefferson Davis (April 12, 1861 – April 9, 1865) and Vice President Alexander Stephens. Beginning of the Reconstruction era under President Andrew Johnson (1865–1869).
• 1863–64 January Uprising in the Russian Empire.
• On 19 July 1864 the fall of Nanjing formally ended the 14-year Taiping Rebellion.
• 1862-1877 Tongzhi Hui Revolt in Qing dynasty of China.
• 1868-1869 Boshin War in Japan, fought between the Tokugawa shogunate and those seeking to return political power to the Imperial Court.

Assassinations and attempts

Prominent assassinations, targeted killings, and assassination attempts include:

Shown in the presidential booth of Ford's Theatre, from left to right, are assassin John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, Clara Harris, and Henry Rathbone

• President of the United States Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, April 14, 1865.
• King of Madagascar Radama II is captured by soldiers and strangled to death.
• Manuel Isidoro Belzu, President of Bolivia is assassinated.
• Father of Canadian Confederation, Thomas D'Arcy McGee is assassinated by Patrick J. Whelan.
• Sakamoto Ryōma, a prominent figure in the Bakumatsu era in Japan and part of the movement to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate, is assassinated along with Nakaoka Shintarō at a Kyoto inn in 1867.

Science and technology

Alfred Nobel invents dynamite in Sweden, patenting it in 1867

• The First Transcontinental Railroad in the USA is completed in 1869.
• The Suez Canal in Egypt is opened in 1869.
• The Plongeur, the first mechanically powered submarine in the world, is launched in 1863 after three years of construction.
• Carl Wilhelm Borchardt discovers and proves Cayley's formula in graph theory in 1860.
• The first transatlantic telegraph cable is successfully laid in 1866, enabling almost instant communication between America and Europe.
• Alfred Nobel invents dynamite in Sweden, patenting it in 1867.
• James Clerk Maxwell publishes his equations that quantify the relationship between electricity and magnetism, and shows that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation
• Joseph Lister develops antiseptic methods for use in surgery in 1867, introducing carbolic acid as an antiseptic, turning it into the first widely used surgical antiseptic in surgery, and publishing Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery. As a result, deaths from infections due to surgery greatly decrease.^[2]
• Gregor Mendel formulates Mendel’s laws of inheritance, the basis for genetics, in a two-part paper written in 1865 and published in 1866, although it is largely ignored until 1900.
• Dmitri Mendeleev develops the modern periodic table
• Helium was first detected during the total solar eclipse of August 18, 1868, in parts of India. It was the first eclipse expedition in which a spectroscope was used.
• J. Norman Lockyer and Pierre Janssen are honored for their discovery of the nature of the Sun’s prominences. They were the first to notice bright spectral emission lines when viewing the limb of the Sun without the aid of a total solar eclipse.
• 1862 International Exhibition in London, England and 1867 International Exposition in Paris.

Establishments

• The Christian Mission, later renamed The Salvation Army, is co-founded by William and Catherine Booth in London, England in 1865.
• The London Fire Brigade was established in 1865.
• Florence Nightingale founds school for nurses in 1860.
• Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA opens its doors on May 6, 1869, for the first time under a land grant from the Morrill Act.

Popular culture

People

References

Further reading

• Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events: 1861 (1864) online
• Appletons' annual cyclopaedia and register of important events of the year: 1862. New York: D. Appleton & Company. 1863. p. i.
• Appletons' annual cyclopedia and register of important events: Embracing political, military, and ecclesiastical affairs; public documents; biography, statistics, commerce, finance, literature, science, agriculture, and mechanical industry, Volume 3 1863 (1864), thorough coverage of the events of 1863
• The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1867
• American Annual Cyclopedia ... 1868 (1869), online
• American Annual Cyclopedia ... for 1869 (1870) online edition

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 1860s.

• 1860s in fashion – Clothing, Hair Styles and Personal Appearance.