Federal government edit

• President: Andrew Johnson (D-Tennessee) (until March 4), Ulysses S. Grant (R-Illinois) (starting March 4)
• Vice President: vacant (until March 4), Schuyler Colfax (R-Indiana) (starting March 4)
• Chief Justice: Salmon P. Chase (Ohio)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives:
  • until March 3: Schuyler Colfax (R-Indiana)
  • March 3–March 4: Theodore Medad Pomeroy (R-New York)
  • starting March 4: James G. Blaine (R-Maine)
• Congress: 40th (until March 4), 41st (starting March 4)

January–March edit

• January 1 – Sigma Nu, the first anti-hazing honor/social fraternity, is founded, at Virginia Military Institute.
• January 20 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the first woman to testify before the United States Congress.
• January 21 – The P.E.O. Sisterhood, a philanthropic educational organization for women, is founded at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
• February 15 – Charges of treason against Jefferson Davis are dropped.
• March 4 – Ulysses S. Grant is sworn in as the 18th president of the United States, and Schuyler Colfax is sworn in as the 17th vice president.
• March 9 – Southern Illinois University Carbondale is established by the state legislature as Southern Illinois Normal College.

April–June edit

• April 6 – The American Museum of Natural History is founded in New York City.
• May 6 – Purdue University is founded in West Lafayette, Indiana.
• May 10 – The "golden spike" is driven marking the completion of the First transcontinental railroad in Promontory, Utah.
• May 15 – Woman's suffrage: In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.
• May 26 – Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
• June 1
  • The Cincinnati Red Stockings open the baseball season as the first fully professional baseball team.
  • Thomas Edison is granted his first patent for the Electric Vote Recorder.
• June 15 – John Wesley Hyatt patents the first plastic, Celluloid, in Albany, New York.

July–September edit

• July 4 – World's first rodeo held in Deer Trail, Colorado
• September 15 – Brooklyn Fire Department organized as a professional brigade.
• September 24 – Black Friday: The Fisk-Gould Scandal causes a financial panic in the United States.

October–December edit

• October 8 – New York Foundling Asylum incorporated.
• October 11 – Gamma Sigma becomes the first high school fraternity in North America at Brockport Normal School, Brockport, New York.
• October 16 – The Tremont House in Boston becomes the first hotel to have indoor plumbing.
• November 6 – The first intercollegiate game of American football is played: Rutgers University defeats Princeton University 6–4 in a college football game.
• December 7 – Outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery, in Gallatin, Missouri.
• December 10
  • The first American chapter of Kappa Sigma is founded at the University of Virginia.
  • The Wyoming territorial legislature gives women the right to vote, one of the first such laws in the world.

Undated edit

• The H. J. Heinz Company is founded as Heinz Noble & Company in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania.
• James Gordon Bennett, Jr. of the New York Herald asks Henry Morton Stanley to find Dr. Livingstone.
• Marcus Jastrow arrives in the United States to become rabbi of Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia.

Ongoing edit

• Reconstruction era (1865–1877)
• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)

• November 6 – College of New Jersey (Princeton) defeat the Rutgers Queensmen (Rutgers) 6 to 4 in New Brunswick, N.J. in what is widely considered the first ever American Football game with Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, becoming known as "The Birthplace of College Football"

• January 4 – Tommy Corcoran, baseball player (died 1960)
• January 10 – Rachel Davis Harris, African American librarian (died 1969)
• February 2 – Smith W. Brookhart, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1922 to 1926 (died 1944)
• February 19 – Frederic C. Walcott, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1929 to 1935 (died 1949)
• February 29 – Thomas Walter Bickett, governor of North Carolina (died 1921)
• March 13 – Fairfax Harrison, lawyer and businessman (died 1938)
• April 2 – Hughie Jennings, baseball player (died 1928)
• April 4 – Mary Colter, architect (died 1958)
• April 6 – John W. Brady, Texas judge and murderer (died 1943)
• April 8 – Harvey Cushing, neurosurgeon (died 1939)
• April 9 – James Thomas Heflin, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1920 to 1931 (died 1951)
• May 3 – Warren Terhune, U.S. Navy Commander and 13th Governor of American Samoa (died 1920)
• May 23 – Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, poet and journalist (died 1944)
• June 10 – William Kenyon, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1909 to 1922 (died 1933)
• July 14 – Bruno Albert Forsterer, Marine Sergeant, Medal of Honor recipient (died 1957)
• July 17 – Mariette Rheiner Garner, wife of John Nance Garner, Second Lady of the United States (died 1948)
• July 20 – Howard Thurston, stage magician (died 1936)
• August 5 – J. C. W. Beckham, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1915 to 1921 (died 1940)
• August 9 – Annie Malone, née Turnbo, African American millionaire businesswoman, inventor and philanthropist (died 1957)
• September 11 – Charles Kilpatrick, one-legged trick cyclist (died 1927)
• November 20 – Alma Webster Hall Powell, opera singer, suffragist, and inventor (died 1930)
• December 16 – Bertha Lamme, electrical engineer (died 1943)
• December 22
  • Nathan Paine, lumber baron (died 1947)
  • Edwin Arlington Robinson, poet (died 1935)

• January 1 – Martin W. Bates, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1857 to 1859 (born 1786)
• January 11 – Sophia Dallas, wife of George M. Dallas, Second Lady of the United States (born 1798)
• February 18 – Walker Brooke, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1852 to 1853 (born 1813)
• March 13 – James Guthrie, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1865 to 1868 (born 1792)
• April 13 – Isaiah Rogers, architect (born 1800)
• May 23 – Alexander O. Anderson, U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1840 to 1841 (born 1794)
• July 18 – Laurent Clerc, advocate for the deaf (born 1785)
• July 22 – John A. Roebling, bridge engineer (born 1806 in Prussia)
• July 30 – Isaac Toucey, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1851 to 1857 (born 1792)
• August 6 – David J. Baker, U.S. Senator from Illinois in 1830 (born 1792)
• September 10 – John Bell, U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1847 to 1859 (born 1796)
• October 8 – Franklin Pierce, 14th president of the United States from 1853 to 1857 (born 1804)
• October 15 – William Hamlin, engraver (born 1772 in Rhode Island)
• November 11 – Hiram Bingham I, missionary to Hawaii (born 1789)
• November 21 – Benjamin Fitzpatrick, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1848 to 1849 and 1853 to 1861 (born 1802)
• December 18 – Louis Moreau Gottschalk, composer and pianist (born 1829)
• December 24 – Edwin Stanton, 27th United States Secretary of War (born 1814)
• Sandy Cornish, freed slave and farmer (born 1793)

• Timeline of United States history (1860–1899)

• American Annual Cyclopaedia ... 1869, NY: D. Appleton & Co. – via HathiTrust

•   Media related to 1869 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons