March 4, 1869 - Ulysses Grant inaugurated as 18th president.

March 7, 1869 - The Suez Canal, the waterway across Egypt connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, opened.

April 10, 1869 - Congress increases number of Supreme Court judges from 7 to 9.

April 16, 1869 - Ebenezer Bassett, first U.S. Negro diplomat, begins service in Haiti.

May 10, 1869 - A golden spike is driven at Promontory, Utah, marks the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The U-S transcontinental railways, from north to south became: 1. Great Northern (later part of Burlington Northern). 2. Milwaukee Road (the last one completed, and no longer there). 3. Northern Pacific (later part of Burlington Northern). 4. The original route (Union Pacific and Central Pacific). 5. Southern Pacific (formed from the original Central Pacific).

September 24, 1869 - "Black Friday": financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk tried to inflate and corner the gold market (spread a rumor that President Grant was about to stop the sale of government gold); sent Wall Street into a panic, left thousands of investors in financial ruin; Grant eventually saw through the scheme, put $4 million worth of gold on the market; price of gold in specie fell to $133 from $163.50; swindle blemished Grant's record, Gould dumped his holdings before the price drop, Fisk took hefty loss.

October 9, 1869 - President Ulysses S. Grant announces the death of former President Franklin Pierce. Pierce, whose presidency was remembered mostly for his failure to end the debate over slavery, had died the day before at his home in Concord, NH (only president to hail from New Hampshire); effects of alcoholism led to his death in 1869 at the age of 65. Upon his death, Grant arranged for "suitable military and naval honors" for Pierce’s funeral and, in keeping with tradition, ordered flags flown at half-staff on all federal buildings.

November 17, 1869 - The Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean and the Red seas, is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony attended by French Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. Construction began in April 1859, and at first digging was done by hand with picks and shovels wielded by forced laborers. Later, European workers with dredgers and steam shovels arrived. Labor disputes and a cholera epidemic slowed construction, and the Suez Canal was not completed until 1869--four years behind schedule. When it opened, the Suez Canal was only 25 feet deep, 72 feet wide at the bottom, and 200 to 300 feet wide at the surface. Consequently, fewer than 500 ships navigated it in its first full year of operation. Major improvements began in 1876, however, and the canal soon grew into the one of the world's most heavily traveled shipping lanes. In 1875, Great Britain became the largest shareholder in the Suez Canal Company when it bought up the stock of the new Ottoman governor of Egypt. Seven years later, in 1882, Britain invaded Egypt, beginning a long occupation of the country. The Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936 made Egypt virtually independent, but Britain reserved rights for the protection of the canal.

December 28, 1869 - The Knights of Labor, a labor union of tailors in Philadelphia, hold the first Labor Day ceremonies in American history. The Knights of Labor was established as a secret society of Pennsylvanian tailors earlier in the year and later grew into a national body that played an important role in the labor movement of the late 19th century. The first annual observance of Labor Day was organized by the American Federation of Labor in 1884, which resolved in a convention in Chicago that "the first Monday in September be set aside as a laborer's national holiday." 1887 - Oregon became the first state to designate Labor Day a holiday; 1894 - Congress designated the first Monday in September a legal holiday for all federal employees and the residents of the District of Columbia.

January 26, 1870 - Virginia rejoined the Union.

February 7, 1870 - The Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the case of Hepburn v. Griswold that effectively declared that the Legal Tender Acts, initially passed during the height of the Civil War in 1862 and 1863, were unconstitutional. As a result, debts piled up before 1862 or 1863 could not be paid via U.S. Treasury notes that were issued under the auspices of the acts; President Ulysses S. Grant, who used his executive power to reinstate the Legal Tender Acts; 1871 - Supreme Court reversed course and upheld the Legal Tender Acts.

February 9, 1870 - President Ulysses S. Grant signed a joint resolution of Congress authorizing the Secretary of War to establish a national weather service (originally named "The Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce"); placed under the direction of the Signal Service Corps of the Secretary of War; September 1, 1869 - Cleveland Abbe had inaugurated a private weather reporting and warning service at Cincinnati and had been issuing weather reports or bulletins; January 3, 1871 - accepted position with Bureau; first U.S. metereologist, and known as the "father of the U.S. Weather Bureau."

March 30, 1870 - The 15th amendment to the Constitution, giving black men the right to vote, was declared in effect; April 1 - Thomas Peterson-Mundy of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, became the first African American to vote.

March 30, 1870 - Texas was readmitted to the Union.

May 12, 1870 - Manitoba entered the confederation as a Canadian province.

June 22, 1870 - Congress created the Department of Justice.

June 26, 1870 - The first section of the boardwalk in Atlantic City, N.J., was opened to the public.

July 8, 1870 - Second general revision of the copyright law. Copyright activities, including deposit and registration, centralized in the Library of Congress. Works of art added to protected works. Act reserved to authors the right to create certain derivative works including translations and dramatizations. Indexing of the record of registrations began.

July 15, 1870 - Georgia became the last of the Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.

July 19, 1870 - The Franco-Prussian war began; led to the unification of the German states.

September 20, 1870 - Italian troops took control of the Papal States, leading to the unification of Italy.

October 2, 1870 - Rome became the capital of the newly unified Italy. The previous capital was Florence.

November 1, 1870 - The U.S. Weather Bureau made its first meteorological observations, using reports gathered by telegraph from 24 locations.

March 3, 1871 - Congress establishes the civil service system.

April 20, 1871 - Congress passed Third Force Act, popularly known as the Ku Klux Act; authorized President Ulysses S. Grant to declare martial law, impose heavy penalties against terrorist organizations, and use military force to suppress the Ku Klux Klan. Led to nine South Carolina counties being placed under martial law and thousands of arrests. In 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Ku Klux Act unconstitutional, but by that time Reconstruction had ended, and the KKK had faded away. Founded in 1865 by a group of Confederate veterans, the KKK rapidly grew from a secret social fraternity to a paramilitary force bent on reversing the federal government's progressive Reconstruction Era-activities in the South, especially policies that elevated the rights of the local African-American population. The name of the Ku Klux Klan was derived from the Greek word kyklos, meaning "circle," and the Scottish-Gaelic word "clan," which was probably chosen for the sake of alliteration. Under a platform of philosophized white racial superiority, the group employed violence as a means of pushing back Reconstruction and its enfranchisement of African-Americans. Former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was the KKK's first grand wizard and in 1869 unsuccessfully tried to disband it after he grew critical of the Klan's excessive violence.

May 10, 1871 - Treaty of Frankfurt am Main is signed, ended the Franco-Prussian War, marked the decisive entry of a newly unified German state on the stage of European power politics, so long dominated by the great empires of England and France. Humiliating defeat of Louis Napoleon’s Second Empire of France. At the root of the Franco-Prussian conflict was the desire of the ambitious statesman Prince Otto von Bismarck to unify the collection of German states under the control of the most powerful of them, his own Prussia. The event that immediately precipitated the war was the Bismarck-engineered bid by Prince Leopold, of the Prussian Hohenzollern royal family, for the throne of Spain, left empty after a revolution in 1868. July 19, 1870 - France declared war to humiliate Prussia into subordination, insisted that the Prussian king, Wilhelm I, personally apologize to the French sovereign and promise that there be no further such attempts by the Hohenzollerns. States of southern Germany honored their treaties with mighty Prussia and immediately backed Wilhelm’s armies. Thus the Germans were able to marshal some 400,000 men, double the number of French troops, at the outset of the war. Three German armies cut a broad swath through France, gaining the upper hand almost from the beginning of the fighting. Germany annexed the French provinces of Alsace (excluding Belfort) and Lorraine; the French were also ordered to pay an indemnity of five billion francs. German troops occupied France until September 1873, when the amount had been paid in full. The Franco-Prussian War and the nearly three years of German occupation that followed marked the beginning of a growing enmity between anxious France, its influence and power in decline, and striving Germany, a technologically and industrially superior nation that by the first decade of the 20th century had built the most powerful land army on the European continent.

July 8, 1871 - Day of reckoning for William "Boss" Tweed, the New York City official who helped pioneer urban America's lucrative version of government corruption. Indeed, on this and a few successive days, Tweed's recklessly profligate practices were exposed in a series of articles published by the New York Times. A mechanic turned politician, Tweed pushed legislation through the state government that helped transform his seemingly meager role as the head of the Department of Public Works into the roost from which he ruled over New York City. Tweed used his power--and an array of kickbacks, dummy vouchers and phony contacts--to rake in a handsome fortune. When all the cash was counted, Tweed had supposedly hauled in $200 million; in the process, he also almost bankrupted New York City. The political kingpin was brought to trial and eventually received a twelve-year prison sentence. But, the ever-slippery Tweed managed to escape from jail; he trekked to Cuba and then Spain before being shipped back to the United States by foreign leaders. Upon returning home, Tweed attempted to trade a confession for immunity. The gambit proved to be a major blunder: though Tweed revealed the machinations of his corrupt regime, local officials were of no mind to wipe his crimes off the books. And so Tweed, the once imperious political boss, was sent back to prison, where he died in 1878.

July 20, 1871 - British Columbia becomes sixth Canadian province.

October 8, 1871 - Great Fire began near the home of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary at 137 De Koven Street in southwest Chicago at about 9 p.m., destroyed over 4 miles of Chicago; 18,000 buildings were destroyed by the fire, the most notable was the city’s courthouse, which had cost over $1 million to build. The Field and Leiter department store was also lost, with an estimated $2 million of merchandise inside. 250 people died, 100,000 people were left homeless. All told, the fire was responsible for an estimated $200 million in damages (more than $3 billion in today's money), approximately one-third of the city’s entire worth.

October 17, 1871 - President Grant suspends writ of habeas corpus.

March 1, 1872 - Congress authorized creation of Yellowstone National Park; Congress moved to set aside 1,221,773 acres of public land straddling the future states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho as America's first national park. President Grant signed the Yellowstone Act of 1872, designated the region as a public "pleasuring-ground," which would be preserved "from injury or spoilation, of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within"; set a precedent and popularized the idea of preserving sections of the public domain for use as public parks. Congress went on to designate dozens of other national parks, and the idea spread to other nations around the world.

February 12, 1873 - Congress abolishes bimetallism and authorizes $1 and $3 gold coins.

February 18, 1873 - The House found Massachusetts Representative Oakes Ames guilty of charges of bribery. Ames had hastily formed Credit Mobilier in the wake of the government's grant of land and building rights to Union Pacific Railroad and then gave bribes to various officials to win the Union Pacific construction job. He also charged the government $100 million for the job, double what the rail line had cost to construct. The government soon got wise to Ames's swindle and investigated the affair. The House recommended Ames's expulsion from the House. But legislators chose instead to censure him. The case against Credit Mobiler lived on, eventually made it to the Supreme Court, which ruled for Ames's company on the grounds that the government couldn't marshal a lawsuit until Credit Mobilier's debt matured in 1895.

March 3, 1873 - Congress enacts the so-called Comstock Law (named for Anthony Comstock, salesman from Connecticut), making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" book through the mails. Also unlawful under the law is sending anything "designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion."

March 3, 1873 - Members of Congress passed what has since come to be known as "The Salary Grab Act," a bill that boosted legislator's salaries by a staggering 50 percent. Bill also paved the way for the pay increase to be effective retroactively for the past two years. Congress also doubled the salaries of the President, as well as the Supreme Court Justices. Congress eventually acceded to the public's demands and killed the "Salary Grab Act."

March 16, 1873 - Antislavery advocate George Boutwell Sewall ended his four-year stint as the U.S. secretary of the treasury. Sewall was a harsh and outspoken critic of Andrew Johnson's presidency: along with lobbing frequent attacks, Sewall led the charge to have Johnson impeached. In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant tabbed Sewall as the nation's twenty-eighth secretary of the treasury. Following his run in the Treasury, Sewall served as a U.S. senator and presidential advisor before returning to the private sector as a lawyer.

June 18, 1873 - Suffragist Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election.

September 20, 1873 - Panic swept the New York Stock Exchange in the wake of railroad bond defaults and bank failures.

April 14, 1874 - Congress passed The Legal Tender Act. Derisively known in some circles as the "Inflation Bill"; called for 1) $18 million worth of greenbacks to be pumped into the economy, 2) certified the hefty chunk of paper notes that had been released during the previous year, 3) authorized $400 million in greenbacks as legal tender; week after Congress weighed in with its decision, President Ulysses S. Grant moved to kill the bill, arguing that it would unleash a tidal wave of inflation; June 1874 - pro-paper forces successfully pushed another version of the Legal Tender Act into the law books; brought the amount of greenbacks in circulation up to $382 million.

November 25, 1874 - Greenback party, a political alliance composed mainly of Southern and Western farmers ravaged by the Panic of 1873, formed. Along with strong support of the greenback, legal tender that had been introduced in 1861 to help finance the Civil War, the group favored the demise of bank notes and stood firmly against policies forwarded by the U.S. Treasury. The Greenback party enjoyed some initial success, joining forces with the Labor party to gain fourteen seats in Congress in 1878. However, the return of fiscal prosperity in the early 1880s eased the discontent that had carried Greenback candidates to office. By 1884, the party was forced to disband.

January 14, 1875 - "Hard money" forces in the House engineered the passage of the Specie Resumption Act, a legislative salvo against paper currency; bill directed the Treasury (under Secretary John Sherman) to begin exchanging legal tender for gold on January 1, 1879; mandated that the number of greenbacks in circulation be reduced to $300 million; greenbacks became just as valuable as gold on the exchange market; the public was reluctant to swap their paper currency for coinage and the exchange program turned out to be a flop.

March 1, 1875 - Congress passes Civil Rights Act; 1883 - invalidated by Supreme Court.

June 11, 1876 - Republicans pick Rutherford B. Hayes as presidential candidate.

June 25, 1876 - Lt. Col. George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of Little Big Horn in Montana; ignored scout's report of size of Indian encampment; Gen. Custer's command came upon the main camp of Sitting Bull, and at once attacked it, charging the thickest part of it with five companies, Major Reno, with seven companies attacking on the other side. The soldiers were repulsed and a wholesale slaughter ensued. Gen. Custer, his brother, his nephew, and his brother-in-law were killed, and not one of his detachment escaped. The Indians surrounded Major Reno's command and held them in the hills during a whole day, but Gibbon's command came up and the Indians left. The number of killed is stated at 300 and the wounded at 31. Two hundred and seven men are said to have been buried in one place. The list of killed includes seventeen commissioned officers. It is the opinion of Army officers in Chicago, Washington, and Philadelphia, including Gens. Sherman and Sheridan, that Gen. Custer was rashly imprudent to attack such a large number of Indians, Sitting Bull's force being 4,000 strong.

June 27, 1876 - Democratic Party selects Samuel Tilden as presidential candidate.

August 1, 1876 - Colorado was admitted to the union as the 38th state.

August 13, 1876 - Reciprocity Treaty between U.S. and Hawaii ratified.

November 7, 1876 - Rutherford B Hayes and Samuel J Tilden claim presidential victory. Tilden (D) wins election but Electoral college selects Hayes (R) as 19th President of the United States.

April 27, 1897 - Grant's Tomb dedicated.

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Max Byrd (2000). Grant: A Novel. (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 362 p.). Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885 --Fiction; Presidents--Fiction; Generals--Fiction; United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Fiction. Biographical fiction.

Ulysses S. Grant; with an introduction and notes by James M. McPherson (1999). Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. (New York, NY: Penguin, 674 p. [orig. pub. 1885]). Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885; United States. Army--Biography; Presidents--United States--Biography; Generals--United States--Biography; United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Campaigns.

Compiled by Marie Ellen Kelsey; foreword by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (2005). Ulysses S. Grant: A Bibliography. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 520 p.). Director of the Educational Media and Technology Program (College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, MN). Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885 --Bibliography. Grant's early life, his careers both as soldier and as president, his associations with various individuals, his post-presidency activities, the role alcohol played in his life, his battle with throat cancer, and ultimately, his tragic death. 

Harry J. Maihafer (1998). The General and the Journalists: Ulysses S. Grant, Horace Greeley, and Charles Dana. (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 315 p.). Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885 --Relations with journalists; Greeley, Horace, 1811-1872; Dana, Charles A. (Charles Anderson), 1819-1897; Presidents--United States--Biography; Journalists--United States--Biography; Press and politics--United States--History--19th century; United States--Politics and government--1869-1877; United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Journalists.

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Geoffrey Perret (1997). Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President. (New York, NY: Random House, 542 p.). Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885; United States. Army -- Biography; Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Generals -- United States -- Biography.

Mark Perry (2004). Grant and Twain: The Story of a Friendship That Changed America. (New York, NY: Random House, 294 p.). Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885 --Friends and associates; Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885 --Literary art; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 --Friends and associates; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 --Literary art; Presidents--United States--Biography; Authors, American--19th century--Biography; Friendship--United States--Case studies; Race relations in literature; United States--Race relations. 

Horace Porter; introduction by Brooks D. Simpson (2000). Campaigning with Grant. (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 546 p. [orig. pub. 1897]). Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885 --Military leadership; Porter, Horace, 1837-1921; Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885 --Friends and associates; United States. Army--Biography; Generals--United States--Biography; United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Personal narratives; United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Campaigns.

Frank J. Scaturro (1998). President Grant Reconsidered. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 137 p.). Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885; Presidents--United States--Biography; United States--Politics and government--1869-1877.

Brooks D. Simpson (2000). Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822-1865. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 533 p.). Historian, Arizona State University. Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson), 1822-1885; United States. Army--Biography; Presidents--United States--Biography; Generals--United States--Biography.