1882 in the United States

1882 in the United States
Years:	1879 1880 1881 – 1882 – 1883 1884 1885
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Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1865–1918)

Events from the year 1882 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Chester A. Arthur (R-New York)
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Morrison Waite (Ohio)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: J. Warren Keifer (R-Ohio)
• Congress: 47th

Events

January–March

• January 2
  • The Standard Oil Trust (monopoly) is secretly created to control multiple corporations set up by John D. Rockefeller and his associates.^[1]
  • Oscar Wilde arrives in the United States for an extended lecture tour.^[2]
• January 5 – Charles J. Guiteau is found guilty of the assassination of James A. Garfield (President of the United States), despite an insanity defense raised by his lawyer.^[3]
• March 22 – Polygamy is made a felony by the Edmunds Act passed by the United States Congress.
• March 29 – The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization, is incorporated in New Haven, Connecticut by Father Michael J. McGivney.

April–June

• April 3 – Old West outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back of the head and killed by fellow outlaw Robert Ford in his home at St. Joseph, Missouri for reward.
• May 6 – The Chinese Exclusion Act is the first significant law that restricts immigration into the U.S.
• June 30 – Charles J. Guiteau, the assassin of President James A. Garfield, is hanged.

July–September

• August 3 – The U.S. Congress passes the 1882 Immigration Act.
• August 5 – Standard Oil of New Jersey is established.
• September 4 – Thomas Edison starts the world's first commercial electrical power plant, lighting one square mile of lower Manhattan.
• September 5 – The first United States Labor Day parade is held in New York City.
• September 30 – The Vulcan Street Plant, the first hydroelectric central station to serve a system of private and commercial customers in North America, comes on stream in Appleton, Wisconsin.

October–December

• October 5 – The Society for Ethical Culture of Chicago (the modern-day Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago) is founded by Felix Adler.
• October 16 – The New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad ("Nickel Plate Road") runs its first trains over the entire system between Buffalo, New York, and Chicago. Nine days later the Seney Syndicate sells the road to William Henry Vanderbilt for US$7.2 million.
• November 14 – Franklin Leslie shoots Billy Claiborne dead in the streets of Tombstone, Arizona.

Undated

• The Personal Liberty League is established to oppose the temperance movement in the U.S.
• Carolyn Merrick is elected president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
• Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show debuts.^[4]

Ongoing

• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)
• Depression of 1882–85 (1882–1885)

Births

• January 6 – Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (died 1961)
• January 30 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States from 1933 to 1945 (died 1945)
• July 22 – Edward Hopper, painter (died 1967)
• July 26 – Dixie Bibb Graves, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1937 to 1938 (died 1965)
• September 12 – George L. Berry, U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1937 to 1938 (died 1948)
• October 5 – Robert Goddard, rocket scientist (died 1945)
• October 14 – Éamon de Valera, third President of Ireland (died 1975 in Ireland)

Deaths

• January 3 – Clement Claiborne Clay, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1853 to 1862, Confederate States Senator from Alabama from 1862 to 1864 (born 1816)
• January 30 – Henry Whitney Bellows, clergyman of the Unitarian Church (born 1814)
• February 25 – James Bates, U.S. Representative from Maine from 1831 to 1833 (born 1789)
• March 4 – Milton Latham, U.S. Senator from California from 1860 to 1863 (born 1827)
• March 24 – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet and professor, dies of peritonitis in his Cambridge home (born 1807)
• April 27 – Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist and poet (born 1803)
• June 30 – Charles Guiteau, Assassin of President James A. Garfield (born 1841)
• July 16 – Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln, First Lady of the United States (born 1818)
• July 19 – George N. Stearns, founder of E. C. Stearns & Company (born 1812)
• August 16 – Benjamin Harvey Hill, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1877 to 1882 (born 1823)
• November 5 – Robert Woodward Barnwell, U.S. Senator from South Carolina from 1862 to 1865 (born 1801)
• December 10 – Alexander Gardner, Scottish-born Civil War photographer (born 1821)

External links

• Media related to 1882 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons

References