1862

From dKosopedia

Category: Timeline

1861 1862 1863

Events

• U.S. Congress outlaws polygamy in the United States.
• First printing of U.S. national fiat or paper money.
• Homestead Act of 1862 transfered ownership of 270 million acres of public land (formerly Native American owned) to private farmers, an area equivalent to 10% of the U.S. Massive government giveaway program.
• California imposes "police tax" of $2.50 a month on every Chinese; Chinese Consolidated Benevolant Association organized.
• Smallpox epidemic kills many of the First Nations in British Columbia.
• Russian Tsar Alexander II appoints M. Kh. Reutern to be Finance Minister.
• Marcel Sembat is born.

Timeline

• January 10: Leland Sanford is sworn in as Governor of California. His inaugural address is full of racist, anti-immigrant yellow peril: "Asia, with her numberless millions, sends to our shores the dregs of her population."
• April: U.S. Congress abolishes chattel slavery in the District of Columbia, with financial compensation to slaveowners.
• May 16: African American seaman Robert Smalls escapes slavery and the Confederacy by hijacking the C.S.S. Planter and affords the Union a miltiary intelligence coup.
• June 2: Union Admiral Du Pont and Major General Hunter land two divisions on James Island, SC.
• June 22: Henry Morton Stanley, former Confederate POW and newly enlisted Union private, deserts the Union Army.
• July 16: Samuel Francis Du Pont is appointed Rear Admiral in recognition of his victory at Port Royal.
• September 22: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation
• October 6: Royal mail steamship Australasian arrives in Liverpool which from New York with news that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
• December 26: Mass execution of 38 Sioux men in Mankato, Minnesota for participation in the Sioux Uprising.