1855 in The United States - Events

Events

  • January – Klamath and Salmon River War: In Klamath County, California, hostility between settlers and the local Native Americans becomes violent. The California State Militia and U.S. Army intervene, ending the war in March.
  • January 23 – The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota (a crossing made today by the Hennepin Avenue Bridge).
  • January 26 – The Point No Point Treaty is signed in the Washington Territory.
  • February 12 – Michigan State University (the "pioneer" land-grant college) is established.
  • February 22 – Pennsylvania State University is founded as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania.
  • March 3 – The U.S. Congress appropriates $30,000 to create the U.S. Camel Corps.
  • March 16 – Bates College is founded by abolitionists in Lewiston, Maine.
  • March 30 – Elections are held for the first Kansas Territory legislature. Missourians cross the border in large numbers to elect a pro-slavery body.
  • April – Cincinnati riots of 1855: Tension between nativists and German-American immigrants in Cincinnati breaks out into territorial street fighting on election day.
  • May 17 – The Mount Sinai Hospital is dedicated (as the Jews' Hospital) in New York City; it opens to patients on June 5.
  • June 6 – Portland Rum Riot: A crowd gathers at a storehouse believed to hold alcohol in Portland, Maine. The militia is called in and fires on the crowd to disperse the crowd, killing one person.
  • June 28 – The Sigma Chi Fraternity is founded at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
  • July 1 – Quinault Treaty signed, Quinault and Quileute cede their land to the United States.
  • July 2 – The Kansas territorial legislature convenes in Pawnee and begins passing proslavery laws.
  • July 16 – U.S. Indian commissioner Isaac Stevens signs the Hellgate treaty with Native Americans living in what is present-day western Montana.
  • August 6 – Bloody Monday: Protestant mobs attack Irish Catholics on an election day in Louisville, Kentucky, causing 22 deaths.
  • September 3 – First Sioux War – Battle of Ash Hollow: U.S. forces defeat a band of Brulé Lakota in present-day Garden County, Nebraska.
  • October 5 – Yakima War – Battle of Toppenish Creek: In the Yakima River Valley, a band of Yakama warriors forces a company of U.S. soldiers to retreat. It is the first battle of the Yakima War.
  • October 28–31 – First Fiji Expedition: The U.S. Navy dispatches the USS John Adams to Viti Levu, Fiji, to protect American interests. One American sailor is killed and two Marines are wounded.
  • November 1 – 31 people are killed in the Gasconade Bridge train disaster in Missouri.
  • November 9–10 – Yakima War – Battle of Union Gap: American soldiers attack a Yakama village, forcing the village to retreat.
  • November 21 – Large-scale Bleeding Kansas violence begins with events leading to the Wakarusa War between antislavery and proslavery forces.

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Famous quotes containing the word events:

    “The prime lesson the social sciences can learn from the natural sciences is just this: that it is necessary to press on to find the positive conditions under which desired events take place, and that these can be just as scientifically investigated as can instances of negative correlation. This problem is beyond relativity.”
    —Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)

    “The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
    —Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    “The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
    —John Ashbery (b. 1927)