Events from the year 1855 in the United States.
Incumbents
State governments
Events
- 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 4 – Walt Whitman's poetry collection Leaves of Grass is published in Brooklyn.
- July 4 –Amelia Bloomer speaks in favor of women's rights and suffrage in Omaha, Nebraska.
- July 6 – The Kansas Territorial Legislature meets for the last time in Pawnee, voting to relocate to Shawnee, closer to the border of slave state Missouri.
- July 16 – U.S. Indian commissioner Isaac Stevens signs the Hellgate treaty with Native Americans living in modern-day western Montana.
- August 6 – Bloody Monday: Protestant mobs attack Irish and German Catholics on an election day in Louisville, Kentucky, causing 22 deaths.
- September 3 РFirst Sioux War: Battle of Ash Hollow РU.S. forces defeat a band of Brul̩ 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 in the first battle of the War.
- October 28âÂÂ31 – 1855 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 9âÂÂ10 – 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.
Ongoing
Births
- February 4 – George Cope, painter (died 1929)
- February 23 – Jonathan Bourne, Jr., U.S. Senator from Oregon from 1907 to 1913 (died 1940)
- June 14 – Robert M. La Follette, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin (died 1925)
- June 17 – Janet Cook Lewis, portrait painter, librarian and bookbinder (died 1947)
- July 12 – Eugene Prussing, lawyer and philanthropist (died 1936)
- July 29 – Bowman Brown Law, politician (died 1916)
- August 4 – Jay Hunt, film director (died 1932)
- September 2 – M. Hoke Smith, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1911 to 1920 (died 1931)
- October 21 – Howard Hyde Russell, temperance activist (died 1946)
- October 23 – James S. Sherman, 27th vice president of the United States from 1909 to 1912 (died 1912)
- October 26 – Jessie Wilson Manning, author and lecturer (died 1947)
- November 5 – Eugene V. Debs, union leader (died 1926)
- November 6 – Annie Keeler, early woman physician (died 1927)
- December 10 – August Spies, labor activist and newspaper editor (died 1887)
- December 28 – John William Wood, Sr., North Carolinan politician, founder of Benson, North Carolina (died 1928)
Deaths
See also
References
External links