14th Amendment adopted | July 28, 1868 | HISTORY

In an event that heralds the birth of modern Japan, patriotic samurai from Japan’s outlying domains join with anti-shogunate nobles in restoring the emperor to power after 700 years.

On February 23, 1868, William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois is born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Du Bois would become a brilliant scholar, an influential proponent of civil rights and a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The U.S. House of Representatives votes 11 articles of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson, nine of which cite Johnson’s removal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The House vote made President Johnson the first president to be impeached in U.S. history.

For the first time in U.S. history, the impeachment trial of an American president gets underway in the U.S. Senate. President Andrew Johnson, reviled by the Republican-dominated Congress for his views on Reconstruction, stood accused of having violated the controversial Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress over his veto in 1867.

On May 5, 1868, Martha Jones of Amelia County, Virginia is believed to be the first Black woman to receive a U.S. patent for inventing a machine that husks and shells corn all in one procedure. The Patent No. 77,494 granted to Jones three years after the Civil War for her “Improvement to the Corn Husker, Sheller” was for a device that pulled off and cut up the corn husk and stripped the kernels off the cob, all at the same time, a key technological step in automating agricultural progress.

On May 16, 1868, the U.S. Senate votes against impeaching President Andrew Johnson for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” He would not be fully acquitted of all charges until 10 days later, on May 26, 1868.

At the end of a historic two-month trial, the U.S. Senate narrowly fails to convict President Andrew Johnson of the impeachment charges levied against him by the House of Representatives three months earlier. The senators voted 35 guilty and 19 not guilty on the second article of impeachment, a charge related to his violation of the Tenure of Office Act in the previous year. Ten days earlier, the Senate had likewise failed to convict Johnson on another article of impeachment, the 11th, voting an identical 35 for conviction and 19 for acquittal. Because both votes fell short–by one vote–of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Johnson, he was judged not guilty and remained in office.

By proclamation of General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, the first major Memorial Day observance is held to honor those who died “in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” Known to some as “Decoration Day,” mourners honored the Civil War dead by decorating their graves with flowers. On the first Decoration Day, May 30, 1868, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, after which 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Civil War soldiers buried in the cemetery.

Attempting to convince local Native Americans to make peace with the United States, the Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet meets with the Sioux leader Sitting Bull in present-day Montana.

July 28, 1868: Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including formerly enslaved people—is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution. Secretary of State William Seward issues a proclamation certifying the amendment.

Early in the morning on September 17, 1868, a large band of Cheyenne and Sioux stage a surprise attack on Major George A. Forsyth and a volunteer force of 50 frontiersmen in Colorado.

The first volume of Louisa May Alcott’s book Little Women is published on September 30, 1868. The novel will become Alcott’s first bestseller and a beloved children’s classic.

Without bothering to identify the village or do any reconnaissance, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads an early morning attack on a band of peaceful Cheyenne living with Chief Black Kettle.

An angry group of vigilantes yank the brothers Frank, William, and Simeon Reno from their Indiana jail cell and hang them, after a guard they had shot during an earlier train robbery died of his wounds. Although the Reno gang—which included another brother, John, as well—had a short reign of terror, they are credited with pulling off the first train robbery in American history and are believed to be the inspiration for criminal copycats like the legendary Jesse James.