1869 in the United States

Federal government

• President:

Andrew Johnson (D-Tennessee) (until March 4)

Ulysses S. Grant (R-Illinois) (starting March 4)

• Vice President:

vacant (until March 4)

Schuyler Colfax (R-Indiana) (starting March 4)

• Chief Justice: Salmon P. Chase (Ohio)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives:

Schuyler Colfax (R-Indiana) (until March 3)

Theodore Medad Pomeroy (R-New York) (March 3–4)

James G. Blaine (R-Maine) (starting March 4)

• Congress: 40th (until March 4), 41st (starting March 4)

January–March

• January 1 – Sigma Nu, the first anti-hazing honor/social fraternity, is founded, at Virginia Military Institute.
• January 20 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the first woman to testify before the United States Congress.
• January 21 – The P.E.O. Sisterhood, a philanthropic educational organization for women, is founded at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
• February 15 – Charges of treason against Jefferson Davis are dropped.
• March 4 – Ulysses S. Grant is sworn in as the 18th president of the United States, and Schuyler Colfax is sworn in as the 17th vice president.
• March 9 – Southern Illinois University Carbondale is established by the state legislature as Southern Illinois Normal College.

April–June

• April 6 – The American Museum of Natural History is founded in New York City.
• May 6 – Purdue University is founded in West Lafayette, Indiana.
• May 10 – The "golden spike" is driven marking the completion of the First transcontinental railroad in Promontory, Utah.
• May 15 – Woman's suffrage: In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.
• May 26 – Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
• June 1
  • The Cincinnati Red Stockings open the baseball season as the first fully professional baseball team.
  • Thomas Edison is granted his first patent for the Electric Vote Recorder.
• June 15 – John Wesley Hyatt patents the first plastic, Celluloid, in Albany, New York.

July–September

• July 4 – World's first rodeo held in Deer Trail, Colorado
• September 15 – Brooklyn Fire Department organized as a professional brigade.
• September 24 – Black Friday: The Fisk-Gould Scandal causes a financial panic in the United States.

October–December

• October 5 – During construction of the Eastman tunnel in St. Anthony, Minnesota (modern-day Minneapolis), the Mississippi River breaks through the tunnel's limestone ceiling, nearly destroying Saint Anthony Falls.
• October 8 – New York Foundling Asylum incorporated.
• October 11 – Gamma Sigma becomes the first high school fraternity in North America at Brockport Normal School, Brockport, New York.
• October 16 – The Tremont House in Boston becomes the first hotel to have indoor plumbing.
• November 6 – The first intercollegiate game of American football is played: Rutgers University defeats Princeton University 6–4 in a college football game.
• December 7 – Outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery, in Gallatin, Missouri.
• December 10
  • The first American chapter of Kappa Sigma is founded at the University of Virginia.
  • The Wyoming territorial legislature gives women the right to vote, one of the first such laws in the world.
• December 13: The Los Angeles Police Department is created, with city marshal William C. Warren hiring six officers.

Undated

• The H. J. Heinz Company is founded as Heinz Noble & Company in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania.
• James Gordon Bennett, Jr. of the New York Herald asks Henry Morton Stanley to find Dr. Livingstone.
• Marcus Jastrow arrives in the United States to become rabbi of Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia.

Ongoing

• Reconstruction era (1865–1877)
• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)