1876 in the United States

Federal government

• President: Ulysses S. Grant (R-Illinois)
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Morrison Waite (Ohio)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives:

Michael C. Kerr (D-Indiana) (until August 19)

Samuel J. Randall (D-Pennsylvania) (starting December 4)

• Congress: 44th

January–March

• January 27 – Northampton Bank robbery.^[1]
• February 2 – The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs is formed at a meeting in Chicago, Illinois; it replaces the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. Morgan Bulkeley of the Hartford Dark Blues is selected as the league's first president.
• February 22 – Johns Hopkins University is founded in Baltimore, Maryland.
• February/March – The Harvard Lampoon humor magazine is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• March – Librarian Melvil Dewey first publishes the Dewey Decimal Classification system.^[2]
• March 2 – Secretary of War William W. Belknap resigns his office in the wake of the trader post scandal.
• March 3 – Kentucky meat shower.^[3]
• March 7 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone.^[4]
• March 10 – Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful call by saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.."

April–June

• April 17 – Friends Academy is founded by Gideon Frost at Locust Valley, New York.
• May 10 – The Centennial Exposition begins in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• May 18 – Wyatt Earp starts work in Dodge City, Kansas, serving under Marshal Larry Deger.
• May 29 – Senate votes 37 to 29 that Secretary of War William W. Belknap cannot be barred from trial and impeachment, despite being a private citizen; however, this is far short of the two-thirds majority required and thus he is acquitted.
• June 4 – The Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California via the First Transcontinental Railroad, 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City.
• June 11 – Rutherford B. Hayes selected by the Republicans as presidential candidate.
• June 17 – Indian Wars: Battle of the Rosebud – 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.
• June 25 – Indian Wars: Battle of the Little Bighorn – an army under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer is defeated by 1,500-2,500 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, suffering over 300 casualties.
• June 27 – Samuel J. Tilden selected by the Democrats as presidential candidate.

July–September

• July 4 – The United States centennial is celebrated.
• August 1
  • Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state (see History of Colorado).
  • Senate votes to acquit former Secretary of War William W. Belknap of all impeached charges relating to the trader post scandal.
• August 2 – Wild Bill Hickok is killed during a poker game in Deadwood, Dakota.
• August 7 – George S. Houston is reelected the 24th governor of Alabama defeating Noadiah Woodruff.
• August 8 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
• September 6 – Southern Pacific line from Los Angeles to San Francisco completed.
• September 7 – In Northfield, Minnesota, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang attempt to rob the town's bank but are surrounded by an angry mob and are nearly wiped out.

October–December

• October 4 – Texas A&M University opens for classes.
• October 6 – American Library Association founded in Philadelphia.
• November 7
  • The 1876 presidential election ends indecisively with 184 Electoral College votes for Samuel J. Tilden, 165 for Rutherford B. Hayes, and 20 in dispute. The new president (Hayes) is not decided until 1877.
  • A failed grave robbery of the Lincoln Tomb takes place this night.
• November 10 – The Centennial Exposition ends in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• November 23 – Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Marcy Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.
• November 25 – Indian Wars: In retaliation for the dramatic American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops under General Ranald S. Mackenzie sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River. The soldiers destroy all of the villagers' winter food and clothing, and then slash their ponies' throats.
• December – The first American edition of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, his first individual extended work of fiction, is published by the American Publishing Company; a British edition has appeared in early June in London with the first review appearing on June 24 in a British magazine.
• December 5 – The Brooklyn Theater Fire kills at least 278, possibly more than 300.
• December 6 – The first cremation in the U.S. takes place in a crematory built by Francis Julius LeMoyne.
• December 29 – Ashtabula River railroad disaster: collapse of a bridge over the Ashtabula River near Ashtabula, Ohio kills 92 and injures 64, the worst U.S. railroad accident until 1918.

Undated

• Emile Berliner invents an improved form of microphone which will be adopted for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone.^[5]
• Meharry Medical College is founded in Nashville, Tennessee, as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College; it is the first medical school for African Americans in the South.
• Lyford House, by Richardson Bay, Tiburon, California is constructed.
• Heinz Tomato Ketchup introduced.
• Adolphus Busch's brewery, Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, Missouri, first markets Budweiser, a pale lager, as a nationally sold beer.
• Melville Reuben Bissell files a patent for an improved carpet sweeper.^[6]
• First carousel at Coney Island built by Charles I. D. Looff.
• Spring – Vast numbers of Indians move north to an encampment of the Sioux chief Sitting Bull in the region of the Little Bighorn River, creating the last great gathering of native peoples on the Great Plains.

Ongoing

• Reconstruction era (1865–1877)
• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)
• Depression of 1873–79 (1873–1879)

Full date unknown

• Halver Halversen, traveling jewelry auctioneer and store owner (d. ?)^[9]