Last edition:
The Japanese government issued the Haitō Edict, The Sword Abolishment Edict (廃刀令) prohibiting people, with the exception of former lords (daimyōs), the military, and law enforcement officials, from carrying weapons in public, including swords.
It was an attack on the former samurai class, with their establishment itself having already been eliminated.
The Big Horn Expedition returned to Ft. Fetterman. It was a failure.
The commander of the expedition, Joseph J. Reynolds, would be court martialed for failures associated with the campaign and was convicted on all three charges. He retired in 1877. He died in 1899 at age 77.
Last edition:
Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds of the 2nd Cavalry opened the Great Sioux War with an attack on a Northern Cheyenne and Oglala Lakota village near the location of present day Broadus.
Much native property was destroyed by the attack was poorly executed and the inhabitants of the village largely escaped. Reynolds was accused of dereliction of duty for failing to properly support the first charge with his entire command; for burning the captured supplies, food, blankets, buffalo robes, and ammunition instead of keeping them for army use; and for losing hundreds of the captured horses.
When I was a student in Laramie I lived for a time on Reynolds Street, named after Col. Reynolds.
Last edition:
And, just a few days after it happened in Kentucky, a meat shower happened over London.
Weird.
Last edition;
Alexander Graham Bell successfully transmitted the first intelligible human speech over a telephone system, saying, "Mr. Watson, come here—I want to see you".
Also:
Last issue:
March 8, 1876
Executive Mansion
By an Executive order dated October 20, 1875, the following-described tract of country, situated in Montana Territory, was withdrawn from public sale and set apart for the use of the Crow tribe of Indians in said Territory to be added to their reservation, viz: “Commencing at a point in the mid-channel of the Yellowstone River, where the one hundred and seventh degree of west longitude crosses the said river; thence up said mid-channel of the Yellowstone to the mouth of Big Timber Creek; thence up said creek 20 miles, if the said creek can be followed that distance; it not, then in the same direction continued from the source thereof to a point 20 miles from the mouth of said creek; thence eastwardly along a line parallel to the Yellowstone—no point of which shall be less than 20 miles from the river—to the one hundred and seventh degree west longitude; thence south to the place of beginning.” The said Executive order of October 20, 1875, above noted, is hereby revoked, and the tract of land therein described is again restored to the public domain.
U. S. Grant
Note how the White House was called the "Executive Mansion".
Last edition:
Scottish born Alexander Graham Bell, age 29, patented the telephone.
Last edition:
Secretary of War William Belknap resigned just before he was about to be impeached for corruption.
Belknap was a prewar politician and lawyer who had served as a Union General during and after the Civil War.
Last edition:
Japan and Korean signed the Japan Korea Treaty of Amity, formally ending Korea's status as a tributary state of the Chinese Qing Dynasty, but giving Japan special rights in an independent Korea.
Last edition:
Texas adopted its current state constitution.
FWIW, most states change constitutions fairly frequently.
Last edition.
The Territory of Colorado granted women the full franchise. Wyoming had done the same in 1869.
It didn't make the front page of this Denver newspaper, but then, this was probably a morning addition.
John Henry "Doc" Holliday arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, following news of gold having been found in the territory. He went to work there as a faro dealer in the Bella Union Saloon which was owned by Thomas Miller, a partner of John A. Babb for whom he'd been similarly employed in Denver.
The Bella Union in Cheyenne was located in what is now the parking lot for the Hacienda restaurant in Cheyenne, so the building is no longer there. The bar itself did not have a long presence in Cheyenne, as in the fall of 1876 the owner moved the institution to Deadwood, South Dakota, and Holliday went with it. It was following the regional gold rush.
Holliday was a dentist by trade, but he practiced only a year before heading West after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. He briefly resumed dentistry after moving to Dallas, but only very briefly, having to give it up due to the disease, after which he turned to gambling for a livelihood. The sometimes illegal occupation was one that required carrying a sidearm.
Wyatt Earp wrote of Holliday:
I found him a loyal friend and good company. He was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long, lean blonde fellow nearly dead with consumption and at the same time the most skillful gambler and nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever knew.
Bat Masterson, who did not like him, wrote:
While he never did anything to entitle him to a Statue in the Hall of Fame, Doc Holliday was nevertheless a most picturesque character on the western border in those days when the pistol instead of law determined issues.... Holliday had a mean disposition and an ungovernable temper, and under the influence of liquor was a most dangerous man…. Physically, Doc Holliday was a weakling who could not have whipped a healthy fifteen-year-old boy in a go-as-you-please fistfight.
Holliday was a curious figure in various ways, and there have been various efforts to pin down his personality, probably not all successfully. A convert from Presbyterianism to Methodism, he converted to Catholicism on his deathbed and seems to have carried a torch for a cousin who became a nun, Sister Mary Melanie Holliday, with some accounts holding that in spite of his association with Big Nose Kate he pined for her his entire life.
He died in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, in 1887.
Last edition:
The National League was founded on this date.
It was a successor to the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP or National Association (NA)). The original teams were
The Secretary of the Interior relinquished jurisdiction over all Plains Indians not on reservations to the War Department.
Last edition:
