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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
^Bell, John L. Hard Times : Beginnings of the Great Depression in North Carolina, 1929-1933. Raleigh: North Carolina Dept. of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History, 1982. Print.
^Sears, Donald A. (1978). John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. p. 12. ISBN080-5-7723-08.
Media related to 1876 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons