Historical Events
- May 1 Lee orders Confederate troops under T J Jackson to Harper's Ferry
- May 3 General Winfield Scott presents his Anaconda Plan for the North against the South in American Civil War
- May 3 Lincoln asks for 42,000 Army Volunteers and another 18,000 seamen
- May 4 At Gretna, Louisiana, one of 1st guns of Rebel navy is cast
- May 5 Alexandria, Virginia - Confederate troops abandon the city
- May 6 Arkansas & Tennessee becomes 9th & 10th states to secede from US
- May 7 Riot occurs between prosecessionist & Union supporters in Knoxville TN
- May 8 Richmond, Virginia, is named the capital of the Confederacy in the US
- May 10 Union troops march on state militia in St Louis, Missouri
British Neutrality
May 13 Queen Victoria announces Britain's position of neutrality during the US Civil War
- May 13 The Great Comet of 1861 is discovered by John Tebbutt of Windsor, New South Wales, Australia
- May 14 The Canellas meteorite, an 859-gram chondrite-type meteorite, strikes the earth near Barcelona, Spain
- May 16 Confederate government offers war volunteers $10 premium
- May 16 Kentucky proclaims its neutrality
- May 16 Major General Twiggs surrenders to Confederate Army in San Antonio, Texas (US Civil War)
First Color Photograph
May 17 First color photograph, of a tartan ribbon is shown by Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell to the Royal Institution in London
- May 18 Battle of Sewall's Point Virginia - 1st Federal offense against the South
- May 18 Friedrich Hebbel's play "Kriemhildes Rache" premieres in Weimar
- May 20 Cornerstone of University of Washington laid in Seattle
- May 20 Kentucky proclaims its neutrality in Civil War
- May 20 North Carolina becomes 11th and last state to secede from the Union
- May 20 US Marshals, in search of secessionist evidence, seize the previous year's telegraph dispatches
- May 21 Richmond, Virginia, is designated the Confederate Capital
- May 23 Three Virginia slaves Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory and James Townsend escape, rowing across Hampton Roads to Fort Monroe, Virginia - declared 1st contraband of war the next day [1]
- May 23 Virginia citizens vote 3 to 1 in favor of secession from the Union
- May 24 Alexandria, Virginia, occupied by Union troops
Butler Declares Slaves Contraband
May 24 Union Major General Benjamin Butler declares escaped slaves "contraband of war", after three slaves escaped to Fort Monroe - will become Union policy and change the course of the war [1]
Dorothea Dix
May 29 Dorothea Dix offers help in setting up hospitals for the Union Army
- May 31 General Beauregard is given command of Confederate Alexandria Line
- May 31 Mint at New Orleans closes
Famous Birthdays
- May 3 Emmett Dalton, American outlaw of the Old West (The Dalton Gang), born in Belton, Missouri (d. 1937)
- May 6 Motilal Nehru, Indian lawyer and freedom fighter, born in Agra, British India (d. 1931)
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
May 7 Indian philosopher, poet, writer (Nobel Prize for Literature 1913), born in Calcutta, British India
- May 11 Frederick Russell Burnham, American scout and adventurer whose friendship with Baden-Powell inspired the founding of the international scouting movement, born in Tivoli, a Dakota Sioux Indian reservation in modern-day Minnesota, (d. 1947)
- May 12 Ivan Caryll [Félix Tilkin], Belgian composer of operetta and musical comedy (The Shop Girl; The Spring Chicken; The Pink Lady), born in Liège, Belgium (d. 1921)
H. H. Holmes (1861-1896)
May 16 American serial killer associated with 27 deaths, born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire
Nellie Melba (1861-1931)
May 19 Australian operatic soprano and face of the Australian 100 dollar note, born in Richmond, Victoria, Australia
Famous Deaths
- May 3 Anthony Philip Heinrich, America's 1st "full-time" composer, dies at 80
- May 9 Peter Ernst von Lasaulx, German philologist and politician, dies at 55
- May 12 Christian Heinrich Hohmann, German composer, dies at 50
- May 24 Elmer E. Ellsworth, American soldier who was the 1st Union officer killed in the American Civil War, dies at 24
