On May 9 – 10, 1860, the Illinois Republican State Convention was held in Decatur.

* 1860 – The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — later renamed Community of Christ — is organized by Joseph Smith III and others at Amboy, Illinois

* 1805 – Joseph Locke, English railway and civil engineer ( d. 1860 )

* 1860 – Annie Oakley, American target shooter ( d. 1926 )

* 1860 – The Second Maori War begins in New Zealand.

* 1860 – William Kennedy Dickson, France-Scottish actor, director, and inventor ( d. 1935 )

* 1860 – Alan Leo, English astrologer ( d. 1917 )

* 1860 – Henrietta Vinton Davis, American writer and public speaker ( d. 1941 )

* 1860 – Florence Harding, American publisher, 31st First Lady of the United States ( d. 1924 )

* 1860 – Jules Laforgue, French poet ( d. 1887 )

* 1860 – Martin Hawke, 7th Baron Hawke, England cricketer ( d. 1938 )

* 1860 – Klara Hitler, Austrian mother of Adolf Hitler ( d. 1907 )

" The Transubstantiation of a Poor White ", in Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward the History of the Part Which Black People Have Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860 – 1880 ( 1935 ).

Unionism and Reconstruction in Tennessee, 1860 – 1869 ( 1934 ) online edition

* 1789 – Stéphanie de Beauharnais, French wife of Charles, Grand Duke of Baden ( d. 1860 )

* 1860 – On his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville makes the oldest known recording of an audible human voice.

* 1860 – Isaac Levitan, Russian painter ( d. 1900 )

* 1860 – The first Pony Express rider reaches Sacramento, California.

* 1860 – Charles XV of Sweden of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Norway in Trondheim.

Historians identify several waves of migration to the United States: one from 1815 – 1860, in which some five million English, Irish, Germanic, Scandinavian, and others from northwestern Europe came to the United States ; one from 1865 – 1890, in which some 10 million immigrants, also mainly from northwestern Europe, settled, and a third from 1890 – 1914, in which 15 million immigrants, mainly from central, eastern, and southern Europe ( many Austrian, Hungarian, Turkish, Lithuanian, Russian, Jewish, Greek, Italian, and Romanian ) settled in the United States.

* 1860 – Ottó Bláthy, Hungarian engineer and inventor ( d. 1939 )

* 1860 – The first successful United States Pony Express run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California begins.

* 1860 – Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, Indian singer and composer ( d. 1936 )

On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States, beating Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democrats, and John Bell of the new Constitutional Union Party.

In the 1860 United States Census the slave population in the United States had grown to four million, and in Reconstruction after the Civil War ( late 1860s ) the newly freed slaves became citizens with ( in the case of men ) a nominal right to vote.

* 1860 – South Carolina becomes the first state to attempt to secede from the United States.

George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen ( 28 January 1784 – 14 December 1860 ), styled Lord Haddo from 1791 to 1801, was a British politician and landowner, successively a Tory, Conservative and Peelite, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1852 until 1855.

* 1860 – Charles Curtis, Vice President of the United States ( d. 1936 )

With the creation of the United States Lighthouse Board in 1852, all U. S. lighthouses received Fresnel lenses by 1860.

* 1860 – Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward, who later becomes the United States Secretary of State.

Postage stamp collecting began at the same time that stamps were first issued, and by 1860 thousands of collectors and stamp dealers were appearing around the world as this new study and hobby spread across Europe, European colonies, the United States and other parts of the world.

By 1860 the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States.

* 1860 – The Prince of Wales ( later King Edward VII of the United Kingdom ) visits the United States.

The National Rifle Association ( NRA ) of the United Kingdom was founded in 1860 to raise the funds for an annual national rifle meeting " for the encouragement of Volunteer Rifle Corps, and the promotion of Rifle-shooting throughout Great Britain ".

* March 17 – Susanna M. Salter, first woman mayor in the United States ( b. 1860 )

* February 8 – Charles Curtis, 31st Vice President of the United States ( b. 1860 )

* November 4 – Democrats gain control of the United States House of Representatives for the first time since 1860.

* January 28 – George Hamilton Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ( d. 1860 )

* George Hamilton Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen ( 1784 – 1860 ), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The United States presidential election of 1860 was a quadrennial election held on November 6, 1860, for the office of President of the United States and the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War.

The modern meaning of the flag was forged in December 1860 when Major Robert Anderson, acting without orders, moved the U. S. garrison from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, in defiance of the power of the new Confederate States of America.

* Corsican Guard, the papal militia at the time of the Papal States ( abolished in 1860 ).