Events January–March January 1 – The United Kingdom annexes Lagos Island, in modern-day Nigeria. January 6 – French intervention in Mexico: French, Spanish and British forces arrive in Veracruz, Mexico. January 16 – Hartley Colliery disaster in north-east England: 204 men are trapped and die underground, when the only shaft becomes blocked. January 30 – American Civil War: The first U.S. ironclad warship, , is launched in Brooklyn. January 31 – Alvan Graham Clark makes the first observation of Sirius B, a white dwarf star, through an eighteen-inch telescope at Northwestern University in Illinois. February 1 – American Civil War: Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" is published for the first time in the Atlantic Monthly. February 2 – The first railway is opened in New Zealand, by the Dun Mountain Copper Mining Company. February 6 – American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant gives the Union Army its first victory of the war, by capturing Fort Henry, Tennessee. February 11–16 – American Civil War: Battle of Fort Donelson – General Ulysses S. Grant attacks Fort Donelson, Tennessee, capturing it on the last day. February 21 – American Civil War: Battle of Valverde – Confederate forces defeat Union troops near Fort Craig in New Mexico Territory: February 22 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is officially inaugurated in Richmond, Virginia, to a six-year term as president of the Confederate States. March 6 – An ammunition warehouse explosion in San Andres Chalchicomula, Mexico, kills between 1,400 and 2,280 during the Second French intervention in Mexico. March 7 – American Civil War: Battle of Pea Ridge – The Confederates are shut out of Missouri. March 8 – American Civil War: Ironclad (formerly USS Merrimack) is launched at Hampton Roads, Virginia; the Battle of Hampton Roads starts the same day. March 13 American Civil War: The U.S. federal government forbids all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation. A smallpox epidemic in San Francisco spreads to British Columbia. March 17 – The first railway line in Finland, between the cities of Helsinki and Hämeenlinna, is officially opened. March 26–28 – American Civil War: Battle of Glorieta Pass – In New Mexico, Union forces succeed in stopping the Confederate invasion of New Mexico Territory. March 31 – Victor Hugo's epic French historical novel Les Misérables