Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Similar to US History Timeline 1865-1900
Similar to US History Timeline 1865-1900 (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
US History Timeline 1865-1900
- 2. 1850 1862 1864 The Bessemer Process is cheap and efficient process for making steel which was developed by British manufacturer Henry Bessemer and American William Kelly. The technique involved injecting air into molten iron to remove carbon and other impurities. The Homestead Act was a law enacted that provided 160 acres in the West to any citizen who was head of household and would cultivate the land for five years. This law led to settlers claiming private property previously reserved for Native Americans. Massacre at Sand Creek- When the Cheyenne returned to Colorado’s Sand Creek Reserve for the winter, Colonel John Chivington and his troops descended on Cheyenne and that Arapaho camped at Sand Creek. The attack at dawn on November 29, 1864 killed over 150 inhabitants. 1867 Oliver Kelley started the Patrons of Husbandry, an organization for farmers that became popularly known as the Grange and encouraged families to promote the economic well-being of the community and agriculture.
- 3. 1869 1870 1870 The Transcontinental Railroad was competed in 1869, liking the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States. This railroad allowed nationwide transportation that united the country. In the 1870’s, trusts became important. Participants in a trust turned their stock over to a group of trustees- people who ran the separate companies as one large corporation. In return, the companies were entitled to dividends on profits earned by the trust. Long drives are the moving of cattle over trails to a shipping center. There was normally one cowboy to about every 250 head of cattle, a cook who drove the chuck wagon and set up camp, and a wrangler who cared for the extra animals. Trail bossed supervised the drive and negotiated with settlers. 1870 At age 21, Jacob Riis left Denmark for the United States. He found work as a police reporter which exposed him to New York City’s slums. He was shocked at the conditions in the overcrowded, airless, filthy tenements and expressed these hardships through writing.
- 4. 1871 1873 1875 Fredrick Law Olmstead was a landscape architect who helped draw up a plan for “Greensward” which was selected to become Central Park in New York City. He also planned landscaping for Washington, DC, and St. Louis. He also drew the initial designs for one of Boston’s park systems. Andrew Carnegie moved from Scotland to America and worked his way up to become private secretary of the local boss of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He bought stock and made his own fortune. In 1873, he founded the Carnegie Steel Factory. He improved manufacturing operation and controlled almost all of the steel industry. Kickbacks, overpayments of government money that were “kickbacked” to government officials, were very common around this time. 1875 Tammany Hall was New York City’s powerful Democratic political machine headed by Boss Tweed. The Tweed Ring was a corrupt organization that Boss Tweed ran as part of Tammany Hall. Greensward
- 5. 1876 1876 1876 George Armstrong Custer reported in 1874 that the Black Hills had lots of gold. In June 1876, he and his troops reached the Little Bighorn River where they met Native Americans. The Indians crushed Custer’s troops killing all of them within an hour. Alexander Graham Bell, along with Thomas Watson, invented the telephone. The National Farmers’ Alliance groups included people who sympathized with farmers. Lecturers of this group traveled educating and persuading people about lower interest rates on loans and government control over railroads and banks. Membership in the group grew to more than 4 million. 1876 Thomas Alva Edison established the world’s first research laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. He later perfected the incandescent light bulb and invented an entire system for producing and distributing electricity.
- 6. 1876 1877 1877 The Battle of Little Bighorn occurred when Colonel Custer and his troops met Native Americans at the Little Bighorn River. The Native Americans, led by Crazy Horse, Gall, and Sitting Bull, crushed Custer’s troops. Within an hour, Custer and all of the men of the Seventh Cavalry were dead. Chief Joseph succeed his father as the leader of the Wallowa band of Nez Perce when the United States government forcibly removed them from their land in Wallowa Valley to a reservation in Idaho in 1877. The Nez Perce was a group of Native American people who lived in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. In 1877, they were ordered to a reservation by the U.S. government and refused to go. They fled to Canada and fought the U.S. Army along the way. After five days of fighting, few Nez Perce remained after they had been defeated. 1880 Social Darwinism is an economic and social philosophy based on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. This theory was used by philosopher Herbert Spencer to explain the evolution of human society.
- 7. 1880 1880 1880 Segregation, the separation of people based on the basis of race, was a controversial issue during this time. Southern states passed laws to separate white and black people in public and private facilities. The Gilded Age was a time of enormous growth in the United States, railroads being the major industry. The North and West thrived while the South remained economically devastated from the Civil War. African Americans were stripped of many rights. Rights for blacks, tariff policies, and monetary policies were dominant issues. Sweat shop was a negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. 1880 John D. Rockefeller established the Standard Oil Company and used a trust to gain total control of the oil industry in America. He reaped huge profits by paying his employees low wages and driving competitors out of business by selling his oil at a lower price than in cost to produce it. Once he controlled the market, he hiked prices far above original levels. He gave away a lot of money and established the Rockefeller Foundation, provided funds to found the University of Chicago, and created a medical institute.
- 8. 1881 1881 1881 Sitting Bull was the leader of the Hunkpapa Sioux who was a warrior, spiritual leader, and medicine man. He believed whites should leave Sioux territory. His most famous fight was at the Little Bighorn River. Bull surrendered to the government in 1881 and was killed by Native American police 9 years later. Gafts, the illegal use of political influence for personal gain, were a large part of political corruption during this time. Booker T. Washington was an African American educator who believed that racism would end when blacks acquired useful labor skills and proved their economic value to society. He was born enslaved and graduated from Virginia’s Hampton Industrial Institute in Alabama. He aimed to equip blacks with useful skills for jobs. 1883 The Pendleton Civil Service Act was a law enacted that established a bipartisan civil service commission to make appointments to government jobs by means of the merit system based on candidates’ performance on an examination.
- 9. 1884 1884 1885 Scabs were hired strikebreakers paid to keep the business running while others were on strike. Guards would protect these people while they worked during strikes Mugwumps were Republican political activists who bolted from the Republican Party by supporting Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland in the 1884 Presidential election. They switched because they rejected the financial corruption associated with Republican candidate James G. Blain. Dumbbell tenements were built in New York City to accommodate immigrants. The name is derived from the shape of the building’s footprint of a dumbbell. 1886 A settlement house was a community center providing assistance to residents, particularly immigrants in a slum neighborhood. These houses were run by middle-class, college- educated women. The houses provided educational, cultural, and social services, It offered classes, health care, and support for women.
- 10. 1850 1862 1864 18671887 1888 1888 The Dawes Act was a law that was intended to “Americanize” Native Americans by distributing reservation land to individual Indian owners- 160 acres to each head of household and 80 acres to each unmarried adult. The government would sell the remainder of the reservations to settlers, and the resulting income would be used by Native Americans to buy farm implements. Poll taxes were created as annual taxes that had to be paid before qualifying to vote. Black and white sharecroppers were often too poor to pay these poll taxes. Southern States added the Grandfather Clause to their constitutions. It stated that even if a man failed the literacy test or could not afford a poll tax, he was still entitled to vote if he, his father, or his grandfather had been eligible to vote before January 1, 1867. Before that date, freed slaves did not have the right to vote. This law prevented blacks from voting. 1888 George Eastman developed a series of more convenient alternatives to the heavy glass plates previously used in photography. Photographers could use more flexible film and send it to a studio for processing. He introduced the Kodak camera in 1888.
- 11. 1889 1890 1890 Jane Addams was an influential member of the Social Gospel movement who founded the Hull House in 1889 along with Ellen Gates Starr. This was a settlement home located near Chicago, Illinois. Jim Crow Laws were laws enacted by Southern States and local governments to separate white and black people in public and private facilities. George Westinghouse was an entrepreneur and engineer who invented the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry. He founded the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. 1890 Angel Island was a US entry point in San Francisco Bay, California, where immigrants from the West Coast arrived and gained admission to the United States. These immigrants were primarily from Asia.
- 12. 1890 1890 1890 Culture shock is personal disorientation that a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration. The Ghost Dance was a movement that spread rapidly among the 25,000 Sioux an the Dakota reservation. It was based on a prophet who promised that if Sioux performed a ritual called the Ghost Dance, Native American lands and way of life would be restored. America became known as a melting pot because of the mixture of people from different cultures and races who blended together by abandoning their native languages and cultures. 1890 Political machines were organized groups that controlled political parties in a city and offered services to voters and businesses in exchange for political and financial support.
- 13. 1890 1890 1891 Wounded Knee- On December 28, 1890, the Seventh Cavalry rounded up 350 starving and freezing Sioux and took them to a camp at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. The next day, soldiers demanded that the Indians give up their weapons. A shot was fired and the soldiers opened fire killing 300 mostly unarmed Native Americans. The Sherman Antitrust Act was a law enacted that was intended to prevent the creation of monopolies by making it illegal to establish trusts that interfered with free trade. Collective bargaining was a process of negotiations between employers and a group of employees aimed at reaching agreements that regulate working conditions. 1892 The Omaha Platform was a party program that adopted the convention of the Populist Party held in Omaha, Nebraska on July 4, 1892. The Preamble was by Ignatius L. Donnelly. The planks represented the Farmers’ Alliance concerns, free-currency monetarism, and endorsing the goals of the Urban Knights of Labor.
- 14. 1894 1894 1895 Eugene Vs. Debs attempted to form an industrial union- the American Railway Union (ARU). Union members were mostly unskilled and semiskilled laborers, but engineers and firemen joined too. In 1894, the new union won a strike for higher wages. Membership eventually grew to 150,000. When businesses fell in 1894, George Pullman cut jobs and wages in a plant and increased working hours in order to lower costs and keep profits, but not rents or prices in his town. His workers launched the Pullman Strike which was eventually broken up by federal troops. Ellis Island was a popular immigration station located in New York Harbor. Immigrants were given medical examinations, government inspections, and various tests. Ellis Island was the chief immigration station with an estimated 17 million immigrants. 1895 Urbanization, the growth of cities, was expanding especially in the regions of the Northeast and Midwest.
- 15. 1895 1896 1897 William Randolph Hurst purchased the New York Morning Journal and also owned the San Francisco Examiner. He tried to out-do his competitors by filling the Journal with exaggerated tales of personal scandals, cruelty, hypnotism, and imaginary conquest of Mars. In Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that the separation of races in public places was legal and did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. It began when Homer Plessy was seated in the “whites only” car and refused to move. He was arrested, tried, and convicted in the District Court of New Orleans for breaking Louisiana’s segregation law. He appealed, and sent the trial to Supreme Court. Ragtime was a blend of African spirituals and European musical forms, which originated in the saloons of the South. This style later led to jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, and the blues. 1901 Monopolies developed which was a complete control over it’s industry’s production, wages, and prices achieved by a firm that buys out all its competitors.
- 16. 1902 1903 1900s Debt Peonage was a system in which workers were bound in servitude until their debts were paid to their employer. Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, bicycle manufacturers from Dayton, Ohio, worked on planes. They first built a glider, then a four- cylinder internal combustion engine. Their first successful flight was on December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The flight covered 120 feet and lasted 12 seconds. Literary tests were voting restrictions imposed in the Southern States to limit blacks’ votes. The tests for blacks were very hard and sometimes written in different languages, making it almost impossible to pass. Officials could pass or fail applicants as they wished which allowed for discrimination against blacks. 1900s Vaudeville was a theatrical genre that included performances of song, dance, juggling, slapstick comedy, and a female chorus. Promoters sought large audiences with various backgrounds to display various cultures.