Subject:
More of that history, if you will - Part III
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 06:39:25 -0700
23:13 Cherry Hill Park; Tulsa, Oklahoma! :: 10 SEP 97
1800-1819 . 1820-1839
. 1840-1859 . 1860-1879 . 1880-1900
[abridged...and expanded]
[Navigational Note:
Finding historical documents with the '§' character.]
1860
map
(119K): Territorial Growth 1860.
Abraham Lincoln is elected sixteenth President of the United
States. On receiving news of Lincoln's election, the South Carolina legislature
calls a special state convention to meet at Columbia on December 20. On
that date, by unanimous vote, South Carolina secedes from the Union.
The first repeating rifle in the US is produced by Oliver F.
Winchester.
The first relay on the Pony Express Mail Service leaves St.
Joseph, Missouri and arrives in Sacramento, California.
The State of California authorizes the California Geological
Survey, headed by Josiah Dwight Whitney, who puts together a group of
college-trained scientists. The maps produced by the survey use topographical
systems and serve as models for later survey maps. The survey ends in
1868 when the state cuts off funding.
Eighth census§:
US population - 31,443,321
1861 Civil
War timeline
Abraham
Lincoln is inaugurated§
as the sixteenth President of the United States.
Mississippi§,
Florida, Alabama, Georgia§,
Louisiana and Texas§
join South Carolina§
in seceding§
from the Union. These seven states form a new southern union, setting
up a provisional government called the Confederate States of America§.
Jefferson Davis§
of Mississippi is elected President for a six year term.
Confederate forces open fire on US Fort Sumter§
in Charleston, South Carolina, which surrenders on April 14.
President Lincoln calls for a 75,000 man militia to suppress
the "insurrection;" this move provokes the remaining southern states,
Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina, to secede and join the
Confederacy.
In the first Battle of Bull Run§
at Manassas, Virginia, Union troops retreat to Washington, DC.
Miners coming into Colorado in large numbers provoke conflict
with native Indian people in the Cheyenne-Arapaho War.
The first transcontinental telegraph line is completed, bringing
to an end the pony express.
Kansas is admitted as the thirty-fourth state in the Union§;
Kansas is admitted as a free state.
1862 Civil
War timeline (with photographs)
Confederate Gen. Henry H. Sibley defeats Union forces at Valverde,
New Mexico and takes Santa Fe. Pushing northwestward toward Fort Union,
he is met and defeated at the Battle of Glorietta Pass March 26-28.
Adm. David G. Farragut captures New Orleans for the Union in
April.
The Homestead Act is passed, entitling any citizen or person
who intends to acquire citizenship, who is twenty one years or older and
the head of a household, to acquire 160 acres of land in the public domain
by settling on them for five years and paying a small filing fee. The
law takes effect January 1, 1863.
General Lee's invasion of the North is halted by General McClellan§
at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. In the bloodiest single day of
the Civil War, Union casualties§ are 2,108
killed and 9,549 wounded; Confederate casualties§ are 2,700
killed and 9,029 wounded.
Chief Little Crow leads a Dakota (Sioux) uprising in Minnesota,
during which more than 350 whites are killed. Federal Gen. Henry Hastings
Sibley defeats the Dakota forces at Wood Lake. Thirty-eight Dakota chiefs
are hanged at Mankato, Minnesota.
President Lincoln signs a bill incorporating the Union Pacific
Railroad and subsidizing it with federal funds so that it can construct
a line from Nebraska to Utah. This line will meet the Central Pacific
coming east from California, and thus form a transcontinental railroad.
1863 Civil
War timeline (with photographs)
President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation§, which states that "All
slaves in areas still in rebellion are freed." The proclamation also enables
the recruitment of federal regiments of African-American volunteer soldiers.
[Note: the History wall a little misleading here; the Emancipation
Proclamation was issued September 22, 1862 and it contained, among other
statements, the line "That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons
held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people
whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be
then, thenceforward, and forever free..."]
The greatest battle of the Civil War is fought at Gettysburg§, Pennsylvania. Following a major
confederate defeat, Gen. Robert E. Lee, after sustaining 20,400 casualties§, retreats
into Virginia. Union Gen. George Gordon Meade§,
his army exhausted, fails to capitalize upon victory, and the Confederates
escape.
Confederate forces at Vicksburg, Mississippi surrender to General
Ulysses S. Grant, opening the entire Mississippi River to Union control.
Congress passes the first National Conscription Act, which calls
for the enrolment of all male citizens and aliens who have declared an
intention of becoming citizens between the ages of 20 and 45. Conscripts
can be exempted from military service by the payment of $300 or by hiring
a substitute. The payment provision is especially objectionable to working-class
men, for whom $300 is about 2/3 of an average annual income.
The first draft drawings precipitate riots in New York City.
Rioters burn, loot and kill. Irish Immigrant laborers, the lowest paid
of all, attack African-Americans and lynch several of them. Order is restored
only after the arrival of regular army troops from Gettysburg.
West Virginia is admitted as the thirty-fifth state in the Union.
1864 Civil
War timeline (with photographs)
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant is named as the overall commander of all
federal armies.
In the Battle of the Wilderness, Grant's army of 100,000 meets
Lee's army of 60,000. The indecisive battle rages for two days. Union
casualties§ far exceed
Confederate casualties§.
Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, with an army of 60,000,
leaves Atlanta in flames and begins a march through Georgia on a 60 mile
front, destroying everything that might be of use to the Confederacy.
Sherman's army reaches Savannah, which surrenders, on December 22. The
estimated destruction of Georgia property is $100 million.
Col. John M. Chivington's Colorado volunteers attack Black Kettle's
peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho village and kill 150 Indian men, women and
children in the Sand Creek Massacre.
Navajo Indian people make the "Long Walk" after their defeat
in Canyon de Chelly to a reservation in the New Mexico Territory.
The California Geological Survey maps the Sierra Mountains and
urges President Lincoln to preserve Yosemite. The "Yo-Semite Valley" and
the Mariposa Big Tree Grove of Giant Sequoias are granted to the State
of California by President Lincoln to be held "inalienable and for all
time" for "public use, resort and recreation."
Nevada is admitted as the thirty-sixth state in the union.
1865 Civil
War timeline (with photographs)
Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated§ for his second term.
Gen. Robert E. Lee surrenders to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox
Court House, Virginia, signalling the end of the Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln is shot at Ford's Theatre. The first President
to be assassinated, Lincoln dies on April 15, at the age of fifty-six.
He is buried at Springfield, Illinois.
Andrew
Johnson is inaugurated as the seventeenth President of the United
States.
The steamer Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River
with 2,300 on board, 2,134 of whom are Union soldiers returning from Confederate
prison camps. Seventeen hundred die in the worst ship disaster in US History.
Civil War casualty§ totals
are released: The Union - 359,000 dead, 100,00 wounded; The Confederacy
- 280,000 dead, 100,000 wounded. The war has cost the Union $5 billion
and the Confederacy $3 billion.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution is ratified,
abolishing slavery in the United States.
The Union Stockyards are built where nine railways converge
in Chicago, and open for business on Christmas Day.
The US gives a contract to Protestant missionary societies to
operate Indian schools.
1866
Two hundred fifty thousand head of cattle are driven from Goliad,
Texas to the railhead in Sedalia, Missouri in the first great overland
cattle drive.
Jesse Chisholm opens the Chisholm Trail.
Congress passes a Civil Rights Act over President Johnson's
veto. It grants the same rights to all natural-born Americans, including
African-Americans, but excepts American Indian people.
The steamship Great Eastern reaches the US, completing
the second trans-Atlantic cable between Great Britain and the US.
"Red Cloud's War" is precipitated by Lakota (Sioux) opposition
to the construction of a road from southern Wyoming to Montana along the
Bozeman Trail by US troops.
The sharecropping system in the southern states results from
a lack of success in attracting European immigrants and Chinese labourers
to replace slave labor, and from a lack of cash for wages to former slaves.
The system keeps African-Americans in a virtual slave state, or "peonage".
Four African-American regiments are established in the peacetime
US Army, and designated as the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and
10th Cavalry. The units eventually acquire the nickname "Buffalo Soldiers"
from the American Indians.
1867
Frederick Douglas appeals to Congress§ for black suffrage:
"It is no less a crime against the manhood of a man, to declare that he
shall not share in the making and directing of the government under which
he lives, than to say that he shall not acquire property and education.
"
Comanches, Kiowas, Southern Cheyenne and Arapahos sign a treaty
with the US government at Medicine Lodge, Kansas. The Indians will withdraw
opposition to the construction of a railroad and will be settled on one
great reservation south of the Arkansas River.
A Congressional Peace Commission is created, which initiates
a new round of treaties with American Indians, providing for district
reservations, education, isolation from casual contact with whites, annuities
for clothing and useful articles, and allotments of land to individual
Indians who seek it.
Joseph G. McKoy, an Illinois cattle buyer, travels to Abilene,
Kansas, "to establish a market whereat the southern drover and the northern
buyer can meet upon equal footing."
The National Grange (Order of the Patrons of Husbandry) is organized
in Washington, DC. Women and men are admitted as members on an equal basis.
The First Reconstruction Act imposes martial law on the southern
states and provides for the restoration of civil government when those
states are reorganized into the Union. Each of the former Confederate
states must ratify the fourteenth-amendment to the Constitution.
The US purchases Alaska from Russia for 7,200,000.
The British North American Act establishes the Confederation
of Canada.
Clarence King heads the first of the four great federal surveys
established to "erase the last unexplored labels from the maps of western
America.
Nebraska is admitted as the thirty-seventh state in the Union.
1868
Unqualified amnesty is granted to all who participated in the
"insurrection or rebellion" against the US by presidential proclamation.
The Treaty of Ft. Laramie is signed by the US and Red Cloud
of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux). No whites are to be permitted to settle,
occupy or pass through the Black Hills without the consent of the Lakota
people.
Gen. George A. Custer attacks the sleeping Cheyenne village
of Black Kettle on the Washita River. One hundred and three Cheyenne people
are killed., fifty three women and children are captured. The camp is
destroyed and 900 ponies are shot.
The US House of Representatives passes a resolution impeaching
President Johnson. Impeachment proceedings close with an acquittal.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, establishing
the rights of citizenship for African-Americans, is ratified.
Susan B. Anthony§
founds the Suffragette newspaper, The Revolution. The motto of
their newspaper is: "The true Republic - men, their rights and nothing
more: women, their rights and nothing less!"
1869
Ulysses
S. Grant is inaugurated§ as the eighteenth
President of the United States.
The Union Pacific Railroad, building west from Nebraska, joins
the Central Pacific building east from California at Promontory, Utah.
The junction completes the first transcontinental railroad link.
William Tecumseh Sherman takes command of the entire US Army
in the West, composed of fourteen thousand soldiers deployed from Texas
to North Dakota, from Kansas to California. Sherman's headquarters is
established in St. Louis.
A financial panic known as "Black Friday" occurs after Jay Gould
and James (Jubilee Jim) Fisk conspire to corner all the gold on the money
market, hold it until the price soars, then sell.
John Wesley Powell descends the Colorado River with nine men
in four special boats with watertight compartments. They run the rapids
of the Green River Canyon, Glen Canyon, Marble Canyon and the Grand Canyon
of the Colorado.
The Suez Canal is opened in Egypt, facilitating world travel
and trade.
1870
map
(133K): Territorial Growth 1870.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, establishing
the right to vote by all male citizens regardless of "race, color or previous
condition of servitude," is ratified.
The last four southern states, Virginia, Mississippi, Texas,
and Georgia, are readmitted to the Union after ratifying the fourteenth
and fifteenth amendments and framing constitutions satisfactory to the
Congress.
The Justice Department is created by an act of Congress.
The US Weather Bureau is established by Congress as part of
the Signal Corps.
Standard Oil Company of Ohio, with a capitalization of $1 million,
is formed by John D. Rockefeller. The company makes special low-rate agreements
with the railroad and gains control of pipelines, thus virtually monopolizing
oil refining in the US.
Nathaniel P. Langford, Gen. Henry D. Washburn and Lt. Gustavus
C. Doane mount a civilian-sponsored expedition in the Yellowstone region
of Wyoming. All of the nineteen explorers (save one) decide that thoughts
of personal exploitation of the area should be abandoned, and at the suggestion
of Cornelius Hedges, to work together in an effort to persuade the US
Government to set aside the region as a national park.
John Wesley Powell explores the plateaus north of the Grand
Canyon and the Zion area of Utah.
Ninth Census: US population - 39,818,000.
1871
Kansas City hide dealer J.N. Dubois floods the plains with offers
to buy all buffalo hides taken any time of the year. The invention in
Germany of a new tanning process which makes the tough hide of buffalo
commercially usable touches off "the big kill," in which 3,700,000 buffalo
are destroyed.
All American Indian people are made national wards and the US
Government discontinues the practice of making treaties with Indian nations
under the Indian Appropriation Act, passed in March. General Sheridan
issues orders forbidding western Indians to leave reservations without
the permission of civilian agents.
The Apache War in New Mexico is caused by the massacre of over
one hundred Apaches at Camp Grant in Arizona.
The Ferdinand V. Hayden survey party, including photographer
William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran, explores the Yellowstone
Area.
John Wesley Powell leads a second Grand Canyon exploration down
the Colorado River.
Phineas T. Barnum produces the first "Greatest Show on Earth"
circus in Brooklyn, NY.
1872
The Amnesty Act is passed by Congress: civil rights are restored
to all citizens of the South except for five to seven hundred former Confederate
leaders.
Congress establishes Yellowstone National Park as "a public
park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people."
The first National Park comprises 3,348 square miles at the junction of
the borders of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
Susan B. Anthony tests the Fourteenth Amendment by leading a
group of women to cast ballots in the Presidential election. She is arrested,
found guilty, and fined $100.
Mark Twain publishes Roughing It about his experiences
in the gold fields of Nevada.
1873
Ulysses S. Grant is inaugurated§ for his second
term.
The Timber Culture Act of 1873 augments the Homestead Act by
giving title to an additional 160 acres of land to any person who plants
trees on at least forty acres of it; residence on the land is not required.
The Coal Lands Act of 1873 allows the purchase of public coal
land for ten to twenty dollars per acre, depending upon its distance from
a railroad.
The Panic of 1873 is precipitated by the failure of the Jay
Cooke Company Banking House, which is involved in the financing of Northern
Pacific Railroad. Two days later, the New York Stock Exchange is closed.
Modoc Indians led by "Captain Jack" hold out in the impenetrable
lava beds in California, and inflict sixty-nine casualties on attacking
troops while remaining unharmed. The Indians are finally dislodged by
massive artillery bombardments. "Captain Jack" is hanged.
A patent for an improvement in barbed wire is issued to Joseph
Glidden.
More immigrants come to the US than in any previous year: the
total is almost 460,000.
1874
Gen. George A. Custer leads and expeditionary force into the
Black Hills of Dakota, confirming reports of the discovery of gold.
Starving Comanches, Kiowas, Cheyennes and Arapahos leave their
reservation in search of buffalo in the heart of the last buffalo range,
Palo Duro Canyon. Gen. McKenzie's troops find the great Palo Duro village
on September 26.
Rocky Mountain locusts devastate grain growing areas of the
Great Plains from Texas to Canada.
Ohio women begin the "whiskey war" in an effort to eradicate
the liquor trade. Women stand in front of liquor stores and with prayers
and songs, denounce the sale of intoxicants.
Ead's Bridge, the first bridge to cross the lower Mississippi
River, is opened in St. Louis.
In the case of Minor v. Happersett, the US Supreme Court
rules that women do not automatically have the right to vote by virtue
of citizenship. Individual states have the right to decide which of their
citizens have suffrage rights.
1875
Fifteen thousand gold seekers enter the region of the Black
Hills, enticed by reports from Gen. Custer's expedition and ignoring Indian
rights in the area.
President Grant sends a commission "to treat with the Sioux
Indians for the relinquishment of the Black Hills."
Public lands on Mackinac Island in Michigan are declared a "National
public park or grounds for health, comfort, and pleasure, for the benefit
and enjoyment of the people" by Congress.
In the Red River War on the southern plains, Quanah Parker leads
Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne forces against the US Army.
1876
The War Department authorizes General Sheridan to commence operations
against the "hostile Sioux." Sheridan orders Generals Crook and Terry
to begin military operations in the direction of the headwaters of the
Powder, Rosebud, Tongue and Bighorn Rivers.
General Crook is defeated at the Battle of the Rosebud by American
Indians under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
Gen. George A. Custer and his Seventh Cavalry attack more than
one thousand Lakota, Arapaho and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse, encamped
along the Little Bighorn River. In the battle that follows, Custer and
270 cavalrymen, scouts and Indian allies are killed.
A detachment of Gen. Crooks army strikes the Cheyenne village
of Dull Knife in central Wyoming.
The centennial exposition of United States Independence is held
in Philadelphia. Almost ten million people come to see such machines as
a self-binding reaper, web printing press, typewriter, refrigerated boxcar,
duplex telegraph, the Corliss engine, and Alexander Graham Bell's first
telephone§.
Colorado is admitted as the thirty-eighth state in the Union.
1877
Rutherford
B. Hayes is inaugurated§
as the nineteenth President of the United States.
Crazy Horse is killed at Fort Robinson.
Sitting Bull takes his people to Canada.
The Nez Perce, under Chief Joseph, flee seventeen hundred miles
on their way to Canada to join Sitting Bull. In a brilliant military campaign,
Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce field commander, Looking Glass, elude,
outmanoeuvre and defeat the best efforts of the US Army. The Nez Perce
are finally defeated at the Battle of Bear Paw, a short distance from
their goal in Canada.
Thomas A. Edison perfects the electric light bulb.
The Farmer's Alliance, a cooperative union for the purpose of
agrarian reform, hods its first formal meeting in Texas.
A general strike halts movement of railroad trains, and spreads
across the entire US. Troops battle railroad workers in some cities, and
force an end to the nationwide strike.
Nicodemus, Kansas, is settled by African-Americans from Kentucky.
William H. Holmes and William Henry Jackson make a tour of most
of the known ancient Indian sites, including San Juan, Canyon de Chelly,
Chaco Canyon, Pueblo Pintado and the existing Moqui [Hopi] Villages near
the Colorado River. Their explorations reveal for the first time the sweep
of an entire lost civilization.
1878
A second Dakota land boom is promoted by the entry of the Northern
Pacific and the Great Northern Railroads into the territory.
The Timber Cutting Act allows miners and settlers to cut timber
for their own use on public land, free of charge.
The Greenback Labor Party is organized at a Toledo, Ohio convention
by delegates from twenty-eight states. Their platform reflects labor viewpoints,
calling, in part, for restrictions on the hours of industrial labor, suppression
of national bank notes, and checks on Chinese immigration.
The first electric light company in the US, the Edison Electric
Light Company, is formed with a headquarters at 65 fifth Avenue, New York
City.
Thomas A. Edison is awarded a patent for the phonograph.
The first bicycles, called "wheels," are manufactured in the
US.
A woman suffrage amendment is submitted to Congress.
A yellow fever epidemic strikes, killing 5,000 in Memphis, Tennessee
and 4,000 in New Orleans Louisiana.
1879
Clarence King is appointed director of the newly created US
Geological Survey.
John Wesley Powell publishes his "Report on the Arid Regions
of the United States." A scientific and environmental approach to using
the West and its resources wisely. Powell's book was also the first modern
treatise on political reform in the West.
George B. Selden applies for a patent on the first carriage
in America to be run by an internal combustion engine.
In one of the largest spontaneous migrations in history, over
6,000 oppressed African-Americans, called "Exodusters," travel from the
former slave states to the great plains of Kansas to establish homesteads
and begin new lives.
Thomas A. Edison brings three thousand spectators to his shop
in New Jersey to see a demonstration of hundreds of incandescent lamps.
Edison's system makes electricity for home light able to compete with
gas.
Frank W. Woolworth and his partner W.H. Moore open a "five and
ten cent" store in Utica, New York.
The first intercity telephone communication is established between
Boston and Lowell, Massachusetts.
1800-1819 .
1820-1839 . 1840-1859
. 1860-1879 . 1880-1900
~~~ Responses Sought ~~~
Joad was embarrassed. "Well, pa wasn't no hand to write
for
pretty, or to write for writin'. He'd sign up his name as
nice as anybody, an' lick his pencil. But pa never did write
no letter. He always says what he couldn't tell a fella with
his mouth wasn't worth leanin' on no pencil about."
