1801
Thomas Jefferson becomes the third president. Because Jefferson
and his running mate Aaron Burr received the same number of
electoral votes, the election was thrown into the House of
Representatives, where Jefferson was elected after six days of
balloting and 36 ballots.
January 20: John Marshall is
appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court. Under his
leadership, the court established the judiciary's right to
declare federal and state laws unconstitutional.
March 4: In his inaugural
address, Jefferson attempts to allay Federalist fears of a
Republican reign of terror by declaring "We are all Republicans,
we are all Federalists." He pledges a frugal government and
subsequently repealed all internal taxes.
April 30: Jefferson purchases
Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, acquiring 800,000 square
miles for $15 million.
1802
The first hotel in the U.S. opens in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
1803
February 24: The Supreme Court establishes the principle of
judicial review in the case of Marbury v. Madison. For the first
time, the court rules a federal law unconstitutional.
1804
January 1: Jean Jacques Dessalines proclaims Haiti's
independence.
May 14: The Lewis and Clark
Expedition sets out from St. Louis. The party will explore 8000
miles along the Missouri and Columbia Rivers as far as the
Pacific, returning in 1806.
July 11: Federalist party
Alexander Hamilton is killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron
Burr. Indicted by New Jersey for murder, Burr flees to South
Carolina and Georgia until the indictment is quashed.
1805
April 27: "To the Shores of Tripoli." William Eaton and a small
force of Marines and Arab mercenaries march 500 miles from Egypt
to capture Tripoli's port of Derna. Tripoli, which had enslaved
American seamen, ended its demands for tribute.
1806
Aaron Burr is charged with treason for plotting to set up a
separate nation on lands claimed by the United States and Spain.
At a trial presided over by John Marshall, Burr is acquitted.
July 15: While exploring the
southern portion of the Louisiana Purchase, Zebulon Pike sees
the famous peak that now bears his name.
1807
June 22: The British frigate Leopard fires on the American
warship Chesapeake, killing three Americans and forcibly
removing four alleged British navy deserters.
September 4: Robert Fulton
sails his steamship the Clermont on the Hudson River,
inaugurating a new era of steam-powered transportation.
December 22: The Embargo of
1807 prohibits U.S. exports to Britain and France to protest
interference with American shipping. In effect for 18 months, it
produced smuggling and unemployment.
1808
January 1: Congress
prohibits the African slave trade.
March 1: The Non-Intercourse
Act prohibits imports from Britain and France and bans their
ships from U.S. ports.
1810
U.S. population:
7,239,881.
The American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions, originally founded by the
Congregationalist Church, begins to send Protestant missionaries
to foreign countries and Indian tribes.
May 1: Macon's Bill No. 2,
which replaces the Non-Intercourse Act, reopens trade with
Britain and France, but provides that if either country agrees
to respect American shipping, the U.S. will cut off trade with
the other.
October 27: Following a revolt
by American settlers in West Florida in September, the U.S.
annexes the region.
1811
January: A slave
insurrection in Louisiana results in the deaths of some 75
slaves.
November 7: William Henry
Harrison and 800 soldiers defeat Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee
prophet, and destroy Prophetstown.
1812
The word "gerrymander"
enters the politics after the Massachusetts Republicans
reapportion the state's Senate districts. One district resembles
a salamander, or, as a Federalist put it, a gerrymander (after
Gov. Elbridge Gerry).
June 18: By a vote of 79-49 in
the House and 19-13 in the Senate, the United States declares
war against Britain over interference with American shipping and
impressments of American seamen. Two days earlier, the British
had repealed trade restrictions, but news of the British action
did not reach the United States until August 12.
1814
September 10: Lieut.
Oliver Hazzard Perry announces his naval victory at the battle
of Lake Erie with the famous words: "We have met the enemy and
they are ours."
October 5: The Indian leader
Tecumseh is killed at the battle of the Thames in Canada, ending
his hopes for an Indian confederation resisting American
expansion.
1814
Francis Cabot Lowell
opens the first U.S. factory able to convert raw cotton into
cloth using power machinery.
May 27: The Creek Chief Red
Eagle surrenders to General Andrew Jackson after the battle of
Horse Shoe Bend, opening southern and western Alabama to white
settlement.
August 24: The British avenge
an American raid on York, Ontario (now Toronto), the capital of
Upper Canada, by setting fire to the White House and the
Capitol.
September 14: Lawyer Francis
Scott Key, detained on a British warship, writes "The
Star-Spangled Banner," which was destined to become the
country's national anthem.
December 15-January 1815:
Hartford Convention. Federalists call for the repeal of the
Three-Fifths compromise; requiring a two-thirds vote for
admission of new states and declarations of war; limiting
presidents to one terms; and forbidding successive presidents to
come from the same state.
December 24: A peace treaty
ending the War of 1812 is signed at Ghent, Belgium.
1815
January 8: Unaware of
a peace treaty signed two weeks earlier, General Andrew Jackson
stops a British attack at the Battle of New Orleans. British
forces suffer 2036 casualties; U.S. forces suffer 8 killed and
13 wounded.
July 3: Algiers releases
American captives and agrees to end its demand for tribute
payments.
1816
Richard Allen forms
the African Methodist Episcopal Church
The American Bible Society is
founded.
April 10: Congress charters
the Second Bank of the United States.
December: The American
Colonization Society was established to transport free blacks to
Africa.
1817
Thomas Hopkins
Gallaudet founds a free public school for the deaf in Hartford,
Conn.
April 28-29: The Rush-Bagot
Convention begins the process of disarmament along the U.S.
Canadian boundary.
July 4: Construction of the
Erie Canal begins. The canal, designed to connect the Great
Lakes to Albany, officially opened in 1825.
December 27: Andrew Jackson
marches into Florida in order to stop raids by Indians, fugitive
slaves, and white outlaws on American territory.
1819
U.S. population:
9,638,453.
The financial Panic of 1819,
the country's first major economic depression, produces
political division and calls for the democratization of state
constitutions and an end to imprisonment for debt.
McCulloch v. Maryland. The
Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the Bank of the
United States and rules that a state cannot tax an agency
authorized by the federal government.
Dartmouth v. Woodward. The
Supreme Court bars states from unilaterally altering contracts.
William Ellery Channing's
"Unitarian Christianity" sermon lays out the principles of
liberal Protestantism.
February 13. A Firebell in the
Night. A political crisis arises when Rep. James Tallmadge of
N.Y. proposes an amendment to a bill granting statehood to
Missouri. He proposes that all slave children be freed when they
reach their 25th birthday and that any further introduction of
slaves be barred.
1820
U.S. population:
9,638,453.
English writer Sydney Smith
asks: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American
book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American
picture or statue?"
March 3: The Missouri
Compromise prohibited slavery north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes
north latitude. Missouri is admitted as a slave state, and Maine
(up to then a part of Massachusetts) is admitted as a free
state.
April 24: The Land Act of 1820
reduces the price of land to $1.25 an acre for a minimum of 80
acres (down from $1.64 per acre for a minimum of 160 acres).
1821
Emma Hart Willard
opens the Troy Female Seminary, the first institution in the
United States to offer a high school education for girls.
Benjamin Lundy publishes an
early antislavery newspaper, The Genius of Universal
Emancipation.
1822
Stephen F. Austin
establishes an American colony in Texas.
The American Colonization
Society founds Liberia as a colony for free blacks from the
United States.
May-June: Denmark Vesey, a
former slave who had purchased his freedom after winning a
lottery, organizes an insurrection in Charleston, S.C. After
several slaves informed their masters of the plot, 131 blacks
were arrested and 35 were hanged.
1823
December 2: Responding
to a fear that Russia would seize control of the Pacific Coast
and that European powers would assist Spain in reclaiming its
New World colonies, President James Monroe announces what has
become known as the Monroe Doctrine. He declares that the
Western Hemisphere is closed to further European colonization
and threatens to use force to stop further European
interventions in the Americas.
1824
"The Red Harlot of
Infidelity," Frances Wright, arrives from Scotland, and lectures
publicly on birth control, women's rights, and abolition.
1825
January 3: In Indiana,
Robert Owen establishes New Harmony, the first secular utopian
community.
1826
The Anti-Masonic Party
was founded after William Morgan of Batavia, N.Y., was kidnapped
and presumably murdered after the threatens to publish a book
revealing the secrets of the Masonic Order.
July 4: Thomas Jefferson and
John Adams die on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the
Declaration of Independence.
1827
Samuel E. Cornish and
John B. Russwurm publish the first African American newspapers,
Freedom's Journal.
Massachusetts enacts the first
law requiring every community with 500 or more families to
establish a high school.
1829
David Walker, a free
black living in Boston, issues his militant Appeal, demanding
the abolition of slavery and an end to racial discrimination.
April 6: Mexico forbids
further U.S. immigration into Texas and reconfirms its
constitutional prohibition on slavery.
1830
U.S. population:
12,866,020.
January 27: "Liberty and
Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" In his celebrated
debate with Sen. Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina over federal
land policy, Sen. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts rejected the
idea that the states could nullify federal laws.
April 6: Joseph Smith founds
the Mormon Church.
April 13: At a Jefferson day
dinner, Jackson expresses his opposition to the doctrine of
nullification, proposing a toast: "Our Union: It must be
preserved." Vice President John C. Calhoun responded: "The
Union, next to our liberty, most dear!"
May 28: President Jackson
signs the Indian Removal Acts, which promises financial
compensation to Indian tribes that agree to resettle on lands
west of the Mississippi River.
September 25: The first
national Negro convention is held in Philadelphia.
1831
January 1: A
25-year-old Bostonian, William Lloyd Garrison, publishes the
first issue of the Liberator, the first publication dedicated to
immediate emancipation of slaves without compensation to their
owners. He promises: "I will not equivocate--I will not
excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--AND I WILL BE HEARD."
August: William Miller
predicts that the second coming of Christ was imminent and that
"cleansing by fire" would occur between March 21, 1843 and March
21, 1844.
August 21: Nat Turner, a
Baptist preacher, leads a slave insurrection in southern
Virginia, which provokes a debate in the Virginia legislature
about whether slavery should be abolished.
1832
John Kaspar Spurzheim
of Vienna introduces phrenology into America. Phrenology, an
early example of the science of human behavior, taught that a
person's character could be determined by studying the shape of
a person's skull.
January 21: Sen. William Marcy
of New York defends the Spoils System of party patronage with
the phrase, "To the victor belong the spoils."
April 6: The Black Hawk War
begins when Black Hawk, chief of the Sauk Indians, crosses the
Mississippi River to plant corn on the tribe's old fields in
Illinois. The Sauks had ceded their lands in exchange for new
land in Iowa, but were unable to support themselves there. Capt.
Abraham Lincoln and Lieut. Jefferson Davis took part in the
conflict. The Sauk surrendered in August, after many older men,
women, and children were massacred in Wisconsin while carrying
white flags.
August: The United States's
first school for the blind opens under the direction of Dr.
Samuel Gridley Howe.
November 24: South Carolina
declares the federal tariff null and void.
December 28: John C. Calhoun
becomes the first Vice President after to resign, after he is
elected as a Senator from South Carolina.
1833
Samuel Colt introduces the "six-shooter," the first handgun with
a revolving barrel.
Massachusetts becomes the last
state to end tax support for churches.
March 2: President Andrew
Jackson signs Henry Clay's compromise Tariff of 1833, which
reduces duties on imported goods, and the Force Act, authorizing
him to use military force enforce the federal tariff.
March 15: South Carolina
revokes its Ordinance of Nullification. Three days later, it
nullifies the Force Act.
September 23: Andrew Jackson
fires his Secretary of the Treasury for refusing to withdraw
government deposits from the Second Bank of the United States
and place them in state banks.
December 3: The first
coeducational college in the United States, Oberlin, opens, with
a class of 29 men and 15 women. In 1835, Oberlin became the
first college to admit African Americans.
December 4: The American
Anti-Slavery Society is founded in Philadelphia.
1834
Gen. Antonio López de
Santa Anna overthrows Mexico's constitutional government.
March 28: The U.S. Senate
votes to censure Andrew Jackson for removing government deposits
from the Bank of the United States, accusing the President of
having "assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred
by the Constitution and laws." The Senate expunged the censure
in 1837.
1835
American colonists in
Texas revolt against Mexican rule.
January: For the only time in
American history, the United States was free from debt; the
Treasury had a surplus of $400,000.
January 30: The first attempt
on the life of a president occurs. In the U.S. Capitol, Richard
Lawrence fired two pistols at the president at point blank
range. Miraculously, both pistols misfire. Lawrence was later
found to be insane.
July 8: The Liberty Bell
cracks as it tolls the death of Chief Justice John Marshall.
October 21: A Boston crowd
mobs William Lloyd Garrison and almost lynches him. He is placed
in a jail for his own safety.
1836
The viciously
anti-Catholic novel appears, Awful Disclosure of Maria Monk,
as Exhibited in a Narrative of Her Suffering during a Residence
of Five Years as a Novice, and Two Years as a Black Nun, in the
Hotel Dieu Nunnery at Montreal.
March 2: Texas declares its
independence from Mexico.
March 6: Mexican troops storm
the Texans at the Alamo, a former San Antonio mission defended
by 182 Texans, including the frontier heroes David Crockett and
James Bowie. The Alamo's defenders included a number of Tejanos.
March 27: Santa Anna orders
330 Texas prisoners executed at Goliad.
April 21: East of present-day
Houston, Gen. Sam Houston's troops defeat the Mexican Army and
capture Santa Anna, forcing him to recognize Texas independence.
May 25: The House of
Representatives adopts the Gag Rule, voting to table all
antislavery petitions without discussion.
July 4: Marcus and Narcissa
Prentiss Whitman and Henry H. and Eliza Hart Spalding establish
a mission near present-day Walla Walla, Washington.
July 11: The Treasury
Department issues the Species Circular, requiring payment in
gold or silver for public lands. President Jackson's critics
blamed the Species Circular for the Panic of 1837.
1837
John Deere introduces
a plow with a steel blade.
March: The Panic of 1837
begins and lasts until 1843.
August 31: Ralph Waldo Emerson
delivers his "American Scholar" address, in which he calls for a
distinctive national literature rooted in American experience.
November 7: Rev. Elijah P.
Lovejoy becomes the abolitionist movement's first martyr when he
is murdered by a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois, across from
slaveholding St. Louis.
November: Mary Lyon opens the
first woman's college, Mount Holyoke, in South Hadley,
Massachusetts.
1838
Samuel F.B. Mores
develops an alphabet of dots and dashes, making communication
with the telegraph possible.
December: 14,000 Cherokees are
forcibly removed from western Georgia and southeastern Tennessee
and marched down the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. Some 4,000 died
en route.
1839
Enslaved Africans
aboard the Spanish ship L'Amistad revolt. After their capture
off Long Island, the Van Buren administration tried to have the
captives returned to Spain. In 1841, the Supreme Court ruled
that the Amistad captives had been illegally enslaved and set
them free.
1840
U.S. population:
17,069,453.
March 31: President Martin Van
Buren institutes a 10-hour work day for federal employees.
1841
The first wagon train
arrives in California.
March: Dorothea Dix is shocked
when she enters the East Cambridge, Mass., House of Correction
and observes the ill-treatment of the mentally ill. After a
two-year investigation, she submits a Memorial to the
Massachusetts legislation, describing the mentally ill confined
"in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens--chained naked, beaten
with rods, and lashed into obedience."
April 1: Brook Farm, a utopian
community near Boston inspired by American Transcendentalism,
seeks to combine manual labor and intellectual pursuits.
April 4: President William
Henry Harrison dies after 30 days in office.
October 27: Creole Affair.
Slaves on the brig Creole revolt and sail to the Bahamas.
Britain refused to return the slaves but the U.S. won financial
compensation.
1842
The Massachusetts
Supreme Court upholds the right of workers to organize in the
case of Commonwealth v. Hunt.
May: The Dorr War. To protest
Rhode Island's outdated charter of 1663 which restricted voting
rights to property holders and their oldest sons, Thomas Dorr
and his supporters unsuccessfully attempted to capture the
armory at Providence. A new Constitution was subsequently
adopted that granted the vote to citizens who paid a $1 poll tax
or owned at least $134 in real estate.
1843
August 23: Mexico
warns that American annexation of Texas would be "equivalent to
a declaration of war against the Mexican government."
1844
May 3: Rioting erupts
in Philadelphia when anti-Catholic "Native Americans try to hold
a street meeting in the heavily Irish Kensington district.
May 24: Samuel F.B. Morse
sends the first message by telegraph: "What hath God wrought."
He sent the message from Washington to Baltimore.
June 27: A mob storms a
Carthage, Ill., jail, and murders Joseph Smith, the founder of
Mormonism, and his brother. Smith was being held for destroying
the printing press of a dissident who had attacked the practice
of polygamy.
December 3: The House of
Representatives lifts the Gag Rule.
1845
The Baptist Church
splits over the slavery issue.
July: John L. O'Sullivan, the
editor of the U.S. Magazine and Democratic Review, declares that
the United States has a "manifest destiny" to occupy the North
American continent. Manifest destiny became one of the most
influential slogans in American history.
August: A blight devastates
the Irish potato crop. Over 1 million people died and 2 million
emigrated, 1.3 million to the United States.
December 29: Texas is admitted
to the Union as a slave state.
1846
January: President
James K. Polk orders Gen. Zachary Taylor to march southward from
Corpus Christi and occupy position near the Rio Grande River,
150 miles south of the Texas border as defined by the Spanish
and Mexican authorities.
May 4: Michigan becomes the
first state to abolish capital punishment.
May 13: President Polk tells
Congress that Mexico has "invaded our territory and shed
American blood on American soil." Congress then declares war on
Mexico.
June 15: The United States
accepts the 49th parallel as the boundary between the United
States and Canada west of the Great Lakes.
July 23: Henry David Thoreau,
living in a cabin at Walden Pond, near Concord, Mass., was
arrested for refusing to pay a $1 poll tax, his protest against
slavery and the Mexican War. This incident that inspired him to
write the essay Civil Disobedience, in which he argued in behalf
of non-violent protest against unjust government policies. He
wrote: "Any man more right than his neighbor constitutes a
majority of one."
August: Rep. David Wilmot
submits an amendment to a military appropriations bill
prohibiting slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. The
proviso passes the house twice but is defeated in the Senate.
October: A party of pioneers
headed by George Donner is trapped in the Sierras by early
snows. In April 1847, 47 survivors of the original party of 82
finally reached California.
1847
July 24: The first
Mormons reach the Great Salt Lake.
September 13-14: Mexico City
falls to a U.S. army under Gen. Winfield Scott.
1848
Alexander T. Stewart
opens the first department store on Broadway in New York.
The Free Soil party is formed,
opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories.
New York State grants married
women the right to own property apart from their husbands.
January 24: James Marshall
discovers gold at John Sutter's sawmill near Sacramento, Calif.
February 2: The Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexico War. The American negotiator,
Nicholas Trist, had been ordered home four months earlier, but
had continued the negotiations. The United States acquired
California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and parts of Arizona,
Colorado, Kansas and Wyoming for $15 million and assumption of
$3.25 million in debts owned by Mexico to Americans.
July 19-20: The first Woman's
Rights Convention in history is held in Seneca Falls, New York.
The convention called for women's suffrage. Only two
participants lived to see the 19th amendment to the
Constitution, granting women the right to vote.
1849
80,000 people migrate
to California; about 55,000 overland and 25,000 by sea. Only
about 700 are women.
Elizabeth Blackwell becomes
the United States' first women to receive a medical degree.
1850
U.S. population:
23,191,876.
The U.S. navy and merchant
marine outlaw flogging.
August: Congress adopts the
Compromise of 1850, which admits California to the Union as a
free state, but does not forbid slavery in other territories
acquired from Mexico. It also prohibits the sale of slaves in
Washington, D.C. and includes a strict law requiring the return
of runaway slaves to their masters.
October 23-24: The first
national women's rights convention, held in Worcester, Mass.,
attracts delegates from nine states.
1851
Feb. 18: A Boston crowd rescues Shadrack, a fugitive slave,
from court custody.
June 2: Maine adopts a law
prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages,
leading future prohibition statutes to be called Maine laws.
1852
Mar. 20: Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's
Cabin, which sells 300,000 copies in a year and a million
copies in 16 months. When Stowe met President Lincoln at the
White House, he reportedly asked her: "Is this the little woman
whose book made such a great war?"
1853
Dec. 30: Gadsden Purchase. Mexico sells the United States
29,640 square miles of territory south of the Gila River (in
what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico) for $10 million.
1854
Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison publicly burns a copy of
the Constitution, calling it "a covenant with death and an
agreement with Hell."
Henry David Thoreau publishes
Walden, which is based on his experiences living beside
Walden Pond near Concord, Mass. From July 1845 to September
1847. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," he
writes.
Jan. 23: Sen. Stephen Douglas
introduces the Kansas Nebraska Act, which repeals the Missouri
Compromises and opens Kansas and Nebraska to white settlement.
Feb. 4: Alvan Bovay, a Ripon,
Wisc., attorney, proposes that opponents of slavery organize a
new political party, the Republican party.
Mar. 31: Commodore Matthew C.
Perry negotiates the Treaty of Kanagawa, opening up Japan to the
West.
Apr. 26: Eli Thayer founds the
Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society to encourage opponents of
slavery to move to Kansas.
June 2: In Boston, the U.S.
government returns Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave, to slavery.
Oct. 18: Ostend Manifesto.
American ministers James Buchanan, John Y. Mason, and Pierre
Soulé, meeting in Belgium, urge the United States to seize Cuba
militarily if Spain refuses to sell the island. Many Northerners
regarded this as a plot to extend slavery.
1855
Walt Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass.
Abraham Lincoln writes: "Our
progress in degeneracy appears to me pretty rapid. As a nation,
we began by declaring 'all men are created equal.' We now
practically read it 'all men are created equal except Negroes.'
When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are
created equal except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When
it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country
where they make no pretense of loving liberty to Russia, for
instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base
alloy of hypocrisy."
Mar. 30: Pro-slavery forces
win the territorial elections in Kansas. Some 6000 votes are
cast even though only 2000 voters are registered, many by
pro-slavery "border ruffians" from Missouri. The pro-slavery
government passes laws imposing the death penalty for aiding a
fugitive slave and two years hard labor for questioning the
legality of slavery. Antislavery forces respond by setting up an
opposing government in Topeka.
1856
May 19: Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachuetts denounces "The
Crime Against Kansas," which he describes as the rape of a
virgin territory by pro-slavery forces. In his speech, Sumner
accuses a South Carolina Senator of taking "the harlot Slavery"
for his mistress."
May 21: The "Sack of
Lawrence." Pro-slavery forces in Kansas burn a hotel and other
buildings in Lawrence, Kansas.
May 22: Sen. Butler's nephew,
Representative Preston Brooks, beats Sen. Sumner with a cane,
leaving him disabled for three years.
May 25: In reprisal for the
"Sack of Lawrence" and the attack on Sumner, John Brown and six
companions murder five pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie Creek in
Kansas. A war of reprisals left 200 dead in "Bleeding Kansas."
1857
Mar. 6: In the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford, the Supreme
Court rules that the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights were
not intended to apply to African Americans and that the Missouri
Compromise was unconstitutional. The decision also denied
Congress and territorial legislatures the right to exclude
slavery from the western territories.
Mar. 23: Elisha Otis installs
the first passenger elevator in a New York department store.
Aug. 24: The Financial Panic
of 1857 begins; 4,932 business fail by year's end.
1858
June 16: Abraham Lincoln accepts the Republican nomination
for US Senate with the famous phrase, "A house divided against
itself cannot stand."
Aug. 21 to Oct. 15: Stephen
Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, candidates for the US Senate from
Illinois, hold seven debates. The Democratic majority in the
Illinois legislature reelected Douglas to the Senate.
Oct. 25: Senator William
Seward of New York declares that there is an "irrepressible
conflict" between the free North and the slave South.
1859
Daniel Decatur Emmett, a Northerner from Ohio, composes
Dixie for a New York minstrel show.
May 12: A commercial
convention in Vicksburg, Miss., calls for the African slave
trade to be reopened.
Aug. 27: "Colonel" Edwin L.
Drake strikes oil at Titusville, Pa. This was the first
deliberate attempt to drill for oil underground.
Oct. 16: John Brown and some
21 followers seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. He
is taken prisoner two days later, US Marines, led by Col. Robert
E. Lee.
Oct. 31: Refusing to plead
insanity as a defense, John Brown is put on trial and is
convicted of treason, criminal conspiracy, and murder. He is
hanged Dec. 2. Ralph Waldo Emerson hails Brown as a "new saint"
who "will make the gallows glorious like the cross."
1860
US population: 31,443,321.
Publisher Erastus Beadle
issues the first dime novels, which actually sell for a nickel.
Apr. 3: The Pony Express
inaugurates overland male service between St. Joseph, Mo., and
Sacramento, Calif.
Apr. 23: Southern delegates
walk out of the Democratic National Convention in Charleston,
S.C. The convention adjourns without nominating a presidential
candidate.
June 18-23: Northern
Democrats, convening in Baltimore, nominate Stephen Douglas for
the presidency. On June 28, Southern Democrats nominated John C.
Breckinridge as their presidential candidate.
Nov. 6: Abraham Lincoln tops a
four-candidate field to be elected president. Although he
received less than 40 percent of the vote, and no votes in the
South, he won an overwhelming Electoral College victory.
Dec. 20: South Carolina,
voting 169-0, secedes from the Union.
1861
Yale University confers the U.S.'s first Ph.D.
Jan. 9: South Carolina blocks
a federal ship, the Star of the West, from resupplying Fort
Sumter in Charleston harbor.
Feb. 4: Representatives from
six seceding states adopt a Confederate constitution in
Montgomery, Ala. Five days later, they elect Jefferson Davis, a
former US Senator from Mississippi, the president of the
Confederate States of America.
Apr. 12: At 4:30 a.m.,
Confederate guns fire on Fort Sumter, a federal installation in
South Carolina's Charleston harbor. The fort surrendered after
34 hours of bombardment.
Apr. 19: President Lincoln
orders a blockade of Confederate ports.
July 18: At the first battle
of Bull Run, near Manassass, Va., Confederate forces rout a
Union army.
Aug. 5: To help finance the
Civil War, Congress enacts taxes on real estate and personal
income.
Oct. 24: President Abraham
Lincoln receives the first transcontinental telegraph message.
Nov. 7: Union forces capture
Port Royal Island on the South Carolina coast.
1862
The Morrill Land Grant Act gives each state 30,000 acres per
member of Congress to be used to create colleges of agriculture
and mechanical arts. 69 land grant colleges were established on
13 million acres.
Mar. 9: The first battle
between ironclad warships takes place off Hampton Roads, Va.,
where the Union's Monitor and the Confederate's Merrimac fight
to a draw.
May 1: Capt. David G. Farragut
captures New Orleans.
May 20: President Lincoln
signs the Homestead Act, giving settlers title to 160 acres if
they worked the land for five years. By 1890, 375,000
homesteaders received 48 million acres.
June 1: Confederate Gen.
Robert E. Lee is appointed commander of the Army of Northern
Virginia.
July: General David Hunter
organizes the first black regiment, the First Carolina.
July 22: President Lincoln
tells his cabinet that he intends to issue an emancipation
proclamation, but agrees to wait for a military victory so that
this will not appear to be an act of desperation.
Aug. 18: A Sioux uprising
begins in Minnesota after the government fails to pay cash
annuities agreed to under treaty. About a thousand white
settlers die before the Sioux are defeated in September.
Sept. 17: Union troops under
Gen. George McClellan halt Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's
invasion of the North at the battle of Antietam in western
Maryland.
Sept. 22: President Lincoln
issues his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that
on Jan. 1, 1863 slaves in areas still in rebellion would be
declared free.
Dec. 17: Gen. Ulysses S. Grant
issues his notorious Gen. Order #11, which expels Jews from his
department. The order was immediately rescinded by Pres.
Lincoln.
1863
Congress authorizes a standard track width for railroads: 4'
8 1/2".
Jan. 1: President Lincoln
signs the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in areas
in rebellion (excluding certain parts of Louisiana and
Virginia). The Proclamation immediately freed slaves in parts of
Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.
Feb. 25: Congress passes the
National Banking Act, establishing nationally-chartered banks.
Mar. 3: Congress requires all
males between 20 and 45 register for military service. Draftees
could be exempted from service by paying $300 or providing a
substitute.
July 3-4: The Battle of
Gettysburg. In an effort to spur European intervention, Gen.
Robert E. Lee and his army invade the North. By accident, Lee's
forces encounter George G. Meade's troops at Gettysburg, Pa.,
leading to the largest battle in the western hemisphere.
Confederate forces suffered 30,000 casualties; Union troops,
25,000. On July 5, Lee's army retreated across the Potomac
River, and was unable to take the offensive again.
July 5: A Confederate army at
Vicksburg surrenders to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, giving the Union
control of the Mississippi River. More than 29,000 Confederate
troops surrender.
July 11-14: The New York City
Draft Riots. Four days of rioting leave a thousand people dead
or wounded before troops brought from Gettysburg restore order.
Aug. 21: Quantrill's Raiders,
which includes Frank and Jesse James, attack Lawrence, Kansas.,
burning 185 buildings.
Oct.: President Lincoln
proclaims the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.
Nov. 19: At a ceremony marking
the dedication of a battlefield cemetery delivers the Gettysburg
Address.
1864
Mar. 10: Ulysses S. Grant assumes command of the Union army.
Apr. 12: At Fort Pillow,
Tenn., Confederate Gen. Nathan Forrest's cavalry massacres
African American soldiers after they had surrendered.
July 30: The Battle of the
Crater. At Petersburg, Va., Union troops dig a 586' tunnel
underneath Confederate Lines and fill it with 8,000 lbs. of
gunpowder.
Aug. 5: At the battle of
Mobile Bay, Ala., Union Adm. David Farragut, declaring "Damn the
torpedoes! Go ahead!defeats a Confederate fleet. The torpedoes
were floating casks of gunpowder with contact fuses.
Nov. 8: Pres. Lincoln defeats
Democratic candidate George B. McClellan.
Nov. 29: At dawn, some 700
Colorado volunteers led by Col. John Chivington attack a camp of
500 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians who were flying an American
flag and a white flag of truce. By nightfall, at least 150
Indians, mostly women and children, had been killed and their
body parts taken as trophies.
1865
Mar. 3: Congress establishes the Freedman's Bureau.
Mar. 13: The Confederacy
decides to permit slaves to serve in the military.
Apr. 9: Gen. Robert E. Lee
surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomatox Courthouse, Va.
Apr. 14: On Good Friday, John
Wilkes Booth shoots President Abraham Lincoln at Washington's
Ford's Theater. As he leaps to the stage (breaking a shinbone),
Booth shouts, "Sic Semper Tyrannis (Thus Always to Tyrants)."
Lincoln died the next morning. Andrew Johnson becomes the 17th
president.
Nov. 10: Confederate Capt.
Henry Wirz, commandant of Andersonville, Ga., prison camp, is
hanged for war crimes. He is accused of ordering prisoners shot
on sight, of sending bloodhounds after escaped prisoners, and
injecting prisoners with deadly vaccines.
Dec. 18: The 13th Amendment to
the US Constitution abolishes slavery.
Dec. 24: The Ku Klux Klan is
founded in Pulaski, Tenn. Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford
Forrest is appointed the first Grand Wizard.
1866
The first big cattle drive takes place when cowboys drive
260,000 head from Texas to Kansans, Missouri, and Iowa.
The first Young Woman's
Christian Association in the US opens in Boston.
Apr. 9: Congress passes the
Civil Rights Act over President Andrew Johnson's veto, granting
citizenship and civil rights to all persons born in the United
States (except Indians) and providing for the punishment of
those who violate those rights.
1867
The National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, the first
organization of American farmers, is founded.
Mar. 2: The first
Reconstruction Act imposes martial law on the southern states,
splits them into five military districts, and provides for the
restoration of civil government when they ratify the 14th
Amendment.
Mar. 2: Congress passes the
Tenure of Office Act, which denies the president to remove
officials who had been appointed with the Senate's consent.
Mar. 23: The second
Reconstruction Act, passed over President Johnson's veto,
provides for the registration of all qualified voters.
Mar. 30: "Seward's Icebox."
Russia sells Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million, or
less than 2 cents an acre.
July 19: The third
Reconstruction Act requires the southern states to ratify the
15th Amendment before they are readmitted to the Union.
1868
Feb. 24: The House of Representatives votes to impeach
President Andrew Johnson in part for violating the Tenure of
Office Act, which forbid him to dismiss a cabinet member without
congressional approval. The Senate trial lasted 11 and a half
weeks. On the major charges, the Senate voted 35-19 for
conviction, one vote short of the 2/3s vote required for removal
from office.
June 25: Congress enacts an
8-hour workday for workers employed by the government.
July 28: The 14th Amendment to
the US Constitution grants citizenship to anyone born in the
United States and guarantees due process and equal protection of
the laws. It serves as the basis for applying the rights
specified in the US Constitution to the states.
Dec. 25: President Johnson
grants amnesty to those who had participated in "insurrection or
rebellion" against the United States.
1869
Jan.: When Commanche Chief Toch-a-way informs Gen. Philip H.
Sheridan that he is a "good Indian," Sheridan reportedly
replied: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
May 10: A golden spike is
driven into a railroad tie at Promontory Point, Utah, completing
the transcontinental railroad. Built in just over three years by
20,000 workers, it had 1,775 miles of track. The railroad's
promoters received 23 million acres of land and $64 million in
loans as an incentive.
1870
US population: 39,818,449.
31-year-old John D.
Rockefeller forms Standard Oil of Ohio.
Feb. 25: Hiram R. Revels of
Mississippi becomes the first African American to serve in the
US Senate. Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the first
black Representative.
Mar. 30: The 15th Amendment to
the US Constitution guarantees the right to vote regardless "of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
1871
P.T. Barnum opens his three-ring circus, hailing it as the
"Greatest Show on Earth."
Jan.: Victoria Woodhull
petitions Congress demanding that women receive the vote under
the 14th Amendment.
Mar. 3: Congress declares that
Indian tribes will no longer be treated as independent nations
with whom the government must conduct negotiations.
Oct. 8: The Great Chicago Fire
claims 250 lives and destroys 17,500 buildings.
1872
Montgomery Ward begins to sell goods to rural customers by
mail.
Nov. 5: Susan B. Anthony and
other women's suffrage advocates are arrested for attempting to
vote in Rochester, N.Y.
1873
Mar. 3: The Comstock Act prohibits the mailing of obscene
literature.
Sept. 18: The Financial Panic
of 1873 begins. 5,183 business fail.
1874
The introduction of barbed wire provides the first
economical way to fence in cattle on the Great Plains.
The discovery of gold leads
thousands of prospectors to trespass on Indian lands the Black
Hills in Dakota territory.
The Women's Christian
Temperance Union is founded.
Mar. 11: 4-years-old Charley
Brewster Ross is abducted, the country's first kidnapping for
ransom. The child was never found.
Aug. 21: The Reverend Henry
Ward Beecher, the nation's best-known preacher, is sued by
newspaper editor Theodore Tilton for alienation of his wife's
affections. The trial resulted in a hung jury.
1875
Mar. 1: Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to
guarantee equal use of public accommodations and places of
public amusement. It also forbids the exclusion of African
Americans from jury duty.
1876
Feb. 14: 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell patents the
telephone.
May: The nation celebrates its
centennial by opening an International Exhibition in
Philadelphia.
June 25: George A. Custer and
265 officers and enlisted men are killed by Sioux Indians led by
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Little Horn River in
Montana.
1877
Charles Elmer Hires introduces root beer.
Feb. 27: An electoral
commission declares Rutherford Hayes the winner of the disputed
presidential election.
Apr. 10: President Hayes
begins to withdraw federal troops from the South, marking the
official end to Reconstruction.
June to Oct.: Federal troops
pursue and capture Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians of
Oregon and force them to live on an Oklahoma reservation.
July 16: The Great Railroad
Strikes begins in Marinsburg, W. Va., after the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad imposes a 10 percent wage cut.
Dec. 6: 30-year-old Thomas
Edison invents the phonograph.
1878
German engineer Karl Benz produces the first automobile
powered by an internal combustion engine.
Jan. 10: The Senate defeats a
woman's suffrage amendment 34-16. |