1860s 1860 - Pony Express begins 1860 - Crittenden Compromise 1860 - South Carolina secedes 1861 - Abraham Lincoln becomes President 1861 - Confederate States of America (the Confederacy) established under President Jefferson Davis 1861 - United States Civil War begins at Fort Sumter 1861 - Morrill tariff 1861 - Kansas admitted to the Union as a free state 1861 - Ex Parte Merriman, federal court case which objected to Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus 1861 - First Battle of Bull Run 1862 - Homestead Act 1862 - Pacific Railway Act 1862 - Morrill Land Grant Colleges Act 1863 - National Banking Act of 1863 1863 - Battle of Antietam 1863 - Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation 1863 - Battle of Gettysburg 1863 - West Virginia becomes a state 1863 - New York City draft riots 1864 - National Banking Act of 1864 1864 - Wade Davis Bill 1864 - Sand Creek Massacre 1864 - Maximilian Affair 1864 - Nevada becomes a state 1865 - Abraham Lincoln assassinated 1865 - Andrew Johnson becomes President 1865 - United States Civil War ends 1865 - 13th Amendment 1865 - Freedman's Bureau 1866 - Civil Rights Act 1866 - Ku Klux Klan founded 1866 - Ex Parte Milligan 71 US 2 1866 rules that civilians cannot be tried in military tribunals when civilian courts are available 1867 - Tenure of Office Act 1867 - The Grange founded 1867 - Reconstruction Acts 1867 - US purchases Alaska from Russia 1867 - Nebraska becomes a state 1868 - Burlingame Treaty 1868 - 14th Amendment 1868 - Tenure of Office Act 1868 - University of California chartered 1868 - Carnegie Steel Company founded 1868 - Typewriter invented 1869 - Ulysses S. Grant becomes President 1869 - Wyoming becomes first state to grant women's suffrage 1869 - Golden spike nailed in, completing the First Transcontinental Railroad (North America) 1869 - James Fisk and Jay Gould's "Black Friday" 1869 - Knights of Labor formed 1870s 1870 - 15th Amendment 1870 - First graduate programs (Yale, Harvard) 1870 - Force Acts 1870 - Standard Oil Company is formed 1871 - Great Chicago Fire 1872 - Yellowstone National Park created 1872 - Crédit Mobilier scandal 1872 - Amnesty Act 1872 - Alabama Claims 1873 - Panic of 1873 1874 - Red River Wars 1875 - Aristides wins first Kentucky Derby 1875 - Resumption Act 1875 - Civil Rights Act 1876 - National League Baseball founded 1876 - Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia 1876 - Munn v. Illinois establishes public regulation of utilities 1876 - Colorado becomes a state 1876 - Battle of Little Bighorn 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone 1877 - Rutherford B. Hayes becomes President and Reconstruction ends with the Compromise of 1877 1877 - Nez Percé Indian War 1878 - Bland-Allison Act 1878 - Morgan silver dollars first minted 1879 - Thomas Edison invents light bulb 1879 - Knights of Labor go public 1880s 1880s - Dust Bowl begins 1880 - US population exceeds 50 million 1881 - James Garfield inaugurated as President 1881 - James Garfield assassinated 1881 - Chester A. Arthur inaugurated as President 1881 - Clara Barton creates Red Cross 1881 - Tuskegee Institute founded 1881 - A Century of Dishonor written by Helen Hunt Jackson 1882 - John D. Rockefeller founds Standard Oil 1882 - Chinese Exclusion Act and European Restriction Act 1883 - Civil Rights Cases 109 US 3 1883 legalizes doctrine of segregation 1883 - Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act 1883 - Brooklyn Bridge opens 1885 - Grover Cleveland inaugurated as President 1885 - Washington monument completed 1885 - Stanford University founded 1886 - Haymarket Riot 1886 - American Federation of Labor founded in Columbus, Ohio 1887 - Congress creates Interstate Commerce Commission 1887 - Dawes Act 1887 - Hatch Act 1888 - Publication of Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy 1888 - National Geographic Society founded 1889 - Benjamin Harrison becomes President 1889 - North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington become states 1889 - Johnstown flood in Pennsylvania 1889 - Jane Addams founds Hull House 1890s 1890 - Sherman Antitrust Act 1890 - Sherman Silver Purchase Act 1890 - McKinley tariff 1890 - Yosemite National Park created 1890 - Idaho and Wyoming become states 1890 - Wounded Knee Massacre 1890 - North American Women's Suffrage Association founded 1891 - Basketball invented 1891 - Baltimore Crisis 1892 - Homestead Strike 1892 - General Electric Company founded 1893 - Grover Cleveland inaugurated President for second term 1893 - Panic of 1893 1893 - Sherman Silver Purchase Act repealed 1894 - Coxey's Army 1894 - Pullman strike 1894 - Wilson-Gorman tariff, including Income Tax 1895 - Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company strikes down part of Wilson-Gorman Tariff 1896 - Plessy v. Ferguson 163 US 537 1896 legalizes segregation in railway cars 1896 - William Jennings Bryan Cross of Gold speech 1896 - Gold discovered in Klondike 1896 - Utah becomes a state 1897 - William McKinley becomes President 1897 - Boston subway completed 1897 - Dingley tariff 1898 - USS Maine explodes in Havana, Cuba precipitating the Spanish-American War 1898 - DeLome Letter 1898 - Treaty of Paris (1898) ends Spanish-American War 1899 - Teller Amendment 1899 - Open Door Notes 1820-1859 1860-1899 History of the United States 1900-1929