Timeline of United States history (1860–99)

More than 550,000 Americans died fighting the Civil War, including these men who fell during the bloody Battle of Antietam

This section of the Timeline of United States history concerns events from 1860 to 1899.

1860s

U.S. territorial extent in 1860

• 1860 – Pony Express begins.
• 1860 – Crittenden Compromise
• 1860 – Abraham Lincoln elected President of the United States
• 1860 – South Carolina secedes from the Union
• 1861 – Ten more states secede from the Union and establish the Confederate States of America
• 1861 – Jefferson Davis elected President of the Confederacy
• 1861 – American Civil War begins at Fort Sumter
• 1861 – First Battle of Bull Run (First Battle of Manassas)
• 1862 – Battle of Hampton Roads (Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack; first ever naval battle between iron-sided ships)
• 1862 – Homestead Act
• 1862 – Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act
• 1862 – Gen. Robert E. Lee placed in command of the Army of Northern Virginia
• 1862 – Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Battle of Manassas)
• 1862 – Battle of Antietam (Battle of Sharpsburg)
• 1862 – Dakota War of 1862 begins
• 1862–1863 – Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation
• 1863 – Battle of Gettysburg
• 1863 – The Siege of Vicksburg ends
• 1863 – New York City draft riots
• 1863 – Pro-Union Virginia counties become separate state of West Virginia
• 1864 – Gen. Ulysses S. Grant put in command of all Union forces
• 1864 – Wade–Davis Bill
• 1864 – Sand Creek massacre
• 1864 – Nevada becomes a state
• 1864 – U.S. presidential election, 1864
• 1864 – Sherman's March to the Sea
• 1865 – Robert E. Lee made commander-in-chief of all Confederate forces
• 1865 – Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, captured by a corps of black Union troops
• 1865 – Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House
• 1865 – Abraham Lincoln assassinated; Andrew Johnson becomes President
• 1865 – American Civil War ends as the last elements of the Confederacy surrender
• 1865 – 13th Amendment passes, permanently outlawing slavery
• 1865 – Freedmen's Bureau
• 1866 – Civil Rights Act of 1866
• 1866 – Ku Klux Klan founded
• 1867 – Tenure of Office Act enacted
• 1867 – Territory of Alaska purchased from the Russian Empire
• 1867 – Nebraska becomes a state
• 1868 – Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, acquitted by the Senate
• 1868 – Fourteenth Amendment is ratified; second of Reconstruction Amendments
• 1868 – Ulysses S. Grant is elected president
• 1869 – The First Transcontinental Railroad is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory

1870s

U.S. territorial extent in 1870

• 1870 – 15th Amendment
• 1870 – First graduate programs (at Yale and Harvard)
• 1870 – Enforcement Acts
• 1871 – Great Chicago Fire
• 1871 – Treaty of Washington with the British Empire regarding the Dominion of Canada
• 1872 – Yellowstone National Park created
• 1872 – Crédit Mobilier scandal
• 1872 – Amnesty Act
• 1872 – Alabama Claims
• 1872 – U.S. presidential election, 1872
• 1873 – Panic of 1873
• 1873 – Virginius Affair
• 1874 – Red River Indian War
• 1875 – Aristides (horse) wins first Kentucky Derby
• 1875 – Resumption Act
• 1875 – Civil Rights Act of 1875
• 1875 – The Art Students League of New York is founded
• 1876 – National League of 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 – Wild Bill Hickok is killed by a shot to the back of his head by Jack McCall while playing poker in Deadwood, South Dakota. He held aces and eights, now known as the Dead man's hand.
• 1876 – U.S. presidential election, 1876 produces an unclear result with 20 Electoral College votes disputed
• 1877 – The Electoral Commission awards Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency
• 1877 – Reconstruction ends
• 1877 – Nez Perce War
• 1878 – Bland–Allison Act
• 1878 – Morgan silver dollars first minted
• 1879 – Thomas Edison creates first functioning light bulb
• 1879 – Knights of Labor go public

1880s

U.S. territorial extent in 1880

• 1880 – University of Southern California founded
• 1880 – U.S. population exceeds 50 million
• 1881 – The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory
• 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 – Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett
• 1881 – A Century of Dishonor written by Helen Hunt Jackson
• 1882 – Chinese Exclusion Act
• 1882 – Jesse James was shot and killed by Robert and Charlie Ford
• 1883 – participants include: Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Calamity Jane, and Annie Oakley.
• 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
• 1886 – Haymarket Riot
• 1886 – American Federation of Labor founded in Columbus, Ohio
• 1887 – The United States 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 – Oklahoma Land Rush (April 22, 1889)
• 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 – Jacob Riis published "How the Other Half Lives"
• 1890 – Sherman Silver Purchase Act
• 1890 – McKinley Tariff
• 1890 – Yosemite National Park created
• 1890 – Idaho and Wyoming become states
• 1890 – Wounded Knee Massacre
• 1890 – National American Woman Suffrage Association founded
• 1891 – Baltimore crisis
• 1891 – James Naismith invents basketball
• 1892 – Homestead Strike
• 1892 – General Electric Company founded
• 1892 – Sierra Club 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 Act, including income tax
• 1895 – Stagger Lee shoots Billy, spawning countless ballads.
• 1895 – Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. strikes down part of Wilson–Gorman Tariff
• 1896 – Plessy v. Ferguson 163 US 537 1896 affirms the idea of "separate but equal"
• 1896 – William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech
• 1896 – Gold discovered in the Yukon's Klondike
• 1896 – Utah becomes a state
• 1897 – William McKinley becomes President
  

  Wreckage of the USS Maine
• 1897 – Boston subway completed
• 1897 – Dingley tariff
• 1898 – USS Maine explodes in Havana, Cuba harbor, precipitating the Spanish–American War
• 1898 – De Lôme Letter
• 1898 – Treaty of Paris (1898) ends Spanish–American War, Philippine–American War begins
• 1898 – Hawaii annexed
• 1898 – Newlands Resolution
• 1898 – American Anti-Imperialist League organized
• 1899 – Teller Amendment
• 1899 – American Samoa occupied
• 1899 – Open Door Notes

See also

• Timeline of the American Old West

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to United States in the 19th century.

• Library of Congress. Time Line of African American History, 1852–1880