Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events

Period Political and Social History Literature

1512: Spanish Laws of Burgos forbid enslavement of
Indians and advocate Christian conversion
1514: Bartolome de las Casas petitions Spanish crown
on behalf of Native Americans
1519-1521 Cortes's conquest of Aztecs in Mexico.
1528-1536 A member of the Narvaez expedition, Alvar
Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is shipwrecked first near Tampa
Bay and later on Galveston Island off the coast of what
is now Texas. After six years spent among the Indians of 1519: Hernan Cortes, First Letter from
the region, he and his companions travel westward Mexico to the Spanish Crown
1500-
across Texas and Mexico. 1542: Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, The
1549
1540-1542 Seeking gold first in the city of Cibola, Relation of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de
reportedly larger and richer than Mexico City, and then Vaca(New URL)
in Quivera, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado leads
an expeditionary force through the Texas and Oklahoma
panhandles, with much loss of life among the area's
native peoples. He returns to Mexico City in 1542 and
dies in 1544.
1542 Urged on by Bartolome de las Casas and others,
Carlos V enacts the "New Laws" designed to end
theencomienda system that enslaves native people.
1584: Sir Walter Raleigh sends a reconnaissance fleet
under Captains Amadas and Barlow to the future
Croatoan Sound, North Carolina. Based on their 1550 Tales of La Llorona (the Weeping
glowing account, he sends out a colonizing expedition Woman), an important cultural figure and
the next year of 100 men who settle on Roanoke Island, legend, begin to be told in Mexico City.
among them artist John White and surveyor Thomas 1552: Casas,The Very Brief Relation of
Harriot. Sir Francis Drake later takes the colonists back the Devastation of the Indies, a protest
to England at their request. against the treatment of
1550- 1587: Ralegh sends out a fresh colony of 117 men, 1568: Bernal Diaz del Castillo writes The
1599 women, and children in three ships, with John White as True History of the Conquest of New
governor. Spain (1632)
1590: White returns to find that settlers have 1588: Thomas Harriot, A Brief and True
disappeared, leaving "Croatoan" carved on a tree Report of the New Found Land of
1598: Don Juan Oate establishes the colony of New Virginia (.pdf version) (summary)
Mexico by taking over a pueblo, which he renames San 1589: Arthur Barlow, The First Voyage
Juan, near modern-day Santa Fe. In retaliation for an Made to the Coasts of America
attack on the settlement, he destroys the Acoma pueblo,
killing 800 and capturing 500.
1607: Establishment of Jamestown
1608 Colony of Quebec is established.
1600- 1616: John Smith, A Description of New
1610. Santa Fe is established as the new capital of New
1619 England
Mexico, with Pedro de Peralta as the governor of the
new colony.
1621 First Thanksgiving, at Plymouth
1630 John Cotton preaches the
1628 (May 1) Thomas Morton and colonists at sermon God's Promise to His
Merrymount dance around a maypole and celebrate May Plantation to the departing colonists
1620- Day, upsetting the Plymouth Pilgrims. In June, Capt. aboard the Arbella
1629 Miles Standish is sent to eradicate the settlement and
John Winthrop delivers the lay
Morton is sent back to England.
sermon A Model of Christian Charity while
1630-43: English Puritans immigrate to Massachusetts
aboard the ship Arbella.
Bay Colony
 1630 Population: 3,000 colonists in Virginia; 300 at
Plymouth. During 1630-1640, another 16,000 colonists
will arrive.
1636 Founding of Providence, R. I. by Roger Williams,
who establishes Rhode Island as a place of religious
toleration.
1636-1637. Pequot War.
July 1636. The murder in 1634 of Capt. John Stone, a
disreputable English seaman and merchant, and of
trader John Oldham on 20 July 1636, reportedly by
Pequots, leads to reprisals against Pequot settlements.
This marks the beginning of the Pequot War, although
the conflict is not officially so designated until 1637.
24 August 1636. After Massachusetts Governor
Henry Vane commissions John Endicott to assemble a
force of 90 men to seek out Block Island tribe of Pequots
and demand their surrender, Endicott destroys the
Block Island settlement. In retaliation, the Pequots attack
Fort Saybrook and its commander Lieutenant Lion
Gardiner.
1637 Pequot War. Roger Williams helps to convince the
Narragansetts, traditional enemies of the Pequots, to
join the New Englanders' side of the conflict.
20 January. Boston clergyman John Wheelwright
preaches a sermon supporting the ideas of Anne
1630- Hutchinson and her followers and is thereby sentenced 1637 Thomas Morton, New English
1639 to banishment on 12 November. Anne Hutchinson is Canaan
sentenced to banishment at the same time.
26 May.The burning of the Pequot fort by Capt. John
Mason and his forces at Fort Mystic, Connecticut, kills
300-700 men, women, and children
28 July. Most of the remaining Pequots are killed
near New Haven, Connecticut, by combined forces from
Massachusetts and Connecticut.
To prevent the re-election of Governor Vane, who is
sympathetic to Anne Hutchinson and her ideas, John
Winthrop moves the voting to Newtown and thus is
himself elected Governor of the colony.
December. Under the leadership of Peter Minuit, a
group of Swedish colonists establishes a settlement
called New Sweden on the Delaware River.
1638 7 March. Banished from the Massachusetts Bay
Colony for her religious beliefs, Anne Hutchinson leaves
Boston and helps to establish Pocasset, or Portsmouth,
Rhode Island. (See this article for information about
Hutchinson's beliefs.)
21 September 1638. Signing of the Treaty of Hartford
formally ends the Pequot War. Remaining members of
the Pequot tribe are divided up among the Puritans
Indian allies; Pequot territories are turned over to the
Puritans as spoils of war. This treaty marked the end of
the Pequots as a distinct people.
1630-50 William Bradford begins writing Of Plymouth
Plantation (pub. 1856)
1642 John Cotton, The True Constitution
1643 Anne Hutchinson and family murdered by Native
of a Particular Visible Church
Americans near Eastchester, Long Island (N. Y.)
1643 Roger Williams, A Key into the
1646 Robert Child and others protest the intolerance of
Language of America
1640- Massachusetts Puritans toward those of other faiths; in
1645 John Cotton preaches and
1649 response, Governor John Winthrop and others justify
publishes The Way of the Churches of
their policies and banish Child.
Christ in New England, a sermon that
At the Synod of 1646 in Boston, John Cotton and justifies the New England Way
others draft a document published in 1648 as the 1650 Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse
Cambridge Platform, which codifies and defines New
England Congregationalism. (Go to an essay on the
 history of the Cambridge Platform from a theological
perspective.
1647 First woman barrister in the colonies, Margaret
Brent of Maryland, seeks and is denied the right to vote
in the assembly.

1650, Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse

1653 John Eliot, Catechism in the Indian
1652 Massachusetts general court rules that the territory Language, first book printed in an Indian
1650- of Maine lies within the boundaries of the Massachusetts language. He will later (in 1661) translate
1654 Bay Colony, thus ending Maine's immediate hopes of the Bible into the Algonquian language.
independence. 1654 Edward Johnson, Wonder-Working
Providence of Sion's Saviour in New
England
1656 (Summer) Massachusetts Bay Colony
Puritans whip, imprison, and banish the first Quakers to
arrive in the colony. Legislation in 1658 bars the
Quakers from holding their services, called "meetings."
22 September. In Maryland, an all-woman jury, the first
1656 John Hammond, Lea and Rachel;
1655- in the colonies, acquits Judith Catchpole on charges of
or, The Two Fruitfull Sisters, Virginia and
1659 murdering her unborn child.
Maryland
1659. 27 October. Quakers William Robinson and
Marmaduke Stephenson are hanged for refusing to
leave Massachusetts. Mary Dyer, a follower of Anne
Hutchinson and later a Quaker, is scheduled to hang
with them but is reprieved at the last minute.
1660. 1 June. Mary Dyer is hanged after defying an
expulsion order by returning to Boston in May 1660.
1661 Massachusetts continues to punish Quakers by
hanging those who refuse to leave the colony. After a
royal edict requires the Massachusetts authorities to
release imprisoned Quakers and return them to 1662 Michael Wigglesworth, The Day of
England, the authorities instead allow them to leave for Doom. This immensely popular poem sold
other colonies. By December, corporal punishment for 1800 copies in its first year, and
1660-
Quakers and other dissenters is suspended in the according to the Norton Anthology of
1664
Massachusetts Bay colony by order of Parliament. American Literature (Volume 1), "about
1664 Maryland Colony passes a law mandating lifetime one out of every twenty persons in New
servitude for black slaves; previous precedent had England bought it" (284).
allowed freedom for those who converted to Christianity
and established legal residences there.
1664 New Amsterdam becomes New York after
Governor Peter Stuyvesant's surrender to English
forces.

1665 Legislation in several states tightens the bonds of

slavery. English law provides that slaves may be freed if
they convert to Christianity and establish legal
1665-
residence, but Maryland, New York, New Jersey, North
1669
Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia pass laws
allowing conversion and residence without freeing the
slaves.
1670 Hudson's Bay Company is chartered.
1670- 1673 Marquette and Joliet travel from Lake Michigan
1674 down the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas River,
completing a 2500-mile journey of exploration.
1675-78 King Philip's War. It begins when Metacomet
(King Philip) leads an attack against Swansea in
1675- retaliation for the Plymouth colony's execution of three
1679 Wampanoag tribe members. Metacomet is betrayed and
shot on 12 August 1676, and the war formally ends
when Sir Edmond Andros makes peace in Maine on 12
John Eliot, The Indian
Grammar (1666)
1671 Samuel Danforth, A Brief
Recognition of New Englands [sic] Errand
into the Wilderness, a powerful jeremiad
1673-1729 Samuel Sewall's diary
1678 Anne Bradstreet's Poems, a second
edition of The Tenth Muse corrected by
Bradstreet, is published posthumously in
Boston.
1676 Increase Mather, A Brief History of
the War with the Indians in New England
 April 1678.
1675 (September) The Massachusetts settlements of
Deerfield and Hadley experience the first of three raids
from the Wampanoag and Nipmuck peoples.
1676. May 2. Mary Rowlandson is ransomed after her
capture during an attack on Lancaster.
30 July. Bacon's Rebellion. Tobacco planters led by
Nathan Bacon ask for and are denied permission to
attack the Susquehannock Indians, who have been
conducting raids on colonists' settlement. Enraged at
Governor Berkeley's refusal, the colonists burn
Jamestown and kill many Indians before order is
restored in October. See also these more extensive
accounts: Robert Beverley (1704), Mr. King (1835), Mary
Newton Standard (1907)
1681 4 March. William Penn receives a charter for land 1682 Mary Rowlandson, The Soveraignty
on which he will found Pennsylvania & Goodness of God, Together with the
1683 Penn and Native Americans negotiate a peace Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed;
1680-
treaty at Shackamaxon under the Treaty Elm Being a Narrative of the Captivity and
1684
1684 Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
revoked after critical reports reach England. This ends 1682-1725 Edward Taylor, Preparatory
the requirement of church membership for voting. Meditations (published 1939, 1960)
1686 Governor Edmund Andros begins issuing a series
of unpopular orders aimed at the consolidation of
colonies into one large settlement. He dissolves the
assemblies of New York and Connecticut, limits the
number of town meetings in New England to one per 1684 Increase Mather, Remarkable
year, places the militia under his direct control, and Providences (An Essay for the Recording
1685- forces Puritans and Anglicans to worship together in the of Illustrious Providences)
1689 Old South Church. 1685 Cotton Mather, Memorable
1689 April. Rebellious colonists force Andros to take Providences Relating to Witchcraft and
shelter in a fort for his own protection.Cotton Possessions
Mather supports the rebellion.
25 July. Andros is ordered back to England to stand
trial. The colonies reestablish their previous systems of
government.
1692 Deodat Lawson, A Brief and True
1690 (1689-1763). The series of wars known as the
Narrative of Some Remarkable Passages
French and Indian War begins with King William's War.
Relating to Sundry Persons Afflicted by
Schenectady, N. Y. and other areas are burned by
Witchcraft
French and Native Americans; Massachusetts colonists
1690- 1692, 1693 Cotton Mather, The Wonders
capture Port Royal, Nova Scotia; and Canadian forces
1694 of the Invisible World
destroy Casco, Maine.
Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience
1692 (May). Salem witchcraft trials begin. From June-
Concerning Evil Spirits, a volume
September 22, 20 people are executed.
denouncing the use of spectral evidence
1693 The College of William and Mary is founded.
in witchcraft trials.
1697 Massachusetts general court expresses official
repentance for the witchcraft trials; Samuel Sewall
1695- confesses guilt from his Boston church pew.
1699 1699 Peace treaty at Casco Bay, Maine, brings
hostilities between the Abenaki Indians and the
Massachusetts colony to an end.

1800 Census: Population about 5.3 million people.

30 August. Gabriel Prosser's plan to lead Virginia
slaves in rebellion is revealed.
The Library of Congress is established. In 1815,
Thomas Jefferson's library of 7,000 volumes will be Charles Brockden Brown, Clara
1800 purchased. Howard and Jane Talbot (epistolary
In Philadelphia, free African Americans petition novels); second part of Arthur Mervyn
Congress to end the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.
Congress convenes in Washington, D. C. for the first
time.
John Chapman, a.k.a. "Johnny Appleseed," begins
 dispensing apple seeds and seedlings to settlers in
Ohio.
Thomas Jefferson is chosen as
president over incumbent John
Adams in a contested election that is
decided in the House of
Representatives; Aaron Burr becomes
vice-president. With this election, the
Federalist party loses control of the
presidency and of Congress. (Image
of John Adams courtesy of
the Images of American Political
History site.)
War with Tripoli begins and will last until 1805.
In the last weeks of his presidency, John Adams
1801 creates new judgeships and "packs the courts" with
Federalist appointees to mitigate the effects of the
election. Among his appointments is John Marshall as
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
4 July. United States Military Academy opens at West
1802 Point, N. Y. Among its cadets will be Ulysses Grant,
Robert E. Lee, and Edgar Allan Poe.
In the case of Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme
Court under Chief Justice John Marshall rules that an
act of Congress is null and void when it conflicts with
provisions of the U. S. Constitution. This is the first
important test of the system of checks and balances
between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches
of government. Charles Brockden Brown, Memoirs of
1803 May. Louisiana purchase ($15 million) doubles the Carwin the Biloquist (November 1803-
land area of the United States. March 1805)
31 August. Lewis and Clark expedition sets out down
the Ohio River; they will complete a 3-year journey to the
West Coast.
Passage of the 12th Amendment: election of
president and vice president on separate ballots.
April. Aaron Burr is defeated in his campaign for
governor of New York.
May. Lewis and Clark expedition leaves St. Louis. By
October, the expedition is encamped for the winter at a
Mandan Indian village near what is now Bismarck, N.D.
1804 July. Aaron Burr challenges Federalist Alexander
Hamilton, his longtime rival, to a duel after Hamilton had
successfully foiled Burr's bid to become governor of New
York. Burr shoots Hamilton, who dies 10 hours later.
Jefferson wins a second term as president, with
George Clinton as vice president.
 May. Members of the Lewis and Clark expedition see
the Rocky Mountains; in November, they see the Pacific
Ocean.
Lt. Zebulon Pike explores the Louisiana Territory.
Painter Charles Willson Peale
establishes the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts, where
this trompe l'oeil picture by
Peale, The Staircase Group (1795), is Mercy Otis Warren, Rise, Progress and
still exhibited.(Picture courtesy Termination of the American Revolution, a
1805
of Carol Gerten's Fine Art site.) three-volume history that is the earliest
such account by an American.

Noah Webster issues his Compendious Dictionary of

the English Language
Lewis and Clark expedition winters at Fort Clatsop in
1806 Oregon and ends its journey by returning to St. Louis in
September.
The Cumberland Road is built to facilitate western
settlement.
Embargo Act bans all trade with foreign countries and
forbids American ships to set sail for foreign ports. This
act has a lasting negative effect on New England Washington Irving, his brother William,
seaports. and James Kirke Paulding start an
1807 The Clermont, first reliable steamboat, travels from anonymous satirical
New York City to Albany, N.Y. magazine, Salmagundi.
The Chesapeake-Leopard incident in which three Joel Barlow, The Columbiad
Americans are seized or "impressed" as seamen from
the American ship Chesapeake stirs anti-British feeling.
The Osage, a Sioux tribe, sign the Osage Treaty
ceding their lands in what is now Missouri and Arkansas James N. Barker, The Indian Princess, or
to the U. S. La Belle Sauvage; first play having Native
1808
American life (that of Pocahontas) as its
Thomas Jefferson refuses to run for a third term as subject.
president, naming James Madison as his successor.
Shawnee leader Tecumseh begins to establish a
defensive confederacy to resist the westward movement
of white settlers.
New England governors refuse to supply militia to
1809 Washington Irving, History of New York
enforce the Embargo Acts (of 1807 and 1808)
Phoenix completes the first sea voyage by a
steamboat by traveling around the shores of New
Jersey.

Third national census records 7,239,881 people
John Jacob Astor founds the Pacific Fur Company. In
1810 1811, this company establishes a trading post at Astoria
at the mouth of the Oregon River. Astor loses this post
during the War of 1812.
Charles Jared Ingersoll (1782-
1862), Inchiquin, the Jesuit's Letters, a
volume defending the American scene
against the criticisms of English travel
writers.

7 November. Battle of Tippecanoe at which William

Henry Harrison and his troops engage Shawnee and
1811
Creek forces led by The Prophet. Tecumseh has earlier
sought allies among the Creek Indian tribes.

State of Louisiana enters the union. James Kirke Paulding (1778-1860), The
1812 Diverting History of John Bull and Brother
1 June. Despite the opposition of most New England Jonathan, a satiric account of the
 and Middle Atlantic states, President Madison asks for a founding and rebellion of the American
declaration of war against Great Britain because of the colonies
impressment of seamen and the blockade of American
ports. War is declared on 19 June. The British attack
Sacketts Harbor, New York, on Lake Ontario in early
July.
James Madison re-elected to a second term as
president, defeating New York's DeWitt Clinton.
War of 1812 continues as various
negotiations break down.
(Image of HMS Shannon firing a
broadside at the US frigate
Chesapeake off Boston Harbor on 1 June 1813 courtesy
1813 of the War of 1812 website.)
5 October. Death of Tecumseh and defeat of the
British in the Battle of the Thames (north of Lake Erie).
17 December. Embargo on British trade becomes
law.
Embargo Act is officially repealed.
Creek War ends with the Creek nation ceding two-
thirds of its land in southern Georgia to the U. S.
24-25 August. British forces
invade Washington and set fire to
the Capitol, the White House, and
other buildings. (Image courtesy of
the Images of American Political
History site.)
Francis Scott Key, "The Star-Spangled
1814 11 September. American naval
Banner"
forces gain control of Lake
Champlain.
Congress purchases Thomas Jefferson's 7,000-
volume library to replace the books burned in the Library
of Congress.
24 December. Treaty of Ghent ends the War of 1812.
Francis Cabot Lowell builds the first American factory
to combine cotton weaving and spinning in Waltham,
Massachusetts.
8 January. Unaware that the War of 1812 has ended,
the British attack Andrew Jackson in New Orleans, Philip Freneau, Poems
1815
losing 2,036 soldiers. U. S. casualties include eight killed The North American Review (1815-1939)
and 13 wounded.
In Philadelphia, African Americans establish the first
African Methodist Church.
This is the "year of no summer" in New England; 10
1816 inches of snow fall in Massachusetts in June.
Indiana is admitted to the union as a free state.
Founding of American Colonization Society, the
purpose of which is to return freed slaves to Africa.
James Monroe is inaugurated as fifth president of the
U. S.
N. Y. legislature authorizes construction of the Erie
1817 Canal, which opens in 1825. William Cullen Bryant, "Thanatopsis"
"Era of Good Feeling" ensues since both Democratic-
Republicans and Federalists are pleased at Monroe's
election.
First Pension Act provides for veterans of the Revolutionary
War.
Congress limits the number of stripes on the flag to 13 for
1818 the original colonies.
William Cullen Bryant, "To a Waterfowl"
Andrew Jackson begins his First Seminole War campaign in
Florida.

Arkansas County of the Missouri Territory
reorganized as the Arkansas Territory.
Congress offers a $50 reward for reporting the illegal
1819 importation of slaves into the United States.
William Ellery Channing's sermon "Unitarian
Christianity" underscores the differences between
Unitarians and other Christian denominations.
Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle"
appears in the May 1819 first installment
of The Sketch Book
Mordecai Noah's drama She Would Be
a Soldier is produced and then published.
It is the story of Christine, who disguises
herself as a soldier during the Battle of
Chippewa (5 July 1814) and is rescued
by the American soldier she loves.

James Monroe is almost unanimously reelected as

president over John Quincy Adams, winning 231 of 232
electoral votes.
Missouri Compromise balances slave and free states
admitted to the union. Missouri is admitted as a slave
state, but no slavery will be permitted anywhere north of
Missouri's southern border.
Congress makes trade in foreign slaves an act of
piracy
Daniel Boone dies at age 85. In the Edinburgh Review (volume 33,
Spring. In Palmyra in western New York state, January 1820) Sydney Smith writes, "In
Joseph Smith has the first in a series of religious visions the four quarters of the globe, who reads
that ten years later, on April 6, 1830, lead to the an American book? Or goes to an
1820 American play? Or looks at an American
organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints (Mormons). After removing first to Kirtland, Ohio, picture or statue?"
and Commerce (later Nauvoo) Illinois, Smith was shot to Washington Irving, The Sketch
death by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, in 1844. Book (1819-20)
U. S. population: 9,638,453
20 November. The whaling ship Essex is rammed
and sunk by a sperm whale in the Pacific ocean. The
survivors are found 94 days later, after a gruelling ordeal
that includes near starvation and cannibalism. As a
sailor aboard the Acushnet in 1840, Herman
Melville hears the story and reads Owen Chase's
narrative of the disaster, an account that will later
influence Moby-Dick.
James Fenimore Cooper, The Spy
After a hunting
accident in 1809,
Missouri enters union as 24th state, thus balancing Sequoyah
the union at 12 slave and 12 free states (1730?-1843)
Opening of Santa Fe trail. develops a
written alphabet
1821 Republic of Liberia in West Africa is established as a
for the Cherokee
refuge for freed American slaves.
language. It is
The Waterford Academy for Young Ladies, later the approved by the
Emma Willard School, opens in Waterford, N.Y, the first Cherokee chiefs
college-level school for women in the Unites States. in this
year.(Image of
Sequoyah courtesy of the Smithsonian's
Portrait Gallery.)
Denmark Vesey, a free African American, is
convicted and hanged along with 35 others in
Charleston, S.C. when his plans to lead a slave uprising
1822 are revealed.
President James Monroe asks Congress to recognize
several newly independent republics in Latin America,
among them Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Peru.
James Fenimore Cooper, The
2 December. President Monroe presents Monroe Pioneers
1823 Doctrine stating that U.S. will not tolerate European Clement Clarke Moore, "A Visit from
interference in Western Hemisphere. St. Nicholas" is published in the Troy
[N.Y.] Sentinel.(For an article discussing
 the controversy over whether Moore
really wrote this poem, go
to http://www.common-place.org/vol-
01/no-02/moore/index.shtml)
John Quincy Adams is elected president (1824-28) in
a contested election that ends in the House of
Washington Irving, "Tales of a
Representatives on 9 February 1825. Speaker of the
Traveller"
House Henry Clay uses his influence to elect Adams, an
action bitterly resented by candidate Andrew Jackson, Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok (romance
1824
whose 99 electoral votes make him a logical choice. glorifying the "noble savage")
Adams names Clay his Secretary of State. James Seaver, A Narrative of the Life
Bureau of Indian Affairs is established. of Mrs. Mary Jemison (captivity narrative)
Great Salt Lake explored by scout Jim Bridger.
Creek chief William McIntosh signs treaty ceding
Creek lands to the U.S. and agrees to vacate by 1826;
other Creeks repudiate the treaty and kill him.
Completion of the Erie Canal linking the Great Lakes
with New York City; first load of grain shipped in 1836
John Trumbull, William Dunlap, and Asher B. Durand
1825 discover Thomas Cole's Lake with Dead Trees in a
show window; Cole and Durand become associated with
the Hudson River School of painters.
Fanny Wright, a Scottish reformer, publishes a Plan
for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery and establishes the
Nashoba Community in Tennessee (1825-28) as a
cooperative in which slaves could earn their freedom.
First American railroad completed in Quincy,
Massachusetts
Death of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July
4.
12 September. Former Freemason William Morgan of
Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans
Batavia, N.Y, who had exposed Masonic secrets
in Illustrations of Masonry, disappears from the Graham's Magazine (1826-58)
1826
Canandiagua, N.Y. jail under mysterious circumstances 26 May. Elias Boudinot, "An Address
and is never seen again. A general belief that the to the Whites"
Freemasons had killed him for revealing their secrets
leads to the formation of the Anti-Masonic party, the first
third party in American politics. (For a description from
the Freemasons' point of view,
visit http://www.freemason.org/ims/morgan.htm)
Cooper, The Prairie
Creek Indians sign a second treaty ceding lands in
western Georgia Edgar Allan Poe, Tamerlane and Other
1827 Poems
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas established to protect
Santa Fe Trail. Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Hope
Leslie
Noah Webster publishes American Dictionary of the
English Language.
John James Audubon publishes the first volume
of Birds in America.
Hawthorne, Fanshawe (suppressed by
1828 Andrew Jackson is elected president, winning 178 the author)
electoral votes to incumbent John Quincy Adams's 83.
21 February. Elias Boudinot and Sequoyah begin
publishing the Cherokee Phoenix, the first American
newspaper published in a Native American language.
Creek Indians receive orders to relocate across the
Mississippi River
Poe, Al Araaf, Tamerlane, and Other
1829 First steam-powered locomotive in America.
Poems
Mexico resists the efforts of Andrew Jackson to
purchase Texas.

1830 Mexico blocks further U.S. colonists Godey's Lady's Book (1830-98)
 U. S. population: 12,866,020
28 May. President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian
Removal Act authorizing the move of of several tribes to
Western lands.
The Republicans nominate Henry Clay for president.
15 September. The Choctaws sign a treaty
exchanging 8 million acres of land east of the Mississippi
for land in Oklahoma.
Former president John Quincy Adams takes a seat in
the House of Representatives.
Nat Turner leads slave uprising in which 70 whites
are killed; 100 blacks are killed in a search for Turner.
Thomas Gray records the Confessions of Nat Turner in
early November.
1831
Black Hawk of the Sauk and Fox tribes agrees to
move west of Mississippi.
Alexis de Tocqueville and his friend Gustave de
Beaumont spend nine months touring America. The
book that de Tocqueville writes after this trip, Democracy
in America, will be published in 1835.
Democrat Andrew Jackson is re-elected president
over his opponents, gathering 216 electoral votes to
National Republican candidate Henry Clay's 49. Also
running are Anti-Masonic candidate William Wirt (7) and
Independent John Floyd (11).
1832 Seminole chiefs cede Florida to the U.S. and agree to
move west of the Mississippi
The Oregon Trail becomes a main route for settlers
New England Anti-Slavery Society is founded
6 April-2 August. Black Hawk War (Columbia
Encyclopedia entry)
Americans in Texas territory vote to separate Texas
from Mexico.
Britain prohibits slavery in her colonies.
Oberlin College opens, the first co-educational
1833 college and the first to admit blacks.
25 September. Following the instructions of President
Jackson, Treasury Secretary Roger B. Taney
announces that the government will shift its deposits
from the Second Bank of the United States to state
banks, a move that as Jackson intended weakens the
Birth of Emily Dickinson (d. 1886)
Rebecca Harding Davis born.
Poe publishes "Israfel" in Poems by
Edgar A. Poe
James Kirke Paulding's The Lion of the
West features a character, Nimrod
Wildfire, based on Davy Crockett (1786-
1836).
The
Liberator (abolitionist
paper, 1831-65). In its
first issue, William
Lloyd Garrison writes,
"On this subject
[slavery] I do not wish
to think, or speak, or
write with moderation.
No! No! Tell a man whose house is on
fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to
moderately rescue his wife from the
hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to
gradually extricate her babe from the fire
into which it has fallen; but urge me not to
use moderation in a cause like the
present. I am in earnest--I will not
equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not
retreat a single inch--AND I WILL BE
HEARD." (Image courtesy of the National
Portrait Gallery.)
Spirit of the Times (1831-58), which
publishes stories and sketches of
the Southwestern humorists.
The New-England Magazine (1831-
1835)
Louisa May Alcott born on her father's
33rd birthday.
Hawthorne, "Roger Malvin's Burial"
William Apess, "An Indian's Looking-
Glass for the White Man"
Knickerbocker Magazine (1833-65)
founded by Charles Fenno Hoffman
(1806-1884)
Child, Appeal in Favor of that Class of
Americans Called Africans
 Bank of the United States. Black Hawk or
Makataimeshekiakiak
, selections
fromAutobiography (
Surrender Speech of
1832 also available
online; iImage
courtesy of
the National Portrait
Gallery.)

The Senate opposes Jackson over his removal of

funds to topple the Bank of the United States
Cyrus McCormick patents the horse-drawn grain
1834 Southern Literary Messenger (1834-64)
reaper
Anti-Catholic protestors burn the Ursuline convent in
Somerville, Massachusetts.
Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) born
in Florida, Missouri. (d. 1910)
Harriet Jacobs goes into hiding to
escape Dr. Norcom (Dr. Flint
in Incidents); she will remain in hiding
National debt is paid off. To increase the amount of until her 1842 escape to New York.
available money needed for a growing economy, the
Poe appointed editor of the Southern
state banks begin to issue bank notes not backed by
Literary Messenger
gold and silver. Inflation results from this practice.
William Gilmore Simms, The
1835 Mob in Charleston, S.C. burns abolitionist literature,
Yemassee (story of Indian warfare in
and abolitionist writers are expelled from Southern
Georgia)
states.
Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Georgia
Alexis de Tocqueville publishes Democracy in
Scenes
America in France.
Crockett almanacs (1835-56)
James Gordon Bennett begins
publishing the New York Herald, which
boosts its circulation with sensational
coverage of the murder of Helen Jewett.
Beginning on February 23, Santa Anna leads 3,000
men in a siege of the Alamo, killing all 187 Texans inside
on March 6; on March 27, his troops under Col. Jos
Nicols de la Portilla kill 300-400 soldiers
defending Goliad. (To see the Alamo today, visit
Graham's Magazine
the Alamo cam)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
21 April. Texans capture Santa Anna at the Battle of
San Jacinto and kill some 650 Mexican soldiers. Transcendental Club (1836-c.1844)
1836 11 July. The problems arising from growing inflation, Bret Harte born
land speculation, and worthless currency lead President Elizabeth Peabody edits Bronson
Jackson to issue the Specie Circular, which requires that Alcott's Record of a
public lands be paid for in gold or silver instead of paper School andConversations with Children
money. on the Gospels.(1826-58)
1 September. Settlers led by Dr. Marcus Whitman
reach Walla Walla in present-day Washington.
Massachusetts Supreme Court rules that any slave
brought within its borders by a master is free.

March. As one of his last acts as president, Andrew Ralph Waldo Emerson, "An Oration"
Jackson recognizes the Lone Star Republic of Texas; (revised in 1841 as "The American
the U.S. now consists of 13 slave and 13 free states, Scholar")
with statehood pending for one slave territory and three Birth of William Dean Howells in Ohio.
free territories. (d. 1920)
1837
4 March. Democrat Martin Van Buren is inaugurated Birth of Edward Eggleston.
president, with Richard M. Johnson as vice president. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-Told
Van Buren won in part because he ran against a badly Tales (including "My Kinsman, Major
divided Whig party whose three candidates--William Molineux"
Henry Harrison, Hugh L. White, and Henry Clay--split United States Magazine and
 the vote.
10 May. Following several months of increasing
inflation and shrinking credit, the Panic of 1837begins,
causing widespread bank failures and unemployment.
Education reform by Horace Mann, Calvin Stowe,
Mary Lyon, and others.
Removal of 15,000-17,000 Cherokee Indians from
Georgia on the "Trail of Tears" results in an estimated
4,000-8,000 deaths. (Interactive lesson online from the
National Park Service includes background history,
1838 images, and maps.)
Republic of Texas withdraws its offer of annexation
with the U. S.
Underground Railroad organized.
Spanish slave ship Amistad,
carrying 53 slaves, is taken over in a
mutiny by their leader, Cinque; before
the Supreme Court, John Quincy
Adams argues their right to be
1839
freed ( Amistad documents at the
National Records site)
4 July. The Independent Treasury Act is signed into
law by President Martin Van Buren. It makes the federal
government exclusively responsible for managing its
own funds.
At the Anti-Slavery Convention in London, William
1840 Lloyd Garrison and others walk out when women
abolitionists are not allowed to be seated as delegates.
U. S. population: 17,069,453.
William Henry Harrison ("Old Tippecanoe") defeats
incumbent Martin Van Buren for the presidency.
Supreme Court upholds lower court ruling and allows
the Amistad mutineers to return to Africa.
13 August. The Independent Treasury Act is
repealed.
4 March. William Henry Harrison is inaugurated as
president. Chilled through after a lengthy outdoor
ceremony, the 68-year-old Harrison contracts
pneumonia and dies on 4 April. Vice-President John
1841 Tyler becomes president.
7 November. Slaves aboard the Creole mutiny and
sail the ship to Nassau, a British port, where they are
freed.
Forty-eight wagons arrive in Sacramento by way of
the Oregon Trail, one of the earliest large groups to
make this journey.
Brook Farm Institute is founded 9 miles from Boston
(1841-47).
May. Colonel John C. Fremont leads an expedition to
1842
explore the Rocky Mountains.
Beginning of large migration westward.
1843 Second Seminole War ends.
Sculptor Hiram Powers completes The Greek Slave.
Aggressive expansionist James K. Polk defeats
1844
Henry Clay for the presidency.
Democratic Review (1837-49)
Burton's Gentleman's Magazine (1837-
40)
William Ellery Channing, Self
Culture (promotes "doctrine of self-
improvement" as an alternative to strict
Calvinism)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "An Address . .
. " (revised in 1841 as "The Divinity
School Address")
Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in
America (first American edition)
Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher"
in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine; edits
the magazine until 1840.
Poe, Tales of the Grotesque and
Arabesque
Caroline Kirkland, A New Home--
Who'll Follow?
Transcendentalist Club begins to
publish The Dial with Margaret Fuller as
the first editor
Bronson Alcott, Orphic Sayings
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Two Years
Before the Mast
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First
Series (including "Self-Reliance")
Edgar Allan Poe becomes editor
of Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia
Melville sails for 18 months on
whaler Acushnet and jumps ship in the
Marquesas in July 1842.
Poe, Reviews of Hawthorne's Twice-Told
Tales
Henry James, Jr., born in New York
City.
Poe, "The Gold Bug"; "The Black Cat"
The New-Englander (1843-92)
Emerson, Essays: Second
Series (including "Experience" and "The
 The Springfield Republican, edited by Samuel
Bowles, is founded; Bowles will publish Emily
Dickinson's poetry years later.
Poet"
Bronson Alcott and his family spend
seven months at Fruitlands. See
the Concord chronology for more dates.
Littell's Living Age (1844-1900)

In The United States Magazine and Democratic Poe, The Raven and Other Poems
Review, John L. O'Sullivan writes of "the fulfillment of Margaret Fuller, Woman in the
our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted Nineteenth Century
by Providence," and the phrase catched on with Henry David Thoreau begins living at
expansionist politicians and the public. Walden Pond
1845 Anti-rent wars in New York State protest the Johnson Jones Hooper, Simon Suggs
patroonship system.
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the
Texas joins the union as the 28th state. Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Potato famine in Ireland brings great numbers of Irish Slave
immigrants. American Whig Review (1848-52)
3 May. The Battle at Palo Alto in which 2300
Americans put to rout twice as many Mexican forces
marks the beginning of the Mexican War. At President
James Russell Lowell publishes the
Polk's request, on 11 May Congress declares the U.S. at
first of "The Bigelow Papers" in
war with Mexico.
the Boston Courier to voice his opposition
6 June. Treaty with Great Britain extends the Oregon to war with Mexico.
Territory boundary at latitude 40 degrees to Puget
Poe,"The Philosophy of Composition"
1846 Sound. This allows President James K. Polk to focus his
attention on the war with Mexico. Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old
Manse (includes "Roger Malvin's Burial"
14 June. In California, U.S. settlers proclaim the
and "Young Goodman Brown")
independent Republic of California, which in August is
annexed by the United States. Melville, Typee
15 August. U.S. annexation of New Mexico, formerly Whitman editor of The Brooklyn Eagle
a Mexican territory.
Iowa becomes a state.
22-23 February. Battle of Buena Vista in which
General Taylor's army of 4800 men defeats General
Santa Anna's 15,000-man force.
Frederick Douglass founds The North
9 March. General Winfield Scott's forces lay siege to Star, an abolitionist newspaper.
Vera Cruz and take it on 29 March.
Emerson, Poems (includes
8 September. Scott occupies the heights of "Hamatreya" and "Each and All")
1847
Chapultepec and later marches into Mexico City.
Henry Wadsworth
22 December. New congressman Abraham Lincoln Longfellow, Evangeline
makes a speech opposing the Mexican War.
Melville, Omoo
Senator Lewis Cass proposes "popular sovereignty"
by which residents of territories decide whether the state
will be slave or free.
24 January. James Marshall discovers gold near
Sutter's Fort, California. News of the find begins the
California Gold Rush of 1849.
Mexican War ends with the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo. In exchange for $15 million and the settling of
$3.25 million in American claims, Mexico cedes some
500,000 square miles of its territory in the western and
southwestern U.S.
12-20 July. Lucretia Mott and James Russell Lowell, A Fable for
1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton organize the Critics
first American women's rights Joel Chandler Harris born (d. 1928)
convention in Seneca Falls, New
York, where theDeclaration of
Sentiments was signed by 68 women
and 32 men.
Picture of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
courtesy of the National Portrait
Gallery site on the Seneca Falls Convention.
Free Soil party organizes and nominates Martin Van
 Buren on an anti-slavery platform.
John Humphrey Noyes establishes the Oneida
Community, a communal society based on the principles
of "complex marriage" and perfectionism. The society
disbands in 1880.
Amelia Bloomer begins
publishing The Lily, a journal
supporting temperance and Thoreau, "Resistance to Civil
women's rights. Government"; A Week on the Concord
and Merrimack Rivers. Better known
28 February. First gold
under the title "Civil Disobedience," his
seekers arrive in San
"Resistance to Civil Government"
Francisco. (Image courtesy
recounts his experience in refusing to pay
of the Images of American
his poll tax as a means of protesting the
Political History site.)
1849 Mexican War.
Zachary Taylor
Poe, "The Bells"; "Annabel Lee"
inaugurated as
12th president. Poe dies in Baltimore (b. 1809)
Harriet Tubman (1820- Sarah Orne Jewett born
1913) escapes to the North and begins working with the Melville, Redburn; Mardi
Underground Railroad. Tubman helps at least 300 Rufus Griswold, The Female Poets of
slaves to escape before the Civil War; during the war, America
she worked as a nurse, cook, laundress, and, it is said,
spy behind Confederate lines for the Union forces.

3 June. At the Nashville Convention, delegates from

nine Southern states gather and agree to defend the
rights of slaveholders and to adopt what they consider a
moderate position by extending the 36' 30" dividing
line of the Missouri Compromise, actions rendered moot
by the Compromise of 1850 and, later, by the Kansas-
Nebraska Act.
18 September. Fugitive Slave Act provides for the
return of slaves brought to free states.(Text of this
document; interview with historian Eric Foner about its
effects.) Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet
Vice President Millard Fillmore becomes president Letter, which sells 4,000 copies in the first
after Zachary Taylor dies on 9 July 1850. 10 days and becomes a best seller.
Compromise of 1850 admits California as a free Emerson, Representative Men
1850
state; New Mexico and Utah territories are organized Melville, White-Jacket
with no restrictions on slavery until they apply for Susan Warner (1818-85), The Wide,
statehood. Under the principle of "popular sovereignty," Wide World (domestic fiction)
voters in those territories will decide for themselves
whether slavery is permitted. Other laws "prohibited the
public sale of slaves in the District of Columbia; included
the new Fugitive Slave Act; and federalized Texas's pre-
annexation debt in exchange for Texas's relinquishment
of its substantial territorial claims upon New
Mexico Territory."
(Map) (Documents) (More Information)
National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester,
Massachusetts.
U. S. population: 23,191,876
15 February. Shadrach Minkins,an African American
working as a waiter, is seized by slavecatchers in
Boston; Richard Henry Dana, Jr., tries to free him by Melville, Moby-Dick
legal means, but first Shadrach is rescued by a group of
African Americans. Hawthorne, The House of the Seven
Gables
1851 Sioux sign Treaty of Traverse des Sioux giving up
land in Iowa and Minnesota. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Indian
Tribes (1851-57)
According to HarpWeek, Horace Greeley did not
originate the phrase but "gave wide exposure to Indiana Birth of Kate Chopin (d. 1904)
editor John Soule's counsel to 'Go west, young man, go
west.'"
 Congress passes the Land Act of 1851, an attempt to
sort out competing land claims by Mexican Americans,
called Californios, who were longtime settlers in
California, and the immigrants, often from other areas of
the United States, who contested their claims. The net
result was a loss of land by the Californios, as depicted
in Mara Amparo Ruiz de Burton's novel The Squatter
and the Don (1885).
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's
Democrat Franklin Pierce, a friend of Hawthorne's, Cabin sells one million copies within the
defeats General Winfield Scott for the presidency and year.
1852 affirms his support for the Compromise of 1850. Melville, Pierre
"Know-Nothing" Party opposes Catholics and Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
immigrants. Birth of Mary E. Wilkins (Freeman) (d.
1930)
Hawthorne,Tanglewood Tales
Birth of Thomas Nelson Page (d.
30 December. Gadsden Purchase gives the U.S. a
1922)
strip of land in what is now southern New Mexico and
Arizona. (Map) William Wells Brown, Clotel; or, The
1853 President's Daughter, published in
Abba Alcott and 73 other women petition the
England, is the first novel by an African
Massachusetts Constitutional Convention to urge
American.
suffrage for women.
Putnam's Monthly Magazine (1853-
1922)
Emigrant Aid Society encourages anti-slavery settlers
to move to Kansas
24 May. Wendell Phillips and others lead anti-slavery
mob to attack a Federal court house in Boston that
holds Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave.
30 May. The Kansas-Nebraska Act passes, allowing Henry David Thoreau, Walden
"popular sovereignty"; the net effect was to negate the
Missouri Compromise (1820). (Read the text of this Melville, "The Encantadas"
document.) Thomas Bangs Thorpe, The Hive of
Abraham Lincoln gives a speech condemning the the Bee Hunter
1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act. Maria Cummins, The Lamplighter
18 October. Minister to Great Britain James John Rollin Ridge, The Life and
Buchanan, Minister to France John Y. Mason, and Adventures of Joaqun Murieta, the
Minister to Spain Pierre Soul meet in Ostand, Belgium Celebrated California Bandit (first novel
and Aix-le-Chapelle to draw up the Ostend Manifesto, an by a Native American)
attempt to purchase Cuba from Spain that emphasizes
Cuba's strategic importance and threatens to take it by
force should negotiations fail. The public reaction to this
move, which would presumably have added Cuba as a
slave state, forces its chief supporter, Secretary of State
William Marcy, to repudiate the manifesto.
Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and
My Freedom
March. After pro-slavery Missourians cross the Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Kansas border to elect a territorial legislature, Free State
1855 Longfellow, Hiawatha
Kansans vote to outlaw slavery and set up their own
capital at Topeka. Melville, "The Paradise of Bachelors"
and "The Tartarus of Maids"; "Benito
Cereno"; Israel Potter
18 February. "Know-Nothing" nativist
party opposing immigration and Catholics
endorses the Kansas-Nebraska act at its
convention in Philadelphia and nominates
Melville, The Piazza Tales,
1856 former president Millard Fillmore as its
and "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
candidate. (Link to statement of its principles)
Winter. Margaret Garner, a woman escaping
from slavery with her children, reaches
Cincinnati, Ohio, and is about to be recaptured
 when she tries to kill her children rather than
have them live as slaves. She kills her daughter,
but her sons are only injured. Abolitionists seek
to have her tried in Ohio so as to prevent her
return to slavery, but with the provisions of the
Fugitive Slave Law she is returned to Kentucky.
The incident later becomes the basis for Toni
Morrison's novelBeloved. (Read an 1891
account of the incident compiled from
abolitionist sources.)
19-20 May. After delivering his anti-slavery
speech "The Crime Against Kansas" and
attacking Senator Andrew Pickens Butler of
South Carolina by name,
Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner is
attacked and beaten with a cane by Preston S.
Brooks, Butler's nephew, two days later on the
floor of the Senate.
21 May. After the burning of the Free State
Hotel and the looting of Lawrence, Kansas by
pro-slavery forces, abolitionist John Brown kills
5 pro-slavery men at Pottawotamie Creek on
May 24, executing them with broadswords.
Kansas becomes known as "Bleeding
Kansas" because of clashes between pro- and
anti-slavery forces.(Timeline of John Brown's
life) (More Kansas history: original maps,
pictures, and documents)
James Buchanan, the Democratic candidate,
defeats Republican John C. Frmont and
Americanist ("Know-Nothing") party candidate
Millard Fillmore for the presidency.
6 March. Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court.
After being brought to free territory by his owner, Scott
sued for his freedom, but the court ruled that he had
never ceased to be a slave, denied that he was a citizen,
and denied him the right to sue.
Melville,The Confidence Man
23 March. First elevator installed by Elisha P. Otis in
New York City. Atlantic Monthly (1857- )
24 August. Panic of 1857 begins when the New York Harper's Weekly (1857-1916)
branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company Fanny Fern (Sarah Willis Parton), Fern
fails, preceding a number of other business failures. Leaves from Fanny's Portfolio
1857
11 September. On September 7, the Fancher party, a Frank J. Webb, The Garies and their
wagon train of 120 emigrants traveling to Santa Fe, is Friends, "second novel published by an
attacked by Piutes or members of the LDS church African American"
(Mormons) dressed as Piutes. On Friday morning, (read another article about this
September 11, LDS leader John D. Lee persuades them book)
to disarm and accept the protection of the Mormon
militia. All but 17 young children are shot in what has
become known as the Mountain Meadows massacre.
Although he claims to be a scapegoat for others in the
organization, Lee is later executed for the crime.
President Buchanan asks that Kansas be admitted as
Charles W. Chesnutt born (d. 1932)
a slave state, a request rejected.
1858 Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat
Lincoln is nominated to oppose Stephen Douglas for
of the Breakfast Table
the Senate; Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's
Wooing
16 October. John Brown leads an armed group of
21 to seize the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, is Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig: or,
1859 captured, and is executed. Sketches in the Life of a Free Black, first
novel by an African American woman
Georgia passes a law forbidding owners from
manumitting slaves in their wills. Martin Delany, Blake or The Huts of
America: A Tale of the Mississippi Valley,
the Southern United States (serialized in
 1859 in The Anglo African Magazine )
12 August. Birth of Katherine Lee
Bates, author of "America, the Beautiful"
27 February. In a speech at the Cooper Institute in
New York, Abraham Lincoln attacks slavery and insists
that the Federal government has "the power of
restraining the extension of the institution."
Abraham Lincoln elected president. (Image courtesy
Hamlin Garland born (d. 1940)
of American Treasures page at
the Library of Congress.) Hawthorne, The Marble Faun
1860 South Carolina votes to Emerson, Conduct of Life
secede from the Union. Stephens, Malaeska (first dime
U. S. population: 31,443,321 novel) (New URL)

12 April. Attack on Fort Sumter off the coast of

Charleston, South Carolina, signals the beginning of the
Civil War. See the "Valley of the Shadow" website for
images of two communities during the Civil War.
20 April. After being offered field command of the
Union forces, Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in Harriet Jacobs (Linda Brent), Incidents
the U. S. Army and takes up a commission in the in the Life of a Slave Girl
Confederate Army.
Rebecca Harding Davis, "Life in the
21 July. First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) Iron Mills"
provides a decisive victory over Union forces for
Holmes publishes his "medical
1861 Confederate Generals Johnston and Beauregard and
novel" Elsie Venner
their troops. It is in this battle that Confederate General
Thomas J. Jackson earns his nickname--"Stonewall"--for Longfellow, "Paul Revere's Ride"
"standing like a stone wall" against Union troops. James T. Fields, Hawthorne's
21 October. Union forces defeated at the battle of publisher (Ticknor and Fields), becomes
Ball's Bluff, Virginia. editor of Atlantic
1 November. Lincoln replaces general-in-chief
Winfield Scott with George B. McClellan. McClellan
creates a disciplined army, but as months go by and he
refuses to engage the enemy in battle, Lincoln grows
frustrated with his inaction.
Robert E. Lee commands the Confederate Armies of
Northern Virginia
16 February. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant captures Ft.
Donelson, near Nashville, Tennessee.
8 March. The Confederate
ironclad Merrimack attacks the Cumberland, one of the
Union ships blockading the Confederacy at Hampton
Roads, Virginnia. Before retiring at the end of the day,
theMerrimack also destroys the Congress and runs
the Minnesota aground, with plans to destroy it the next Rebecca Harding Davis, Margret
day. But on March 9 the Monitor, the Union's ironclad, Howth
1862 fights the Merrimack until the latter withdraws. The battle Stowe,The Pearl of Orr's Island
establishes that the future of the navy will be in iron, not 24 January. Birth of Edith Wharton (d.
wooden, ships. 1937)
6-7 April. Union forces narrowly prevail at the Battle
of Shiloh, but losses on both sides are heavy. Casualties
include 11,000 soldiers on the Confederate side and
13,000 on the Union side (Schlesinger 282). . Of the
100,000 men who fought, one in four was a casualty,
and 3,477 died--"more than all the Americans who died
in all the battles of the Revolution, the War of 1812, and
the war with Mexico, combined" (Ward and Burns 121).
(Read Herman Melville's poem "Shiloh").
 25 April. Admiral David Farragut takes New Orleans
for the Union.
20 May. Lincoln signs the Homestead Act.
30 May. McClellan's troops are attacked by Joseph E.
Johnston near the Confederate capital of Richmond,
Virginia as McClellan insists that he needs more troops
to attack the city. The North loses 5,000 and the South
6,000 men in the battle called Fair Oaks (North) or
Seven Pines (South) (Ward 139).
2 July. Lincoln signs the Morrill Act granting land for
land grant colleges.
30 June -2 July. In several battles known collectively
as "Seven Days," Lee forces McClellan's army to
withdraw and ends Union hopes for capturing Richmond.
McClellan had squandered his chance to capture it by
failing to act. Lincoln replaces McClellan with General
Henry W. Halleck but restores him to command a few
months later. .
9 August. Stonewall Jackson and his Confederate
forces defeat Union troops at the Battle of Cedar
Mountain (Virginia).
22 August. In a letter to Horace Greeley's New
York Tribune, Lincoln writes, "If I could save the Union
without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could
save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I
could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I
would also do that . . . . I have here stated my purpose
according to my view of official duty, and I intend no
modification of my oft-expressed personalwish that all
men, everywhere, could be free."
30 August. At the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second
Manassas), the combined forces of Robert E. Lee,
Stonewall Jackson, and James Longstreet push Union
troops back to Washington.
17 September. Battle of Antietam, fought by the
banks of Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. In
what has been called the single bloodiest day of the war,
McClellan forces Lee to pull back but then does not
follow up this advantage by pursuing Lee's
troops. Losses: Union--2,109 dead, 10, 293 wounded or
missing; Confederacy--10, 318 dead, wounded, or
missing, a quarter of Lee's army (Ward 160).
23 September. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
is published in newspapers in the North. It frees slaves
in the Confederate states but not those in border states
or recaptured territories.
5 November. Lincoln relieves McClellan of command,
replacing him with Gen. Ambrose Burnside.
Lincoln signs the Homestead Act allowing citizens to
acquire a parcel of land up to 160 acres after farming it
for 5 years.
13 December. Battle of Fredericksburg. Entering
Fredericksburg, Union troops under Burnside attack
Longstreet's Confederates despite the Confederates'
tactical advantage of firing down from Marye's Heights.
The Union is badly defeated despite its greater numbers
of troops.
December-2 January 1863. Battle of Murfreesboro, a
fight to the draw between the two armies.
1 January. The Emancipation Proclamation is signed. Louisa May Alcott publishes Hospital
26 January. The governor of Massachusetts begins Sketches about her experiences as a
1863 nurse in a Union hospital.
to recruit African-American troops, and the 54th
Massachusetts Volunteers, the first black regiment, is Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn
formed shortly thereafter. By the end of the war, the Abraham Lincoln, "Gettysburg
Union army will contain 166 all-black regiments Address"
composed of 185,000 soldiers. Thoreau, Excursions
3 March. Abraham Lincoln signs the first national Hawthorne,Our Old Home
Conscription Act requiring males from ages 20-45 to
Edward Everett Hale (1822-
register for service in the army. The act allows males to
1909), "The Man Without a Country"
purchase substitutes to take their place for $300, a
clause that allows many wealthy Americans to avoid
serving and led to accusations that this was a "rich
man's war but a poor man's fight."
2-4 May. With heavy losses on both sides, Lee's
forces of 60,000 defeat Hooker's Army of the Potomac
of 115,000 men for a Southern victory at
Chancellorsville, a battle later described in Stephen
Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (1895). By the end
of the battle, Hooker has lost 17,000 men killed or
wounded and Lee has lost 13,000 (Ward 210).
Stonewall Jackson is wounded and dies a few days
later; his final words are "Let us cross over the river and
rest under the shade of the trees."
22 May. Ulysses Grant's troops besiege Vicksburg,
Mississippi.
20 June. West Virginia is admitted to the Union as a
state.
1-3 July. Battle of Gettysburg. Under General Meade,
Northern troops hold their position and deflect Lee's
attack. Particularly costly in terms of men is Pickett's
charge, in which three divisions (13,000 men) of
Confederate soldiers march across a field and toward a
wall in front of the heights where Union troops await.
Over 6500 are mowed down, either killed or captured by
Union troops. After the battle, Lee and his troops
withdraw to Virginia, but Meade fails to follow. The
South loses 28,000 and the North 23,000 men in three
days of fighting, the bloodiest battle of the war" (Ward
256).
4 July. With its populace and soldiers starving,
besieged Vicksburg surrenders unconditionally to
Ulysses S. Grant, who earns a new nickname:
"Unconditional Surrender" Grant.
13-16 July. Draft riots erupt in New York City as a
predominantly Irish-American mob protests the drawing
of names on July 11 under the Conscription Act .
Widespread lynchings of African Americans and lootings
are finally brought under control by Federal
troops. (Read about the draft riots in the Columbia
Encyclopedia, or go to an extended day-by-day
chronology at Virtual New York)
18 July. Led by Col. Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th
Massachusetts, an all-African American regiment, Union
forces attack Fort Wagner. The 54th incurs heavy losses
but wins new respect for the fighting abilities of African
American soldiers.
21 August. Led by Southern sympathizer William C.
Quantrill, a group calling itself "Quantrill's Raiders"
invades Lawrence, Kansas, and kills over 180 civilians.
19-20 September. Battle of Chickamauga (Georgia).
Gen. Bragg's Confederate troops defeat Union forces,
which retreat to Chattanooga. Confederate casualties
number 18,000; Union casualties, 16,000.
19 November. Lincoln dedicates the cemetery at
Gettysburg, the occasion of the "Gettysburg Address."
Listed as "remarks" by the President, the speech lasts
less than two minutes, and LIncoln worries that it is a
"flat failure." But the day's featured speaker, Edward
 Everett, wrote to Lincoln, "I should be glad if I could
flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of
the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes"
(Ward 262).
Sand Creek Massacre of Native Americans in
Colorado.
10 March. Grant is promoted from commander of the
Union forces in the west to commander of the Union
armies.
5-6 May. The
forces of Grant and
Lee clash in the
battle of the
Wilderness, during
which brushfires
started by gunfire kill
many wounded. By
the time Grant's
forces withdraw, he has lost 17,000 men (Ward 290).
(Image: General Grant and staff on the road from the
Wilderness to Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia May 7,
1864 courtesy ofAmerican Treasures page.)
11-20 May. Grant attacks Lee's forces at
Spotsylvania and then, on 2 June, at Cold Harbor. As
60,000 Union soldiers charge the Confederate ranks,
5,000 to 7,000 of them are mowed down, most within the
first eight minutes of the fight (Ward 294).
12 June. Union forces move on Petersburg, Virginia,
south of Richmond, the beginning of a siege that will last
until July 30. Burnside orders troops to dig a tunnel
Death of Nathaniel Hawthorne; he is
beneath the enemy's lines and fill it with explosives.
1864 buried in Concord, Mass.
When the explosives are ignited, the explosion causes
the formation of a 30' deep crater into which Union Locke, The Naseby Papers
forces rush in their haste to reach the city. No one has
thought to provide ladders to get out of the crater,
however, and Confederate soldiers fire on the trapped
and helpless Union forces.
27 June. Confederate forces repel Sherman at
Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia. At Brices Cross Roads
near Tupelo, Mississippi, Confederate General Nathan
Bedford Forrest continues his successful harassment of
Union forces and the capture of their supplies.
5 August. Union naval forces under Admiral David
Farragut successfully attack the key Confederate port of
Mobile Bay. After mines destroy one ship, Farragut
continues the assault, yelling "Damn the torpedoes!
Full Speed ahead!"
2 September. Sherman takes Atlanta and, on 16
November, begins his "march to the sea," creating a 40-
mile-wide path of destruction that ends when he reaches
Savannah on 22 December.
8 November. Despite his fears that he will be beaten,
Lincoln wins re-election over the Democratic candidate,
George McClellan.
30 November. At Franklin, Tennessee, Confederate
General John Bell Hood orders a series of charges
against Union forces but loses a quarter of his army in
the fight.
31 January. Congress passes the Thirteenth Mark Twain, "The Celebrated Jumping
Amendment, which abolishes slavery.. Frog of Calaveras County"
1865 4 February. Robert E. Lee is promoted to Walt Whitman, "When Lilacs Last in
commander-in-chief of the Confederate army. the Dooryard Bloom'd"; Drum-Taps
17-18 February. Columbia and Charleston, South Louisa May Alcott, Moods
 Carolina, fall to Union forces under Sherman. Birth of Sui-Sin Far (Edith Maude
4 March. Lincoln is inaugurated for his second term; Eaton) (d. 1914)
his "Second Inaugural" speech is justly famous for its Julia C. Collins, The Curse of Caste;
appeal to bind up the wounds of the nation. or, The Slave Bride ("possibly the first
22 February. Wilmington, North Carolina, the last serialized novel by a black American
remaining southern port, is captured. woman")
1 April. Sheridan repels a Confederate assault at the
Battle of the Five Forks (Virginia), the last major battle of
the war. Grant attacks the badly outnumbered
Confederate forces at Petersburg and takes the city.
3 April. Union forces under Grant take Richmond, the
capital of the Confederacy; two days later, Lincoln visits
the site.
6 April. Union forces of 125,000 close in on Lee's
army of 25,000 near Sayler's Creek, Virginia.
8 April. Civil War officially ends when Lee surrenders
to Grant at Appomattox Court House. The terms are
generous: Confederate soldiers may keep their side
arms and possessions, and Grant orders 25,000 rations
to be distributed. The terms are written for the men's
signatures by Colonel Eli Parker, a Seneca Indian on
Grant's staff (Ward 379). The Army of Northern Virginia
formally surrenders three days later.
13 April. The Union begins disbanding its forces.
Senate records later showed that the Union had enlisted
2,324,516 soldiers, of whom 360,000 were killed; the
Confederacy had about a million soldiers, of whom
260,000 were killed (Schlesinger 294). .
14 April. While watching Our American Cousin at
Ford's Theater, Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth
and dies the following day.
27 April. One of the worst steamship disasters in
American history occurs as the Sultana blows up on the
Mississippi, killing 1700 people, mostly returning Union
soldiers.
24 November. Mississippi institutes the Black Codes,
which legalize limits against African Americans'
citizenship rights.
4 December. The House of Representatives
establishes a Joint Committee on Reconstruction, to
which the Senate agrees on 12 December.
Melville, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of
the War (poems)
13-27 July . Atlantic cable is completed.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Snow-Bound
30 April. Congress passes the Civil Rights Bill of
1866. Emerson, "Terminus"
First appearance of a 5-cent coin, soon called "the Mary Mapes Dodge, Hans Brinker; or,
1866 nickel." The Silver Skates
The Sioux nations are angered as the US Army The Galaxy (New York), 1866-1878,
begins building forts along the Bozeman Trail, an was founded to counter the limitations
important route to the gold fields of Virginia City; Capt. ofThe Atlantic Monthly. Among its
Fetterman and 80 soldiers are killed. contributors were Mark Twain, Henry
James, Rose Terry Cooke, Rebecca
Harding Davis, and Walt Whitman.
31 January. All males over 21 are granted suffrage in George Washington Harris, Sut
US territories Lovingood Yarns
2 March. First Reconstruction Act passed over the William Dean Howells, Venetian Life
president's veto; the second is passed on March 23. John W. DeForest, Miss Ravenel's
1867 30 March. Secretary of State Seward purchases Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. Congressional Augusta Evans, St. Elmo
critics call this "Seward's Folly."
Emerson, May-Day and Other Poems
17 July. Congress passes the Third Reconstruction
Act over a presidential veto. Instead of a majority Elizabeth Stoddard, Temple House
 calculated from the number of registered voters, only a Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping
majority vote by those voting will be necessary to Frog of Calveras County and Other
confirm ratification and readmission of states. Sketches
Nebraska becomes the 37th state to join the US. Bret Harte, Condensed Novels and
An American era begins as Jesse Chisholm maps the Other Papers
Chisholm trail, one of several routes over which
cowboys drive cattle from Texas to the railheads of
Kansas City, Cheyenne, Dodge City, and Abilene.
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Bret Harte, "The Luck of Roaring
13 March-6 May. Impeachment trial of President
Camp"
Andrew Johnson ends in his acquittal.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, The
Custer moves against Chief Black Kettle, destroying
Gates Ajar
an Indian village and all its inhabitants.
Mary Jane Holmes, The Guardian
1868 28 July. Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment
Angel
grants full citizenship to all (including African Americans)
born in the US except Native Americans. Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick
3 November. Ulysses S. Grant and his vice- Lippincott's Magazine (Philadelphia),
presidential candidate, Schuyler Colfax, are elected by a 1868-1916
landslide. Overland Monthly (San Francisco), 1868-
1875; 1883-1935, publisher of Jack
London, among others.
Ulysses S. Grant becomes president (1869-77).
10 May. Union Pacific-Central Pacific transcontinental
railroad is completed as the two lines meet at
Promontory Point, Utah.
Wyoming passes first woman's suffrage act.
Susan B. Anthony elected president of the American Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Equal Rights Association. Louisa May Alcott, Good Wives (Little
Number of justices on the Supreme Court rises from Women II)
7 to 9. Stowe, Oldtown Folks
1869 Elizabeth Cady Stanton elected president of the Harte, "Tennessee's Partner" and "The
National Woman Suffrage Association, which demands Outcasts of Poker Flat"
federal voting rights for women.
Appleton's Journal (New York), 1869-
First Sioux War ends with the Treaty of Fort Laramie; 1881, publisher of Constance Fenimore
the US agrees to abandon Forts Smith, Kearney, and Woolson, among others.
Reno.
24 September. Earlier in the year, Jay Gould and Jay
Fisk attempted to drive up the price of gold and corner
the market. On this day, "Black Friday," President
Grant releases $4 million and drives the price down, an
action that causes a stock-market panic.
Franco-Prussian War.
John D. Rockefeller founds the Standard Oil
Company.
Birth of Frank Norris in Chicago (d.
Territory of Utah gives full suffrage to women; the first 1902)
election in which they vote occurs on 1 August
Emerson, "Society and Solitude"
1870 Congress enacts the "Ku Klux Klan Act of 1870" or
Scribner's Monthly (1870-81)
"Enforcement Act" to stop southern white resistance to
the power African Americans have gained during Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp
Reconstruction. and Other Sketches
22 June. Department of Justice is created.
5 December. When the 41st Congress meets, every
state is represented, the first such Congress since 1860.

3 March. The Indian Appropriation Act of 1871 marks Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier
a step backward as it makes tribal members wards of Schoolmaster
the state rather than preserving their rights as members Henry James, Watch and
1871 of sovereign nations. Ward (in Atlantic; book form, 1878)
8 October. Chicago is almost destroyed by fire. See Birth of Stephen Crane and Theodore
the "Great Chicago Fire" website (image courtesy of this Dreiser
source.) Howells, Their Wedding
 Journey; becomes editor of The Atlantic
Monthly(1871-1881)
Whitman, Democratic Vistas and A
Passage to India
Louisa May Alcott, Little Men

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

8 July. Tweed Ring exposed in the New York
Times and is overthrown.
5-6 June. The Republican party meets in Philadelphia
and nominates Grant for re-election to the presidency.
Meeting in Baltimore on 9 July, the Democrats nominate
Horace Greeley.
The Credit Mobilier Scandal erupts when the New
York Sun reports news of events during the building of
the transcontinental railway. Massachusetts
congressman and shovel manufacturer Oakes Ames
and the Union Pacific Railway had created a company Twain, Roughing It
1872
called Credit Mobilier of America, which was awarded all Birth of Paul Laurence Dunbar (d. 1906)
construction work for building the Union Pacific line west
of Nebraska. Ames sweetened the deal by giving
shares in the company to many government officials,
including both of U. S. Grant's vice-presidents.
Congress ultimately pays $94 million to the company for
work worth $44 million.
Grant wins the presidency by a landslide, gathering
3,597,132 votes to Greeley's 2,834,125.
3 March. Homesteaders willing to plant trees on their
land are granted an additional quarter section (160
acres). Howells, A Chance Acquaintance
Congress votes itself a 50% salary increase and Mark Twain and Charles Dudley
makes the increase retroactive for two years, an action Warner, The Gilded Age
1873 that causes such an outcry that the raises are rescinded.
Birth of Willa Cather (d. 1947)
18 September. Financial Panic of 1873 begins with
the failure of Jay Cooke and Company after years of Louisa May Alcott, Work
inflation, speculation, and the overproduction of paper The Delineator (1873-1937)
currency. The Stock Exchange closes for 10 days.
Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology.
Women's Christian Temperance Union founded in
Cleveland.
8 May. Massachusetts limits women's working days
to 10 hours, a significant reform.
First Impressionist exhibition in Paris.
1874 Barbed wire becomes available, thus making possible Birth of Ellen Glasgow (d. 1945)
the inexpensive enclosure of grazing lands in the west.
Featuring educational as well as religious lectures,
the Chautauqua Movement begins at Lake Chautauqua,
New York.
Samuel Tilden becomes governor of New York.
Civil Rights Act states that no citizen can be denied
equal use of public facilities. Bret Harte, Tales of the Argonauts
1875 Second Sioux War erupts after the Sioux refuse to Louisa May Alcott, Eight Cousins
sell lands north of the Platte to the federal government. Howells, A Foregone Conclusion
The Supreme Court decision of Minor v. Happersett
 allows states to set suffrage requirements and denies
women voting rights.
Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
25 June. Ignoring warnings of a massed Sioux army
of 2,000-4,000 men, Custer and 250 soldiers attack the Twain, Adventures of Tom Sawyer
forces of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Little Big Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Centennial
Horn. Custer and all of his men die in the attack. Sitting Edition)
Bull escapes to Canada, returning to the United States
Melville, Clarel (poem)
in 1881 as a participant in wild west shows.
James, Roderick Hudson
1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
Louisa May Alcott, Silver Pitchers and
In an election marred by fraud, Republican
Independence (containing
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893) is elected president
"Transcendental Wild Oats"); Rose in
over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden after compromising with
Bloom
southern Democrats over the restriction of
Reconstruction. Tilden receives 4,284,020 popular votes Birth of Jack London, Sherwood
and Hayes receives 4,036,572. (Visit theHarper's Anderson
Weekly site for an overview of the election, political
cartoons, and other information.)
29 January. The Electoral Commission Bill authorizes
a committee of 15 to decide the election between Hayes
and Tilden. The committee's votes split along party
lines. On 3 March, Hayes is announced as President
after House Republicans agree, among other
concessions, to pull Federal troops from the South. On 5
March, Rutherford B. Hayes is inaugurated as President James,The American
of the United States (1877-81). Jewett,Deephaven
Nez Perce war. After a battle between Nez Perce December 17. Mark Twain gives his
1877 forces under Chief Joseph and those of Col. Miles in infamous "Whittier Birthday Dinner
Idaho, Chief Joseph's band is sent to a reservation in Speech" in front of an assembled
Oklahoma multitude of literary dignitaries.
14 July. The Great Strike of 1877 begins with railroad
workers walking out; later, workers from other industries
will follow. (Accounts from Harper's Weekly)
Thomas Alva Edison patents the phonograph. He
demonstrates the device on 7 December at the offices of
the Scientific American in New York.
15 October. Although he has not yet perfected the
incandescent light bulb, Edison establishes Edison
Electric Light Company in New York City (Almanac of
American History 338).
Women's Suffrage Amendment is introduced into
Congress but fails.
The Timber and Stone Act permits the cutting of
1878 timber on public lands to increase the cleared acreage James, The Europeans; (Daisy Miller)
for farmers; timber lands are sold for as little as $2.50 an
acre.
The Northern Cheyenne escape from their
reservation in Oklahoma in an attempt to reach their
lands in Montana Territory.
The first central switchboard for telephone service in
New York City is opened.
Using first carbonized cotton and then carbonized
bamboo for a filter, Edison invents a functioning light
bulb.
A bill to restrict Chinese immigration is passed by
Congress but vetoed by President Hayes.
1879 James, Daisy Miller
Hearing rumors that Kansas had been set aside for
settlement by former slaves, between 7,000 and
15,000 African Americans move to Kansas; they are
called "exodusters" after their exodus into the dusty
lands of Kansas.
1880 James A. Garfield wins the presidency. Death of Lydia Maria Child (b. 1802)
 The signing of the Chinese Exclusion Treaty by China George Washington Cable, Old Creole
and the United States restricts but does not prohibit the Days
immigration of Chinese laborers. Howells, Lady of the Aroostock
George Eastman takes out a patent on a flexible roll Henry Adams, Democracy, An
of film for use in cameras. The first Kodak box cameras American Novel
are sold in 1888, and the first pocket Kodak camera is
Albion Tourgee (1838-1905), Bricks
sold in 1895. (An archive of Kodak advertising and other
Without Straw: A Novel
materials is available at the Emergence of Advertising
America, 1850-1920 at the Duke Scriptorium.)
Population: 50,100,100, of whom 6.6 million were
foreign born. (Source: Almanac of American History)
11 May. Mussel Slough, near Fresno, California. After
encouraging farmers to settle and cultivate land in
California, the Southern Pacific railway takes legal action
when the farmers refuse to pay the high prices it sets for
the land they have developed. When threatened with
eviction, the settlers band together and fight back; seven
men, including five farmers, are killed; eight are
wounded; and others are arrested. (See Frank Norris's
fictional account in The Octopus).
Tuskegee Institute founded by Booker T.
Washington. James, Washington Square; The
Clara Barton organizes the American Red Cross. Portrait of a Lady
2 July. Garfield is shot in the back on 2 July 1881 by Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick
Charles Guiteau, a disappointed office-seeker; after Douglass
Garfield's death on September 19, Chester A. Arthur Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus
becomes president on 20 September 1881. The Critic (1881-1906), edited by
1881 26 October. A gunfight breaks out near the O.K. Jeannette and Joseph Gilder, is one of
Corral in Tombstone, Arizona,when city marshal Virgil the first magazines to welcome Whitman's
Earp, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and Doc Holliday writing.
try to disarm Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury; in the Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century of
fight, Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Tom McLaury Dishonor chronicles the federal
are killed and Morgan Earp, Virgil Earp, and Doc government's treatment of Native
Holliday are wounded. (See an episode of The American Americans.
Experience on Wyatt Earp.)
Immigration of Chinese labor suspended despite
President Chester A. Arthur's veto of the Chinese Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
Exclusion Act.
Death of Emerson (b. 1809)
John D. Rockefeller organizes the Standard Oil Trust.
Whitman, Specimen Days and Collect
1882 In Boston, a production of Gilbert and
Howells, A Modern Instance
Sullivan's Iolanthe is lighted by electric incandescent
light bulbs, the first such use of the new technology. In Frank Stockton, "The Lady or the
New York, Edison's Pearl Street power company begins Tiger?"
to supply electricity for the city.
Twain, Life on the Mississippi
E. W. Howe, The Story of a Country
24 May. Brooklyn Bridge opened to the public.
Town
1883 Pendleton Civil Service Act is passed to reform the
Collier's Magazine(1883-1957)
corruption in the Civil Service.
John Hay, The Breadwinners (first
published anonymously)
A ten-story building in Chicago is the world's first true
"skyscraper."
Charles Egbert Craddock (Mary N.
Democrat Grover Cleveland is elected president over Murfree), In the Tennessee Mountains, a
James G. Blaine, whose supporters had denounced the collection of local color stories
Democrats as a party of "Rum, Romanism, and
Rebellion." Helen Hunt
1884 Jackson, Ramona (protesting treatment of
Samuel S. McClure founds the first newspaper Native Americans)
syndicate in the U.S., McClure's Syndicate. Among his
writers will be Willa Cather. Jewett, A Country Doctor
Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry
Linotype machine patented by Ottmar Mergenthaler; Finn
among its competitors is the Mark Twain-backed Paige
Typesetter.
 4 Sept. According to the Telecommunications History
Timeline, the first commercially successful long-distance
service is established between Boston and New York.
Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham
Washington Monument dedicated after 36 years of
Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton (1832-
construction.
1885 1895), The Squatter and the Don
Ulysses S. Grant dies and is buried in New York after
Birth of Sinclair Lewis and Ezra Pound
an elaborate funeral and procession.
Sidney Lanier,Poems
4 May. Haymarket Riot: 7 officers are killed by a
bomb and 8 anarchists are arrested despite their lack of
involvement; when several are executed, Howells
protests. The incident is the subject of Frank Harris's
novel The Bomb. "The Dramas of the Haymarket" at the James, The Princess Casamassima;
Chicago Historical Society includes background The Bostonians
information about and images of this event. See Howells, Indian Summer
1886 also documents from the Library of Congress site. Alcott,Jo's Boys
28 October. Statue of Liberty dedicated in New York Lucretia P. Hale, The Peterkin Papers
Harbor.
Death of Emily Dickinson
The Supreme Court rules that corporations are
"persons" under the 14th amendment and cannot be
denied profits or the right of due process.
American Federation of Labor organized. .
Dawes Severalty Act provides for 160 acres to be
given to each Indian family, breaking up the system of
Thomas Nelson Page, In Ole
communal land holdings. By declaring as surplus land
Virginia (plantation school)
not owned by individuals, the law ultimately reduced the
1887 amount of land owned by Native Americans. (Read the Freeman, A Humble Romance
Act.) Susan Fenimore Cooper,Rural Hours
Nez Perce war. (revised edition)
Interstate Commerce Act passed.
Death of Bronson and Louisa
May Alcott
James, Aspern Papers
12 March. Great Blizzard of 1888 paralyzes the east
coast and causes 400 deaths. Whitman, November Boughs;
Complete Poems and Prose
1888 Secret ballot system introduced into U. S.
Edward Bellamy, Looking
An act of Congress prevents Chinese laborers who
Backward (utopian novel)
have left the country from returning to the U. S.
Birth of T. S. Eliot, Eugene O'Neill
Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the
Hunting Trail
Benjamin Harrison wins the presidency despite
Grover Cleveland's larger share of the popular vote
(1889-93).
22 April. In the first "Oklahoma land rush," the U. S.
government bows to pressure and opens for
settlement land that it had previously promised would be
a permanent refuge for Native Americans moved from Howells, Annie Kilburn; Howells moves
their eastern territories. Native American tribes are paid to New York to join editorial staff
about $4 million for the parcel of land. The starting gun atHarper's
sounds at noon, and an estimated 50,000 settlers race Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of
1889 across the land; by sunset, all 1.92 million acres have the West
been claimed. (See also the May 18, 1889 account
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in
from Harper's Weekly)
King Arthur's Court
13 May. Johnstown (Pennsylvania) flood kills an
Munsey's Magazine (1889-1929)
estimated 5,000 people when a dam bursts 18 miles
above Johnstown.
First anti-trust law passed (by Kansas).
Electrocution replaces hanging as the official method
of capital punishment in New York State.
In Chicago, Jane Addams opens Hull House.
 June. Andrew Carnegie, "Wealth" (North American
Review).
November. Admitted to statehood: North Dakota and
South Dakota (2 November), Montana (8 November),
and Washington (11 November).
Emily Dickinson, Poems
Sherman Anti-Trust Law
Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes
Yosemite Park created by Act of Congress
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
1890 1889-90 Jane Addams sets up Hull House, the first of
many settlement houses to aid the poor James, The Tragic Muse
29 December. Two hundred Sioux are killed by Sarah Orne Jewett, Tales of New
soldiers at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. England

Death of Melville (b. 1819) in obscurity

in New York.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, A New
England Nun and Other Stories
First international copyright law Rose Terry Cooke, Huckleberries
900,000 acres of Indian land in Oklahoma opened to Gathered from New England Hills
white settlers. Howells, Criticism and Fiction
1891 Populist Party is formed in Cincinnati, Ohio. Dickinson, Poems: Second Series
Thomas Edison patents a motion picture camera, the Hamlin Garland,Main-Travelled Roads
"kinetoscope," which is capable of showing movies to Mary N. Murfree, In the "Stranger
one person at a time. People's" Country
Sophia Alice Callahan (Creek, 1868-
1894), Wynema: A Child of the Forest(first
novel by a Native American woman
author)
July. Homestead (Pennsylvania) steelworkers strike;
after the strikers battle with Pinkerton detectives,
Governor Pattison calls in the militia. The strikers call off
their strike in November.
April-July. Strike by workers in silver mines in Coeur Death of Whitman (b. 1819)
d'Alene, Idaho. Frances E. W. Harper, Iola Leroy, the
Democrat and former president Grover Cleveland is most popular work by an African-
elected over opponent Benjamin Harrison, with Populist American woman writer of the 19th
candidate James B. Weaver coming in as a strong third. century.
According to the Almanac Death of Rose Terry Cooke (b. 1827)
1892 of American History, on 24 Mary Hallock Foote, The Chosen
March 1883"Telephone Valley
service is put into operation William Dean Howells, The Quality of
between Chicago and New Mercy
York" (352). The Library of
Grace King, Tales of a Time and Place
Congress, however, puts the
date at 1892 and includesthis Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus
picture of Alexander Graham and His Friends
Bell at the opening of the line
between the two cities.
 Financial panic of 1893 Henry James, The Real Thing and
In Hawaii, Queen Liliuokalani's government is Other Tales
overthrown; Hawaii becomes a U. S. protectorate Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the
despite President Cleveland's opposition. Streets. Crane publishes this edition at
20 October. his own expense under the pseudonym
World's Columbian Johnston Smith.
Exhibition opens in Alice French (Octave Thanet), Stories
Chicago and is of a Western Town
nicknamed the "White Henry Blake Fuller, The Cliff-Dwellers
City" for its lights and
architecture. Most of Joseph Nicolar, The Life and
1893 its buildings are Traditions of the Red Man (newly
destroyed by fire in discovered Native American text)
January 1894. McClure's Magazine (New York),
Ida B. Wells 1893-1933, which will become famous for
publishes "The publishing "muckraking" articles from
Reason Why the c.1901-12, reformist exposes such as Ida
Colored American Is Tarbell's "The History of the Standard Oil
Not in the World's Company," Lincoln Steffens's "The
Columbian Shame of Minneapolis," and Ray
Exposition." Stannard Baker's "The Right to Work." S.
S. McClure's My Autobiography (1914)
was written by Willa Cather.
Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Coxey's Army, a group of unemployed men, marches Harriet Prescott Spofford, A Scarlet
on Washington. A related group, Kelley's Army, sets out Poppy and Other Stories
from the West Coast; one of them is Jack London.
Kate Chopin, Bayou Folk
A tailors' strike in New York City brings attention to
Howells, A Traveler from
sweat shops.
Altruria (utopian novel)
1894 11 May -3 August. In Chicago, after the Pullman
Death of Constance Fenimore
Palace Car company reduces wages, workers strike; a
Woolson (b. 1840)
general sympathy strike ensues on 26 June. Despite
protests by Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld, deputy Edward Everett Hale, The Brick Moon
marshals and U. S. troops are called out to quell the and Other Stories
strikers, and 34 people are killed. Gertrude Atherton, Before the Gringo
Came
Death of Frederick Douglass
Alice Brown, Meadow-Grass: Tales of
New England Life
Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Violets and
Other Tales
Cuban rebellion.
Constance Fenimore Woolson, The
Strike of trolley workers in Brooklyn, N. Y., leads to Front Yard and Other Italian Stories
riots.
Stephen Crane,The Red Badge of
1895 Crisis in waning gold reserves causes hoarding. Courage; Black Riders
Citing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the Supreme Ina Coolbrith (1841-1928), Songs from
Court upholds an injunction against striking railway the Golden Gate
workers, claiming that the strike impedes interstate
commerce. Hamlin Garland, Rose of Dutcher's
Coolly
James Lane Allen, A Kentucky
Cardinal
Simon Pokagon, An Indian on the
Problems of His Race
19 January. First use of X-rays to treat breast
Henry James, "The Figure in the
cancer.
Carpet"
23 April. At Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York,
Crane, George's Mother; The Little
the public sees its first movie.
Regiment and Other Episodes of the
1896 7 July.At the Democratic National Convention, American Civil War
William Jennings Bryan electrifies the crowd with
Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of
his"Cross of Gold" speech supporting free silver (instead
the Pointed Firs
of the gold standard).
Harold Frederic, The Damnation of
12 August. The Klondike gold rush begins. By 1900,
 100,000 people will have journeyed to the gold fields.
In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court
upholds the "separate but equal" doctrine.
Utah becomes a state.
3 November. With a large percentage of the electoral
vote, Republican McKinley wins a bitterly contested
presidential election over William Jennings Bryan. The
popular vote: McKinley--7,104,799; Bryan--
6,502,925. The 1896 page at Vassar College provides
detailed information about the election.
10 December. Queen Liliuokalani, former ruler of
Hawaii, visits the United States.
The first comic strip, "The Yellow Kid," appears in
Hearst's New York World. The term "yellow journalism"
(sensationalistic reporting) later derives from the
connection.
William McKinley is inaugurated as president. After
being elected to a second term in 1900, he is
assassinated in 1901.
1897 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Backing away from earlier pro-business decisions,
the Supreme Court votes 5-4 that railroads are subject
to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
15 February. The explosion and sinking of the
battleship Maine in Havana harbor results in 260 deaths,
leading to the battle slogan "Remember the Maine!"
25 February. Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Theodore Roosevelt sends the Pacific fleet to the
Philippines.
1898 12 August. Annexation of Hawaii.
Spanish-American War (April-December)
"Yellow Journalism"
Thorstein Veblen, "The Barbarian Status of Women"
Rev. Louis Albert Banks, White Slaves, or the
Oppression of the Worthy Poor (Note: This is a large
.PDF file.)
Philippine insurrection (1899-1902); Howells and
Twain oppose U. S. involvement. The Anti-Imperialist
League is formed on February 17.
Inspired by Jean-Franois Millet's L'homme la
houe, Edwin Markham publishes "The Man with the
Hoe" in the San Francisco Examiner. It becomes the
1899 most popular poem published in the United States to
date and influences Frank Norris's The Octopus.
August. Scott Joplin publishes the "Maple Leaf
Rag," the most famous of his works. Other rags
(published in 1902) include "Peacherine,""The
Entertainer," and "The Strenuous Life," the last-named a
tribute to Theodore Roosevelt.
Theron Ware
Abraham Cahan, Yekl
Dickinson, Poems: Third Series
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of Lowly
Life
James Lane Allen, Summer in Arcady
Birth of F. Scott Fitzgerald (d. 1940)
Macmillan Co. founded.
Edwin Arlington Robinson, Children of
the Night
Simon Pogagon, "The Future of the
Red Man"
Mary Hartwell Catherwood, The Spirit
of an Illinois Town and The Little Renault
Ellen Glasgow, The Descendant
Kate Chopin, A Night in Acadie
James, What Maisie Knew; The Spoils
of Poynton
Ruth McEnery Stuart, In Simpkinsville:
Character Tales
Richard Harding Davis, Soldiers of
Fortune
Doubleday & McClure founded.
Death of Harriet Jacobs
Birth of William Faulkner (d. 1962)
Gertrude Atherton, The Californians
Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley in
Peace and in War
Henry James, "The Turn of the Screw"
Stephen Crane, The Open Boat and
Other Tales of Adventure
Brander Matthews, Outlines in Local
Color
Abraham Cahan, The Imported
Bridegroom and Other Stories
Frank Norris, Moran of the "Lady Letty"
Death of Edward Bellamy (b. 1850)
Death of Harold Frederic (b. 1856)
Chesnutt, The Conjure
Woman and The Wife of His Youth and
Other Stories of the Color Line
Crane,The Monster and War is Kind
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Alice Dunbar-Nelson, The Goodness
of St. Rocque and Other Stories
Alice Brown, Tiverton Tales
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow
Wall-paper
James,The Awkward Age
Norris, McTeague; Blix
 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835-
1921), The Nemesis of Motherhood
12 April. Foraker Act confirms Puerto Rico as an
unconsolidated territory of the United States.
Democratic National Convention nominates William
Zitkala-Sa, Impressions of an Indian
Jennings Bryan for president; its platform condemns
Childhood, The School Days of an Indian
imperialism and the Gold Standard Act.
Girl, and An Indian Teacher among
As expected, the Republican Indians published in the January,
National Convention in Philadelphia February, and March Atlantic Monthly.
renominates William McKinley for a
Charles W. Chesnutt, The House
second term as president. Despite
Behind the Cedars
his protests that he does not want
the office, Theodore Roosevelt Mark Twain, "The Man that Corrupted
1900 Hadleyburg"
attends the convention in "Rough
Rider" garb and accepts the Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous
nomination for vice-president.(Photo Age
courtesy of the American Memory 5 June. Stephen Crane dies at
Home Page) Badenweiler, Germany
20 June. The revolt known to the West as the Boxer Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Rebellion breaks out in China.
Smart Set (1900-1930)
September. In the worst natural disaster to date in U.
S. history, a hurricane sweeps over Galveston, Texas,
killing an estimated 6,000-7,000 of its 36,000
inhabitants.
10 January. Spindletop claim in Texas brings in oil,
the first in that region.
4 March. McKinley is inaugurated for his second term
as president.
6 September. President McKinley shot by Leon Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of
Czolgoz at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, N. Y. Tradition
1901 He dies of his wounds on September 14 and Roosevelt Frank Norris, The Octopus
is sworn in as president on the same day.(See early
movies of the opening of the Exhibition and of
McKinley's funeral at the American Memory Home
Page.)
16 October. Roosevelt invites Booker T. Washington
to the White House.
Ida Tarbell's expose of the oil
monopoly, History of the Standard Oil
Company,appears in McClure's
Magazine.
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
Jack London, The Iron Heel
The United Mine Workers go on strike and the Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the
owners refuse to recognize the union; as tensions mount Cities
and negotiations fail, Roosevelt calls the two sides to the
1902 White House and successfully handles the situation. Henry James, The Wings of the Dove
Newlands Reclamation Act authorizes the building of Ellen Glasgow, The Battle-Ground
irrigation dams across the West. Owen Wister, The Virginian
October. Frank Norris dies of
appendicitis.
Susie King Taylor, Reminiscences of
My Life in Camp with the 33d United
States Colored Troops Late 1st S. C.
Volunteers
 Department of Commerce and Labor created by Act
of Congress; George B. Cortelyou is first secretary.
Commission to settle UMW dispute recommends
shorter hours and a wage increase for the miners.
An eleven-minute Edison film, The
Great Train Robbery, is shown in
theaters. (Image courtesy of W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black
the Edison Papers at Rutgers Folk
University.)
W.E. B. DuBois,"The Talented Tenth"
3 November After the Hay-Herran
Treaty with the Colombian Henry James, The Ambassadors
1903
government fails to resolve the issue Jack London, The Call of the Wild
of sovereignty over the proposed Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain
Canal Zone, a bloodless uprising Frank Norris, The Pit and The
occurs and, on November 4, Responsibilities of the Novelist
Panamanian independence is
declared. On 18 November, the Hay-Buneau-Varilla
treaty gives the U. S. permanent rights to a 10-mile-wide
strip of land in return for $10 million and annual
payments.
17 December. Orville Wright flies 120 feet in 12
seconds in the first heavier-than-air machine.
The Socialist Party nominates Eugene V. Debs for
president. The Republicans nominate Roosevelt, who
wins handily (by 2.5 million votes) over Democrat Alton
B. Parker.
Henry James, The Golden Bowl
National Child Labor Committee formed.
Jack London, The Sea-Wolf
1904 Roosevelt Corollary extends the Monroe Doctrine
from the Western Hemisphere to global U. S. "spheres Robert Herrick, The Common Lot
of influence." Death of Kate Chopin
New York passes the first speed law for automobiles:
10 mph in cities, 20 mph in the countryside.
Russo-Japanese War.
5 September. Russo-Japanese War ends with treaty
signed at Portsmouth, N. H.
Industrial Workers of the World union organized in
Chicago.
11-13 July.In June, frustrated by the
accommodationist tactics of Booker T. Washington, W.
E. B. Du Bois invites African American leaders to a
conference on political action and individual rights. On
11-13 July, 29 delegates from 14 states meet at Fort
Erie near Niagara Falls, Ontario. They agree to a William Dean Howells, "Editha"
"Declaration of Principles" emphasizing educational and Charles W. Chesnutt, The Colonel's
political equality, and they organize what would be called Dream
1905 the Niagara Movement. Du Bois's "Address to the
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Nation" at the second annual meeting in 1906 calls for
its members to obtain the five demands he outlines "By Robert Herrick, The Memoirs of an
voting where we may vote, by persistent, unceasing American Citizen
agitation, by hammering at the truth, by sacrifice and
work." The Niagara Movement holds annual meetings
until 1909, when most of its members join with white
liberals to form the N.A.A.C.P.
In the April issue of the Ladies' Home Journal, Grover
Cleveland writes, "Sensible and responsible women do
not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed
by man and woman in the working out of our civilization
were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence."
April. Roosevelt lambastes the press for its lurid Death of Paul Laurence Dunbar (b.
exposure of social evils, calling journalists such as 1872)
1906 Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, David Jack London, White Fang
Graham Phillips, and Ray Stannard Baker "muckrakers"
after the man in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress who could Mark Twain, What is Man?
 see nothing but filth. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
18 April. San Francisco Muckraking articles: Ray Stannard
earthquake kills an estimated Baker, The Railroads on Trial; David
500 people, and fire destroys Graham Phillips, The Treason of the
much of the city. Senate.
30 June. To correct the
conditions detailed in
Sinclair's The Jungle, Congress
passes the Meat Inspection Act
and the Pure Food and Drug
Act.
Roosevelt journeys to
Panama to visit the Canal,
begun this year.
Henry James, The American Scene
21 March. U. S. Marines are sent to help put down a
revolution in Honduras. 1907-9, New York Edition of James's
work
Panic of 1907. Financier J. P. Morgan manages the
crisis, importing $100 million in gold to bolster U. S. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry
1907 currency. Adams (privately printed)
Immigration law excludes Japanese workers. Edith Wharton, The Fruit of the Tree
Frank Lloyd Wright completes the Robie House near John T. McCutcheon, Congressman
Chicago (more pictures). Pumphrey, the People's Friend (popular
political humor)
Choosing not to run again, Roosevelt picks William
Howard Taft as his successor for the nomination for the
presidency. The Democrats again nominate William
Jennings Bryan, who loses to Taft.
Robert
Henri, John
Sloan,
George Luks,
William
Glackens,
Everett Shinn,
and George
Bellows form
the "Ashcan
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, The
School" of
1908 Shoulders of Atlas
painters in
Greenwich Jack London, The Iron Heel
Village. Protesting the National Academy's conservative
tastes and exclusion of their work, these artists hold their
own successful exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery on
February 3, 1908; the next year they are offered their
own gallery at the National Academy's exhibition.
George Bellows's Both Members of this Club (1909)
courtesy of American Visions.
October. Henry Ford introduces the Model T. It sells
for about $850, gets about 25 miles to a gallon of
gas, and can, says Ford, be purchased in any color the
buyer wishes, as long as the buyer wants black. Colors
were added the next year. By 1926, the year before the
Model A replaces the Model T, the price drops to $310.
W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963) founds the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP).
1909 Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
Bakelite, an early form of plastic, is patented.
W. C. Handy writes "Memphis Blues," the first blues
to be written down.
Mann Act adopted by Congress to stop the Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull
1910 transportation of women across state lines for "immoral House
purposes" and to stem the importation of European Deaths of Mark Twain (b.
 women to work in American brothels. This law becomes 1835), Rebecca Harding Davis (b. 1831),
known as the "white slave traffic act," and in the next few and William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) (b.
years, alarm about the "white slave trade" grows rapidly. 1862)
In Osawatomie, Kansas, Theodore Roosevelt calls
for "a square deal" in a speech that will become a
rallying cry for the Progressive Movement.
Mexican revolution against Dictator Porfirio Diaz.
Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette helps found the
National Progressive Republican League. On 16
October, the National Conference of Progressive
Republicans nominates him for president.
25 March. Fire breaks out at the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory, killing 146 workers, mostly women and girls;
some jump to their deaths when inadequate equipment Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
makes rescue impossible. (See documents and images Theodore Dreiser, Jennie Gerhardt
at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire site at Cornell 24 January. Progressive journalist and
1911 University.) popular novelist David Graham Phillips(b.
1867) is shot and killed outside the
Initially denied statehood because it permits the recall Princeton Club in New York.
of judges, Arizona drops the provision and is admitted as
a state. The Masses (New York), 1911-1918
Finding the Standard Oil Company to be in restraint
of trade, the Supreme Court orders it and and the
American Tobacco Company to be dissolved.
Efficiency expert Frederick Taylor publishes The
Principles of Scientific Management.
15 April. The Titanic strikes an iceberg, and 1502
lives are lost because the ship did not carry enough
lifeboats.
4 May. About 10,000 supporters of woman's suffrage
marched up Fifth Avenue at sundown to promote the
cause. (New York Times, 5 May 1912; see
also "Chinese Women to Parade for Woman
Suffrage," NYT, 14 April 1912.). Edith Wharton, The Reef
17 May. The Socialist Party nominates Eugene V. Willa Cather, Alexander's Bridge
Debs for president. Theodore Dreiser, The Financier
5 June. In what is now known as "Dollar Diplomacy," Sui-Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton), Mrs.
the U. S. sends marines to protect business interests in Spring Fragrance
1912
Cuba. Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage
Split between Taft and Roosevelt, progressive James Weldon Johson, The
members walk out of the Republican National Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Convention in Chicago, form the Bull Moose third party,
Mary Antin,The Promised Land
and nominate Roosevelt. In October, Roosevelt is shot
Founding of Poetry magazine.
at close range, but the folded-up speech in his coat
pocket blocks the bullet and saves his life.
At the Democratic Convention, the Democrats
nominate Woodrow Wilson after William Jennings Bryan
throws his support to Wilson after the 46th ballot.
Wilson is elected in a landslide by 435 electoral
votes.
The Sixteenth Amendment is ratified; it provides for a Edith Wharton, The Custom of the
graduated national income tax. Country
California Governor Hiram Johnson signs the Webb Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
Alien Land-Holding Bill into law; it excludes the Ellen Glasgow, Virginia
Japanese from holding land. The Japanese government
Robert Frost, A Boy's Will
1913 and Wilson protest.
Jack London, The Valley of the Moon
The Seventeenth Amendment, which provides for the
popular election rather than the appointment of senators, Henry James, A Small Boy and Others
is passed. Oscar Micheaux, The Conquest: The
Henry Ford adopts the conveyor-belt technology Story of a Negro Pioneer
developed by the meat-packers. Vanity Fair (1913-1936)
 The Armory Show in New York City
introduces modern European art to the
United States. (Image of Marcel
Duchamp's Nude Descending a
Staircase, no. 2 courtesy of The Virtual
Armory Show, a site no longer
available.)

American Society of Composers, Authors, and

Publishers (ASCAP) is formed in New York City.
Archduke Francis Ferdinand is assassinated in
Sarajevo, after which the Austro-Hungarian Government
declares war on Serbia.
August. Germany declares war on Russia and
France; Great Britain declares war on Germany as Theodore Dreiser, The Titan
German troops invade Belgium. Japan also declares Henry James, Notes of a Son and
war on Germany. Brother
Panama Canal opens for shipping Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
20 April. Seven months into a strike at the Vachel Lindsay, The Congo
Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation, Carl Sandburg, Chicago
after the National Guard has been called in to break the
Frank Norris, Vandover and the Brute
strike, machine guns begin firing on the workers' tent city
1914 Sinclair Lewis, Our Mr. Wrenn
and fire breaks out, killing 20 men, women, and children.
This incident, known as theLudlow massacre, gives rise Ambrose Bierce (b. 1842) disappears
to demonstrations across the country, and by the time in Mexico and is presumed dead.
President Woodrow Wilson sends in federal troops to Death of S. Weir Mitchell (b. 1829)
restore order, 66 people have been killed. (additional
Death of Sui-Sin Far (Edith Maude
link: "There Was Blood" )
Eaton)
Clayton Anti-trust Act exempts organized labor from
Edwin Markham, Children in
anti-trust restrictions, which had been used against labor
Bondage (problems of child labor)
by companies in the past.
United States evacuates troops stationed in Vera
Cruz, Mexico.
5 September. Allied victory at the Battle of the
Marne.

7 May. Lusitania is sunk without warning, losing 1198

T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred
out of 1924 passengers. Although tensions run high
Prufrock"
even after Germany offers condolences, Wilson says,
"There is such a thing as a man being too proud to Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River
fight." The U. S. demands reparations, but Germany Anthology
delays. Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark
1915
17 August. In a famous case, Leo Frank, who had Margaret Deland, Around Old Chester
been convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan in a Theodore Dreiser, The "Genius"
climate of anti-Semitism, is lynched in Marietta, Georgia.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher, The Bent
The group responsible calls itself the Knights of Mary
Twig
Phagan, which becomes a revived Ku Klux Klan.
Robert Frost, North of Boston
Iron and Steelworkers strike for the 8-hour day.
In Mexico, Pancho Villa kills 18 American mining Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems
engineers whom he has forced off a train.Two months Sherwood Anderson, Windy
later, he raids towns in New Mexico with a force of 1500 McPherson's Son
men, killing 17 Americans. General John Pershing
pursues Villa across the border in a two-year Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
unsuccessful effort to capture him. William Dean Howells, The
1916 Wilson campaigns for re-election on the slogan "He Leatherwood God
kept us out of the war." He wins the election. Grace King, The Pleasant Ways of St.
Workman's Compensation act enacted by Congress. Medard
Jeannette Rankin of Montana is the first woman Amy Lowell, Men, women, and Ghosts
elected to the House of Representatives. Ring Lardner, You Know Me Al
Mexican President Carranza orders U. S. Troops out Deaths of Henry James (b.
 of Mexico.
5 February. Immigration Act requiring a literacy test
for immigrants and excluding Asiatic workers other than
Japanese is passed over Wilson's veto.
2 April. Saying that "the world must be made safe for
democracy," Wilson asks Congress to declare war on
Germany.
18 May. The Selective Service Act is passed,
providing for the concription of men between 20 and 30
for military service. The first American troops arrive in
1917 France in October.
By the end of the war, 2,000,000
men will have landed in France; 49,000
will be killed in action, 230,000
wounded, and 57,000 will die of
disease. (Image courtesy of the World
War I: Trenches on the Web site.)
1843), Jack London (b. 1876), and
Richard Harding Davis (b. 1864)
Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle
Border
Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David
Levinsky
Sinclair Lewis, The Job
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence
T. S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other
Observations
David Graham Phillips, Susan Lenox:
Her Fall and Rise
Edith Wharton, Summer
Oscar Micheaux, The Homesteader
Pulitzer Prizes established.

Wilson proposes "Fourteen Points" for peace in the

world.
25 June. Marine brigade of U. S. 2nd Division Willa Cather, My Antonia
captures Bouresche and Belleau Wood, suffering high Edith Wharton, The Marne
casualties (9500 men). Henry Adams, The Education of Henry
17 July. Second Battle of the Marne. Adams
1918 26 September. 896,000 American troops join 135,000 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Edgewater
French soldiers in an attack at Argonne Forest. People
In the fall of 1918, a deadly influenza epidemic Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent
strikes; before it ends in 1919, it kills an estimated 20 to Ambersons
40 million people worldwide. (See the Timeline of the O. Henry Award for the short story
epidemic at PBS's American Experience site and established
theInfluenza Pandemic site at Stanford.)
11 November. Germany signs the armistice treaty.
Prohibition Act becomes law; it will go into effect on
January 16, 1920.
February 6-11. The Seattle General Strike shuts
down the city and leads to arrests among socialists and Pulitzer Prizes: For literature--Booth
others deemed subversive. Tarkington, The Magnificent
1919 26 June. Signing of the Versailles Treaty, which the Ambersons;for biography--Henry
Senate later refuses to ratify. Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
31 August. Communist Party is formed in Chicago. Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
25 September. President Wilson suffers a stroke and
never fully recovers.
John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World

1920 16 January. The 18th Amendment (Prohibition Sinclair Lewis, Main Street
Amendment) goes into effect at midnight. Although the Edith Wharton, The Age of
law is challenged in some states (New Jersey), the Innocence and In Morocco
Supreme Court later declares the law valid. (Map of
F. Scott Fitzgerald,This Side of
"wet" and "dry" states at pbs.org)
Paradise
The 19th Amendment (voting rights for women) goes
Anzia Yezierska, Hungry Hearts
into effect.
Ezra Pound, Hugh Selwyn
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer declares that a
Mauberly. For informaton on Pound and
"Red Menace" exists, and authorities begin to raidprivate
other modernist poets, visit the "Petals on
homes and labor headquarters.
a Wet, Black Bough" exhibit at the
5 May. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are Beinecke Museum.
arrested on charges of murder and robbery.
Eugene O'Neill, The Emperor Jones
Elections: The Republican Party nominates Warren
Robert Frost, Mountain Interval
G. Harding for president and Calvin Coolidge for vice-
president. The Democrats nominate James M. Cox for Death of William Dean Howells (b.
 president and Franklin Delano Roosevelt for vice-
president. The Socialist Labor Party nominates Eugene
V. Debs as its presidental candidate, although Debs is in
jail serving a 10-year sentence for controversial
speeches delivered during World War I. Other parties
nominating candidates include the Farmer Labor Party,
which will merge with Robert La Follette's Progressive
Party, and the Prohibition Party. On 2 November,
Harding wins the election by a wide margin (nearly two
to one).
2 November. Station KDKA in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, initiates regular radio broadcasts, the first
station to do so.
1921 2 April. Albert Einstein lectures in New York about his
theory of relativity.
The Emergency Quota Act restricts immigration by
setting limits based on the number of foreign-born
people already in the country in 1910. Immigration must
not exceed three percent of each nationality already in
the United States in that year.
George Washington Carver of the Tuskegee
Institution presents his innovative ideas on agriculture to
the U. S. House of Representatives.
Former president William Howard Taft is appointed to
the Supreme Court.
July-September. Wage cuts and massive
unemployment cause unrest and an increase in
violence. The newly formed Hoover Commission
suggests price cuts and shorter hours rather than an
increase in wages; the average working day is 12-14
hours.
December. By order of President Harding, Eugene
Debs is freed from prison.
10 November. Margaret Sanger forms the American
Birth Control League.
1922 The World War Foreign Debt commission tries to sort
out the issue of war debts owed to the United States,
which insists on full payment and thereby causes ill will
among European nations.
The Supreme Court declares the 19th Amendment
(votes for women) to be constitutional.
The Capper-Volstead Act permits farmers to form
cooperatives for buying and selling goods without being
prosecuted for anti-trust violations.
1923 The Intermediate Credit Act authorized by Congress
provides relief to farmers through extending loans to
cooperatives.
2 August. President Harding dies of an embolism
after suffering ptomaine poisoning followed by
pneumonia. Coolidge is sworn in on 3 August.
The Teapot Dome scandal erupts as the deal
between Harry F. Sinclair of Mammoth Oil and Secretary
1837)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and
Philosophers (stories)
John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers
Sherwood Anderson, The Triumph of
the Egg (stories); "The Egg"
Edith Wharton wins the Pulitzer Prize
for literature for The Age of Innocence.
Although some of the judges wished to
award the prize to Sinclair Lewis's Main
Street, others believe Lewis's book to be
too negative in its representation of small-
town America. Lewis sends Wharton a
gracious note of congratulationsafter his
loss, and she responds by praising Main
Street.
James Joyce's Ulysses is published in
Paris; 500 copies imported to America are
seized by the U. S. Post Office as
obscene material and burned.
F. Scott Fitzgerald,The Beautiful and
Damned
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1921-
1922)
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt
Anzia Yezierska, Salome of the
Tenements
Eugene O'Neill, The Hairy Ape
Willa Cather, One of Ours
Edith Wharton, The Glimpses of the
Moon
Katherine Anne Porter, "Maria
Conception" (Century)
T. S. Eliot founds Criterion magazine
(1922-1939)
Booth Tarkington wins the Pulitzer
Prize for Alice Adams
Willa Cather, A Lost Lady
Wallace Stevens, Harmonium
William Carlos Williams, Spring and All
Jean Toomer, Cane
 of the Interior Albert B. Fall is revealed. Fall had illegally
leased federal lands to Sinclair's company without
calling for competitive bids; after the investigation, Fall is
the first cabinet member in U. S. history to go to jail.
The FBI begins investigating an unusually high rate of
murders and mysterious deaths among the Osage in
what Oklahoma newspapers call the "Osage Reign of
Terror." Because of the great wealth of the Osages' oil-
rich land, members of the tribe become the targets of
unscrupulous dealings and violence.
U. S. Steel implements the 8-hour day, a victory for
labor.
1924 Congress passes a new and more restrictive Edith Wharton, Old New
immigration law; quotas are now set at only 2 percent of York (novellas)
existing nationalities in the U.S. in 1920, and Japanese Eugene O'Neill, Desire under the Elms
immigration is suspended.
H. L. Mencken and George Jean
Calvin Coolidge is elected by a large margin over the Nathan found The American
Democratic candidate, John W. Davis, and the Mercury, which ceases publication in
Progressive candidate, Robert La Follette. 1951.
Nellie Ross of Wyoming and Miriam Ferguson of
Texas are elected governors of their states.
1925 February. A diphtheria epidemic in Alaska captures F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
the country's attention as dog teams drive through the Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time
winter weather to deliver antidiphtheria serum to Nome.
Willa Cather, The Professor's House
July. The Scopes trial begins as John T. Scopes of
Theodore Dreiser, An American
Tennessee is arrested for teaching Darwin's theory of
Tragedy
evolution. Clarence Darrow defends Scopes as William
Jennings Bryan heads the prosecution. In an unusual Gertrude Stein, The Making of
move, Bryan takes the witness stand to defend his strict Americans
interpretation of the Bible. Scopes loses the trial and is Alain Locke, The New Negro
fined $100, but the trial publicity has given the debate Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers
over evolution national attention.
John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
Edna Ferber's So Big wins the Pulitzer
Prize.
The New Yorker is founded by Harold
Ross. Its unofficial motto: "Not edited for
the old lady in Dubuque" (James
Thurber, The Years with Ross, 75).
1926 The Air Commerce Act regulates civil aviation; the William Faulkner, Soldier's Pay
Army Air Corps is established. This occurs just one year Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also
after Col. William "Billy" Mitchell had been suspended Rises
from the Army for 5 years without pay for insisting on the
Hart Crane, The Bridge
importance of air power in the national defense.
Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues
A land boom in Florida comes to a halt as a massive
tornado causes enormous damage.
Richard Byrd makes the first flight over the North
Pole.
U. S. Marines land in Nicaragua to suppress a revolt
and will stay until 1933.
Gertrude Ederle swims the English channel in 14
hours, 31 minutes.
1927 20-21 May. Charles Lindbergh flies The Spirit of St. Willa Cather, Death Comes for the
Louis from New York to Paris, traveling 3600 miles in 33 Archbishop
and a half hours. Countee Cullen, Caroling Dusk
Catholic presidential candidate Alfred Smith of New (anthology) and Copper Sun
York answers questions about whether his loyalty to the
Vatican would supersede his loyalty to the U. S. by
saying, "I recognize no power in the institution of my
Church to interfere with the operations of the
Constitution of the United States or the enforcement of
the law of the land."
Refusing a nomination for reelection in what will
 become a famous statement, Calvin Coolidge says, "I do
not choose to run."
23 August. Still protesting their innocence, Sacco and
Vanzetti are executed after judicial appeals are
exhausted.
6 October. The Jazz Singer, starring Broadway star
Al Jolson, debuts as the "first" talking picture, and its
success spells the beginning of the end for silent
movies.
20 October. The Ford Model A, the successor to the
Model T, is produced under great secrecy. Production
lines have been shut down and retooled to produce it.
Public curiosity is finally satisfied on December 2 when
the car goes on sale. By 1929, 1.5 million Model A cars
had been sold. Songs like the humorous "Henry's Made
a Lady out of Lizzie" celebrated the Model A..
1928 Elections: In the presidential election, Republican Eugene O'Neill, Strange Interlude
Herbert Hoover, whose party's slogan is "A chicken in Nella Larsen, Quicksand
every pot, a car in every garage," beats Democratic
candidate Al Smith. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt is
elected governor of New York.
The Kellogg-Briand Pact proposes to substitute
diplomacy for warfare as a means of settling
international disputes; 62 nations ultimately sign the
pact. The U. S. Senate approves the pact in 1929.
12 March. In southern California, the two-year-old St.
Francis Dam gives way, killing over 500 people. The
dam is part of the water system designed by William
Mulholland, creator of the Los Angeles Aqueduct
systerm.
1929 14 February. In the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre," William Faulkner, The Sound and the
six gangsters from the "Bugs" Moran mob and another Fury and Sartoris
man are gunned down in a Chicago garage. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to
1 July. Enforcement of the the Immigration Act of Arms
1924 begins. Katherine Anne Porter, "Flowering
24-29 October. On "Black Thursday," 24 October, 13 Judas"
million shares are sold on the New York Stock Countee Cullen, Black Christ and
Exchange; despite efforts to shore up prices by J. P. Other Poems
Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, prices fall again on 29
Nella Larsen, Passing
October, "Black Tuesday," as 16 million shares are
sold. By 13 November, $30 billion has been lost in
devalued stocks. Although all of the effects are not felt
immediately, the stock market crash marks the
beginning of the Great Depression.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences gives out its first awards, which are not called
"Oscars" until 1931.