MXA US History II Timeline I 1876 - 1900 (Descriptions taken from "The American Yawp" ch. 16-19)
By megxanderson
-
1870's Charles Darwin's Evolution Theory Gains Traction
"In 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution ... It was not until the 1870s, however, that those theories gained widespread traction...the British sociologist and biologist Herbert Spencer, applied Darwin’s theories to society and popularized the phrase survival of the fittest (American Yawp Ch. 16)." -
1876 Custer's Fall at Little Bighorn
"In late June 1876, a division of the 7th Cavalry Regiment led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer was sent up a trail into the Black Hills as an advance guard for a larger force... Custer’s 7th Cavalry was vastly outnumbered, and he and 268 of his men were killed (TAY Ch. 17)."1876 -
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
"Workers struck from Baltimore to St. Louis, shutting down railroad traffic—the nation’s economic lifeblood—across the country (American Yawp Ch. 16)." -
1877 Texas Agrarians organize the first Farmers' Alliance
"Threatened by ever-plummeting commodity prices and ever-rising indebtedness, Texas agrarians met in Lampasas, Texas, in 1877 and organized the first Farmers’ Alliance to restore some economic power to farmers as they dealt with railroads, merchants, and bankers (TAY Ch. 16)." -
1878 Edison Announces Electric Power and Lighting Research
"In September 1878, Edison announced a new and ambitious line of research and development—electric power and lighting (The American Yawp Ch. 18)." -
1880 McCormick Hires a Production Manager to Boost Production
"1880, McCormick hired a production manager who had overseen the manufacturing of Colt firearms to transform his system of production. The Chicago plant introduced new jigs, steel gauges, and pattern machines that could make precise duplicates of new, interchangeable parts. The company had produced twenty-one thousand machines in 1880. It made twice as many in 1885, and by 1889, less than a decade later, it was producing over one hundred thousand a year. (American Yawp Ch. 16)" -
1880 Bison reduced from ten million to a few hundred
"The infamous American bison slaughter peaked in the early 1870s. The number of American bison plummeted from over ten million at midcentury to only a few hundred by the early 1880s. The expansion of the railroads allowed ranching to replace the bison with cattle on the American grasslands (TAY Ch. 17)." -
1880 Wild West Shows
"Wild West shows, arguably the unofficial national entertainment of the United States from the 1880s to the 1910s (TAY Ch. 17)." -
1880's The Second Industrial Revolution
"The Second Industrial Revolution, made possible by available natural resources, growth in the labor supply through immigration, increasing capital, new legal economic entities, novel production strategies, and a growing national market, was commonly asserted to be the natural product of the federal government’s laissez faire, or “hands off,” economic policy (TAY Ch. 20)." -
1880 Industrial Capitalism Draws Immigrants to the US
"Industrial capitalism was the most important factor that drew immigrants to the United States between 1880 and 1920. Immigrant workers labored in large industrial complexes producing goods such as steel, textiles, and food products, replacing smaller and more local workshops. The influx of immigrants, alongside a large movement of Americans from the countryside to the city, helped propel the rapid growth of cities like New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and St. Louis (TAY Ch. 18)." -
1881 Sitting Bull Surrenders
"in July 1881, Sitting Bull and his followers at last laid down their weapons and came to the reservation. Indigenous powers had been defeated. The Plains, it seemed, had been pacified (The American Yawp Ch. 17)." -
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
"...May 1882, Congress suspended the immigration of all Chinese laborers with the Chinese Exclusion Act, making the Chinese the first immigrant group subject to admission restrictions on the basis of race (TAY Ch. 19)." -
1882 Congress passed the Immigration Act
"In August 1882, Congress passed the Immigration Act, denying admission to people who were not able to support themselves and those, such as paupers, people with mental illnesses, or convicted criminals, who might otherwise threaten the security of the nation (TAY Ch. 19)." -
1886 The Famous Cattle Drives
"Between 1866 and 1886, ranchers drove a million head of cattle annually overland from Texas ranches to railroad depots in Kansas for shipment by rail to Chicago..Ranchers used well-worn trails, such as the Chisholm Trail, for drives, but conflicts arose with Native Americans in the Indian Territory and farmers in Kansas... Other trails, such as the Western Trail, the Goodnight-Loving Trail, and the Shawnee Trail, were therefore blazed (TAY Ch. 18, 17)." -
1886 "That South is Dead"
"“There was a South of slavery and secession,” Atlanta Constitution editor Henry Grady proclaimed in an 1886 speech in New York. “That South is dead.”12 Grady captured the sentiment of many white southern business and political leaders who imagined a New South that could turn its back to the past by embracing industrialization and diversified agriculture (TAY Ch. 18)." -
1886 American Laborers Strike for an Eight-hour Day
"In the summer of 1886, the campaign for an eight-hour day, long a rallying cry that united American laborers, culminated in a national strike on May 1, 1886. Somewhere between three hundred thousand and five hundred thousand workers struck across the country (TAY Ch. 16." -
1887 The Dawes Act
"Passed by Congress on February 8, 1887, the Dawes General Allotment Act splintered Native American reservations into individual family homesteads... Allegedly to protect Indians from being swindled by unscrupulous land speculators, all allotments were to be held in trust—they could not be sold by allottees—for twenty-five years (TAY Ch. 17)." -
1888 Wilhelm II Seated on the German Throne
"...a new ambitious monarch would overshadow years of tactful diplomacy. Wilhelm II rose to the German throne in 1888. He admired the British Empire of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and envied the Royal Navy of Great Britain so much that he attempted to build a rival German navy and plant colonies around the globe (TAY Ch. 21)." -
1889 Ghost Dance
"In Nevada, on January 1, 1889, Northern Paiute prophet Wovoka experienced a great revelation...“You must not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone. You must not fight. Do right always,” he allegedly exhorted... If the people lived justly and danced the Ghost Dance, Wovoka said, their ancestors would rise from the dead, droughts would dissipate, the whites in the West would vanish, and the buffalo would once again roam the Plains (TAY Ch. 17)." -
1889 Gospel of Wealth
"Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie popularized the idea of a “gospel of wealth” in an 1889 article, claiming that “the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth” was the moral obligation of the rich to give to charity (TAY Ch. 18)." -
1890 Inequality Soars in Favor or the Wealthiest 1 percent
"According to various measurements, in 1890 the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans owned one fourth of the nation’s assets; the top 10 percent owned over 70 percent. And inequality only accelerated. By 1900, the richest 10 percent controlled perhaps 90 percent of the nation’s wealth (American Yawp Ch. 16). -
1890 Populist Leader Mary Elizabeth decries, "Wall Street owns the country."
"“Wall Street owns the country,” the Populist leader Mary Elizabeth Lease told dispossessed farmers around 1890. “It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.” Farmers, who remained a majority of the American population through the first decade of the twentieth century, were hit especially hard by industrialization (TAY Ch. 16)." -
1890 Buffalo Soldiers
"Buffalo Soldiers, the nickname given to African-American cavalrymen by the native Americans they fought, were the first peacetime all-black regiments in the regular United States army. These soldiers regularly confronted racial prejudice from other Army members and civilians, but were an essential part of American victories during the Indian Wars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (TAY Ch. 17)." -
1890 The Massacre at Wounded Knee
"December 29, the American cavalrymen entered the camp to disarm Spotted Elk’s band. Tensions flared, a shot was fired, and a skirmish became a massacre. The Americans fired their heavy weaponry indiscriminately into the camp. Two dozen cavalrymen had been killed by the Lakotas’ concealed weapons or by friendly fire, but when the guns went silent, between 150 and 300 Native men, women, and children were dead (TAY Ch. 17)." -
1892 Triple Entente
"...a defensive alliance to counter the existing triple threat between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. Britain’s Queen Victoria remained unassociated with the alliances until a series of diplomatic crises and an emerging German naval threat led to British agreements with Tsar Nicholas II and French President Émile Loubet in the early twentieth century. (The alliance between Great Britain, France, and Russia became known as the Triple Entente.) (TAY Ch. 21)." -
1893 The Populist Cry, "Raise less corn and more Hell."
"...when the Panic of 1893 sparked the worst economic depression the nation had ever yet seen, the Populist movement won further credibility and gained even more ground. Kansas Populist Mary Lease, one of the movement’s most fervent speakers, famously, and perhaps apocryphally, called on farmers to “raise less corn and more Hell.” (TAY Ch. 16)." -
1893 Frederick Jackson Turner presents his "Frontier Thesis"
"In 1893, the American Historical Association met during that year’s World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The young Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his “frontier thesis,” one of the most influential theories of American history, in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History (TAY Ch. 17)." -
1895 Booker T. Washington's "Atlantic Compromise"
1895...Washington’s famous “Atlanta Compromise” speech from that same year encouraged Black Americans to “cast your bucket down” to improve life’s lot under segregation... “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” Washington was both praised as a race leader and pilloried as an accommodationist... -
1896 William McKinley wins the Presidency through his "Sound Money" message
"Conservative William McKinley promised prosperity to ordinary Americans through his “sound money” initiative, a policy he ran on during his election campaigns in 1896 and again in 1900. This election poster touts McKinley’s gold standard policy as bringing “Prosperity at Home, Prestige Abroad (TAY Ch. 16)." -
1898 The Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars
"Although the United States had a long history of international economic, military, and cultural engagement that stretched back deep into the eighteenth century, the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (1898–1902) marked a crucial turning point in American interventions abroad. In pursuing war with Spain, and then engaging in counterrevolutionary conflict in the Philippines, the United States expanded the scope and strength of its global reach (TAY Ch. 19)." -
1899 Open Door Policy
"In 1899, secretary of state John Hay articulated the Open Door Policy, which called for all Western powers to have equal access to Chinese markets. Hay feared that other imperial powers—Japan, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia—planned to carve China into spheres of influence. It was in the economic interest of American business to maintain China for free trade (TAY Ch.19)." -
1900 The United States becomes the world’s leading manufacturing nation
American Yawp Ch. 16 -
1900 Congress passed the Gold Standard Act
"In early 1900, Congress passed the Gold Standard Act, which put the country on the gold standard, effectively ending the debate over the nation’s monetary policy (TAY Ch. 16)." -
1900 The Boxer Rebellion
"The following year, in 1900, American troops joined a multinational force that intervened to prevent the closing of trade by putting down the Boxer Rebellion, a movement opposed to foreign businesses and missionaries operating in China. President McKinley sent the U.S. Army without consulting Congress, setting a precedent for U.S. presidents to order American troops to action around the world under their executive powers (TAY Ch. 19)." -
1901 Booker T Washington published the autobiography "Up from Slavery"
... Washington also published a handful of influential books, including the autobiography Up from Slavery (1901).