U.S. History 1865-1920

By Rain G
  • Bessemer Process

    A new way of creating steel, cheaply and in large amounts.
  • Discovery of Gold in Pikes Peak

    Gold discovered out west.
  • Homestead Act

    Accelerated the settlement of the western territory by granting adult heads of families 160 acres of surveyed public land for a minimal filing fee and five years of continuous residence on that land.
  • Morrill Land grant act

    Allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally-owned land, often obtained from indigenous tribes through treaty, cession, or seizure.
  • Transcontinental r/r completed

    Railroad trackage, that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Big for the trading industry.
  • Battle of little bighorn

    An armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army.
  • Farmers alliance created

    First organized in Texas in the mid-1870s and soon spread to other states and territories in the South and Midwest. One of the group's main goals was to form cooperatives. Farmers set up cooperatively owned retail stores and marketing organizations.
  • Carlisle school established

    The first government-run boarding school for Native American children. The goal? Forced assimilation of Native children into white American society under the belief of “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.”
  • Thomas Edison invents light bulb

    Made the lightbulb.
  • Chinese exclusion act

    It was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States.
  • Edison lights up NYC

    The first electrical lighting in New York City signaled a new era of urban illumination.
  • Statue of Liberty built

    Assembled fully in 1886, construction in the 1870's.
  • American federation of labor founded

    A national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL–CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutual support and disappointed in the Knights of Labor.
  • Interstate commerce act passed

    Applied the Constitution's “Commerce Clause”—granting Congress the power “to Regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States”—to regulating railroad rates.
  • Dawes Act

    Regulated land rights on tribal territories within the United States.
  • Alfred T Mahan writes his book on sea power

    A revolutionary analysis of the importance of naval power as a factor in the rise of the British Empire.
  • U-Boats Created

    In 1903, the Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft dockyard in Kiel completed the first fully functional German-built submarine, Forelle, which Krupp sold to Russia during the Russo-Japanese War in April 1904.
  • Sherman ant-trust act passed

    The first Federal act that outlawed monopolistic business practices.
  • Jacob Riis published his book of photos

    About how the other half lives.
  • Wounded knee massacre

    The slaughter of approximately 150–300 Lakota Indians by United States Army troops in the area of Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota.
  • Fredrick Jackson Turner writes essay of settling the west

    His essay, in the title.
  • Pullman strike

    Widespread railroad strike and boycott that severely disrupted rail traffic in the Midwest of the United States in May–July 1894.
  • Plessy v Ferguson

    Ruled that separate-but-equal facilities were constitutional. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision upheld the principle of racial segregation over the next half-century.
  • Holden v hardy

    A US labor law case in which the US Supreme Court held a limitation on working time for miners and smelters as constitutional.
  • Spanish American War begins

    Began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence.
  • Hawaii is annexed

    The Hawaiian Islands were annexed by this joint resolution. When the Hawaiian islands were formally annexed by the United States in 1898, the event marked the end of a lengthy internal struggle between native Hawaiians and non-native American businessmen for control of the Hawaiian government.
  • Phillipines islands are annexed

    The United States paid Spain $20 million to annex the entire Philippine archipelago. The outraged Filipinos, led by Aguinaldo, prepared for war.
  • Newlands Reclamation act

    Was a pioneering environmental law that defined the federal role in western water distribution. The act created the U.S. Reclamation Service, later renamed the Bureau of Reclamation.
  • Panama Canal is built

    Canal built for trade.
  • Sinclair’s the Jungle written

    The Jungle is a fictional novel by American muckraker author Upton Sinclair, known for his efforts to expose corruption in government and business in the early 20th century.
  • Pure Food and drug act passed

    Prohibited the sale of misbranded or adulterated food and drugs in interstate commerce.
  • Muller V Oregon

    Women were provided by state mandate lesser work-hours than allotted to men. The posed question was whether women's liberty to negotiate a contract with an employer should be equal to a man's.
  • Founding of the NAACP

    An interracial group consisting of W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Mary White Ovington, and others concerned with the challenges facing African Americans, especially in the wake of the 1908 Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot.
  • Ford Motor company's first full assembly line starts

    The Ford Motor Company team decided to try to implement the moving assembly line in the automobile manufacturing process. After much trial and error, in 1913 Henry Ford and his employees successfully began using this innovation at our Highland Park assembly plant.
  • 17th amd

    17th Amendment modified Article I, Section 3, of the Constitution by allowing voters to cast direct votes for U.S. senators. Prior to its passage, senators were chosen by state legislatures.
  • Federal Reserve act

    It was implemented to establish economic stability in the U.S. by introducing a central bank to oversee monetary policy. 1 The Federal Reserve Act is one of the most influential laws shaping the U.S. financial system.
  • Clayton Antitrust act

    Prohibits price discrimination. This is the act of selling the same product to different buyers and charging different prices based on who is purchasing the goods.
  • Beginning of the first world war

    WWI started.
  • Lusitania Sunk

    The RMS Lusitania was a British-registered ocean liner that was torpedoed by an Imperial German Navy U-boat during the First World War
  • WWI end

    after more than four years of horrific fighting and the loss of millions of lives, the guns on the Western Front fell silent. Although fighting continued elsewhere, the armistice between Germany and the Allies was the first step to ending World War I.
  • US enters WWI

    the U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany.
  • Selective Service act

    Authorized the Federal Government to temporarily expand the military through conscription.
  • 18th amendment

    Prohibited the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors..." and was ratified by the states on January 16, 1919. The movement to prohibit alcohol began in the United States in the early nineteenth century.
  • 19th amd

    The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
  • Immigration quota act

    Limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census.
  • National origins act

    a federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe.
  • Scopes trial

    In which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it illegal for teachers to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.
  • 18th amd ended

    It repealed the previous Eighteenth Amendment which had established a nationwide ban on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol.