In the United States | 1861-1911

1860

  • Abraham Lincoln elected 16th President of the United States on an anti-slavery platform
  • South Carolina seceded from the Union

1861

  • Confederate States of America organized
  • April 12 (through 9, 1865), Civil War
  • May 20, secession of North Carolina from the Union

1863

  • The South lost the battle at Gettysburg, Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves

1865

  • American Civil War ends
  • Abraham Lincoln assassinated by John Wilkes Booth
  • Slavery abolished by the 13th Amendment

1866

  • 14th Amendment establishes full national citizenship for blacks
  • Ku Klux Klan formed

1867

  • The United States bought Alaska from Russia for less than 2 cents per acre

1870

  • Standard Oil Company founded by John D. Rockefeller

1871

  • Great Fire of Chicago

1874

  • Barbed wire first introduced - lasting effect in the American West

1876

  • Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  • Scottish-born Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone

1877

  • Thomas Edison invented the phonograph

1878

  • Congress established the District of Columbia (governed by Congress until 1967)

1881

  • Robert Louis Stevenson published Treasure Island.
  • Booker T Washington became the first head of Tuskegee Institute

1882

  • German and Chinese immigration to the United States reached all time highs

1883

  • Brooklyn Suspension Bridge - first bridge to use steel for cable wire

1884

  • Hiram Maxim (American gun smith) invented the Maxim machine gun
  • U.S. Supreme Court ruled vs Ku Klux Klan that interfering with a citizen’s right to vote was a federal offense

1885

  • Iron frame construction employed in the nation’s first skyscraper in Chicago

1886

  • Statue of Liberty, a gift from France, dedicated in New York harbor
  • American Federation of Labor (AFL) founded in Columbus, Ohio

1887

  • A Treaty with Hawaii granted the US rights to build Pearl Harbor naval base

1888

  • Department of Labor was created

1889

  • Celluloid-roll film produced by American photographer George Eastman
  • North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Montana admitted to the Union

1890

  • Rubber gloves used for the first time in surgery in Baltimore
  • Idaho and Wyoming joined the Union
  • Last Indian battle at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, resulted in the death of 200 Sioux
  • Region served by The Western North Carolina Republican

1892

  • Death of A.S. Merrimon, U.S. Senator (1873-1879), Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court

1893

  • Financial panic resulted from a loss of confidence in the US monetary policy

1895

  • Biltmore House completed
  • The Contract Labor Act forbade the importation of contract laborers

1896

  • Steam replaced the “water wheel”; industrialization picks up

1898

  • Biltmore Forest School (first in America) started by Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck

1901

  • Vice President Theodore Roosevelt succeeded President McKinley

1902

  • President Roosevelt called for “a square deal” for every one

1903

  • Wright brothers made the first famous flight at Kitty Hawk, N. C.     

1905

  • Albert Einstein revolutionized the scientific world with the study of physical laws and publication of Special Theory of Relativity

1909

  • Founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

1911

  • Pisgah National Forest established by the U. S. Government     

Sources - Inter Alia:
(1.) Beazley, Mitchell (ed.): Time Lines: World History Year by Year since 1492. New York Crescent Books, 1991
(2.) Grun, Bernard: The Timetables of History. New York, Simon Schuster/ Touchstone, 1991

By Brian du Toit  - Transylvania Sesquicentennial Steering Committee

Share this