Chronology

Full chronology version

1850

Although Congress abolishes flogging in the Navy, it remains legal for schoolteachers to use such punishment to make their pupils behave

1850

The National Women's Rights Convention is held in Worcester, Massachusetts

1850

The Female Medical College of Pennsylvania becomes the first medical school for women

1850

Fugitive Slave Act provides for the return of enslaved people brought to free states

1850

Millard Fillmore becomes President after the death of Zachary Taylor

1850

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter becomes an instant bestseller, tackling the subject of adultery

1850

U.S. population totals 23.1 million

1851

I.M. Singer & Company take out its first patent for the Singer Perpendicular Action Sewing Machine

1851

Elizabeth Smith Miller invents the undergarments that would later come to be known as "bloomers" after being worn by feminist Amelia Bloomer. She advocated clothing reform to improve women's health.

1851

The Young Men's Christian Association begins in Boston in 1851

1851

The Land Act of 1851 is an attempt by Congress to sort out competing land claims by Mexican Americans and the immigrants

1851

The first issue of the New York Times (under the name New York Daily Times) is published

1851

Herman Melville publishes Moby Dick

1852

Massachusetts passes the first compulsory school attendance law

1852

Elisha Otis invents a safety device to prevent elevators falling if the hoisting cable broke

1852

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony become active in the Women's New York State Temperance Society

1852

Uncle Tom's Cabin or Life Among the Lowly is published by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It becomes incredibly popular and plays based on the story are performed by traveling companies all over the country.

1852

By the end of the year 20,000 Chinese immigrants have entered the U.S., almost all arriving at San Francisco to search for gold

1853

Willamette University in Oregon becomes the first university west of the Rockies

1853

Railroad lines reach west as far as the Mississippi River

1853

The first woman minister is ordained; Mrs Amos Bronson Alcott presents a petition with 73 other women to urge suffrage for women

1853

Kong Chow Temple in San Francisco is the first Buddhist temple in the U.S.

1854

Boston Public Library and New York's Astor Library both open this year

1854

Henry Barnard starts the American Journal of Education

1854

Norwegians who have settled in Wisconsin establish the Norwegian Evangelical Church of America

1854

Lincoln University becomes the first Black college

1855

A German-speaking kindergarten is established in Wisconsin, based on the ideas of Friedrich Froebel

1855

Woman's rights activist Lucy Stone marries Henry Blackwell to work for the cause together. In their marriage ceremony they have no obedience clause and will retain their personal property.

1855

Approximately 400,000 immigrants arrive in New York City this year

1856

Massachusetts legislature prohibits racial segregation in the state's schools, the first such law in the United States

1856

The Young Men's Christian Association begins in New York

1856

James Buchanan defeats the first Republican candidate, John C. Fremont and the Americanist Millard Fillmore, to become President

1856

On March 6, the Supreme Court decides that an African-American cannot be a citizen of the U.S., and has no rights of citizenship

1857

The National Teachers Association is founded by 45 teachers and educators in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1857

The first elevator is installed in New York City by the Otis Elevator Company

1857

William Campbell and James Henry take out a patent for a Plunger Closet, now known as a toilet

1857

Harper’s Weekly begins (1857-1916)

1858

Lewis Mill receives a patent on a modern mowing machine

1858

Hymen Lipman patents the first pencil with an eraser

1858

The Ladies Christian Association is formed, eventually becoming the Young Women's Christian Association

1858

A religious revival sweeps the country in the face of a financial panic

1858

Abraham Lincoln opposes Stephen Douglas for the Senate in the Lincoln-Douglas debates

1859

Eben Horsford invents baking powder

1859

Abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond begins a two-year lecture tour that will include stops in Scotland, Ireland, England and France

1860

Elizabeth Peabody opens the first English-speaking kindergarten in Boston

1860

Shakers, an off-shoot of the Quaker religion, have now established more than 20 communities

1860

Abraham Lincoln elected president

1860

Dime novels are published and quickly become popular

1860

The Pony Express mail service begins, taking 8 days from St Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California

1860

Of approximately 35,000 Chinese people in America, only 1, 784 are women. The majority work on the railroads.

1861

Yale University establishes the first organised graduate department in the nation and awards the first Ph.D. degrees

1861

The American Civil War disrupts suffrage activity as women in the North and South divert their energies to "war work"

1861

The interdenominational Woman’s Union Missionary Society of America forms to send single women as missionaries to the women in India, Japan, China and other lands

1861

A rebel government is established by the eleven Southern states to have seceded from the union

1861

Confederate General Beauregard opens fire upon Fort Sumter and the Civil War begins

1862

The U.S. government opens a school on St. Helena Island, South Carolina

1862

Rabbi Jacob Frankel becomes the first Jewish chaplain in the U.S. Army

1862

Catholic nuns make up a fifth of all nurses during the Civil War, willingly treating victims of smallpox and contagious diseases

1862

F.A.O Schwarz opens a toy store in New York

1863

President Lincoln establishes the National Academy of Sciences

1863

Working Women's Protective Union (WWPU) is established as the champion of working women's causes

1863

Circuit preachers spread religion in the west

1863

Lincoln dedicates the cemetery at Gettysburg, the occasion of the "Gettysburg Address"

1863

President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all enslaved people in the Confederate states

1864

George Pullman finishes the first comfortable railroad sleeping car, the Pullman sleeper

1864

The motto “In God We Trust” first appears on U.S. coins

1864

Lincoln is reelected

1865

Orphan schools were established for those whose fathers were killed in the Civil War. They were supported by donations and fund raising.

1865

The first steel rails are manufactured

1865

The Civil War officially ends when Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses Grant at Appomattox Court House

1865

President Lincoln is assassinated

1865

Mark Twain publishes The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County which brings the Western experience into mainstream American literature

1865

Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishes slavery

1866

The literary magazine The Galaxy was founded with contributors including Mark Twain, Henry James, Walt Whitman, and Rebecca Harding Davis

1866

The first trans-Atlantic cable is laid

1866

Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is founded

1866

The African Union Church unites with the First Colored Methodist Protestant Church to form the African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church of America

1866

Burlesque starts to beome popular

1866

First appearance of a 5-cent coin, soon called "the nickel"

1866

The American Equal Rights Association is formed as an organization for white and Black women and men dedicated to the goal of universal suffrage

1867

The original U.S. Department of Education is created to help the States establish effective school systems

1867

Henry Barnard became the first U.S. commissioner of Education

1867

The National Union of Cigarmakers are the first national union to accept women and African Americans, although they do not admit nonskilled factory workers and homeworkers until 1875

1867

All males over 21 are granted suffrage in US territories

1867

The Grange movement is founded, an affiliation of local farmers working for political and economic advantages

1867

Harper's Bazaar magazine begins

1868

The typewriter is patented by Christopher Latham Sholes

1868

The Grange agricultural movement, founded a year earlier, actively encourages female participation

1868

Separate women’s missionary societies are set up by different denominations. A Presbyterian publication calls it “woman’s work for woman” but the prejudices are shown in the title of a typical publication, Heathen Woman’s Friend.

1868

Vanity Fair magazine begins

1868

Louisa May Alcott publishes Little Women. The sequel Good Wives follows a year later.

1868

Fourteenth Amendment grants full citizenship to all (including African Americans) born in the U.S. except Indigenous peoples of North America

1869

St Louis Law School becomes the first law school to admit women

1869

The Union Pacific-Central Pacific transcontinental railroad is completed

1869

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony found the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), and Lucy Stone helps found the more moderate American Woman Suffrage Association

1869

Ulysses S. Grant become President

1869

E.C. Allen starts the People's Literary Companion, marking the beginning of the 'mail-order' periodical

1869

Riots against Chinese immigrants take place in San Francisco

1870

The government takes a strong interest in the education of Indigenous people of North America. Boarding schools were seen as a means of assimilating children from Indigenous communities into the dominant European culture.

1870

Chesebrough Manufacturing Co., makers of Vaseline, is founded

1870

60% of all women workers are employed in domestic service jobs

1870

Women use their vote for the first time in the United States in an election in Utah territory

1870

Congress officially declare Christmas to be a national holiday

1870

The Fifteenth Amendment enfranchises Black men

1870

Hiram R. Revels becomes the first Black man to be elected to the U.S. Senate

1870

Congress enacts the "Enforcement Act" to stop southern white resistance to the power African Americans have gained during Reconstruction

1871

The Women’s Centenary Association, the first national organization of church women, forms to conduct missionary work and promote the education of women ministers. Caroline White Soule is president.

1871

Indigenous peoples of North America are assigned to reservations by the Indian Appropriation Act. They continue to struggle against their confinement.

1872

Susan B. Anthony is arrested and brought to trial for attempting to vote in the presidential election

1873

Smith College is established as a non-denominational institution aimed at improving the lives of women

1873

The Comstock Law is passed, making it illegal to send birth control information through the mail

1873

The term "Gilded Age" is coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today

1874

Joseph F Glidden invents barbed wire. It is now cheap and easy to enclose grazing lands and territory.

1874

Massachusetts limits women's working days to 10 hours

1874

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is founded

1875

John Knowles Paine, a professor at Harvard, establishes the first department of music in an American university

1875

The first Jewish college is established in Cincinnati

1875

Archbishop John McCloskey is invested as the first American Cardinal

1875

Dwight Lyman Moody begins evangelistic revival meeting in the East

1875

The first theater dedicated to burlesque opens on Broadway in 1875

1875

In some states immigrants could vote within a few months without citizenship, while in other states it still took the five years necessary to become a citizen in order to vote

1876

Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone

1876

Lydia E. Pinkham registers the label and trademark for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound

1876

Mary Baker Eddy establishes the Christian Scientists in 1876

1876

The Battle of Little Big Horn

1876

Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes is elected president

1876

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is published

1877

More than 500,000 Black children now attend school

1877

Thomas Edison secures the basic patent for a phonograph machine

1877

The Great Strike is started with railway workers walking out, later to be followed by workers from other industries

1877

The Washington Post newspaper begins publication

1877

The Society of American Artists is formed

1877

The 'Indian Wars' near an end with the surrender of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce on October 5th

1878

The Edison Electric Light Company is established in New York City

1878

A Woman Suffrage Amendment is introduced in the United States Congress but fails

1879

The first students attend the United States Indian Training and Industrial School, Pennsylvania. By 1900, there were 81 boarding and 150 day schools on reservations, and 24 schools outside the reservations.

1879

Albert A Michelson measures distances by light wave-lengths

1879

James Gamble and Harley Procter develop Ivory Soap

1879

Belva Lockwood becomes the first woman admitted to the Supreme Court bar

1879

Congress passes a bill to restict Chinese immigration

1880

Approximately 2.5 million women are working for wages

1880

Women take an active leadership role in the National Farmers’ Alliances that form as local cooperatives in rural areas.

1880

The American branch of the Salvation Army is organised

1880

James A. Garfield becomes President

1880

Theatres on Broadway develop a new kind of stage show, later known as the Broadway musical

1880

U.S. population: 50.1 million of whom 6.6 million were foreign born. The population of Indigenous peoples of North America in the United States is estimated at 243,000, most are encamped in reservations.

1881

Spelman College in Atlanta opens as the first liberal arts college for African-American women

1881

Clara Barton organizes the American Red Cross

1881

The Woman’s Baptist Missionary Training School is established in Chicago. In the next 50 years many similar schools are started, offering instruction in religion and practical work in city missions.

1881

President Garfield is assassinated by Charles Guiteau. Chester A. Arthur becomes President

1881

The period of 'American Renaissance' began, characterized by new public institutions such as museums, schools, libraries, and orchestras

1881

Over the next ten years over 5.2 milllion immigrants settle in the U.S.

1882

The Association of Collegiate Alumnae is organised. It is the forerunner of the American Association of University Women.

1882

Thomas Edison develops the world's first electric power system

1882

The Association of Collegiate Alumnae is organised. It is the forerunner of the American Association of University Women.

1882

The Roman Catholic church permits organization of a fraternal group, the Knights of Columbus

1882

Congress acts to restrict immigration on a selective basis

1883

William K Vanderbilt gives the most expensive fancy dress ball ever given, costing a quarter of a million dollars. Vanderbilt sets the standard for extravagence and conspicuous consumption in this era.

1883

Clergymen, government officials and social reformers meet to develop a strategy for assimilate Indigenous peoples of North American, setting the course for U.S. policy toward Indigenous people of North American and a near destruction of the culture

1884

A ten-story building in Chicago, the Home Life Insurance Building, is the world's first true "skyscraper"

1884

The linotype machine is patented by Ottmar Mergenthaler

1884

The Third Plenary Council of America's Catholic Bishops establishes an administrative code, a parish-based education system and a planned establishment of a national Catholic university

1884

Democrat Grover Cleveland is elected president, despite his party being denounced by opponents as a party of ‘Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion’

1884

Vaudeville becomes popular as the first theatre is built in Boston. It remains the most popular form of entertainment until the impact of Edison's moving pictures.

1885

Bryn Mawr Women's College opens

1885

Furnaces to burn garbage are put into use in many cities

1885

Elizabeth Bailey takes over her husband’s circus, producing ‘Mollie Bailey’s Show’ – the first circus run by a woman; Annie Oakley begins touring with "Buffalo Bill" Cody's Wild West Show.

1885

The Washington Monument is dedicated

1886

The number of divorces rises from 9,937 in 1867 to 25,535

1886

Harriet Hubbard Ayer is the first US woman to launch a successful cosmetics business, marketing a facial cream

1886

The Young Women's Hebrew Association is established

1886

The American Federation of Labor is organized

1886

Ladies Home Journal is first published

1887

During this decade the average salary for female teachers is $54 a year and for male teachers $71 a year

1887

Asa Candler buys part interest in a patent medicine known as Coca-Cola

1887

Susanna Salter of Kansas is elected as the first female mayor

1887

Congress passes the Edmunds-Tucker Act which disincorporates the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, confiscates its properties, and abolishes women's suffrage in Utah

1887

The Dawes Act was introduced, allowing the President to divide up indigenous land and allocate 160 acres of land to each head of an Indigenous family. Land not distributed was offered for sale to settlers.

1888

The first Kodak box cameras are sold

1888

Secret ballot system is introduced into the U.S.

1889

Electrocution replaces hanging as the official method of capital punishment in New York State

1889

Susan La Flesche Picotte becomes the first Indigenous woman of North America to qualify as a medical doctor

1889

Nellie Bly, a journalist for the New York World, travels around the world in 72 days

1889

Benjamin Harrison becomes President

1889

The first ‘Oklahoma land rush’ takes place when the U.S. government opens land for settlement that had been previously promised to Indeginous people of North America

1889

Jane Addams founds the first settlement house in the United States to help immigrants adapt to their new country

1890

National American Women's Suffrage Association is formed. In most states women are allowed to vote in state, municipal, school and local elections.

1890

Charles Augustus Briggs of Union Theological Seminary in New York and Newman Smythe, a Congregational pastor, introduced new methods of Biblical study to American schools

1890

Poems by Emily Dickinson is published

1890

The census records just over 62 million inhabitants, 17 million of whom live west of the Mississippi River. This same census declared the disappearance of a designated frontier line.

1891

Thomas Edison patents a motion picture camera, the "kinetoscope", capable of showing movies to one person at a time

1891

The word "feminist" is first used in a book review in the Athenaeum

1891

The first Woman's Christian Temperance Union meeting is held in Boston

1891

Ida B. Wells-Barnett launches a nation-wide anti-lynching campaign

1892

Senda Berenson introduces the first rules for women's basketball

1892

General Federation of Women's Clubs is founded

1892

The Federal Government offers amnesty to all polygamists in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, on condition that in the future laws against polygamy are adhered to

1892

Grover Cleveland is elected President

1892

Ellis Island opens on January 1st

1893

The first Ferris Wheel is built for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago

1893

A financial panic follows a serious decline in the economy. It was caused partly by a run on the gold supply.

1893

The World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America

1893

McClure’s Magazine (1893-1933) becomes famous for exposing injustice and corruption

1894

So far approximately 1000 Protestant female missionaries have been sent abroad

1895

During this decade The University of Nebraska opens competitive athletics for women

1895

The first pocket Kodak camera is sold

1895

During this decade The University of Nebraska opens competitive athletics for women

1895

Sears and Roebuck began publishing their mail order catalogs

1896

The Macmillan Publishing Company is founded

1896

Johnson & Johnson produce the first commercial disposable sanitary pads

1896

X-rays are used for the first time for the treatment of breast cancer

1896

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach completes her Symphony in E-minor, at a time when most composers were men

1896

Republican William McKinley wins the presidential election

1896

The first movie is shown at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall, New York

1896

U.S contestants win 9 of the 12 events at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens, Greece

1896

The Plessy v. Ferguson ruling allows "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races"

1897

The Parent-Teacher Association is founded

1897

The National Congress of Mothers is formed

1897

The first comic strip appears in the New York World

1898

Spanish-American war

1899

6,000 public high schools now exist all over the country

1899

Florence Kelley becomes head of the National Consumer's League

1899

The commercial travelers belonging to the Christian Commercial Men's Association of America organise the Gideons. The first Gideon Bible is placed in a Montana hotel.

1899

Scott Joplin publishes the "Maple Leaf Rag"

1900

Over 5,000 students were now enrolled in the universities of Harvard, Yale, and John Hopkins

1900

The Association of American Universities was formed to promote high standards among colleges

1900

The first telephone designed for the home is introduced

1900

A fifth of all U.S. women are wage earners. Nearly 30% of all working women are domestics-others work on farms, as teachers, or in factories.

1900

Carrie Nation leads a group of women in an anti-liquor campaign

1900

GDP has reached over $350 billion

1900

Ragtime jazz becomes popular

1900

Theodore Dreiser’s naturalistic novel Sister Carrieis recalled by the publisher and not reissued for twelve years

1900

Frank Baum writes The Wizard of Oz