United States History
Timeline
1859
- John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry
1860
- Election of Lincoln
- Secession crisis in South Carolina
1861
- Secession of Mississippi, Flordia, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas
- Formation of the Confederacy
- Lincoln becomes president
- Confederate attack on Fort Sumter
- Lincoln proclaims naval blockade of southern coastline
- Secession of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina
- First Battle of Bull Run
1862
- Morrill Act provides land for higher education
- Congress passes Homestead Act
- U.S. Grant takes Fort Henry and Fort Donelson
- Battle of Shiloh
- McClellan's Pennsula Campaign
- Seven Days' Battle
- Second Battle of Bull Run
- Battle of Antietam
- Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation
- Battle of Fredricksburg
- Northern army seizes New Orleans
- Sioux uprisings in the West
1863
- Lincoln announces "10 percent" Reconstruction Plan
- Emancipation Proclamation
- Battle of Chancellorsville
- Battle of Gettysburg
- Fall of Vicksburg
- Fall of Port Hudson
1864
- Lincoln vetoes Wade-Davis Bill
1865
- Hampton Roads Conference
- Lee surrenders to Grant at Appoomattox
- Lincoln assassinated
- Thirteenth Amendment
- Johnson issues Reconstruction proclamation
- Congress refuses to seat Southern congressmen
- Freedmen's Bureau
- Southern states pass Black Codes
1866
- Congress passes Civil Rights Bill over Johnson's veto
- Congress passes Fourteenth Amendment
- Johnson-backed candiates lose congressional elections
- Ku Klux Klan founded
- National Labor Union organized
1867
- Reconstruction Act
- Tenure of Office Act
- United States purchases Alaska
- National Grange organized
1868
- Johnson impeached and acquitted
- Johnson pardons Confederate leaders
- General U.S. Grant elected president
1869
- Transcontinental railroad joined near Ogden, Utah
- Knights of Labor organized
- Wyoming Territory grants women the right to vote
- Completion of the Suez Canal
- Black Friday
1870
- Fifteenth Amendment ratified
- Standard Oil Organized
- Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas readmitted
1870-71
- Force Acts
1871
- Tweed scandal in New York
- Publication of Charles Darwin's Descent of Man
1872
- Freedmen's Bureau ends
- Grant reelected president, defeating Horace Greeley
- Congress passes the Amnesty Act
- Exposure of Credit Mobilier
- Improved air bake built
1873
- Panic of 1873
- Comstock law passed
- Invention of barbed wire (which made fencing of the Great Plains possible)
- Resumption of specie payment
- Impeachment of Belknap
1874
- Women's Christian Temperence Union organized
- Invention of electrically powered street car
- Winston Churchill is born (November 30)
1875
- Whiskey Ring Scandal
- Civil Rights Act of 1875
- Resumption Act poassed
- Native Amercinas confined to reservations
- Buffalo almost extinct
1876
- Hayes-Tilden election crisis
- Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
- John Hopkins University graduate school established
- Battle of the Little Big Horn
- Colorado admitted to the Union
1877
- Hayes elected president
- Great Railroad Strike
- Reconstruction ends
1878
- Bland-Allison Act
1879
- Thomas Edison invents the electric light
- Henry George publishes Progress and Poverty
- Salvation Army starts work
1880
- James Garfield defeats Hancock for presidency
1881
- Garfield is assassinated; Chester Arthur assumes presidency
1882
- Chinese Exclusion Act
1883
- Civil Rights Cases
- Pendelton Act sets up Civil Service Commission
- Brooklyn Bridge completed
- Metropolitan Opera House built in New York
1884
- Grover Cleveland is elected president
1886
- Haymarket Square Bombing
- American Federation of Labor formed
- Statue of Liberty erected in New York harbor
1887
- Interstate Commerce Act
- Dawes Severalty Act
- National Farmers' Alliance formed
1888
- Benjamin Harrison elected to the presidency
1889
- Jane Addams founds Hull House in Chicago
- Oklahoma opened to settlement
1890
- Sherman Anti-Trust Act
- Sherman Silver Purchase Act
- U.S. Census announces the closing of the frontier
1891
- New Orleans crisis with Italy
- Basketball invented
- Immigration Act establishes Ellis Island
1892
- Valparaiso crisis with Chile
- Homestead Steel Strike
- Grover Cleveland defeats Harrison and Weaver to regain presidency
1893
- Panic of 1893
- Frederick Jackson Turner publishes "The Significance of the Frontier in America"
- Anti-Saloon League formed
- Columbian Exposition held in Chicago
1894
- Coxey's Army marches on Washington
- Pullman strike
- Republicans regain House of Representatives
1895
- Cuban revolt against Spain
- J.P. Morgan's banking syndicate loans $65 million in gold to federal government
1896
- Utah admitted to the Union
- Plessy v. Ferguson legitimizes "separate but equal doctrine"
1897
- Library of Congress openns
1898
- The explosion of the Battleship Maine
- U.S. war against Spain
- Theodore Roosevelt victorious on San Juan Hill
- Destruction of Spanish fleet at Santiago
1899
- Aguinaldo launches a rebellion against the United States in the Philippine Islands
- First American Open Door Note
- North Carolina imposes racial segregation on trains
1900
- Boxer Rebellion and U.S. expedition to China
- Second Open Door Note
- William McKinley defeats Bryan for presidency
- Gold Standard Act
1901
(Library of Congress)
- William McKinley is shot and Theodore Roosevelt becomes president
- Commission system established in Galveston, Texas
- Progressive Robert La Follette elected governor of Wisconsin
- Fillipino rebellion defeated
- Wright brothers flight
- Platt Amendment
1902
- Lincoln Steffans and Ida Tarbell publish muckrakking exposes
- Anthracite coal strike
- Newlands Act
- Columbian senate rejects canal treaty
1903
- Department of Commerce and Labor established
- Elkins Act
- Panamanian revolution against Columbia
- Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaty
1904
- Northern Securities case
- Theodore Roosevelt defeats Alton B Parker for the presidency
- Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
1904-1914
- Construction of the Panama Canal
1905
- Lochner v. New York
- United States takes over Domincan Republic customs
- Roosevelt mediates Russo-Japanese peace treaty
1906
- Hepburn Act
- Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle
- Meat Inspection Act
- Pure Food and Drug Act
- San Francisco earthquake
- Roosevelt arranges Algeciras conference
1906-1909
- U.S. Marines occupy Cuba
1907
- Economic Panic
- Monogah Mine Disaster
- Great White fleet
1908
- Muller v. Oregon
- Taft defeats Bryan for the presidency
- Alderich-Vreeland Act
- Henry Ford builds the prototype Model T
- FBI established
1909
- Payne-Aldrich Tariff
- Mann-Elkins Act
1910
- Ballinger-Pinchot affair
1911
- Triangle-Shirtwaist Company fire
- Standard antitrust case
- U.S. Steel Corporation Antitrust suit
- United States intervenes in Nicaragua
1912
- Taft wins Republican nomination over Theodore Roosevelt
- Wilson defeats Taft and Theodore Roosevelt for the presidency
1913
- Underwood Tariff Act
- Sixteenth Amendment (income tax) passed
- Federal Reserve Act
- Seventeenth Amendment (direct election of seantors) passed
1914
- Clayton Anti-Trust Act
- Federal Trade Commission established
- U.S. occupation of Vera Cruz, Mexico
- World War I begins
1915
- La Follette Seamen's Act
- U.S. Marines sent to Haiti
1916
- Sussex ultimatum and pledge
- Workingmen's Compensation Act
- Federal Farm Loan Act
- Adamson Act
- Pancho Villia raids New Mexico
- Brandeis appointed to Supreme Court
- Jones Act
- U.S. Marines sent to Domincan Republic
1914
- Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is assassinated in Sarajevo
- Germany invades Belgium
- First Battle of the Marne
1915
- Germany sinks the Lusitania; Wilson protests to Germany
- Germany launches offesnive that forces Russia to abandon Galicia and most of Poland
1916
- General Petain leads French forces at Verdun; Germans fail to capture the fortress town
- Battle of the Somme: the Allies suffer 600,000 casualties
- Wilson reelected under the slogan: "He kept us out of war."
1917
- Germany launches unrestricted submarine warfare
- The United States declares war on Germany
- United States purchases Virgin Islands from Denmark
- Bolsheviks take power in Russia
1918
- Russia signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, losing territory to Germany and withdrawing from the war
- Germans launch a great offensive to end the war
- Germans advance to within 56 miles of Paris
- British victory at Amiens
- Turkey is forced to withdraw from the war after several British successes
- Austria-Hungary signs armistice with the Allies
- Germany signs armistice with the Allies, ending World War I
1919
- Wilson attends Paris Peace Conference; Clemenceau clearly directs the peace
- Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles
1919
- American Legion founded
- Chicago Race riots
- Treaty of Versailles
- U.S. Senate refuses to participate in the League of Nations
- Women gain the right to vote
- Prohibition
1919-1920
- Red Scare
1920
- Radio Broadcasts begin
- F Scott Fitzgerald publishes This Side of Paradise
1921
- Emergency Quota Act
- Veterans Bureau Created
- Capper-Volstead Act
- Commercial radio begins
1923
- President Harding dies; Calvin Coolidge assues presidency
- Teapot Dome Scandal
1924
- Adjusted Compensation Act for veterans
- U.S. troops leave the Domincan Republic
- Calvin Coolidge wins three-way presidential election
- Immigration Act of 1924
- Indians granted U.S. citizenship
1925
- Scopes trial upholds Tennessee law against teaching evolution
- Florida land boom
- F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby
1926
- Ernest Hemingway publishes The Weary Blues
-
U.S. troops occupy Nicaragua
1927
- Charles Lindbergh makes first solo transatlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis
1928
- Kellogg-Briand Pact
- Herbert Hoover defeats Al Smith for the Presidency
- President Hoover takes a good will tour of Latin America
1929
1930
- Harley Smoot Tariff
1931
- Japanese invade Manchuria
1932
(Library of Congress)
- Reconstruction Finance Corporation established
- Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act
- Bonus Army dispersed
- Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Herbert Hoover
1933
- Bank Holiday
- Social Security established
- Emergency Banking Relief Act
- The Hundred Days Congress enacts AAA, TVA, HOLC, NRA, and PWA
- Federal Securitites Act
- Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act
- CWA established
- Twentieth-first Amendment (prohibition repealed)
- United States recognizes the Soviet Union
- FDR declares Good Neighbor policy toward Latin America
- Adolf Hitler elected to German leadership
1934
- Gold Reserve Act
- Securities and Exchange Commission authorized
- Indian Reorganization Act
- FHA established
- Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act
1935
- WPA established
- Wagner Act
- Resettlement Administration
- Social Security Act
- Public Utility Holding Company Act
- Schechter "sick chicken" case
- CIO organized
- Mussolini invades Ethiopia
-
U.S. Neutrality Act
1936
- Franklin Roosevelt defeats Landon for presidency
- U.S. Neutraility Act
1936-1939
- Spanish Civil War
1937
- USHA established
- President Roosevelt announces "Court Packing" plan
- U.S. Neutrality Act
- Panay incident
- Japan invades China
1938
- Second AAA
- Fair Labor Standards Act
- Hitler seizes Austria
- Munich Conference
- Neville Chamberlain proclaims "Peace in Our Time"
1939
- Hitler seizes Czechoslovakia
- Nazi-Soviet pact
- World War II begins in Europe with Hitler's invasion of Europe
- Winston Churchill appointed First Lord of the Admirality
- U.S. Neutrality Act
- Hatch Act
1940
- Fall of France
- Hitler invades Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium
- United States invokes first peacetime draft
- Battle of Britain
- Prime Minister Churchill proclaims that Britain "Will Never Surrender"
- Bases-for-destroyers deal with Britain
- FDR reelected
1941
- Lend-Lease Act
- Hitler attacks the Soviet Union
- Atlantic Charter
- United States declares war on Japan
- Germany declares war on the United States
1942
- Japanese-Americans sent to internment camps
- Japan conquers the Philippines
- Battle of the Coral Sea
- Battle of Midway
- United States invades North Africa
1943
- Allies hold Casablanca Conference
- Allies invade Italy
- Japanese driven from Guadalcanal
- Tehran Conference
1944
- D-Day invasion of France
- U.S. Heavy bombers begin first American raid on Berlin
- Battle of the Marianas
1944-1945
- Battle of the Bulge
1945
- Roosevelt dies; Truman assumes presidency
- Germany surrenders
- Hitler commits suicide
- Battle of Iwo Jima and Okinawa
- Potsdam Conference
- Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- Japan surrenders
- Yalta Conference
- Churchill and Conservative Party defeated in Britain
- United States ends lend-lease in the USSR
- United Nations established
1945-1946
- Nuremberg war crimes in Germany
1946
- Employment Act creates Council of Economic Advisers
- Iran crisis
- Churchill delivers the "Iron Curtain Speech" at Fulton, Missouri
1946-1948
- Tokyo war crimes trial
1947
- Truman Doctrine
- Marshall Plan
- Taft-Hartley Act
- National Security Act creates Department of Defense, National Security Council, and the CIA.
1948
- United States officially recognizes Israel
- Hiss case begins
- Harry Truman defeats Thomas Dewey for president
(Library of Congress)
1948-1949
- Berlin crisis
1949
- NATO established
- Communists defeat Nationalists in China
1950
- American economy begins postwar growth
- Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister for the second time
- Senator McCarthy begins the hunt for communists
1950-1953
- Korean War
1951
- President Truman fires General MacArthur
- Rosenbergs convicted of treason
1952
- United States explodes first hydrogen bomb
- Dwight Eisenhower defeats Stevenson for the presidency
1953
- CIA-engineered coup installs shah of Iran
1954
- French defeated in Vietnam
- Army-McCarthy hearings
- Brown v. Board of Education
- SEATO formed
- CIA-sponsored coup in Guatemala
1955
- Montgomery bus boycott begins; emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Geneva summit meeting
- Warsaw Pact signed
- AF of L merges with CIO
1956
- Soviets crush Hungarian revolt
- Suez crisis
- Eisenhower defeats Stevenson for presidency
(Libarary of Congress)
1957
- Little Rock school desegregation crisis
- Civil Rights Act passed
- Eisenhower Doctrine
-
Soviet Union launches Sputnik satellites
1958-1959
- Berlin crisis
1959
- Castro leads Cuban revolution
- Landrum-Griffin Act
- Alaska-Hawaii attain statehood
1960
- Sit-in movement for civil rights begins
- U-2 incident sabotages Paris ummit
- OPEC formed
- Kennedy defeats Nixon for presidency
1961
- Berlin crisis and construction of the Berlin Wall
- Bay of Pigs
- Kennedy sends "military advisers" to Vietnam
1962
- Pressure from Kennedy results in a rollback on steel prices
- Cuban missile crisis
1963
- Anti-Diem coup in South Vietnam
- Civil Rights march on Washington, D.C.
- Winston Churchill was made the first honorary citizen of the United States
- Presdient Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas
1964
- Twenty-fourth Amendment (abolishing poll tax in federal elections) ratified
- Voter registration in the South
- Tonkin Gulf Resolution
- Lyndon B. Johnson defeats Barry Goldwater for the presidency
- War on Poverty begins
- Civil Rights Act
1965
- Great Society legislation
- Voting Rights Act
- U.S. troops occupy Domincan Republic
1965-1968
- Race riots in American cities
- Escalation of the Vietnam War
1967
- Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt
1968
- Tet offensive in Vietnam
- Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy assassinated
- Richard Nixon defeats Hubert Humphrey for the presidency
1969
- Astronauts land on the moon
1970
- Nixon orders invasion of Cambodia
- Kent State and Jackson State incidents
- Clean Air Act
1971
- Pentagon Papers published
- Twenty-Six Amendment (lowering voting age to eighteen)
1972
- Nixon visits China and the Soviet Union
- ABM and SALT I treaties ratified
- Nixon defeats McGovern for the presidency
- Equal Rights Amendment passes Congress
1973
- Vietnam cease-fire and US withdrawal
- Agenew resigns; Ford appointed vice president
- War Powers Act
- Arab-Israeli war and Arab oil embargo
- Roe v. Wade
1973-1974
- Watergate hearings and investigations
1974
- Nixon resigns
1975
- Helsinki accords
- South Vietnam falls to communists
1976
- Jimmy Carter defeats Ford for the presidency
1978
- Egytian-Israeli Camp David agreement
1979
- Iranian revolution and oil crisis
- SALT II agreements signed (never ratified by the Senate)
- Soviet Union invades Afghanistan
1979-1980
- Iranian hostage crisis
1980
- Ronald Reagan defeats Jimmy Carter for the presidency
1981
- Iran releases American hostages
- Reagan's tax cuts passed
- O'Connor appointed to the United States Supreme Court (first woman justice)
1981-1982
- United States aides antileftist forces in Central America
1983
- Reagan announces SDI plan
- U.S. marines killed in Lebanon
- U.S. invasion of Grenada
1984
- Reagan defeats Mondale for presidency
1985
- Gorbachev comes to power in the Soviet Union
- First Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting
1986
- Iran-Contra scandal revealed
- Second Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting
1987
- Senate rejects Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork
- U.S. begins naval escorts in Persian Gulf
- Third Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting
1988
- Fourth Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting
- George W. Bush defeats Dukakis for the presidency
1989
- Eastern Europe throws off the communist regimes
- Berlin Wall torn down
1990
- Iraq invades Kuwait
- East and West Germany reunite
1991
- Persian Gulf War
- Thomas appointed to the United States Supreme Court
- Gorbachev resigns as Soviet president
1992
- Twenty-seventh Amendment ratified
- Bill Clinton elected to the presidency
1993
- NAFTA signed
- First World Trade Center bombing
1994
- Republicans win majorities in both houses of Congress
1995
- Car bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
1996
- Welfare Reform becomes law
- Clinton defeats Dole for the presidency
- Sudanese government offered to turn Osam bin Laden over to the United States
1998
- Clinton-Lewinsky scandal
- U.S. and Britain lanuch military strikes against Iraq
- House of Representatives impeach Clinton
- Al Qaida operatives bombed two American embassies
1999
- Senate acquits Clinton on impeachement charges
- Kosovo crisis; NATO warfare with Serbia
2000
- Recession begins
- USS Cole attacked
- George W. Bush wins presidency
2001
- America attacked by terrorists
