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Invention of the Telegraph
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End of the Civil War
Eleven southern slave states joined together as the Confederate States of America and fought for their independence from the United States. -
Homestead Act
The Homestead Act required three steps: file an application, improve the land, and file for deed of title. -
Transcontinental Railroad
Transcontinental Railroad, built in the United States between 1863 and 1869 by the Central Pacific Railroad of California and Union Pacific Railroad, connected Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska to Alameda, California. -
End of Reconstruction
Gradually Southern states began electing members of the Democratic Party into office, ousting so-called carpetbagger governments and intimidating blacks from voting or attempting to hold public office. -
Battle of Little Bighorn
The Battle of the Little Bighorn —also known as Custer's Last Stand and, by the Native Americans involved, the Battle of Greasy Grass Creek—was an armed engagement between a Lakota–Northern Cheyenne combined force and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. -
Boss Tweed Jailed
Boss Tweed was arrested and found guilty of corruption and was sentenced to 12 years in jail. -
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed into law by Chester A. Arthur on May 8, 1882, following revisions made in 1880 to the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. -
Pendleton Act
The law only applied to federal government jobs: not to the state and local jobs that were the basis for political machines. -
Time Zones Created
On November 18, 1883, four standard time zones for the continental U.S.A. were introduced at the instigation of the railroads. -
Dawes Act
The Dawes Act was enacted on February 8, 1887 regarding the distribution of land to Native Americans in Oklahoma. -
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act requires the United States Federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies and organizations suspected of violating the Act. -
Battle of Wounded Knee
On December 29, 1890, 365 troops of the US 7th Cavalry, supported by four Hotchkiss guns, surrounded an encampment of Miniconjou (Lakota) and Hunkpapa Sioux (Lakota) near Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. -
Ellis Island Opened
Ellis Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor, is the location of what was from January 1, 1892, until November 12, 1954 the facility that replaced the state-run Castle Garden Immigration Depot in Manhattan.