| 1870-1879 |
Political
and Social History |
Literature |
| 1870 |
Franco-Prussian War.
John D. Rockefeller founds the Standard Oil Company.
Territory of Utah gives full suffrage to women;
the first election in which they vote occurs on 1 August
Congress enacts the "Ku Klux Klan Act of 1870"
or "Enforcement Act" to stop southern white resistance to the power African
Americans have gained during Reconstruction.
22 June. Department of Justice is created.
5 December. When the 41st Congress meets,
every state is represented, the first such Congress since 1860.
|
Birth of Frank
Norris in Chicago (d. 1902)
Emerson,
"Society and Solitude"
Scribner's Monthly (1870-81)
Bret
Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches
|
| 1871 |
3 March. The Indian Appropriation Act of 1871
marks a step backward as it makes tribal members wards of the state rather
than preserving their rights as members of sovereign nations.
8 October. Chicago is almost destroyed by fire.
See the "Great
Chicago Fire" website (image courtesy of this source.)
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
8 July. Tweed Ring exposed in the New York
Times and is overthrown.
|
Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier Schoolmaster
Henry
James, Watch and Ward (in Atlantic; book form, 1878)
Birth of Stephen
Crane and Theodore
Dreiser
Howells,
Their Wedding Journey; becomes editor of The Atlantic Monthly
(1871-1881)
Whitman,
Democratic Vistas and A Passage to India
Louisa
May Alcott, Little Men
|
| 1872 |
5-6 June. The Republican party meets in Philadelphia
and nominates Grant for re-election to the presidency. Meeting in Baltimore
on 9 July, the Democrats nominate Horace Greeley.
The Credit Mobilier Scandal erupts when the New
York Sun reports news of events during the building of the transcontinental
railway. Massachusetts congressman and shovel manufacturer Oakes Ames and
the Union Pacific Railway had created a company called Credit Mobilier
of America, which was awarded all construction work for building the Union
Pacific line west of Nebraska. Ames sweetened the deal by giving
shares in the company to many government officials, including both of U.
S. Grant's vice-presidents. Congress ultimately pays $94 million
to the company for work worth $44 million.
Grant wins the presidency by a landslide, gathering
3,597,132 votes to Greeley's 2,834,125.
|
Twain,
Roughing
It
Birth of Paul
Laurence Dunbar (d. 1906) |
| 1873 |
3 March. Homesteaders willing to plant trees
on their land are granted an additional quarter section (160 acres).
Congress votes itself a 50% salary increase and
makes the increase retroactive for two years, an action that causes such
an outcry that the raises are rescinded.
18 September. Financial Panic of 1873 begins
with the failure of Jay Cooke and Company after years of inflation, speculation,
and the overproduction of paper currency. The Stock Exchange closes for
10 days.
Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology.
|
Howells,
A
Chance Acquaintance
Mark
Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age
Birth of Willa Cather (d. 1947)
Louisa
May Alcott, Work
The Delineator (1873-1937)
|
| 1874 |
Women's Christian Temperance Union founded in
Cleveland.
8 May. Massachusetts limits women's working days
to 10 hours, a significant reform.
First Impressionist exhibition in Paris.
Barbed wire becomes available, thus making possible
the inexpensive enclosure of grazing lands in the west.
Featuring educational as well as religious lectures,
the Chautauqua Movement begins at Lake Chautauqua, New York.
Samuel Tilden becomes governor of New York.
|
Birth of Ellen Glasgow (d. 1945) |
| 1875 |
Civil Rights Act states that no citizen can be
denied equal use of public facilities.
Second Sioux War erupts after the Sioux refuse
to sell lands north of the Platte to the federal government.
The Supreme Court decision of Minor v. Happersett
allows states to set suffrage requirements and denies women voting rights.
|
Bret
Harte, Tales of the Argonauts
Louisa
May Alcott, Eight Cousins
Howells,
A Foregone Conclusion
|
| 1876 |
Alexander
Graham Bell invents the telephone.
25 June. Ignoring warnings of a massed Sioux
army of 2,000-4,000 men, Custer and 250 soldiers attack the forces
of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Little Big Horn. Custer and
all of his men die in the attack. Sitting Bull escapes to Canada, returning
to the United States in 1881 as a participant in wild west shows.
Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
In an election marred by fraud, Republican Rutherford
B. Hayes (1822-1893) is elected president over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden
after compromising with southern Democrats over the restriction of Reconstruction.
Tilden receives 4,284,020 popular votes and Hayes receives 4,036,572. (Visit
the Harper's
Weekly site for an overview of the election, political cartoons,
and other information.)
|
Twain,
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Whitman,
Leaves of Grass (Centennial Edition)
Melville,
Clarel (poem)
James, Roderick Hudson
Louisa
May Alcott, Silver Pitchers and Independence (containing "Transcendental
Wild Oats"); Rose in Bloom
Birth of Jack
London, Sherwood Anderson
|
| 1877 |
29 January. The Electoral Commission Bill authorizes
a committee of 15 to decide the election between Hayes and Tilden.
The committee's votes split along party lines. On 3 March,
Hayes is announced as President after House Republicans agree, among other
concessions, to pull Federal troops from the South. On 5 March, Rutherford
B. Hayes is inaugurated as President of the United States (1877-81).
Nez
Perce war. After a battle between Nez Perce forces under Chief Joseph
and those of Col. Miles in Idaho, Chief Joseph's band is sent to a reservation
in Oklahoma
14 July. The
Great Strike of 1877 begins with railroad workers walking out;
later, workers from other industries will follow. (Accounts
from Harper's Weekly)
Thomas Alva
Edison patents the phonograph. He demonstrates the device on 7
December at the offices of the Scientific American in New York.
|
James,The
American
Jewett,Deephaven
December 17
Mark Twain gives his infamous "Whittier
Birthday Dinner Speech" in front of an assembled multitude of literary
dignitaries.
|
| 1878 |
15 October. Although he has not yet perfected
the incandescent light bulb,
Edison establishes Edison Electric Light Company in New York City (Almanac
of American History 338).
Women's Suffrage Amendment is introduced into
Congress but fails.
The Timber
and Stone Act permits the cutting of timber on public lands to increase
the cleared acreage for farmers; timber lands are sold for as little as
$2.50 an acre.
The Northern Cheyenne escape from their reservation
in Oklahoma in an attempt to reach their lands in Montana Territory.
The first central switchboard for telephone
service in New York City is opened.
|
James,
The
Europeans; (Daisy Miller) |
| 1879 |
Using first carbonized cotton and then carbonized
bamboo for a filter, Edison
invents a functioning light bulb.
A bill to restrict Chinese immigration is passed
by Congress but vetoed by President Hayes.
Hearing rumors that Kansas had been set aside
for settlement by former slaves, between 7,000 and 15,000 African
Americans move to Kansas; they are called "exodusters"
after
their exodus into the dusty lands of Kansas.
|
James,
Daisy
Miller
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