Download Reconstruction Era Timeline

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Reconstruction Era Timline
1865
Jan 16 Military gives 40 acres to black families along coast of SC and Georgia.
Jan 31 Confederate General Robert E. Lee becomes general-in-chief.
March 3 Freedmen Bureau Established
March 4 Lincoln is inaugurated for a second term.
March 13 Confederate States agrees to the use of African American troops.
April 1 Battle of Five Forks: In Petersburg, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins his final offensive.
April 2 "Evacuation Sunday": Davis and most of his Cabinet flee Richmond which is taken by Union troops the next day.
April 9 Robert E. Lee surrenders
April 14 Lincoln assassinated
April 15 Johnson becomes the 17th President.
April 18 Jefferson Davis and his entire cabinet arrive in Charlotte with a contingent of 1,000 soldiers.
April 26 Joseph Johnston surrenders to Sherman at Durham Station, North Carolina.
May 1 President Johnson announces his Reconstruction plan
May 4 Confederate forces in Alabama, Mississippi, and eastern Louisiana, surrenders.
May 10 Jefferson Davis is captured by Irwinville, Georgia.
May 23 Union troops parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.
June 2 Confederate forces west of the Mississippi under Kirby Smith surrender at Galveston, Texas.
July 5 Secret Service is founded.
July 7 Lincoln conspirators hanged.
July 21 Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots Dave Tutt dead in what is regarded as first true western showdown.
Nov 1 The first Black Codes drafted
Nov 10 Major Henry Wirz, the superintendent of a prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, is hanged.
Dec 1 Union Army demobilized
Dec 18 Thirteenth Amendment (which forever abolishes slavery) is declared ratified
Dec 24 Ku Klux Klan formed.
1866
Feb 2 Fredrick Douglass meets Pres Johnson
Feb 13 The first daylight bank robbery in UShistory during peacetime takes place in Liberty, Missouri.
April 9 Civil Rights Act of 1866 is passed.
May 1-3 memphis Race Riot
July 24 Tenn becomes first U.S. state to be readmitted to the Union.
July 30 New Orleans Race Riot
Aug 14–16 National Union Convention is held in Philadelphia.
Aug 27–Sep 15 President Johnson goes on his Swing Around the Circle speaking tour.
Nov 5 House of Representatives elections: Republican Party wins in a landslide.
1867
March 1 Nebraska is admitted as the 37th U.S. state.
March 2 Radical Reconstruction Acts
March 30 Alaska Purchase
Oct 21 Manifest Destiny – Medicine Lodge Treaty:.
Nov 15 Grange founded.
1868
March 5 A court of impeachment is organized in the USSenate to hear charges against President Andrew Johnson.
May 16 President Andrew Johnson is acquitted during his impeachment trial, by one vote in the Senate.
Jun 22 Arkansas is readmitted to the Union.
Jun 25 Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina are readmitted to the Union.
Jul 14 Alabama is readmitted to the Union.
July 28 - 14th Amendment adopted
Aug 11 Thaddeus Stevens Dies
Sep 1 Black elected officials are ousted from the Georgia state legislature;
Sep 28 Opelousas Massacre in Louisiana. An estimated 200 to 300 black Americans are killed.
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Oct 28 Thomas Edison applies for his first patent, the electric vote recorder.
Nov 3 U.S. presidential election, 1868: Ulysses S. Grant defeats Horatio Seymour in the election.
Nov 27 Indian Wars – Battle of Washita River
Dec 25 U.S. President Andrew Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all Civil War rebels.
1869
March 4 Grant succeeds Andrew Johnson as 18th President.
May 10 The "golden spike" is driven marking the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in Promontory, Utah.
May 15 Woman's suffrage: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form National Woman Suffrage Association.
Sep 24 The Fisk-Gould Scandal (also known as Black Friday) causes a financial panic in the United States.
1870
Jan 10 John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil.
Jan 26 Virginia rejoins the Union.
Feb 23 Mississippi readmitted to the Union.
Feb 25 Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first African American Senator takes office.
March 30 The 15th Amendment giving blacks the right to vote, is ratified.
March 30 Texas is readmitted to the Union.
March 31 Thomas Mundy Peterson is the first African-American to vote in an election.
June 22 Congress creates the US Department of Justice.
July 15 Georgia last former Confederate state readmitted to the Union.
Dec 12 Joseph H. Rainey of SC takes his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first black congressman.
1871
March 22 In North Carolina, William Holden becomes the first governor to be removed from office by impeachment.
March 22 Army issued an order for the abandonment of Fort Kearny, Nebraska.
April 20 Grant signs the Ku Klux Klan Act.
Oct 8-11 Great Chicago fire
Oct 17 Martial Law Declared in South Carolina
1872
Jan 2 Brigham Young is arrested for bigamy (25 wives).
March 1 Yellowstone National Park is established as the world's first national park
May 1 Liberal Republican Convention
May 22 Reconstruction: Grant signs the Amnesty Act of 1872.
Sep 5 Credit Mobilier Scandal
Nov 1 Grant reelection
Nov 5 Women's suffrage: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first.
Nov 9 Great Boston Fire of 1872.
Nov 29 Indian Wars: The Modoc War begins with the Battle of Lost River.
Dec 4 The crewless American ship Mary Celeste is found by the British brig Dei Gratia.
Dec 9 First Black Governor in Louisiana, for one month
1873
Jan 17 Indian Wars: The first Battle of the Stronghold is fought during the Modoc War.
March 3 Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" books through the mail.
March 4 Grant begins his second term.
April 15–17 Indian Wars: The Second Battle of the Stronghold is fought.
June 4 Indian Wars: The Modoc War ends with the capture of Captain Jack.
July 21 James-Younger Gang pull off the first successful train robbery.
Sep 18 New York stock market crash triggers the Panic of 1873, part of the Long Depression.
Nov19 Boss Tweed convicted of stealing public funds.
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1874
May 20 Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. The price is $13.50 per dozen.
Nov 4 Democrats regain the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1860.
Nov 25 Greenback Party is established as a political party, made primarily of farmers financially hurt by the Panic of 1873.
1875
Feb 25 Apache (Dil Zhéé) tribes are forced by General George Crook to San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation.
March 1 Congress passes Civil Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in public accommodations and jury duty.
Mar 4 Andrew Johnson becomes the first and only former president to serve in the Senate.
May 10 Whisky Ring Scandal
Sep 4 More than twenty black Americans are killed in a massacre in Clinton, Mississippi.
Jun 1 South Carolina Riots
Nov 9 Indian Wars: Indian Inspector E.C. Watkins issues a report.
Dec 4 Boss Tweed escapes from prison and flees to Cuba, then to Spain.
1876
March 10 Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful call by saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.."
May 18 Wyatt Earp starts work in Dodge City, Kansas, serving under Marshal Larry Deger.
June 4 Transcontinental Express arrives in San Fran, 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City.
June 17 Indian Wars – Battle of the Rosebud.
June 25 Indian Wars – Battle of the Little Bighorn.
July 4 Centennial.
Aug 1 Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.
Aug 2 Wild Bill Hickok is killed in a poker game in Deadwood, South Dakota
Sep 7 In Northfield, Minnesota, James-Younger Gang attempt to rob the town's bank.
Nov 1 Election Too Close to be conclusive in the campaign of Samuel Tilden (Democrat) versus Rutherford B. Hayes
(Republican).
Nov 25 Indian Wars: General Mackenzie sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at headwaters of Powder River
1877
Jan 8 Indian Wars – Battle of Wolf Mountain.
March 2 Compromise of 1877
March 4 Rutherford B. Hayes becomes President
May 5 Indian Wars: Sitting Bull leads his band of Lakota into Canada
May 6 Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux surrenders to US troops in Nebraska.
June 15 Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the US Military Academy.
June 17 Indian Wars – Battle of White Bird Canyon: The Nez Perce defeat the U.S. Cavalry.
June 21 Molly Maguires are hanged at Carbon County Prison in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
July 16 Great railroad strike of 1877
Aug 9 Indian Wars – Battle of Big Hole: Near Big Hole River in Montana
Sep 5 Indian Wars: Crazy Horse is bayoneted by a US soldier.
Nov 21 Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record sound.