Walter Launt Palmer (American, 1854-1932)
 June, 1880, Oil on canvas
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York
Gift of Ruth Scherm, class of 1945, 1995.4.1

1875

Congress passes second Civil Rights Act forbidding racial discrimination in public transportation, hotels, and entertainment venues

Page Act bars entry to prostitutes, felons, and contract laborers from China and Japan; results particularly in the exclusion of Chinese women

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children founded

Massacre of two dozen blacks at Clinton, Mississippi; campaign of violence throughout the state, including murder of African-American state legislators in Yazoo County

Chiricahua Apache revolt, Arizona, led by Geronimo (1875-1886)

Anthracite coal strike over reduction in wages; met by massive police force, strikers riot and burn coal cars and Reading Railroad buildings; 20 Irish-American “Molly Maguires” convicted and hanged for labor-related assassinations

Smith and Wellesley Colleges founded in Massachusetts

Thomas Eakins, “The Gross Clinic” (painting)

Richard Dugdale, The Jukes

P.T. Barnum introduces the three-ring circus

First Kentucky Derby horse race run at Churchill Downs, Louisville, KY

Evangelist Dwight Moody returns from Britain and begins a nationwide American tour

First Catholic cardinal in the United States appointed

First Poor Clares (Roman Catholic) arrive in United States

Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, establishes basis for Christian Science

Theosophical Society founded in New York City

1876

Contested presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden, driven by conflicting returns from three southern states where conservatives are in the process of overthrowing Reconstruction governments; voting on party lines, an election commission elects Hayes. Popular vote 4,036,592 for Hayes, 4,284,020 for Tilden; electoral vote (by ruling of commission) 185 to 184

US and Hawai’ian Kingdom sign Reciprocity Treaty providing for duty-free imports from the islands; Hawai’i precluded from signing such treaties with any other power (1876-1877)

Colorado enters the Union as the 38th state

Greenback Party founded, to become Greenback Labor Party two years later

US v. Cruikshank 

US Coast Guard Academy founded at New London, CT

Jesse James and James-Younger gang raid Northfield, MI

Summer of attacks and terrorism against blacks in South Carolina prompts dispatch of federal troops to suppress violence

Plains War between Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho and US troops on northern plains; major battles include Rosebud, Little Big Horn, Warbonnet Creek, and Slim Buttes (1876-1877)

Black rice workers’ strike, Combahee River area, South Carolina, over wages and “scrip” pay; strike forcibly suppressed amid violence in ensuing political campaign (1876-1877)

Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers founded 

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, establishes graduate school curriculum that becomes a model nationwide

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Alexander Graham Bell develops and patents first telephone

Thomas Edison introduces a mimeograph machine

John W. Draper photographs the solar spectrum

Mathematician Josiah Gibbs publishes a paper on thermodynamics that establishes the basis for physical chemistry

Melvil Dewey introduces Dewey decimal system for library organization

Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia

Baseball’s National League created; first pennant won by Chicago

Frederick Law Olmsted’s Central Park completed, New York City

Felix Adler founds Ethical Culture Society, New York

Sacred Heart Franciscans (Roman Catholic) founded

Brotherhood of the New Life (Spiritualist) founds colony in Fountain Grove, California

1877

Desert Land Act permits homesteaders to buy 640 acres at $1.25 each, in designated arid areas, if within three years they irrigate the land they purchase

Congress creates National Guard

In Munn v. Illinois the US Supreme Court upholds an Illinois law regulating storage rates in grain-elevators, stating that such businesses are “clothed in the public interest” and subject to state regulation

Great Railroad Strike spreads across eastern United States, from Buffalo to Baltimore to St. Louis; gunfights and violence in many cities, notably Pittsburgh, triggered by arrival of National Guard and US troops

Cigarmakers’ strike, New York City, to protest wage cuts

Anti-Chinese riots, San Franciso

Nez Percé War in the northern Rockies

El Paso “salt war” in Texas involves violent resistance by local Tejanos against Anglo takeover of salt beds (1877-1878)

Mimbreño Apache revolt, Arizona, led by Victorio (1877-1880)

American Humane Association founded

New York Farmers’ Alliance created in Rochester; Knights of Reliance, later the Farmers’ Alliance, founded in Lampasas County, Texas

First local telephone exchange set up in Lowell, MA; first switchboard built in Boston; intercity telephone communications betgions between Chicago and Milwaukee and Boston and Salem

First electric streetlight introduced in Newark, NJ

Astronomer Asaph Hall identifies the two moons that orbit Mars

Extensive dinosaur fossil beds discovered in Como Bluffs, Wyoming

Hires root beer marketed for the first time

1878

In re Ah Yup, US Supreme Court declares Chinese immigrants ineligible to naturalize and become US citizens

Greenback Labor Party founded

Socialist Labor Party founded

Bannock War, Idaho

Lincoln County War between New Mexico cattlemen includes gunfights, ambushes, and murders on both sides

Sam Bass gang battles Texas Rangers at Round Rock, Texas

Alexander Winchell, professor of geology at Vanderbilt, is fired for contradicting biblical chronology in his lectures

John Wesley Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States

Henry James, The Europeans

Anna Katherine Green publishes The Leavenworth Case, considered the first American detective novel

Thomas Edison demonstrates and patents phonograph

First bicycle club formed in Boston

1879

Hayes Administration negotiates “executive agreement” for coaling station in Samoa

Standing Bear v. Crook

US Geological Survey created to study the nation’s topography and nature resources

Ute War in Colorado and Utah

Art Institute of Chicago founded

Carlisle Indian School founded in Pennsylvania

Henry George, Progress and Poverty

A Tough Job for the Atlas of the Labor World. Henry George. - If you fellows up there don't keep quiet, I shall have to drop the whole thing!
Puck, Oct. 1887, p.148.

Henry James, Daisy Miller

Thomas Edison develops and patents incandescent light bulb

James and John Ritty patent a cash register

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University develop saccharine

Frank Woolworth opens his first “five and dime” store in Pennsylvania

1880

James Garfield, Republican, defeats Winfield S. Hancock, Democrat, in the US presidential election; popular vote 4,453,295 to 4,414,082; electoral vote 214 to 155. Minor candidates include James B. Weaver on the Greenback-Labor ticket and Neal Dow on the Prohibition ticket

Chinese homes and businesses destroyed by mob violence in Denver

Violent clashes between farmers and agents of Southern Pacific Railroad, Mussel Slough, CaliforniaFarmers’

Alliance founded in Cook Couinty, Illinois; becomes the basis for National Farmers Alliance

Henry Adams, Democracy

Charles Loring Brace, The Dangerous Classes of New York

Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur

Cleveland installs first electric streetlight system in the nation

First hydroelectric power company created in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Sherwin-Williams begins manufacturing house paint

Cloistered Dominican nuns (Roman Catholic) founded

Swiss-American Federation of Benedictines (Roman Catholic) founded in United States

Salvation Army founded in the United States

1881

US President James Garfield assassinated; V. P. Chester A. Arthur assumes the office

Tennessee segregates railroad cars

Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners founded

Booker T. Washington founds Tuskegee Institute, Alabama

Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, founded

Wharton School of Finance created at University of Pennsylvania

Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings

Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor

Henry James, Portrait of a Lady

First electric power plant serving multiple customers is built in New York City

Frederic Ives produces the first color photograph

First major vaudeville theater opens in New York City

First men’s national tennis championship played at Newport, RI

American Red Cross founded

1882

Economic depression hits, lasting through 1885

Congress passes Edmunds Act prohibiting polygamy in federal territories

US and Korea sign treaty permitting Korean immigration

Chinese Exclusion Act bars entry of Chinese laborers for ten years

Violent pogroms in Russia stimulate immigration of Russian Jews seeking refuge in the United States

Gun battles and vigilante violence break out as agents of a corporate consortium “clear” the Maxwell Land Grant, in New Mexico and Colorado, of prior inhabitants (1882-1883)

Cotton mill strike in Cohoes, NY, to protest wage reductions

Henry Adams, John Randolph

Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

Inventor Henry Seely patens an electric iron

John D. Rockefeller creates Standard Oil Trust, first corporation to use trust mechanism

Knights of Columbus founded in New Haven, Connecticut

Dominican Sisters (Roman Catholic) founded in United States

First Good Shepherd Sisters (Roman Catholic) arrive in United States from Canada

Jewish agricultural colonies estabilshed in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, and Virginia

1883

In Ex Parte Crow Dog Supreme Court rules that state and federal courts have no jurisdiction over Indian lands

US Supreme Court strikes down Civil Rights Act of 1875

Setting the Ball A-Rolling.
Puck, Dec. 1882, p.272.

Hatch Act provides federal support for agricultural experiment stations, run by states through state universities

White supremacists stage a political coup in Danville, VA, forcibly removing local officials and murdering four blacks

Cowboy strike in Texas panhandle over wage reductions

Tobacco workers’ strike, Lynchburg, VA

Iron Molders’ lockout, Troy, NY, results in violence and murders on both sides (1883-1884)

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Lester Frank Ward, Dynamic Sociology

Sara Winnemucca, Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims 

Modern Language Association founded

Metropolitan Opera opens in New York

Northern Pacific Railroad completed, creating additional transcontinental link

United States railroads set up four standard timezones; most of the nation converts to these standard times on the “day of two noons”

Completion of 1595-foot Brooklyn Bridge, a suspension bridge and engineering marvel designed by John Roebling; links Brooklyn to New York City for pedestrians and road traffic

William Jenney designs the first steel-frame skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building, Chicago

First Wild West Show presented by Buffalo Bill

Indian Shaker Church founded

Oblates (Roman Catholic) established in United States

1884

Grover Cleveland, Democrat, defeats James G. Blaine, Republican, in the US presidential election; popular vote 4,879,507 to 4,850,293, electoral vote 219 to 182; minor candidates include Benjamin Butler on the Greenback-Labor ticket, John St. John on the Prohibition ticket, and Belva Lockwood on the National Equal Rights ticket

US Naval War College is founded at Newport, RI

Major riot in Cincinnati, Ohio

Textile workers’ strike in Fall River, MA, over wage cuts

Union Pacific Railroad Strike across the West (Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah) over wage cuts

Bryn Mawr College established in Pennsylvania

John Fiske, Excursions of an Evolutionist

Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona

Sarah Orne Jewett, A Country Doctor

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

First volume of the History of Woman Suffrage, edited Susan B. Anthony, Ida Husted Harper, et al., published

American Historical Association founded

Ladies’ Health Protective Association formed in New York to combat pollution and poor urban sanitation

Otto Mergenthaler patents a typesetting machine that cuts publishing time and costs for newspapers and magazines  

World’s Cotton Centennial Exposition, New Orleans

Shalam (Spiritualist) colony founded in New Mexico