| A | B |
|---|
| 1859 | Charles Darwin pulbishes On th Origins of Species |
| 1862 | Congress passes the Pacific Railway Act (building the transcontinental railroads), Morrill Land Grant Act, and Homestead Act |
| 1864 | Sand Creek Massacre |
| 1865 | End of the Civil War, passage of the Freedmen's Bureau, Thirteenth Amendment ratified |
| 1866 | Texas cattle drives begin, KKK founded, Black Codes passed in the South |
| 1867 | The Grange is founded, Tenure of Office Act founded, Military Reconstruction Act (Radical Reconstruction) |
| 1868 | Johnson is impeached but avoids conviction by 1 vote, Fourteenth Amendment ratified |
| 1869 | Knights of Labor formed, Transcontinental Railroad completed, Fisk and Gould corner the gold market, Wyoming is 1st territory to grant woman suffrage |
| 1870 | Fifteenth Amendment ratified |
| 1871 | Boss Tweed is brought down by the cartoons of Thomas Nast, The Great Chicago Fire |
| 1872 | Credit Mobilier Scandal, formation of the Liberal Republican Party |
| 1873 | Panic of 1873, the "Crime of '73", Comstock Law is passed |
| 1876 | Little Big Horn, Hayes vs. Tilden, Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone |
| 1877 | Compromise of 1877, Munn v. Illinois, the Great Railroad Strike |
| 1879 | Henry George writes Progress and Poverty, Carlisle Indian School |
| 1881 | Helen Hunt Jackson writes A Century of Dishonor, President Garfield is assassinated, Tuskegee Institute founded |
| 1882 | Chinese Exclusion Act |
| 1883 | Pendleton Act |
| 1886 | Wabash Case, Haymarket Square Riot, American Federation of Labor formed |
| 1887 | Dawes Severalty Act, Interstate Commerce Act passed |
| 1888 | Edward Bellamy writes Looking Backwards |
| 1889 | Indian Territory is opened to white settlement, Hull House founded by Jane Addams |
| 1890 | How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis is written, the Ghost Dance becomes popular among northern Plains Indians, Wounded Knee, Census declares no frontier line evident, Sherman Antitrust Act, McKinley Tariff, Billion Dollar Congress is at its height |
| 1892 | Coeur d'Alene Strike in Idaho, Homestead Strike |
| 1893 | Panic of 1893, Columbian Exposition (Chicago World's Fair), Frederick Jackson Turner writes his "Frontier Thesis" |
| 1894 | Coxey's Army marches on Washington, Pullman Strike |
| 1895 | Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise Speech, J.P. Morgan lends $65 million to bail out the federal government, U.S. v. E.C. Knight weakens Sherman Anti-trust Act |
| 1896 | Populists and Democrats fuse behind Bryan, William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" Speech, end of the Populists, Plessy v. Ferguson |
| 1898 | Spanish-American War |
| 1900 | The Socialist Party is formed by Eugene V. Debs |
