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The 7th Calvary Regiment of 268 men led by Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer was attacked and killed by a superior force of Sioux, Cheyenne, and other allied Native American tribes.
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With the bursting of the railroad's financial bubble, workers in the railroad industry went on strike across the country, effectively shutting down all of the nations railways and the country itself.
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President James Garfield was assassinated.
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Congress passes legislation banning the immigration of all Chinese workers, making them the first illegal aliens.
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Northern Paiute prophet Wovoka receives a vision calling for pacifist behavior amongst Native Americans and participation in religious ceremony known as the "Ghost Dance."
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United States cavalrymen kill between 150 and 300 Native American men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek, marking the end of Indian resistance in the West.
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Frederick Jackson Turner gives his frontier thesis at the Chicago's World Fair proposing how American exceptionalism had depended largely on westward expansion and the future impact of the closing of the frontier.
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The Supreme Court rules against Homer Plessey in the challenge of segregated streetcars, establishing the principle of "separate but equal" within the legal system.
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The United States declares war on Spain.