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Abraham Lincoln is elected sixteenth president of the United States, the first Republican president in the nation who represents a party that opposes the spread of slavery in the territories of the United States.
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President Lincoln issues a public declaration that an insurrection exists and calls for 75,000 militia to stop the rebellion. As a result of this call for volunteers, four additional southern states secede from the Union in the following weeks. Lincoln will respond on May 3 with an additional call for 43,000+ volunteers to serve for three years, expanding the size of the Regular Army.
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The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect. Applauded by many abolitionists including Frederick Douglass, there are others who feel it does not go far enough to totally abolish slavery.
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Lincoln issues the second Emancipation Proclamation, emphasized as a war measure, which frees all slaves in states or parts of states that were still in rebellion against the United States.
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The temporary Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (known as the Freedmen's Bureau) is established within the War Department.
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President Johnson declares the reconstruction process complete. Outraged, Radical Republicans in Congress refuse to recognize new governments in southern states.
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Nov 3, 1868 Republican Ulysses S. Grant defeats Democrat Horatio Seymour and is elected president of the United States. Grant receives 214 of 294 votes in the Electoral College.
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The famous Golden Spike was driven into the ground to complete The First Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Summit in Utah.
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John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company is incorporated in Ohio. Rockefeller has been active in the oil business .
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President Ulysses S. Grant names George William Curtis to head the Civil Service Commission. Curtis, as editor of Harper's Weekly, has condemned political corruption and advocated imitation of the British system of awarding government positions on the basis of performance on a written test.
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Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. The telephone was developed while Bell was trying to improve the telegraph.
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Thomas Edison developed the world’s first practical incandescent electric light bulb.
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Enacted by Congress which created a crisis by ending Hawaii’s favored position in the sugar trade. The law permitted all countries to ship sugar duty-free to the United States. It also gave sugar producers in the United States a subsidy of two cents per pound. This caused sugar prices to drop, and the Hawaiian economy suffered.
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Spanish-American War that began in 1898 against the Spanish over treatment of Cubans by Spanish troops that controlled the island. As a result of this war, the United States annexed the Philippines, making America a major power in the Pacific.
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Canal across the Panama isthmus that was begun in 1904 and completed in 1914; its opening enabled America to expand its economic and military influence.
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Germany invades Belgium, beginning World War I.
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The British employ the first tanks ever used in battle, at Delville Wood.
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British intelligence gives Wilson the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, a message from German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann proposing that Mexico side with Germany in case of war between Germany and the United States.
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Congress ratifies the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the sale of alcohol anywhere in the United States.
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In Seattle, local trade unionists affiliated with both the mainstream American Federation of Labor and the radical Industrial Workers of the World organize a general strike, halting economic activity in the city for five days.
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The Nineteenth Amendment is ratified, granting women the right to vote.
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Congress passes the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, steeply raising import duties in an attempt to protect American manufactures from foreign competition. The tariff increase has little impact on the American economy, but plunges Europe farther into crisis.
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Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover in a landslide to win the presidency.
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Japan invades China, initiating World War II in the Pacific. World War II, one the darkest periods in the history of the world.
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The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor draws United States into World War II. Mobilization for war finally lifts the American economy permanently out of the Great Depression.
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The "Big Three" allied leaders—American president Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet leader Josef Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill—meet at the Yalta Conference to make arrangements for the postwar world order.
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Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head.
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Having agreed in principle to unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945, Japan formally surrenders, ending World War II.
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British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gives his famous "Iron Curtain" speech at a college graduation in Fulton, Missouri: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.
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Rio Pact - U.S. meet 19 Latin American countries and created a security zone around the hemisphere.
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Vietnamese forces occupy the French command post at Dien Bien Phu and the French commander orders his troops to cease fire. The battle had lasted 55 days.
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NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time.
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Nine black students integrate with white students at Central High School in Little Rock, AR. President Dwight Eisenhower sends the paratroopers in to ward off any violence.
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In Operation Chopper, helicopters flown by U.S. Army pilots ferry 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers to sweep a NLF stronghold near Saigon. US Military Employs Agent Orange: US Air Force begins using Agent Orange, a defoliant that came in metal orange containers-to expose roads and trails used by Vietcong forces.
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More than 250,000 civil rights demonstrators march on Washington, DC, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have A Dream" speech.
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Two days before the U.S. presidential election, Vietcong mortars shell Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon. Four Americans are killed, 76 wounded.
