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On this day Samuel Morse's telegraph sends the first message from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland. It replaced the Pony Express which was the long distance mail service in the West.
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Elias Howe's sewing machine revolutionizes the way clothes are made in homes and factories. In his original design, a hand-turned wheel moved the needle up and down.
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On this year, the German philosopher Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels expanded on the ideas of socialism in a treatise titled Communist Manifesto.This pamphlet denounced capitalism and predicted that workers would overturn it.
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This compromise included a Fugitive Slave Act. According to this measure, California was admitted as a free state, but in the other territory acquired from Mexico, voters would decide the slavery issue for themselves.
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On this day Uncle Tom's Cabin was published. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote this book and it was a powerful condemnation of slavery. Her main character,Unlce Tom, put a human face on slavery for readers who had never witnessed slavery firsthand.
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Elisha Otis developes a safety mechanism to prevent elevator cars from suddenly falling.
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On this day the Kansas-Nebrask Act was finally passed. This act divided the Nebraska Territory into Kansas and Nebraska.
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On this day Southern proslavery forces attacked the free-state town of Lawrence, Kansas. They looted homes, burned down the hotel, and destoyed the presses of The Kansas Free State newspaper.
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On this day Rowland H. Macy opened what he called a department store in New York in 1858. It became the largest single store in America. It sales method was widespread advertising.
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Edwin Drake drilled what became the world's first oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
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In this year, biologist Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, arguing that animals evolved by a process of "natural selection" and that only the fittest survived to reproduce.
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This election demonstrated that Americans' worst fears had come to reality. There was no longer any national political parties.
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In this meeting and without a dissenting vote, the convention declared that "the union now subsisting between South Carolina and the other States, under the name of the "United States of America," is hereby dissolved.
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After the "Bleeding Kansas,"Kansas enters the Union as a free state.
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On this day the seven seceding states established the Confederate States of America. Then they proceeded to frame a constitution for a new government.
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Lincoln was sworn in as President on this day.
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On this day President Lincoln declared that "insurrection" existed and called for 75,000 volunteers to fight against the Confederacy.
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Union troops defeated Lee at the town of Gettysburg. In this battle the Union destroyed one third of Lee's forces and marked the last major Confederate attempt to invade the North.
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On this day President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It freed slaves and helped slavery
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On this day in the small Virginia town of Appomattox Court House, Lee surrenders to Grant.
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Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on this date and as a result Vice President Andrew Johnson became the new President.
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On this day Horatio Alger published his first novel, Ragged Dick. This novel was widely successful. It told the story of a poor boy who rose to wealth and fame by working hard.
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A fire destroyed Chicago in 1871, killing between 200 to 300 people. It also left more than 100,000. The fire left 100,00 people homeless.
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On this day Congress dissolved the Freemen's Bureau.
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Novelist Mark Twain satirized American life in his 1873 novel, The Gilded Age. He depicted American society as gilded, or having a rotten core covered with gold paint.
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This circuit, was a kind of summer camp that opened in 1874, sponsored lectures and entertainment along New York's Chautauqua Lake.
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This presidential election signaled the end of Reconstruction. The Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes won the election and ended Reconstrution.
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Thomas Edison patents the electric light bulb. Within two years, he installs a street-lighting system in New York CIty.
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Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant who had fought in the Civil War. He moved to New York, where he started a morning paper, the World. It was so successful that Pulitzer soon started publishing the Evening World.
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In 1881, an antrepreneur named Tony Pastor opened a theater in New York, aiming to provide families with a "straight, clean variety show."
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This act prohibited immigration by Chinese laborers, limited the civil rights of Chinese immigrants already in the United States, and forbade the naturalization of Chinese residents.
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In 1883, "Buffalo Bill" Cody threw a Fourth of July celebration near his ranch in Nebraska. So many people attended that Cody decided to take his show on the road. His show Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show toured America and Europe, shaping the world's romantic notion of the American West.
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African American inventor Granville Woods invents an improved steam-powered furnace for running trains.
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In 1884, Lamarcus Thompson opened the world's first roller coaster. At ten cents a ride, Thompson averaged more than $600 per day in income. It was the first ride to open at Coney Island.
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On this day thousands of workers mounted a national demonstration for an eight-hour workday. Strikes erupted in several cities, and fights broke out between strikers and stikebreakers.
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Finally, in 1887, the United States Senate created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to oversee railroad operations. This was the first federal body ever set up to monitro American business operations.
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The Senate passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which outlawed any trust that operated "in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states."
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Trolley cars, trucks, and wagons pulled by horses create a traffic jam in Chicago in 1905
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Electic lights glowed in Times Square in New York City by 1910.
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Baseball started to get more and more popular and in 1911 they put pitcher Cy Young on a baseball card. He had the most wins of any pitcher in Major League history.