Chronology

Add key events and discuss their significance below. Please try to keep events in the correct chronological order.

__**1850s**__

__**1860**__

November - Election of Lincoln

November - South Carolina secedes

__**1861**__

April - firing on Fort Sumter marks outbreak of Civil War. (relevant for emancipation)

August - Lincoln signs First Confiscation Act.

__**1862**__

March - Beginning of the ** Port Royal Experiment .** In 1861 planters on the South Carolinian Sea Islands had abandoned their plantations, fleeing from Union forces. The unsupervised slaves looted the planters' houses, destroyed cotton gins and proceeded to plant susbsistence crops, rejecting the 'slave crop' of cotton. Northern abolitionists saw this situtation as an opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities of free African Americans and a group of 'Gideonites' travelled down in March 1862 to establish a free labour system of working on plantations for wages. This project was largely funded by Northern capitalist investors. It demonstrated the discrepancy between desires of Northerners and free African Americans as the Northerners still hoped to grow cotton. Foner describes the Northerners as motivated by a 'combination of reform spirit and desire for profit' (p. 53). Largely, Gideonites held paternalistic attitudes towards blacks, believing they still needed white guidance to help them better themselves. Gideonites also set up education programmes for African Americans. In 1863 under pressure from Northern entrepreneurs, the land was put up for sale. Though there was some disagreement over how to sell the land, it was ultimately put up for auction with wealthy Northern businessmen bidding on an equal level with blacks, reflecting a laissez-faire attitude of an impartial marketplace. This meant that though there was a desire for blacks to become independent landowners, they could not compete with wealthy entrepreneurs to buy land. Ochiai describes this as reflective a 'destructive ambivalence' prevalent in Northern opinion towards African Americans. The experiment demonstrates the tension between laissez-faire ideas of blacks working for their own independence free from government help, and an appreciation of the real difficulties that African Americans may need government help in overcoming.

April - slavery abolished in Washington D.C. by Federal government. Owners compensated. First time ever national government has abolished slavery in any place it had control.

July - Lincoln signs Second Confiscation Act. (relevant for emancipation). The Second Confiscation Act, approved by Congress 16 July 1862, contained the first definite provisions for emancipating slaves in the rebellious states. Under the act, Confederates who did not surrender within 60 days of the acts passage were to be punished by having their slaves freed. The act also dealt with slaves seeking refuge in Union camps which were occupying the south. The act declared all slaves taking refuge behind Union lines captives of war who were to be set free. President Lincoln opposed these acts, believing that they would push the border states towards siding with the Confederacy. The growing movement towards emancipation was aided by these acts, which eventually led to the Emancipation Promclaimation in 1863.

September - After narrow Union victory at Battle of Antietam, Lincoln announces his intention to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. This is known as the 'Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation'. Lincoln wanted to wait for a Union victory lest his gesture look like an act of desperation.

__**1863**__

1 January - Emancipation Proclamation - issued by Lincoln, freeing all slaves in Confederate controlled portions of the South. Arguably does not free any slaves at all, as Lincoln was legislating for an area Union forces did not control! The London //Times// lambasted the document for this very reason. However Proclamation does shift war aims from struggle for Union to struggle for emancipation, and as rumour of the order spread South it doubtless encouraged slaves to runaway, work slowly, or rebel.

From January 1863 - Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks' labour system established in Louisiana. This system placed an emphasis on former slaves avoiding vagrancy and idleness. Instituted was a compulsory system of free labour. Freed slaves were made by the army to enter into contracts with plantation owners in return for a 5% share of the year's crop or a $3 monthly wage as well as food, shelter and medical care. They were forbidden to leave plantations without employer permission. Freedmen had very little room in negotiating terms. Blacks resisted this, seeing it as akin to a re-establishment of slavery. They refused to work, left plantations and violently challenged white authority. Plantation owners were dissatisfied as they believed blacks would work only when subject to corporal punishment. Banks responded by improving labour conditions, exerting greater control over the planters to ensure they were paying their employees, and providing education for freed slaves. It was, however, fundamentally not what freed slaves wanted, i.e. land ownership, independence, subsistence farming. Some historians, such as Herman Belz (1978) view the system as nevertheless a first step in introducing new uses of the land and labour organisation to move towards a free labour economy, that it did not constitute slavery as workers were not denied ownership of themselves or the fruits of their labour. Others criticise the system for being exploitative. The system was cause for concern amongst Radical Republicans in the North, prompting them to formulate and pass the Wade-Davis Bill in the belief that African Americans would never achieve any equitable status under Lincoln's Ten Percent plan.

July - Battle of Gettysburg

July - New York City Draft Riots - July 13 - July 16 1863. The New York City Draft Riots undertaken mainly by Irish immigrants occured due to growing frustrations about the war. It was the largest civil insurrection in American history apart from the South's rebellion itself. The war many Northerners thought would be quick showed no signs of ending in 1863 and many Irish felt resentment in fighting in a war, now deemed to be about bringing an end to slavery, that seemingly had little to do with them. Their anger and resentment increased further when New York adopted its policy of conscription that included a $300 clause meaning the rich could essentially pay for someone else to take their place whilst poor New Yorkers had no say in whether they fought in a war they saw had little to do with them. It began as an attempt to stop the draft and when this was achieved some of the rioters stopped. However a great many more continued and concentrated their violence towards symbols of Republican rule - blacks were often lynched on the spot and black orphanages burned to the ground, policemen were viciously attacked, and the rich found their houses being plundered and often had to flee for safety. It was only with the deployment of federal troops that the mob was put down. The Riots exposed the class and racial tensions that existed just below the surface of the city's life and the memory of them haunted New York City's elite long after its suppression, serving as a reminder of the threat posed by a "dangerous class" whose existence could no longer be denied. Their racial attacks were also a source of embarressment for many Northerners and the often brutal assaults of many blacks (especially the highly symbollic burning of the coloured orphanage) coupled with blacks heroic behaivour just after at the assault on Fort Wagner meant many Northerners took a more tolerant view towards blacks.

December - The Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction issued by Lincoln (The Ten Percent Plan). See Glossary.


 * __1864__**

July - Passage of the Wade-Davis Bill in Congress as an alternative to Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan. Lincoln pocket-vetoes it. See Glossary.

November - Lincoln reelected. Defeats Democrat challenger, General George B. McClellan. Many historians see Lincoln's victory as the nail in the coffin for Southern hopes, for McClellan - a proslavery, unionist Democrat - may have been forced by his party to negotiate a peace with the South.

__**1865**__

31st January - Having been passed by the Senate in 1864, the House of Representatives passes the [|Thirteenth Amendment] outlawing 'slavery' and 'involuntary servitude,' except as a punishment for people convicted of crimes. It is then sent to the states for ratification. See Special Timelines for details.  March - Creation of Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, aka Freedmen's Bureau.

9th April - Confederate surrender at Appomattox.

15th April - Lincoln assassinated. Tennessean Andrew Johnson president.

6th December - The [|Thirteenth Amendment] is ratified and adopted to the Constitution.

December - Christmas Insurrection scare in South (see Steve Hahn article on rumour).

__**1866**__

February / March - President Andrew Johnson vetoes the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill. Calls latter 'a stride towards centralization, and the concentration of all legislative powers in the national Government.' (cited in Slap, //Doom of Reconstruction//, 81.)

May 1st- Memphis (Tennessee), race riot/ massacre- 3 days of rioting, 46 dead African Americans, 8 blcak schools and 3 black churches burnt down.

13th June - The [|Fourteenth Amendment] proposed

July 30th- New Orleans (Louisiana) Race riot/ massacre- arises when the administration run by Confederates in New Orleans (under Gov. James M. Wells) endorses the radical plan to reconvene the Constitutional Convention of 1864, in order to enfranchise blacks, and prohibit "rebels" voting. On the 30th July a procession of 200 black supporters was met by fighting in the streets, when the police arrived it quickly degenerated, 34 blacks and 3 white radicals were killed, and over 100 persons injured.

October - The Republican Party makes significant gains in elections, securing the two-thirds majority needed in Congress to override a presidential veto.

Foundation of Ku Klux Klan. When?

__**1867**__

March - Passage of Military Reconstruction Acts

April - Senate ratifies Alaska Purchase

October - Republican Party suffer losses in elections across North.

__**1868**__

November - election of Ulysses S. Grant to presidency on Republican ticket.

__**1869**__

26th February - The Fifteenth Amendment proposed by Congress

9th July - The Fourteenth Amendment ratified.

__**1870**__

3rd February - Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment prohibiting the restriction of voting rights on the basis of race.

Attempt to annex Santo Domingo - Grant’s attempt to annex Santo Domingo was firmly rooted in American exceptionalism – the idea that America is unlike any other country in the world, and so because of its distinguished character it has an almost given right for expansion. A number of motives lay behind the annexation of Santo Domingo. Firstly were strategic concerns – if annexed by the US, the republic (the “gate of the Caribbean Sea”) would enable American military power in the Caribbean and severely undermine European rivalry in the region. Economic concerns were also at play here – Santo Domingo was rich in natural resources and its annexation would provide new markets for American goods. In his annual address in January 1870, Grant also drew upon humanitarian and abolitionist reasons for America’s acquisition of Santo Domingo, acclaiming the republic’s vulnerability to a Haitian invasion and prophesising a powerful blow to remaining remnants of slavery in the western hemisphere. Most relevant for us, however, is the belief that Santo Domingo would provide a haven for the freedmen to migrate to. Viewed as a means of ending racial strife in the South, such a belief was seen by many as the answer to the increasingly pressing “Negro question.” Whilst the proposed annexation of Santo Domingo was ultimately rejected by the Senate, it nevertheless demonstrated a clear movement away from Reconstruction. Reviving the colonisation of African-Americans to placate southerners, it clearly acted upon the need for blacks to be removed from the South. As a final point, it is important to note how language of race and racial hierarchies actively shaped American imperialist visions at this time. E.H.

__**1871**__

8th October – 10th October: The Chicago Fire killed hundreds of people and destroyed four square miles. It started in a small shed and its spread was aided by the overuse of wood, a drought prior to the fire and strong winds. The fire created an ideal of a new Chicago. Before the fire the city was known for its toleration of gambling and prostitution and some people felt that the city was being punished for this. However, this idea was only held for a short while and then people began to see the disaster as a sign of the City’s unique importance and the start of a forward looking program of reform. The fire was used to show the refined character of the people of the Chicago. There were stories on individual acts of bravery and on how calm and civil people had remained. It was also used to promote the morality of the rest of the country, highlighting the relief the rest of the country sent, and how in responding to Chicago’s needs they forgot their petty divisions. Finally, the fire made people see the need for long term changes in policy and for new measures to deal with the problems posed by the growth of large scale industrial cities.

April- One of the chief reasons for the passage of the Civil Rights Act was to protect southern blacks from the Ku Klux Klan abuses being committed in the South, which had rapidly grown since the groups’ formation in 1866.  The act provided civil and criminal penalties against KKK violence, as well as giving federal protection to Fourteenth Amendment rights that were regularly being violated by private individuals as opposed to the state.

__**1872**__

March - Grant signs into law bill creating Yellowstone National Park in Far West. First national park. What does park suggest about American's attachment to 'nature' and government in the era? What impact did the park have on native Americans? See esp. Cook, //Civil War America// and Cox Richardson, //West from Appomattox//. November - reelection of Grant to presidency. Defeats Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greeley.

__**1873**__

In the wake of a contested election for Governor between an African American Republican candidate and a white Democrat freedmen and local white men engaged in a pitched battle in the town of Colfax Louisiana. The freedmen were forced to retreat to the town court house which was eventually burnt down with many trapped inside. Those freedmen who surrenderred were executed as they left the court house. Estimates for the number of African Americans killed vary from 80 to 300. It remained the worst case of mass murder in U.S history until 9/11. Three men were convicted for their involvement in the massacre, in accordance with the Enforcement Act of 1870. However, in 1876, the convictions were overruled by the Supreme Court (United States vs Cruikshank) which ruled that both the Enforcement Act and the14th Amendment only allowed for Federal involvement in cases where a State had directly deprived an idividual of life, liberty of property without due process of law. The case ruled that because the massacre was carried out by individuals, rather than by the State of Louisiana, the Federal Government had no right to rule over it. The ruling meant that instances of violence against freedmen would now be ruled by the State. In the context of the South's 'Redemption' where most Southern States were again controlled by the Democrat Party, this essentially meant that freedmen became increasingly under threat from white violence from groups such as the Red Shirts who could carry outviolence with little risk of punishment. Some historians have argued that the ruling showed that the Republican Party was no longer willing to defend the freedmen due to disillusionment with Reconstruction.
 * Colfax Massacre-**

The Panic of 1873 ushered in an economic contraction that lasted to the late 1890s, making it the longest period of economic retrenchment in American history and lending it the mantle of the nineteenth century’s Great Depression or ‘the Victorian equivalent of the Wall Street Crash of 1929.’ What is more, the cause of this economic crash was a great symbol of American progression and empire: the railroad. The Northern Pacific Railroad’s inability to sell its Millions of dollars worth of bonds initiated an economic panic that led to a temporary closure of the stock exchange, the folding of banks and significant lay-offs, so that the great progressive economy of America seemed to have been crippled by its own ambitious expansionism. (Foner and Hobsbawm, Age of Capital)
 * Depression of 1873 - Economic collapse.**

__**1874**__ The U.S. House election, was an election for the United states House of Represetatives in 1874, which occurred in the middle of President Grant's second term. It was an important turning point, as the Republicans lost heavily and the Democrats gained control of the House, with the Republicans losing their majority and soon their majority in the Senate. This was also the first period of Democratic control since the Civil War. Democrat majorities were largely put down to the economic crisis and peoples dissillusionment with Grant and the Republican party's solutions to it. The Democrat victory displays the extent of Republicans failures to tackle the financial situation in the South, with many seeking to punish the party through abstaining from voting, or voting Democart. The depression crippled many in the South under poverty and depression, with cotton prices falling nearly 50% between 1872 and 1877.

__**1875**__

__**1876**__


 * May- Opening of Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.** Exhibition is larger than the Great Exhibition in London twenty-five years earlier.

The Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia in 1876 was as much a declaration of America’s progressive destiny as it was a reflection of its past successes. In his opening address President Ulysses S. Grant outlined the progressive nature of America’s civilisation: ‘One hundred years ago our country was new and but partially settled. Our necessities have compelled us to chiefly expend our means and time in felling forests, subduing prairies, building dwellings, factories, ships, docks, warehouses, roads, canals, machinery, etc., etc.’ In this way, the Exhibition became a statement of American civilisation, which was defined by a concept of progress, both past and future. In the era of scientific expansion this sense of progress seemed a perfect tonic to the problems posed in postbellum America. The torrid task of reconstructing a shattered Union into a united nation, the economic downturn of 1873, and ambivalence over national identity meant that the centenary provided the perfect opportunity for America to make a new declaration of its civilisation and this civilisation’s location within the world and, more significantly, its position in the history of human progression. A celebratory international exhibition seemed the perfect vehicle for this affirmation of civilisation, as J. S. Ingram’s 1876 illustrated history The Centennial Exhibition explains, ‘Progress is the law of life, and Exhibitions, at once the outcome and the forebears of that very progress, have experienced its influence and have in turn reacted on it.’

The Fair's exhibitions were numerous and wide-ranging with five main buildings housing most of them. The Main Building was the largest in the world at that time. A distinct emphasis was placed on science and industry and these were often presented in social and cultural terms, most notably in the pseudo-scientific racialised presentation of world cultures and the importance of industry to improving society through easing work and producing consumer goods.


 * June - The Battle of Little Bighorn** General George Armstrong Custer's cavalry defeated and 'massacred' by Lakota Sioux warriors at Little Big Horn, Dakota Territory.

A series of small battles between the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho and the American military, collectively known as the Great Sioux War, was waging in the West. The three tribes were determined to defend the land of the Black Hills, which had been guaranteed to them in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, from the advances of the American military who, through Custer’s recent expedition of 1874, had discovered gold in the Indian Territory. Initially, the war seemed to complement the racially Darwinian notions of progress. Of course in this sense it was a war that America could not lose, as defeat would contradict the Manifest Destiny of American civilisation. The tense relations between the Plains Indians and settlers and the United States government that had sparked into war significantly meant that the Indian Bureau was to be moved to the jurisdiction of the War Department. However, a prominent desire to civilise the residual free Plains Indians remained preferable to their destruction to many despite the war that was being fought against them.

One such American was President Grant, who had for many years pursued a Peace Policy toward the Western Plains Indians, believing that their survival could be attained through the gradual civilising effects of the Reservations. Yet, confronted with the turbulent political situation and economic decline in 1876 Grant yielded and removed soldiers protecting the Black Hills from civilian incursion, yet maintained the decree prohibiting such ventures, hoping to contrive a situation through which war could be achieved under the guise of protecting settlers from Indian attacks. Grant’s action signalled that the humanitarian, civilising approach to the Indian was on the wane. The death knell for the credibility of this approach became increasingly audible as news gradually filtered into the East of Custer’s eradication at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in early July. Whereas the newspapers of the 4th and 5th of July revelled in reports of celebrations at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition, the headlines of the 7th and 8th were consumed in the report of Custer’s demise at the hands of the Indians. In the context of America’s centennial year in which so much effort had been put into America’s first World’s Fair, espousing the enduring and unshakeable nature of American civilisation and mapping out its progress and destiny, the thought, let alone the reality, that the savage Indian could so totally defeat an agent of America’s expansionist destiny seemed obscene.

October - Contested gubernatorial election in South Carolina. Democrat, former planter, and ex-Confederate General Wade Hampton claims victory.


 * November - Contested presidential election.** In the presidential election of 1876, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York outpolled Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote, and had 184 electoral votes to Hayes’ 185, with 20 votes yet uncounted. These 20 electoral votes, however, were in dispute. In Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, both parties claimed victory, whilst in Oregon an elector had been declared illegal. After a bitter legal and political battle, these votes were eventually awarded to Hayes. Unsurprisingly, however, Democrats – and therefore the South – had no intention of accepting Hayes’ presidency. In order to gain the South’s acquiescence, the Republicans struck a deal and agreed to withdraw troops from the South. The election of 1876, therefore, essentially brought Reconstruction to an end.

__**1877**__

July - Great Strike of 1877.

__**1880s**__

__**1890s**__

Legal moves towards Jim Crow / disenfranchisement of black (and some poor white) voters in South.