More than 550,000 Americans died fighting the Civil War, include these men felled during the bloody Battle of Antietam

This section of the Timeline of United States history concerns events from 1860 to 1899.

1860s

1860–1865

• 1860 - Pony Express begins
• 1860 - Crittenden Compromise
• 1860 - South Carolina secedes
• 1861 - Abraham Lincoln becomes President
• 1861 - Confederate States of America (the Confederacy) established under President Jefferson Davis
• 1861 - American Civil War begins at Fort Sumter
• 1861 - Morrill tariff
• 1861 - Kansas admitted to the Union as a free state
• 1861 - Ex Parte Merryman, federal court case which objected to Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus
• 1861 - First Battle of Bull Run
• 1862 - Homestead Act
• 1862 - Pacific Railway Act
• 1862 - Morrill Land Grant Colleges Act
• 1863 - National Banking Act of 1863
• 1863 - Battle of Antietam
• 1863 - Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation
• 1863 - Battle of Gettysburg
• 1863 - Pro-Union counties become sovereign state of West Virginia
• 1863 - New York City draft riots
• 1864 - National Banking Act of 1864
• 1864 - Wade Davis Bill
• 1864 - Sand Creek Massacre
• 1864 - Maximilian Affair
• 1864 - Nevada becomes a state
• 1865 - Abraham Lincoln assassinated
• 1865 - Andrew Johnson becomes President
• 1865 - United States Civil War ends
• 1865 - 13th Amendment
• 1865 - Freedman's Bureau

1866–1869

• 1866 - Civil Rights Act of 1866
• 1866 - Ku Klux Klan founded
• 1866 - Ex Parte Milligan 71 US 2 1866 rules that civilians cannot be tried in military tribunals when civilian courts are available
• 1867 - Tenure of Office Act
• 1867 - The Grange founded
• 1867 - Reconstruction Acts
• 1867 - Alaska Purchase from Russia
• 1867 - Nebraska becomes a state
• 1867 - Medicine Lodge Treaty
• 1868 - Burlingame Treaty
• 1868 - 14th Amendment
• 1868 - Tenure of Office Act
• 1868 - University of California chartered
• 1868 - Carnegie Steel Company founded
• 1868 - Typewriter invented
• 1868 - Treaty of Fort Laramie with Lakota nation
• 1869 - Ulysses S. Grant becomes President
• 1869 - Wyoming becomes first state to grant woman suffrage
• 1869 - Golden spike nailed in, completing the First Transcontinental Railroad (North America)
• 1869 - James Fisk and Jay Gould's "Black Friday"
• 1869 - Knights of Labor formed

1870s

• 1870 - 15th Amendment
• 1870 - First graduate programs (at Yale and Harvard)
• 1870 - Force Acts
• 1871 - Great Chicago Fire
• 1871 - Treaty of Washington with the British Empire regarding the Dominion of Canada
• 1872 - Yellowstone National Park created
• 1872 - Crédit Mobilier scandal
• 1872 - Amnesty Act
• 1872 - Alabama Claims
• 1873 - Panic of 1873
• 1873 - Virginius Affair
• 1874 - Red River Wars
• 1875 - Aristides wins first Kentucky Derby
• 1875 - Resumption Act
• 1875 - Civil Rights Act of 1875
• 1876 - National League of baseball founded
• 1876 - Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia
• 1876 - Munn v. Illinois establishes public regulation of utilities
• 1876 - Colorado becomes a state
• 1876 - Battle of Little Bighorn
• 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
• 1877 - Rutherford B. Hayes becomes President and Reconstruction ends with the Compromise of 1877
• 1877 - Nez Percé Indian War
• 1878 - Bland-Allison Act
• 1878 - Morgan silver dollars first minted
• 1879 - Thomas Edison invents light bulb
• 1879 - Knights of Labor go public

1880s

• 1880s - Dust Bowl begins
• 1880 - U.S. population exceeds 50 million for first time
• 1881 - James Garfield inaugurated as President
• 1881 - James Garfield assassinated
• 1881 - Chester A. Arthur inaugurated as President
• 1881 - Clara Barton creates Red Cross
• 1881 - Tuskegee Institute founded
• 1881 - A Century of Dishonor written by Helen Hunt Jackson
• 1882 - Chinese Exclusion Act and European Restriction Act
• 1883 - Civil Rights Cases 109 US 3 1883 legalizes doctrine of segregation
• 1883 - Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
• 1883 - Brooklyn Bridge opens
• 1885 - Grover Cleveland inaugurated as President
• 1885 - Washington monument completed
• 1885 - Stanford University founded
• 1886 - Haymarket Riot
• 1886 - American Federation of Labor founded in Columbus, Ohio
• 1887 - Congress creates Interstate Commerce Commission
• 1887 - Dawes Act
• 1887 - Hatch Act
• 1888 - Publication of Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
• 1888 - National Geographic Society founded
• 1889 - Benjamin Harrison becomes President
• 1889 - North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington become states
• 1889 - Johnstown flood in Pennsylvania
• 1889 - Jane Addams founds Hull House

1890s

• 1890 - Sherman Antitrust Act
• 1890 - Sherman Silver Purchase Act
• 1890 - McKinley tariff
• 1890 - Yosemite National Park created
• 1890 - Idaho and Wyoming become states
• 1890 - Wounded Knee Massacre
• 1890 - North American Women's Suffrage Association founded
• 1891 - Basketball invented
• 1891 - Baltimore Crisis
• 1892 - Homestead Strike
• 1892 - General Electric Company founded
• 1892 - Sierra Club founded
• 1893 - Grover Cleveland inaugurated President for second term
• 1893 - Panic of 1893
• 1893 - Sherman Silver Purchase Act repealed
• 1894 - Coxey's Army
• 1894 - Pullman strike
• 1894 - Wilson-Gorman tariff, including Income Tax
• 1895 - Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company strikes down part of Wilson-Gorman Tariff
• 1896 - Plessy v. Ferguson 163 US 537 1896 legalizes segregation in railway cars
• 1896 - William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech
• 1896 - Gold discovered in Alaska's Klondike
• 1896 - Utah becomes a state
• 1896 - Hawaii annexed
• 1897 - William McKinley becomes President
  

  

  Wreckage of the USS Maine
• 1897 - Boston subway completed
• 1897 - Dingley tariff
• 1898 - USS Maine explodes in Havana, Cuba harbor, precipitating the Spanish-American War
• 1898 - DeLome Letter
• 1898 - Treaty of Paris (1898) ends Spanish-American War
• 1898 - Newlands Resolution
• 1898 - American Anti-Imperialist League organized
• 1899 - Teller Amendment
• 1899 - American Samoa occupied
• 1899 - Open Door Notes