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1880-1889 |
Political and
Social History |
Literature |
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1880 |
James A. Garfield wins the presidency.
The signing of the Chinese Exclusion Treaty by
China and the United States restricts but does not prohibit the immigration
of Chinese laborers.
George Eastman takes out a patent on a
flexible roll of film for use in cameras. The first Kodak box cameras are
sold in 1888, and the first pocket Kodak camera is sold in 1895.
(An archive of Kodak advertising and other materials is
available at the Emergence of
Advertising America, 1850-1920 at the Duke Scriptorium.)
Population: 50,100,100, of whom 6.6 million
were
foreign born. (Source: Almanac of American History)
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Death of Lydia Maria Child (b. 1802)
George
Washington Cable, Old Creole Days
Howells, Lady of the Aroostock
Henry Adams,
Democracy, An American Novel
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1881 |
Tuskegee Institute founded by Booker T.
Washington.
Clara Barton organizes the American Red Cross.
Garfield is shot in the back on 2 July 1881 by
Charles Guiteau, a disappointed office-seeker; after Garfield's death on
September 19, Chester A. Arthur becomes president on 20 September 1881.
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James, Washington Square; The Portrait of a Lady
Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus
The Critic (1881-1906), edited
by Jeannette and Joseph Gilder, is one of the first magazines to welcome
Whitman's writing.
Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century of Dishonor chronicles the federal
government's treatment of Native Americans.
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1882 |
Immigration of Chinese labor suspended despite
President Chester A. Arthur's veto of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
John D. Rockefeller organizes the Standard Oil
Trust.
In Boston, a production of Gilbert and
Sullivan's Iolanthe is lighted by electric incandescent light bulbs,
the first such use of the new technology. In New York, Edison's Pearl Street
power company begins to supply electricity for the city.
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Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
Death of
Emerson (b. 1809)
Whitman, Specimen Days and Collect
Howells, A Modern Instance
Frank Stockton, "The Lady or the Tiger?"
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1883 |
24 May. Brooklyn Bridge opened to the public.
Telephone service between Chicago and New York
begins this year.
Pendleton Civil Service Act is passed to
reform the corruption in the Civil Service.
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Twain, Life on the Mississippi
E. W. Howe, The Story of a Country Town
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1884 |
A ten-story building in Chicago is the world's
first true "skyscraper."
Democrat Grover Cleveland is elected president
over James G. Blaine, whose supporters had denounced the Democrats as a
party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion."
Samuel S. McClure founds the first newspaper
syndicate in the U.S., McClure's Syndicate. Among his writers will be Willa
Cather.
Linotype machine patented by Ottmar
Mergenthaler; among its competitors is the Mark Twain-backed Paige
Typesetter.
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Charles Egbert Craddock (Mary N. Murfree), In the Tennessee
Mountains, a collection of
local color stories
Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona (protesting treatment of Native
Americans)
Jewett,A Country Doctor
Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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1885 |
Washington Monument dedicated after 36 years
of construction.
Ulysses S. Grant dies and is buried in New
York after an elaborate funeral and procession.
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Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham
Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton (1832-1895),
The Squatter and the Don
Birth of
Sinclair
Lewis and Ezra Pound
Sidney Lanier,Poems
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1886 |
4 May. Haymarket Riot: 7 officers are killed
by a bomb and 8 anarchists are arrested despite their lack of involvement;
when several are executed, Howells protests. The incident is the subject of
Frank Harris's novel
The Bomb.
"The
Dramas of the Haymarket" at the Chicago Historical Society includes
background information about and images of this event.
28 October. Statue of Liberty dedicated in New
York Harbor.
The Supreme Court rules that corporations are
"persons" under the 14th amendment and cannot be denied profits or the right
of due process.
American Federation of Labor organized. .
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James, The Princess Casamassima; The Bostonians
Howells, Indian Summer
Alcott,Jo's Boys
 Lucretia P. Hale,
The Peterkin Papers
Death of
Emily Dickinson
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1887 |
Dawes Severalty Act provides for 160 acres to
be given to each Indian family, breaking up the system of communal land
holdings.
Nez Perce war.
Interstate Commerce Act passed.
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Thomas Nelson Page, In Ole Virginia
(plantation school)
Freeman, A Humble Romance
Susan Fenimore Cooper,Rural
Hours (revised edition)
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1888 |
12 March. Great Blizzard of 1888 paralyzes the
east coast and causes 400 deaths.
Secret ballot system introduced into U. S.
An act of Congress prevents Chinese laborers
who have left the country from returning to the U. S.
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Death of Bronson and Louisa May
Alcott
James, Aspern Papers
Whitman, November Boughs; Complete Poems and Prose
Edward Bellamy,
Looking Backward (utopian novel)
Birth of T. S. Eliot, Eugene O'Neill
Theodore Roosevelt,
Ranch Life and
the Hunting Trail
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1889 |
Benjamin Harrison wins the presidency despite
Grover Cleveland's larger share of the popular vote (1889-93).
22 April. In the first
"Oklahoma land rush," the U. S. government bows to pressure and opens
for settlement
land
that it had previously promised would be a permanent refuge for Native
Americans moved from their eastern territories. Native American tribes are
paid about $4 million for the parcel of land. The starting gun sounds at
noon, and an estimated 50,000 settlers race across the land; by sunset, all
1.92 million acres have been claimed. (See also the
May 18, 1889 account from Harper's Weekly)
13 May. Johnstown (Pennsylvania) flood kills
an estimated 5,000 people when a dam bursts 18 miles above Johnstown.
First anti-trust law passed (by Kansas).
Electrocution replaces hanging as the official
method of capital punishment in New York State.
Admitted to statehood: North Dakota, South
Dakota, Montana, and Washington.
In Chicago, Jane Addams opens
Hull House.
June. Andrew Carnegie,
"Wealth" (North American Review).
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Howells, Annie Kilburn; Howells moves to New York to join
editorial staff at Harper's
Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the
West
Mark
Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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