Lee of the Union

Lee of the Union - Timeline # 1217


Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 3-7-1861
Event Description: President Abraham Lincoln offers General Robert E. Lee command of all Union military forces. "Your country needs you," Lincoln tells him. "I know you love your State of Virginia, but if the seceding States win, it will be in a cause of slavery and treason. Being a Virginian won't be worth very much then. You are an American first, and a Virginian second, and you can do best by Virginia by being loyal to America." Lee accepts.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-21-1861
Event Description: General Robert E. Lee and his Army of the Potomac routs the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and General Pierre Beauregard at Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 8-14-1861
Event Description: General Robert E. Lee makes an easy capture of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 8-16-1861
Event Description: The Slavery Rebellion is over before it can burst into full-scale civil war. General Robert E. Lee accepts the surrenders of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, on behalf of the Confederate government, and General Joseph Johnston, on behalf of the Confederate armies. Davis and Johnston both accept President Abraham Lincoln's offer of amnesty for all rebelling soldiers. Lee had hoped to get General Thomas J. Jackson to be the official military signer, but Jackson wouldn't do it. "Speaking to General Jackson is like speaking to a stone wall," Lee remarks, and for the rest of his life, the stubborn general is known as Stonewall Jackson.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-1-1861
Event Description: General Robert E. Lee, de facto governor of all Confederate States until provisional governments can be set up, announces that any further rebellion on the part of the former Confederate States will be met with severe reprisals, but compliance with the Constitution of the United States will mean leniency.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-19-1861
Event Description: A Constitutional Amendment prohibiting slavery in all States, including all those that had once been Confederate States, is presented to the Congress.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-6-1861
Event Description: The Republican-controlled Illinois legislature appoints Ulysses S. Grant, a Colonel in the recent Slavery Rebellion, to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the 1860 Democratic Presidential nominee.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 12-24-1862
Event Description: The greatest Christmas present in American history is delivered as the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting slavery, is ratified. It will take effect on January 1, 1863. By this time, the provisional legislatures of the former Confederate States of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia have pledged their loyalty to the Constitution of the United States and have been readmitted to the Union, rejoining California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin. Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina remain holdouts.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-4-1863
Event Description: Mississippi becomes the last of the former Confederate States of America to be readmitted to the Union. Alabama and South Carolina had been readmitted earlier in the year. Upon hearing the news, General Robert E. Lee submits his resignation of commission to President Abraham Lincoln, who accepts it.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 6-2-1864
Event Description: With the Union saved, slavery banned by the 13th Amendment, ratification soon to come of the 14th and 15th Amendments, guaranteeing Negro citizenship and voting rights, and a bill to protect Indian lands on its way to passage by Congress, President Abraham Lincoln announces he will not be a candidate for re-election.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-2-1864
Event Description: General Robert E. Lee, the leader of the Army that squashed the Slavery Rebellion, is elected the 17th President of the United States. The Democratic Party had united behind the Virginian who may, for all anybody knows, have saved the country from a prolonged, disastrous civil war. He defeats the Republican nominee, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Lee's Vice President is Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, the only Senator from one of the seceding States who did not resign his seat and stayed loyal to the Union.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-11-1864
Event Description: The city of Atlanta, having returned to the Union with the rest of the State of Georgia in 1862, rests quietly. William Tecumseh Sherman, Robert E. Lee's replacement as General-in-Chief of American armed forces, spends most of the day in his Washington office, smoking cigars, drinking brandy and going through volumes of paperwork. He is burning with boredom.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 3-3-1865
Event Description: On his last full day in office, President Abraham Lincoln signs the Indian Territories Act of 1865, establishing permanent Indian homelands in the Northern Plains (Dakota Territory), in the Southern Plains (Oklahoma Territory), and in the Southwest (Arizona Territory), while amending the Homestead Act of 1862 to allow only those non-Indians already living there to stay, and no new ones to be admitted. Each territory, or each state developed within these territories, will have a U.S. Army fort within its borders, in order to protect the established white settlers in the event of Indian obrogation of the ITA, though Lincoln signs an Executive Order proscribing great punishment for soldiers who go too far. Indian tribes will be permitted to remain or resettle there, with their own people eligible to run for election to territorial legislatures, Governorships and non-voting representatives in Congress, so that if and when their legislatures vote in favor of statehood, they will be admitted with their own people governing them, representing them and voting for their interests in Congress. Lincoln receives support from the former Confederate States, many of whom are willing to pay to have their remaining Native Americans moved to the new Territories.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 3-4-1865
Event Description: Robert Edward Lee is sworn in as President of the United States. In his Inaugural Address, he quotes Benjamin Franklin in order to express brotherhood with the now-restored Southern States: "We must all hang together, or, surely, we will all hang separately." It is a suggestion that the North will not only show lenience toward the former rebels, but also has a responsibility to help the South rebuild.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 3-8-1865
Event Description: Former President Abraham Lincoln returns to his home town of Springfield, Illinois. "I have never been happier than to have the shackles of governing thrown off," he says, "and to return to the highest office a man can hold, that of private citizen in the town he calls home." Even his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, has seen a sense of depression fade from her.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 3-18-1865
Event Description: President Robert E. Lee makes a tour of the Southern States. Among his stops is in Augusta, Georgia, where an eight-year-old boy named Thomas Woodrow Wilson hears him speak on the need for Southerners to help themselves by building up their own institutions, so that they may compete with the North in more positive ways.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 4-14-1865
Event Description: President Robert E. Lee is shot and killed at Ford's Theater in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor who considered Lee a traitor to Virginia. Lee was 58, and had been in office only 41 days, the least in history except for William Henry Harrison. He is the first President to be assassinated. Booth is captured at the scene, and will be executed. Vice President Andrew Johnson becomes the 18th President of the United States, as the nation goes into deep mourning over President Lee.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 4-18-1865
Event Description: An open letter to the American people from former President Lincoln appears in most of the nation's newspapers. It pays tribute to the assassinated President Robert E. Lee, offers his assistance to new President Andrew Johnson, and suggests calm to both a North angry over the assassination and a South that is about evenly divided over whether assassin John Wilkes Booth was justified. "With malice toward none," Lincoln writes, "with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." Lincoln's words do much to repair the breach that still exists between North and South, and many Republican activists want him to run for President again in 1868. He will have none of it: "I have done my duty, and there are many in the Party who are up to the great task that will be before the next President, regardless of whether Mr. Johnson succeeds."

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 1-1-1866
Event Description: With a regiment of the 7th Cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, standing guard, a Chief of the Lakota Sioux takes office as Territorial Governor of Dakota Territory. He takes office, and takes a Christian name along with his Indian name: "I, Joseph Sitting Bull, do solemnly swear..."

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-4-1866
Event Description: The Upper Peninsula of Michigan has its Statehood as the State of Hiawatha ratified by Congress. It becomes the 37th State of the Union.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-1-1867
Event Description: The University of Western Virginia is founded in Morgantown, Virginia.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-4-1868
Event Description: Senator William H. Seward of New York, who had been Secretary of State under President Lincoln, is elected the 19th President of the United States, defeating his State's Governor, Horatio Seymour. Senator Ulysses S. Grant of Illinois is elected Vice President.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-7-1871
Event Description: With great reluctance, former President Abraham Lincoln is elected Mayor of Chicago. Activists with both the Republican and Democratic Parties insisted that, with his name and moral authority, he was the only man in the State of Illinois who could lead the rebuilding effort after the fire that burned down two-thirds of the city a month ago.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 10-16-1872
Event Description: President William Henry Seward, a candidate for re-election, dies at his home in Auburn, New York. He was 71. Vice President Ulysses S. Grant becomes the 20th President. It is too late to replace Seward on Presidential election ballots with Grant, but Congress passes a bill providing for all Electoral Votes won by a deceased candidate for President to pass to his nominee for Vice President. This will force Congress, in 1873, to pass the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, requiring not only the preceding, but also a requirement that every person who qualifies to run as a candidate for President on any ballot to also nominate a candidate for Vice President.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-6-1872
Event Description: President William H. Seward and Vice President Ulysses S. Grant -- as they are listed on ballots -- are re-elected, though Seward has been dead and Grant President for 19 days. The Democrats had nominated Governor Benjamin Harvey Hill of Georgia, a former Confederate Senator who had been a healing figure after swearing an oath of loyalty to the Union.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-5-1873
Event Description: William Henry "Rooney" Lee, 36-year-old son of former President Robert E. Lee, is elected Governor of Virginia.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-1-1874
Event Description: Virginia native Woodrow Wilson, remembering the March 18, 1865 "Southern institutions" speech of President Robert E. Lee in Augusta, Georgia, for which he was present, enters the University of Virginia.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 5-20-1875
Event Description: In the case of Minor v. Happersett, the U.S. Supreme Court votes 4-3 in favor of granting all American citizens age 21 and over the right to vote, regardless of gender or race. The plaintiffs had asserted this right under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, saying that citizenship guarantees the right to register to vote. Despite fierce opposition from Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, the Court stands with those seeking the right to vote.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-4-1875
Event Description: President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Voting Rights Act of 1875, proscribing enforcement of the right to vote under Minor v. Happersett.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 6-24-1876
Event Description: Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, commanding the 7th Cavalry in the Dakota Territory,is shot and killed by a Lakota Sioux Chief named Crazy Horse. Upon his arrest, Crazy Horse denounces Territorial Governor Joseph Sitting Bull: "He is a traitor to all that the red man stands for!"

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 8-7-1876
Event Description: "Big Jim" Kinealy - a member of one of the largest counterfeiting gangs in the nation - hatches a plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. He hopes to ransom Lincoln for $200,000 in gold and the release of Ben Boyd - the gang's master engraver.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-7-1876
Event Description: Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York is elected the 21st President of the United States. The first North Democrat to hold the office since James Buchanan 16 years earlier, he defeats the incumbent Republican Ulysses S. Grant, whose term had been marked by the malfeasance of many of his appointees, marking one of America's most honest and decent Presidents as one of its most incompetent. The election is close, however, and Grant came closer than any other "accidental President" yet had to winning the office in his own right. Indeed, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore and Andrew Johnson had not even been renominated.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-4-1877
Event Description: The Indian Territory of Dakota is admitted to the Union as the 39th States. Joseph Sitting Bull is sworn in for his first four-year term as Governor, having previously served six two-year terms as Territorial Governor.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-5-1877
Event Description: Chief Crazy Horse, Lakota Sioux assassin of Lt. Col. George Custer, is executed at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 5-31-1878
Event Description: Woodrow Wilson graduates from the University of Virginia.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-4-1878
Event Description: The Indian Territory of Oklahoma is admitted to the Union as the 40th State. Its first Governor is Joseph Pierce, formerly known as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-2-1880
Event Description: Senator James G. Blaine of Maine is elected the 22nd President of the United States. The Republican defeated the incumbent Democrat, Samuel J. Tilden, when Tilden's health began to fail in the final year of his term and he was unable to do the work that could have led to his re-election. Blaine's Vice President will be Representative James A. Garfield of Ohio. Also, former Governor Rooney Lee of Virginia, son of the late President Robert E. Lee, is elected to the U.S. Senate.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-2-1881
Event Description: Vice President James A. Garfield gets into an argument at the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington. Charles J. Guiteau approaches him about asking President Blaine for a post in his Administration. Garfield tells Guiteau that Blaine can't be bothered. "He won't even see me," Boatman Jim laments of the Plumed Knight. Garfield and Guiteau exchange words, and Guiteau pulls out a pistol. He cannot get a shot off, though, as Garfield punches him and knocks him unconscious. Guiteau is soon confined to a sanitarium, and remains there for the rest of his life.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-1-1882
Event Description: Woodrow Wilson returns to his alma mater, the University of Virginia, as a professor of political science.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-4-1884
Event Description: Governor Grover Cleveland of New York is elected the 23rd President of the United States. The Democrat defeats the incumbent Republican, James G. Blaine, as a result of Blaine having the most scandal-tarred Administration in American history to that point, so corrupt that even the two living former Presidents who had been Republicans, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, joined the "Mugwump" faction of Republicans that had campaigned for Cleveland. Grant, himself the leader of, though honest enough not to personally so lead, an Administration marked by scandal, had spoken many times on behalf of Cleveland. The former President, now an ailing stockbroker in New York City, had known Cleveland during his rise to the nomination. With no major accomplishments to his name, an increasing gap between rich and poor, and the stock and gold scandals that went with his Administration, historians' polls in 1948, 1962 and 2001 would rate Blaine as the worst President America has ever had, and a 1979 poll would rank him second-worst.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 3-4-1885
Event Description: Grover Cleveland is sworn in as President. He appoints Senator William "Rooney" Lee of Virginia, son of President Robert E. Lee, to be Secretary of War. Outgoing President James G. Blaine returns to his home State of Maine, though he will often return to Washington to work for various Republican causes. He will be remembered in the 20th and 21st Centuries not just as a scandal-wallowing President, but also as the patron saint of lobbyists. Vice President James Garfield, formerly a Congressman from Ohio, takes up residence at his vacation home in Elberon, on the New Jersey shore, and becomes the second former Vice President, following John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 5-1-1885
Event Description: The Hunting Tips of a Ranchman is published, written by Theodore Roosevelt. Formerly Minority Leader of the New York Assembly, he had left politics and headed west following the deaths of his wife and mother. He had previously tried to buy a ranch in the Dakota Territory, but was thwarted by the Territorial Governor, Joseph Sitting Bull. Instead, he purchased a ranch in eastern Montana, near the Little Bighorn River. "It is so vast and unspoiled," the 26-year-old once-and-future politician wrote in Hunting Tips. "One gets the sense that nothing has ever happened there, and that nothing will happen there without your own will."

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-23-1885
Event Description: Former President Ulysses S. Grant (1872-75) dies of throat cancer in New York City. He was 63.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 8-4-1886
Event Description: Former President Samuel J. Tilden (1877-81) dies following a long illness in Greystone, New York. He was 72.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-1-1887
Event Description: Political science professor Woodrow Wilson is named President of the University of Virginia.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-6-1888
Event Description: President Grover Cleveland is re-elected, defeating former Governor Benjamin Harrison of Indiana. When sworn in on the following March 4, he will be the first President to serve a second term since Andrew Jackson 56 years earlier. Fourteen straight President has not done so: Van Buren, Grant, Tilden and Blaine had been defeated for re-election; Tyler, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan and Johnson had been denied renomination; Polk and Lincoln had retired after one term; William Henry Harrison -- Ben's grandfather -- Taylor and Seward had died in office, Seward just before being re-elected. Also, Theodore Roosevelt, former Minority Leader of the New York Assembly, is elected to the House of Represenatives.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 4-22-1889
Event Description: The discovery of vast oil reserves in Oklahoma makes the Indian-led State one of the richest in the nation. Governor Joseph Pierce signs a bill ordering heavy fees for white men wishing to develop land in the State, and offers to share the profits with the Indian State of Dakota and the Territory of Arizona.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 5-11-1889
Event Description: In the case of Walker v. Anson, the Supreme Court rules that a man cannot be denied membership on an athletic team on the basis of race. Moses Fleetwood "Fleet" Walker, currently a catcher for the Syracuse Stars of the International League, had sued Adrian C. "Cap" Anson, manager and first baseman of the Chicago White Stockings, for convincing the owners of the teams in the National League and the American Association to institute a "gentlemen's agreement" that barred black players. Walker, his outfield-playing brother Welday, and pitcher George Stovey are soon signed by AA teams. Their careers soon wind down, but they have opened the doors for other blacks in baseball. The Chicago team will survive, known by 1900 as the Cubs, as a team in the American League, beginning in 1901, takes the old name of White Sox.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-4-1889
Event Description: The Arizona Territory is admitted to the Union as the 41st State, despite an effort of a group of American descendants of Spanish settlers to break off the eastern portion and form a separate state named "New Mexico."

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-4-1890
Event Description: A rush of new States is admitted to the Union: Montana, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming and Utah, making 46 States in all.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 12-29-1890
Event Description: Joseph Sitting Bull dies. The first Native American Governor of any State, he had been the chief executive of Dakota since 1866, just under 25 years, six terms as Governor of the Territory and four terms as Governor of the State.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-1-1891
Event Description: The "new University of Virginia" opens for classes. University President Woodrow Wilson has expanded it to become a statewide system. In addition to the main campus at Charlottesville, founded by Thomas Jefferson, establishing a polytechnic branch at Blacksburg, a western campus at the former Marshall College at Huntington, a northern campus at the former University of Western Virginia at Morgantown, and, upon the advice of several professors and against his own prejudices, a college for Negro students in Norfolk. Wilson's plan becomes a model for State universities all over the nation, and makes him a national figure.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 10-15-1891
Event Description: Secretary of War William H. "Rooney" Lee, son of the martyred President Robert E. Lee, dies in office. With the national economy starting to falter, Democratic leaders saw Lee as the Party's best chance to stay in power, with Grover Cleveland's second term coming to an end and the likelihood that he could win a third, even if he wanted to, becoming slimmer as do the nation's jobs and wages. Governor Ben Tillman of South Carolina, not recognizable as a Democrat to the Northern wing of the Party, has said of Cleveland, "If the President tries to come down here, I'll poke old Grover in his fat ribs with a pitchfork!"

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 3-6-1892
Event Description: Thomas J. Jackson, longtime commandant of Virginia Military Institute, known as "Stonewall" for his stubbornness, dies of a stroke at age 68.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 6-5-1892
Event Description: The Democratic Convention nominates Governor David B. Hill of New York to succeed President Grover Cleveland, as Hill had succeeded Cleveland as Governor in 1884. The Republicans nominate former Vice President James A. Garfield, now a Senator from his new home State of New Jersey.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-9-1892
Event Description: New Yorkers vote in their primaries to select nominees for Governor. The Republicans nominate Theodore Roosevelt, despite his age (34) and his exuberance. With nearly a generation of voting behind America's women, the Democrats nominate the first woman ever to receive a major party's nomination for Governor of any State, Victoria Martin, a 54-year-old stockbroker and magazine publisher who, under her former name of Victoria Woodhull, had been part of the drive for women receiving the right to vote in the 1860s and 1870s. She is running as a Democrat because the Republicans, for all intents and purposes, laughed her out of their nominating convention. She has convinced enough Democrats of a woman's worthiness for the Governorship for her to win the nomination, but many feel she cannot win the general election because of questions about her own worthiness for high office: She has married four times, has advocated free love, and exposed the popular Brooklyn minister Henry Ward Beecher as an adulterer and a blackmailer. Martin shares two traits that have plagued many American politicians, and will continue to do so in the 20th Century: She is disliked more for exposing some truths than others are for telling lies, and she faces the dilemma of people who like the candidate's ideas, but they don't like the candidate.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-2-1892
Event Description: Senator James A. Garfield of New Jersey, who had been James G. Blaine's Vice President and a Congressman from Ohio, is elected the 24th President of the United States. He defeats Governor David B. Hill of New York. Former Representative William McKinley of Ohio is elected Vice President. Representative Theodore Roosevelt is elected the youngest Governor in New York's history, replacing Hill. He defeats Victoria Martin, the first woman ever to receive a major party's nomination for Governor. Despite her landslide loss, in which not even a majority of women gave her their votes, Martin vows she will try again.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 1-13-1893
Event Description: Former President Abraham Lincoln, age 83, succumbed to pneumonia after battling the illness since before Christmas. Lincoln, hailed as the savior of the Union and beloved by the entire country, will be buried next to his wife, Mary Todd (1818-1882), in a private tomb in Springfield, Illinois. President Lincoln was laid out for viewing at the Illinois State Capitol for three days following his death. His only living son, Senator Robert Todd Lincoln (R-IL), attended the private burial on Jan 19, 1893.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 1-13-1893
Event Description: Former President Abraham Lincoln, age 83, succumbed to pneumonia after battling the illness since before Christmas. Lincoln, hailed as the savior of the Union and beloved by the entire country, will be buried next to his wife, Mary Todd (1818-1882), in a private tomb in Springfield, Illinois. President Lincoln was laid out for viewing at the Illinois State Capitol for three days following his death. His only living son, Senator Robert Todd Lincoln (R-IL), attended the private burial on Jan 19, 1893.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 1-27-1893
Event Description: Former President JAmes G. Blaine dies in Washington, D.C. He was 62.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 3-4-1893
Event Description: James Abram Garfield is sworn in as President. Former President Grover Cleveland and his wife Frances return home to New York City.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 6-11-1893
Event Description: Mark Hanna, an Ohio businessman largley responsible for getting President Garfield and Vice President McKinley nominated last year, is appointed to McKinley's seat in the U.S. Senate by the Ohio legislature. Upon hearing the news, several Congressman propose an Amendment to the Constitution, providing for direct election of U.S. Senators by the voters of their States, taking the choice away from the legislatures and the Party bosses who run them.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 10-30-1893
Event Description: The Monarchy in the Island of Hawaii is overthrown by white plantation owners. Queen Liliuokalani seeks help from the United States. President Garfield agrees and sends the Pacific Fleet to the aid the Queen. Commander Elias Bond of the Battleship "Abraham Lincoln" takes the revolting land owners, Allan Judd, Ian W. Rice and Anna Derby into custody. The Queen grants them amnesty on the promise that their lands will be converted to the farming of native plants and coffee. Judd and Rice refuse and are escorted to he "Abraham Lincoln" where they are held until the ship returns to America. Derby agrees and is granted 1/4 of each of the other lands. Her son later becomes the Hawaiian Ambassador to the United States

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 6-3-1894
Event Description: Federal troops, ordered by President James Garfield, attempt to restart the Chicago railroad yards, crippled by the strike by members of the American Railway Union. Someone throws a rock at one of the soldiers, and they open fire, killing an estimated 50 strikers. The railroad begins to run again in a few days, but the damage to the Garfield Administration's credibility is grave, especially with the depression that began last June now reaching depths not even the 1837-40 or 1873-76 depressions reached.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 8-2-1894
Event Description: President James A. Garfield is shot and killed on a visit to Chicago. He is 63 years old. The assassin, Edward Brady, was furious with Garfield's decision to use federal troops to break up the Pullman railroad workers' strike. Vice President William McKinley becomes the 25th President of the United States, saddled with a depression and labor strife. Though many people are in mourning for President Garfield, many others believe, with his handling of the economy and labor issues, that he had it coming. In the decades to come, Garfield will not be as honored as the other assassinated Presidents.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-7-1894
Event Description: Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York is re-elected, despite the nationwide depression that has many New Yorkers out of work. Most blame the Garfield-McKinley Administration, as TR has made an aggressive effort to bring jobs into his State. Victoria Martin, having lost her second race for Governor, is convinced that, if she could not win under the current economic conditions, she never will, and announces her retirement from electoral politics. But she will not give up fighting the good fight until a woman is President of the United States. The depression also causes voters to kick the Republicans out of the majority of both houses of Congress. Even more consequentially, they put the Democrats in control of many of the State legislatures, making ratification of the Constitutional Amendment allowing for direct election of U.S. Senators possible.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 12-11-1894
Event Description: Anarchist Edward Brady, assassin of President James Garfield, is hanged at the Illinois State Prison in Joliet. Protesting outside the prison are hundreds of anarchists, including Brady's former mistress, Emma Goldman. She is one of over sixty who are arrested, and will soon be deported.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 4-8-1895
Event Description: The 17th Amendment to the Constitution, allowing for direct election of U.S. Senators by the voters, is ratified.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 4-13-1896
Event Description: In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court rules 5-4 that public accomodations for blacks that are separate from, and yet equal to, those for whites are inherently unequal, and thus violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Racial segregation laws in the South had been occassionally enforced since the Seward-Grant Administration of the 1870s, but were now dead.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 6-17-1896
Event Description: A battle royal for the nomination for President shapes up at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Advocates of the continuation of the gold standard support either Senator Thomas J. Jarvis of North Carolina, who has also served as U.S. Minister to Brazil, or Senator "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman of South Carolina. Each has also served as Governor of his State. Advocates of the free coinage of silver suport former Representative William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska. Many of the delegates remember how Tillman got his nickname, from threatening to poke President Grover Cleveland "in the fat ribs with a pitchfork!" With that threat in mind, plus Jarvis also being a Southerner and far less vehement in opposition to blacks, Tillman doesn't stand a chance.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 6-18-1896
Event Description: The nomination of Senator Jarvis is almost derailed by Congressman Bryan, who gives a stirring speech on the free-silver issue: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns! You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!" But free-silver advocates, though louder than the "Goldbugs," are a minority, and Bryan, at 36, is just barely old enough to meet the Constitutional age requirement for the President. The 60-year-old Jarvis is talked into accepting Bryan as Vice President, and Bryan is talked into accepting second place on the ticket, with the implicit promise that either the free-silver issue will come up during a Jarvis Administration or that Bryan would be supported for President in either 1900 or 1904, and he could then force the issue himself. It will prove to be a dangerous bargain for both men.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-11-1896
Event Description: Despite great discontent around the nation, the Republicans nominate President William McKinley for a full term. Many of them want to nominate Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York for Vice President, because he has been cracking down on the political bosses in that State. TR refuses: "It is either the Presidency itself or the Governorship." Garret Hobart, Chairman of the Party in New Jersey and a former State legislator, is nominated for Vice President instead.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-4-1896
Event Description: Senator Thomas J. Jarvis of North Carolina is elected the 26th President of the United States. With the worst depression the country has ever seen still raging, the Democrat defeats the incumbent Republican President William McKinley. Most Republicans now regret that they did not throw the wildly unpopular McKinley overboard at their Convention and nominate the activist Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York for President, despite TR's youth (38) and penchant for cracking down on the kind of corruption that the Republicans have mastered since they became a political force in the 1860s.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-3-1897
Event Description: Woodrow Wilson, having resigned as President of the University of Virginia to campaign, is elected Governor of Virginia.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 4-25-1898
Event Description: President Jarvis asks for a declaration of war against Spain for its "atrocities" in Cuba, including their seeming culpability for the explosion that destroyed the battleship U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor on February 15.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 5-15-1898
Event Description: Theodore Roosevelt resigns the Governorship of New York, and enlists in the U.S. Army. Lieutenant Governor Timothy L. Woodruff is sworn in as Governor.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-1-1898
Event Description: General Theodore Roosevelt, who resigned as Governor of New York to lead men into the Spanish-American War, leads his "Rough Riders" up San Juan Hill in Cuba, marking the beginning of the end for Spain's presence in the Western Hemisphere.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-12-1898
Event Description: General Theodore Roosevelt returns to New York City. He says he will run to regain the Governorship of New York. The State's Republicans, not especially fond of his corruption-busting ways, knowns it cannot oppose the most popular man in America. Victoria Martin, who had opposed him in the 1892 and 1894 elections, suggests to him that his wife, Edith Roosevelt, should run for Governor in his place: "You've had your chance, General, and made the most of it. Why not let a woman try? She is nearly as popular as you are, she does not have the same enemies that you have, and she is more qualified for the office than I." TR laughs good-naturedly, but neither Martin nor Edith thinks the idea is funny.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-13-1898
Event Description: Victoria Martin, two-time Democratic nominee for Governor of New York, meets with a former holder of that office, former President Grover Cleveland, and his wife Frances at their apartment in Manhattan. Mrs. Martin tells the Clevelands about her conversation with the Roosevelts the day before, and how Theodore did not take seriously her suggestion that Edith run for Governor. She tells Frances that she ought to run for Governor in 1900 should TR be returned to Albany. She would then be 35, old enough to serve in the office. Frances is skeptical that she can be elected, even with women having had the vote since 1875 and her husband still being popular in the State. Grover says he thinks she has what it takes to do the job, but is just as sure that a woman cannot be elected Governor in these times, even if three-quarters of the State's female registered voters should support her.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-2-1898
Event Description: General Theodore Roosevelt is returned to the Governorship of New York, defeating Assemblyman John Stanchfield in the greatest landslide in the history of elections for that office. In order to reopen the Republican nomination, Governor Timothy Woodruff is promised the appointment to be Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court. He never wins elective office again.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 3-12-1899
Event Description: Former President Grover Cleveland and his wife Frances move from New York City to Princeton, New Jersey. This ends the dream of feminist leader Victoria Martin to elect Mrs. Cleveland, and seemingly any woman, to the office of Governor of New York, and throwing a huge obstacle in her bid to elect a woman -- any woman -- to the Presidency in her lifetime.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-4-1899
Event Description: President Thomas J. Jarvis signs bulls admitting Cuba and Puerto Rico as the 47th and 48th States of the Union. The number of States will remain 48 until the Territories of Alaska and Hawaii are admitted in 1959, bringing the total to 50. Several of Jarvis' Democratic advisers, as well as Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York, hero of the recent war that brought those places to American rule and the leading contender for the Republican nomination for President in 1900, tell him he should annex the Philippines and make it a State as well. But with American soldiers still dying in guerilla attacks over there, he doesn't press Congress for a Statehood bill for the islands.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-1-1899
Event Description: The Philippine rebellion continues despite the fact that the oppressive Spanish are out and the Americans are in. President Jarvis acts to squash the rebellion, sending in more troops than he had during the Spanish-American War. Vice President Bryan warns him that a land war, especially a jungle war, in Asia could prove to be a disaster.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 5-6-1900
Event Description: William Jennings Bryan resigns the Vice Presidency, only the second man to do so. He says he cannot support President Jarvis on the continuing Philippine Campaign. This is a great blow to Jarvis' re-election chances, despite the booming economy that has recovered from the depression he inherited in 1897.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 6-21-1900
Event Description: The Republican Convention proves its Party to be at least as divided as the Democrats. Whether because of the age of Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York (41) or because of his willingness to go around the Party bosses, or because of his willingness to regulate big business in his State, or because of long-term loyalty to the old way of doing business in the Party, enough delegates stick with the Party's old ways and give the nomination to Senator Mark Hanna of Ohio, who had been the guiding force in the career of President William McKinley, and then was appointed to the Senate vacancy McKinley's election caused. Longtime Senator William Boyd Allison of Iowa, a Plains politician designed to blunt the influence of potential Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, is nominated for Vice President. Furious Roosevelt delegates storm out of the Convention, promising to run an independent campaign.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-17-1900
Event Description: The Democratic Convention is a free-for-all, as raucous a caucus as that of the Republicans. Even the choice of location caused a fight. Delegates loyal to President Thomas J. Jarvis wanted it in Raleigh. Delegates loyal to former President William Jennings Bryan wanted it in Omaha, or at least in nearby Kansas City. Baltimore, the largest city near the national capital, is chosen as a compromise. Having lost the battle for location, the Bryan forces go all out, blasting Jarvis for "imperialism" in the Philippines, citing comments he made about the Filipinos being "nonwhite savages"; and for "economic royalism" for refusing the free coinage of silver. Governor Woodrow Wilson of Virginia manages to settle things down by giving a speech reminding the Democrats that they always lose when divided, and that a united Party can beat the Republicans, whose voters are split between nominee Mark Hanna and splinter candidate Theodore Roosevelt, who has selected Representative Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin as his running mate on the Progressive Party ticket. But when Jarvis is renominated, the steaming Bryanites walk out. They vow to keep fighting, and run with former Representative Adlai Stevenson of Illinois for Vice President on the ticket of the Populist Party. After a Convention lasting 13 days, the Democrats depart with a ticket of Jarvis and Wilson, but without the Bryan supporters, estimated at one-third of their Party. Now there are four candidates for President: The Democratic incumbent Jarvis, Republican Hanna, Populist Bryan and Progressive Roosevelt.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 7-21-1900
Event Description: Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York, Progressive Party nominee for President, writes a letter to his old friend, Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, skewering his three opponents, Republican Mark Hanna, Populist William Jennings Bryan and incumbent Democrat Thomas Jarvis: "Whether the Hannites have prevented my election as President, I cannot yet say. But, without question, Cabot, they have prevented the Republican Party from winning in November. It will either be Jarvis again, or thrown into the House of Representatives, controlled by high-strung, whimpering Democrats, and God only knows how they will vote in January, the cantankerous bigot Jarvis or the insipid windbag Bryan. My election is only the third-most-likely outcome, and I dare not wager a penny upon it." The re-election of Jarvis, however, has just become far more likely, as General Arthur MacArthur has just accepted the surrender of several thousand Filipino guerilla fighters, turning the Philippine stalemate into a war the U.S. will win.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 11-6-1900
Event Description: President Thomas J. Jarvis, running his second Democratic campaign, is re-elected. Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York, the Republican who became the Progressive Party nominee for President, finishes second, something no other minor-party candidate has done since Abraham Lincoln turned the Republicans into a major party in 1860. Senator Mark Hanna of Ohio, with only big-business Republicans behind him, runs a distant third, and former Vice President William Jennings Bryan, the ex-Democrat who ran as the Populist Party candidate, finishes a straggling fourth. Jarvis wins 38 percent of the popular vote, Roosevelt 31, Hanna 21 and Bryan only 8. The Electoral Vote totals are Jarvis 237 (barely a majority, preventing the election from being decided by the House of Representatives), Roosevelt 128, Hanna 62 and Bryan a measly 11, taking only his home State of Nebraska and silver-dominated Nevada.

Timeline Number: 1217
Event Date: 9-6-1901
Event Description: President Thomas Jarvis is shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The shooter, a Polish-American anarchist named Leon Czolgosz, claims he did it to punish Jarvis for his imperialist policy. Jarvis does not die immediately, but his prognosis is not good. Vice President Woodrow Wilson, on vacation in New Jersey, returns to Washington immediately.



end lee of the union part one: at the crossroads of destiny
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