American Civil War, Industrialization
1886 American Federation of Labor Founded
1882 John D. Rockefeller Organizes Standard Oil Trust
1879 Thomas Edison Perfects the Electric Light
1876 Irvine Ranch Created from Mexican Ranchos
Figure 20. President Lincoln and his cabinet in 1861. Image courtesy of Library of Congress.
1861–1865 American Civil War 1863 Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
power, taking the name Meiji (“enlightened rule”). The leaders of the Meiji Restoration (1867–1912) introduced fundamental social reforms, seeking to modernize and strengthen Japan against the threat posed by the colonial powers. These reforms put an end to feudalism and featured the creation of a bureaucratic state and national army, necessarily ending the special status of the samurai warrior class. They also fostered the creation of tax systems, the building of railroads and communications systems, and in
1872 Yellowstone, the World’s First National Park
When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 without receiving one electoral vote south of the Mason-Dixon line, Southerners quickly reassessed the value of remaining in the Union, where they feared their minority status and the hostility of Lincoln’s “free soil” Republicans would make preserving slavery impossible. In late 1860, seven southern states seceded from the United States, forming the Confederate States of America and designating Jefferson Davis as president. Four more states later joined the Confederacy, leaving but 23 states loyal to the federal government. Hostilities between North and South began in April 1861 at Fort Sumter in South Carolina and continued for four agonizing years at a cost of more than 633,000 lives. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863, a wartime measure, though it did not make slavery illegal, began the process completed by the adoption of the 13th Amendment in December 1865, which outlawed slavery. SEE FIGURE 20 1868 Japan Embarks on Modernization Since the 17th century, despite the existence of an emperor, Japan had been ruled by the Tokugawa clan, led by a military leader called the shogun. During the shogunate period, Japanese society was stratified, inward looking, and militarily weak. Its economy was primarily agricultural, with little technological development. In 1868 the Tokugama shogun was overthrown and the emperor restored to
1871 Germany Becomes a Nation State; France Becomes a Republic
1890, the convening of a constitutional government with an elected parliament.
1869 U.S. Transcontinental Railroad Completed
1868 University of California Established at Berkeley
1868 University of California Established at Berkeley
Drafters of the 1849 Constitution for the new state of California envisioned creation of a major university that “would contribute even more than California’s gold to the glory and happiness of advancing generations.” Within two decades a university was established in Berkeley by merging a private College of California with a new state land-grant institution called the Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College. An early UC President, Daniel Coit Gilman (1872 –1875), came from Yale (America’s premier research university) to build a similar institution in the West, but he soon encountered a competing vision: that of a trade school for farmers and workers. In fact, the early years of the university were rife with battles over its mission — would it be scholarship, or service to agriculture and industry? Eventually the Yale-Gilman research model prevailed. By the end the century, the University of California had become widely recognized for academic excellence.
1868 Japan Embarks on Modernization
1863 Abraham Lincoln’s
1861–1865 American Civil War
Emancipation Proclamation
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, INDUSTRIALIZATION
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