1880, U.S. Census: total population, 50.16 million (residential); black, 6.58 million (13.1%). Immigration declined in 1870s, probably because of continuing economic depression in the U.S., as well as in Europe.
1880, James Garfield (Ohio), the compromise Republican nominee, elected president over Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock (Pennsylvania), November. Popular vote is the closest ever, with Garfield taking only 1,898 more (0.11%) than Hancock. Hancock is supported by the now-Solid Democratic South. Garfield’s close victory in New York, by less than 2 percent, puts him over in Electoral College.
Garfield collapses after being shot.
1881, Pres. Garfield shot at Washington’s Baltimore & Potomac railroad station by disgruntled job seeker, July 2. He dies 79 days later in Long Branch, NJ. Chester A. Arthur (New York) ascends to presidency.
1881, Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers founded by Lewis Adams, a former slave and son of a white planter, in Alabama, with Booker T. Washington, born into slavery in Virginia, as its first principal, July 4.
Background: Adams convinces Macon County blacks to support two Democratic state senators running for re-election in exchange for state support for this new teachers’ school for black people.
School opens in an AME Zion church. A former plantation is bought for the campus.
Cartoon of immigrant abuse.
1882, Pres. Arthur signs law banning entry of Chinese laborers, May 6, a major step in restriction of U.S. immigration policies. Later, Chinese who leave U.S. to meet with wives and families are not allowed to return.
Of the 105,000 Chinese counted in 1880 census, most are in California and neighboring states where they worked in mines and on the Pacific end of transcontinental railroads. Labor leaders, newspaper editors and politicians portray them as dangerous competition to whites.
Their number is down to 61,600 by 1910, when the Angel Island Immigration Station opens in San Francisco Bay, largely to vet and detain would-be Chinese immigrants; 30% are turned back.
The ban is extended several times and further tightened under the 1924 Immigration Act, which also sets quotas for other Asians and for Eastern and Southern European immigrants.
1883, France, which already has a settlement on Ile Saint-Marie, lands on mainland to enforce dubious business “concessions,” and gains port of Diego-Suarez at Madagascar’s northern tip for a coaling station. But Merina leaders put off French demand to submit to a protectorate.
1883, Supreme Court declares Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional, 8-1, essentially sanctions “separate but equal” facilities and transportation for whites and blacks, Oct. 15.
All nine justices are appointees of Republican presidents. Sole dissent comes from John Marshall Harlan, a former Kentucky slaveholder and a Union officer during the war, appointed by Hayes.
Maxim with machine gun.
1883, Hiram Maxim, a U.S. citizen working in West Norwood, England, wins first patents for a recoil-operated, water-cooled automatic machine gun, June. It is made possible by recent development of smokeless powder by Paul Vieille in France.
The first prototype is demonstrated in October 1884. Another early model is presented to the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition of 1886, and apparently helped to scare off unfriendly tribesmen. That same gun accompanied Frederick Lugard’s 1890 mission to establish a British proctectorate over the kingdom of Buganda (today’s Uganda).
Illustration from Huck Finn.
1884, Adventures of Huck Finn, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) is published in London, December, and two months later in New York. A satire of the attitudes and ways of antebellum Mississippi Valley. Jim, a runaway black slave, is a central character. Clemens grew up in the river town of Hannibal, MO, amid slaves and slaveholders (his parents and uncle included), worked as a Mississippi river pilot and served two weeks in a Confederate militia before taking a stagecoach to the Comstock mines in Nevada.
1884, World Cotton Centennial Exposition opens in New Orleans, Dec. 16. Celebrating the city’s importance in handling a third of all cotton produced in U.S. National government and many states contribute funds and exhibits.
Leaders meet for Berlin conference.
1884, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck opens 14-nation Berlin Conference, Nov. 15, to formalize the scramble for African colonies, already underway by European powers. Belgium’s Leopold II, who holds signed treaties with native Congo entities, plays a large role. All vow prohibition of the slave trade in their respective spheres in Africa to win public support for their plans.
Map highlights African colonies.
1885, Berlin Conference closes, Feb. 26, with General Act, which asserts colonies may be established in Africa only by “effective occupation” by a nation, which requires treaties with local peoples, establishment of an administration and an effective police force.
Conference grants possession of most of the Congo basin to King Leopold’s International Congo Society (thanks to 450 treaties with Congo leaders gathered mostly by Stanley). Europeans (and the U.S.) recognize Leopold as its sovereign; he dubs his new 900,000-plus square-mile empire “the Congo Free State.”
British claims on the Niger basin beyond its colony of Lagos are also confirmed, as the Royal Niger Company has established 30 trading posts and signed 400-plus treaties with local leaders for exclusive trade rights.
Germany makes its first claims in Africa (Cameroon, and present-day Namibia and Tanzania) while Portugal and France expand current holdings.
Small adjustment: After 440 years, Portugal relinquishes Ziguinchor and the Casamance (below the Gambia) to the French, who will combine it with Senegal, as part of the new French West Africa.
Ten years hence in this “Scramble for Africa,” only Morocco, Liberia, Ethiopia, the Sultanate of Hobyo (northern Somalia) and the Boer republics (bordering Cape Colony) remain independent. In the early 20th century, the Boers will submit to Britain; Morocco to France; and Somalia and Ethiopia to Italy. Borders of most present-day independent African nations harken back to final determinations of this conference.
Slaves on sugar plantation.
1886, Slavery abolished in Cuba, two years earlier than promised. Much of the sugar plantation work has already been taken over by indentured laborers, including former slaves, as well as Mexican mestizos from Yucatan and as many as 125,000 Chinese (mostly Cantonese and Hakka) who began arriving in the late 1850s.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is importing 82% of Cuba’s sugar, with the American Sugar Trust financing the latest, largest centralized mills. This guarantees domination of Cuban sugar by U.S. companies.
1886, Earthquake rocks Charleston, SC, killing nearly 100 people, damaging thousands of buildings, and breaking up railroads and highways, Aug. 31. Estimated at a magnitude of at least 7.0, it is felt in New Orleans, Chicago and Boston.
1887, Congress passes and Pres. Grover Cleveland signs the Dawes Severalty Act, intended as major reform for Indians’ benefit. It ends communal landholdings by Indian tribes, and directs president to subdivide land into lots for Indian heads of families (160 acres) and individuals (80 acres). Citizenship offered to individuals who leave reservations. Overall aim is to help “absorption” of Indians “into U.S. mainstream.”
In fact, it is destructive of traditional tribal organization and leadership as it has evolved on reservations, and designates surplus land to be sold to settlers, including large chunks of the Indian Territory (OK). Much of the land retained by individual Indians is ultimately lost to white speculators and swindles.
Schools and social services for Indians require that they give up their languages and tribal identities for the values of the larger white community.
Carriage with pneumatic tires.
1888, First practical pneumatic tire is developed in Belfast by John Boyd Dunlop, a Scots-born veterinarian. In the same year, Karl Benz begins first production of gasoline-fueled automobiles in Mannheim.
Demand for rubber builds for bicycle tires, then soars for auto tires. The known sources are wild Havea trees in the Amazon basin and Landolphia vines found in the Congo rain forest. By 1900, booming production is evenly divided between Brazil and the Congo, and leads to great suffering in both lands.
Princess Isabel of Brazil.
1888, Slavery abolished in Brazil, last nation in Western world to do so, when Isabel, princess imperial of Brazil, signs Lei Áurea (the Golden Law), May 13. Her ailing father, Emperor Pedro II, in Paris for medical treatment, is fully supportive.
But Pedro and his family are deposed the following year in a bloodless military coup supported, in part, by disgruntled former slave masters, particularly the large coffee growers.
1889, Total U.S. buffalo population put at only 541 animals. In 1750, it was estimated at more than 60 million.