Louisiana Timeline 1850-1900

Historic Events

Pre 1600        1600-1700        1700-1750        1750-1800        1850-1900        1900-1925        1925-1950

Louisiana - 1850-1900

In 1853 a yellow fever epidemic killed over 11,000 people in New Orleans.

Louisiana seceded from the Union to join the Confederacy on January 26, 1861.

On April 28, 1862 the Confederate army surrendered the city of New Orleans to the attacking Union forces. The following month, Baton Rouge also surrendered.

In May of 1865, the Confederate President Jefferson Davis, surrendered to the Union, marking the end of the Civil War.

A race riot erupted in New Orleans in 1866 resulting in 38 deaths and 146 injured.

Louisiana rejoined the Union in 1868.

In order to allow larger ships into New Orleans harbor, the mouth of the Mississippi was made deeper in 1869.

In 1878 an outbreak of yellow fever claimed around 4,550 lives.

Jefferson Davis died in New Orleans on December 6, 1889.

The hurricane of 1893 swept across Louisiana, with a loss of over 2,000 lives. Nearly 800 of those that perished were on the tiny island of Cheniere Caminada.

Also in 1893, almost 60 years since it started running, the St Charles Streetcar was electrified.

One of Louisiana's most influential politicians, Huey P Long, was born on August 30th 1894.

J Edgar Hoover was born on January 1, 1895.

America - 1850-1900

Allan Pinkerton forms the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Uncle Tom's cabin was published in 1852.

The first Otis passenger elevator was installed in the Haughty Store in New York in 1857.

The abolitionist, John Brown, was captured at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859, after a two day siege. he was hanged on the morning of December 2nd.

Jefferson Davis was elected President of the Confederacy on February 4th 1861.

A Confederate victory at Bull Run in 1861, marked the beginning of the Civil war.

In 1864 General William T Sherman marched 60,000 Union troops across Georgia.

Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army on April 9, 1865.

The Ku Klux Klan were founded in Tennessee in 1865.

The US purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867.

The first transcontinental railroad connected in Utah, when the central Pacific and Union Pacific lines were completed in 1869.

Jim Crow was born in Virginia in 1870.

After the hot, dry summer of 1871, by October Chicano was like a tinder box waiting for a spark. That came on October 8th, and the Great Fire destroyed a huge area of the city, killing over 200 people and leaving around 100,000 homeless.

Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner published The Gilded Age in 1873. The last thirty years of the 19th century were not unique in their embracing of wealth and corruption, but their acceleration of these attributes during this period is notable.

The Sioux Indians defeat Custer's army at Little Big Horn in 1876 but in 1890 the Sioux were defeated by the US Army at Wounded Knee.

James A Garfield, the 20th President of the United States was assassinated on July 2nd 1881, at Baltimore and Potomac Railway Station in Washington, DC. His death was the second of four Presidential assassinations that would shock America.

Also in 1881, the first cigarettes were manufactured on a machine invented by the American, James Bosnack and on October 26, a thirty second gunfight took place at the O.K. Corral, making legends of Doc Holliday and the brothers Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt Earp.

Coca cola was first registered as a patented medicine in 1885.

The World - Pre 1600

On October 25, 1854, Russian troops slaughtered over 150 British soldiers in the battle at Balaclava in Crimea. This was immortalized by Tennyson in his poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade. A month later Florence Nightingale arrived in Crimea with a group of 38 nurses.

Construction of the Suez canal started in 1859.

In 1860, the first nursing school was opened in London, defining nursing as profession.

Victor Hugo's Les Miserable was first published in 1862 and Lewis Carol published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland a year later.

In 1864, the Taiping rebellion ended with 20 million lives lost.

Rome was made capital of Italy in 1871.

The novel, Far From the Madding crowd by English writer Thomas Hardy became a popular success.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876.

In 1880, Buenos Aires became the capital of Argentina.

The first Sherlock Holmes novel was published in 1887.
A year later, Jack the Ripper murdered six women in London, this would become one of England's greatest mysteries and go on to inspire numerous books and movies.