DATE- # Dred Scott v. Sanford: Landmark Supreme Court decision holds that Congress does not have the right to ban slavery in states and, furthermore, that slaves are not citizens.

DATE- # Abolitionist John Brown and 21 followers capture federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. (now W. Va.), in an attempt to spark a slave revolt (Oct. 16).

DATE- # South Carolina secedes from the Union

DATE- # Confederates attack Ft. Sumter in Charleston, S.C., marking the start of the Civil War.

DATE- # Emancipation Proclamation is issued, freeing slaves in the Confederate states

DATE- # Lincoln is assassinated (April 14) by John Wilkes Booth in Washington, DC.

DATE- # U.S. acquires Alaska from Russia for the sum of $7.2 million

DATE- # Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads are joined at Promontory, Utah, creating first transcontinental railroad

DATE- # Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, giving blacks the right to vote

DATE- # Chicago fire kills 300 and leaves 90,000 people homeless

DATE- # Lt. Col. George A. Custer's regiment is wiped out by Sioux Indians under Sitting Bull at the Little Big Horn River, Mont.

DATE- # Statue of Liberty is dedicated (Oct. 28). American Federation of Labor is organized

DATE- # Last major battle of the Indian Wars occurs at Wounded Knee in South Dakota the frontier is closed

DATE- # Plessy v. Ferguson: Landmark Supreme Court decision holds that racial segregation is constitutional, paving the way for the repressive Jim Crow laws in the South

DATE- # Spanish-American War: USS Maine is blown up in Havana harbor. U.S. declares war on Spain (Spain gives up control of Cuba, which becomes an independent republic, and cedes Puerto Rico, Guam, and (for $20 million) the Philippines to the U.S.

DATE- # U.S. acquires Panama Canal Zone (treaty signed Nov. 17). Wright brothers make the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

DATE- # World War I: begins in 1914 U.S. enters World War I in War ends in 1919

DATE- # Jeannette Rankin of Montana is the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives

DATE- # Worldwide influenza epidemic strikes; by 1920, nearly 20 million are dead. In U.S., 500,000 perish.

DATE- # Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, granting women the right to vote