Between the Civil War and Great Depression, Pennsylvania was controlled by a succession of Republican party "bosses" that ruled in the service of private enterprise in both the state and the nation's capital. To win protection of their own rights and liberties, Pennsylvanians struggled with limited success against one of the nation's most powerful and infamously corrupt political "machines."
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1865 |
The American Civil War ends. |
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1867 |
Former General John W. Geary (R) becomes the first of five Civil War officers elected governor of Pennsylvania; Simon Cameron returns to U.S. Senate and emerges as the first boss of Pennsylvania's powerful state Republican Party. |
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1868 |
Death of Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, a leader of Radical Reconstruction in the House of Representatives. |
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1868 |
Anthracite coal strike in northeastern Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania legislature passes the Coal and Iron Police Act, which enables companies to employ private police that enjoy all the powers of public law enforcement officers. |
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1869 |
Pennsylvania becomes the first state to pass mine safety legislation. Soon afterwards, 111 miners die during the Avondale mine disaster. |
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1869 |
Philadelphia school principal Ebeneezer Bassett becomes the United States' first African-American diplomat when President Ulysses S. Grant appoints him minister to Haiti. |
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1870 |
African Americans, denied the right to vote in Pennsylvania since 1838, receive it with ratification of the 15th Amendment. |
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1871 |
Octavius Catto is killed in Philadelphia while attempting to register black voters. Republicans win control of the city. They will control the city for more than seventy years. |
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1873 |
Ratification of a state constitution, designed to curb widespread political corruption, which doubles the size of the legislature and limits the governor to one four-year term. |
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1876 |
Pennsylvania Railroad President Thomas Scott helps engineer the nomination of Rutherford B. Hayes as the Republican candidate for president. |
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1877 |
Thirty die in Pittsburgh and Reading during the great Railroad Strike. |
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1877 |
At the request of Governor Hartranft, President Rutherford B. Hayes becomes the first president to authorize federal troops to intervene in a strike. |
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1877 |
Twenty Irish miners associated with the Molly Maguires are tried and executed in northeastern Pennsylvania in one of the most infamous political trials in American history |
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1878 |
Labor organizer and Greenback Labor party candidate Terence Powderly is elected the mayor of Scranton. The next year Powderly becomes head of the Knights of Labor. |
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1879 |
Eight persons, including three state legislators, are indicted and jailed for taking bribes from the Pennsylvania Railroad to pass a riot bill whereby state compensated the Railroad for $4 million damage from strike of 1877. |
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1879 |
Henry George publishes Poverty and Progress. |
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1880 |
Pennsylvania General James A. Beaver turns down offer to be James Garfield's vice presidential running mate; Garfield defeats Democratic candidate Winfield Scott Hancock, another Pennsylvanian, in the general election. |
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1881 |
Pennsylvania legislature passes a law, widely ignored, outlawing school segregation |
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1881 |
The Pennsylvania legislature passes a bill outlawing school segregation in the Commonwealth. |
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1883 |
A split between Republican Party regulars and reformers leads to the election of Democrat Robert Pattison as governor. Patterson becomes the first Democratic governor since William Fisher Packer stepped down from office in 1861. |
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1887 |
The Pennsylvania legislature elects Matthew Quay to U.S. Senate. He succeeds J. Donald Cameron as boss of the state Republican Party; the Pennsylvania legislature passes a state equal rights bill. |
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1888 |
Pennsylvania boss Matthew Quay runs Benjamin Harrison's successful national campaign for the presidency. |
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1889 |
Andrew Carnegie publishes The Gospel of Wealth, which argues in favor of an unregulated free market system, asserting that the wealthy, superior in wisdom and talent, can do better for workers than government or the workers can do for themselves. |
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1891 |
Robert Pattison (D) again becomes governor; Pennsylvania adopts the use of the secret ballot for elections. |
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1895 |
Daniel Hasting (R) becomes Governor. |
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1897 |
The old state capitol in Harrisburg burns to the ground. |
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1897 |
Coal and Iron Police deputies under Sheriff James Martin fire upon 400 unarmed marching miners in Luzerne County, killing nineteen and wounding thirty-six in the infamous Lattimer Massacre. |
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1897 |
Boise Penrose is elected to the U.S. Senate. |
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1898 |
John Wanamaker makes an unsuccessful bid for governor, campaigning against the "Quay Machine." Matthew Quay is indicted for misappropriating state funds and loses his seat in the U.S. Senate. |
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1899 |
Publication of W. E. B. Du Bois The Philadelphia Negro. |
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1901 |
Appointed to the State Forest Reservation Commission by Governor William Stone, Myra Dock becomes the first woman to serve in Pennsylvania state government. |
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1901 |
Andrew Carnegie sells Carnegie Steel to J. P. Morgan, who forms U. S. Steel; the Pennsylvania legislature re-elects Matthew Quay to the United States Senate |
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1902 |
Horace McFarland and Mira Dock lead the effort to clean up and modernize the city of Harrisburg. The Harrisburg Plan will later become a model for urban renewal in cities around the nation. |
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1902 |
150,000 Pennsylvania anthracite coal miners stage what at the time was the largest strike in American history. |
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1903 |
Samuel Pennypacker (R) elected Governor; Lincoln Steffens publishes articles on the corrupt city machines in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that become two of six chapters in The Shame of the Cities following year. |
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1904 |
Publication of Ida Tarbell's The History of the Standard Oil Company; Boies Penrose succeeds Matthew Quay as boss of the state Republican Party. |
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1905 |
Pennsylvania legislature creates the Pennsylvania State Constabulary in response to the scandalous behavior of Coal and Iron Police during the 1902 coal strike. |
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1906 |
President Roosevelt dedicates the new Capitol building in Harrisburg. Its architect, contractor, and the state treasurer and state auditor are indicted and jailed for inflating costs by $7.7 million. |
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1909 |
Pennsylvania corporate lawyer Philander K. Knox becomes President William Howard Taft's Secretary of State. Knox then formulates the policy of "dollar diplomacy," which guides American foreign policy. |
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1910 |
James Maurer of Reading becomes the first Socialist elected to the Pennsylvania legislature. |
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1911 |
Suffragist Alice Paul leads open-air meetings in Philadelphia to build public support for a state and federal suffrage amendment while working on her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. |
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1911 |
John Tener (R) elected Governor; State Board of Education established, along with minimum salaries for teachers. |
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1912 |
Educator and former college president Martin Brumbaugh becomes the first Ph.D. elected governor of Pennsylvania. During his term, Brumbaugh vetoes an unprecedented 400 bills to curb special interest legislation in the state. |
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1912 |
For the first time since 1860, Pennsylvania does not cast its votes for the Republican candidate for president. Instead, it gives them to former president Theodore Roosevelt, running on the Progressive Party ticket. |
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1913 |
Sixteenth Amendment to U.S. Constitution is adopted for the direct election of senators, in part to prevent Boies Penrose from being re-elected by the Pennsylvania State legislature; creation of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission |
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1913 |
Pennsylvania Democratic congressman and labor leader William Wilson becomes first Secretary of Labor; the Sproul Highway Bill places 9,000 miles of roads under state jurisdiction. |
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1914 |
Boise Penrose retains his seat in the Senate after campaigning publicly for the first time; Congress designates the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day, culminating a campaign begun by Philadelphian Anna Jarvis almost a decade earlier. |
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1915 |
Pennsylvania legislature passes the state's first workman's compensation law. |
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1915 |
The Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor releases Pennsylvania Cossacks,a publication documenting abuses committed by the Pennsylvania State Constabulary during labor strikes across the state. |
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1916 |
Creation of the National Park Service culminates long campaign led by Harrisburg's Horace McFarland to preserve the nation's natural wonders. |
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1917 |
The U.S. enters World War I. |
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1917 |
Harrisburg's Lavinia Dock and twenty other Pennsylvania suffragists, the most from any state, are arrested and jailed for participating in "Silent Sentinel" demonstrations outside the White House. |
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1919 |
President Woodrow Wilson appoints Pennsylvania Congressman A. Mitchell Palmer as Attorney General. Palmer then leads the infamous Palmer Raids of 1919 and 1920. |
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1919 |
William Sproul (R) elected Governor; Prohibition and Women's Suffrage adopted by constitutional amendment although Pennsylvania endorses neither. |
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1920 |
Pennsylvania Governor William Sproul turns down Warren G. Harding's offer to be his running mate in the upcoming presidential election. |
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1921 |
Pittsburgh multi-millionaire banker Andrew Mellon becomes Secretary of the Treasury, from which office he shapes the nation's financial policies during the Roaring Twenties. |
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1921 |
The death of Boise Penrose, the last of Pennsylvania's Republican state bosses. |
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1922 |
The first women were elected to the State House. All Republicans, they were: Sarah Gerturde MacKinney, Alice M. Bentley, Rosa S. DeYoung, Sarah McCunde Gallagher, Helen Grimes, Lillie H. Pitts, Martha G. Speiser, and Martha G. Thomas |
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1923 |
Newly elected governor Gifford Pinchot impanels a commission to investigate abuses by the State Police. |
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1924 |
President Calvin Coolidge loans Marine Corps general Smedley Darlington Butler to the city of Philadelphia to enforce Prohibition. (He fails.) |
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1925 |
Flora M. Vare of Philadelphia becomes the first woman to serve in the Pennsylvania Senate. |
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1926 |
Republican William Vare wins U. S. Senate seat over Democrat William Wilson, but is denied his seat when Governor Gifford Pinchot, whom Vare had beaten in the Republican primary, refuses to certify the election. |
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1927 |
Socialist J. Henry Stump is elected the mayor of Reading. |
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1929 |
The beginning of the Great Depression. |
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