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| 1876 |
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| National League of Professional Baseball Clubs was formed and ushered in an era of managerial and business practices in the sport. | 1 |
| Johns Hopkins University opened in Baltimore as the nation's first real graduate school. Other universities began to move toward more research training in ensuing years. | 2 |
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| Feb. 15 |
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| Patent for manufacture of barbed wire. This was of the utmost significance in the conquest of the Great Plains. | 3 |
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| Nov |
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| The disputed election of Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–93). Republicans required all of the 20 disputed electoral votes in order to win the presidency. Since Congress had to approve the decision, the crisis continued until an informal agreement permitted the election of Hayes in exchange for removal of federal troops from southern soil, greater local control over federal patronage, and federal funds for southern internal improvement projects. The arrangement helped to avert a continuing conflict between the North and South, but at the expense of African-American rights. Within 20 years, Democrats in the region would control elections, and African Americans would be effectively disfranchised. | 4 |
| The Granger decisions. These decisions of the Supreme Court came as a climax to the first important farmers' movement in American history. In 1867 the Patrons of Husbandry, commonly called the Grange, had been formed as a nonpolitical organization of farmers. At this time the farmers in the Middle Western states were incensed because of the unfair practices of railways and grain elevators. Organizing farmers' parties, they proceeded (1870–75) to enact legislation in Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other states, bringing railways and grain elevators under state control. The Granger decisions established the following principles: (1) a state under its police power has authority to regulate a business that is clothed with a public interest; (2) until Congress acts in the premises, the states may establish rates for interstate shipments; (3) the determination of the reasonableness of rates is a legislative rather than a judicial function. The second of these principles was set aside in 1886 in the case of the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railroad v. Illinois, whereas the third was undermined and set aside by a series of decisions between 1889 and 1898, the last being the case of Smyth v. Ames. | 5 |
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