Year

American Events

1861-65

The Civil War

1865

Lincoln Assassination

1865-77

The Reconstruction

1871

Great Chicago Fire

1878

Born on January 6th in Galesburg, IL to Swedish immigrant parents

1890s

Depression in USA; Social Democrats influence in midwest

1891

Leaves school after the 8th grade

1892-97

1.5 million immigrants entera the USA though Ellis Island.

1894

Eugene Debs leader of the American Railway Union (ARU) jailed during Pullman Strike of 1994

1897

Lives as a hobo for four months

1898

Serves in Puerto Rico in Spanish American War

Spanish American War

1899-1903

Attends Lombard College; leaves before graduating

1907

Over 1 million people immigrated into the USA, America's peak immigration year

1908

Marries Lilian Steichen (Paula); Sandburg campaigned for presidential candidate
Eugene V. Debs

1910

Sandburg becomes private secretary to Milwaukee's Socialist mayor, Emil Seidel

1911

Daughter Margaret born

1912

Sinking of Titanic

1916

Chicago Poems published; daughter Janet Born

1917

Cornhuskers published; Sandburg visits Stockholm; Sandburg's detained by the FBI while working as WWI news corespondent for the Newspaper Enterprise Association

USA enters WWI

1918

News correspondent Chicago Daily News; Daughter Helga born

WWI ends; "Red Scare" campaign lauched against radicals and left-wing organizations, lasted through 1921

1919

Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations idea fails in Congress; Chicago Race Riots

1920

Smoke and Steel published

Women gain the right to vote; major A.F. of L steelworker's union strike, President Wilson intervenes (strike inspired Sandburg's Smoke and Steel)

1921

Slabs of Sunburnt West and Rootabaga Stories published

1922

Family moves to Harbert, MI

Roaring 20's; Age of the Machines; Jazz and Harlem Renaissance

1925

Lincoln: The Prairie Years published

1926

American Songbag published

1927

Good Morning America published

Charles Lindberg crosses the Atlantic Ocean solo

1929

Sandburg leaves Chicago Daily News

Economic collapse; Wall Street stock market crash

1932

FDR initiates the New Deal

1939

Nazi Germany invades Poland; WWII begins

1940

Pulitzer Prize in history for Lincoln: The War Years

1945

Works for war effort; family pays $40,000 for 240 acre farm in Flat Rock, NC

WWII ends

1948

Suburbs, TV and baby-boomers flourish; Cold War begins

1950

His only novel Remembrance Rock published

Korean War

1951

Pulitzer Prize in literature for Complete Poems

1954

McCarthy Hearings

1959

Speaks before a joint session of Congress to celebrate Lincoln's 150th birthday

1960

Works in Hollywood on the Greatest Story Ever Told

American soldiers in Vietnam

1963

Honey and Salt published

JFK assassinated; church bombing
that killed four young Black girls in Birmingham, AL

1964

L. B. Johnson awards Sandburg the Presidential medal of Freedom

Vietnam escalates; Civil Rights movement in news

1967

Sandburg dies on July 22 at age 89

1968

Congress votes to establish Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site within the National Park System