40 Events from 1860 to 1900 That Changed America

1871
Freedom and inclusion expanded with the railroads in 1871, as Utah became the second state to afford women the right to vote. However, it wasn’t all rosy. It was the dawn of the era that would come to be known as the Wild West. The railroads brought scores of Buffalo hunters who decimated herds that once numbered in the millions to satisfy booming demand from teeming cities in the East. Massacres and encroachment crushed the remaining American Indian tribes, and racial tensions soared as whites were forced to compete with freed slaves and masses of cheap, expendable Chinese workers who were shipped in for railroad labor.