* In the “reconstruction” congress required the setting up of new state government for a second time. * The 14th amendment stipulated that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of laws; or deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” * March 4th 1689 Former Union General Ulysses S.
Grant, a republican, took office as the 18th president of the US, having campaigned on the slogan: “ let us have peace” * Alaska had been purchased recently in 1867, for Tsar alexander II of Russia for $7. 2 million * The purchased of Alaska had been criticized as “Seward’s Folly” in ridicule of secretary of state William Henry Seward because of a popular view that Alaska was a cold land of little economic value except for fur and fishing. * January, 1870 John D.
Rockefeller incorporated the standard Oil Company in Cleveland, Ohio * Within 5 years standard oil company controlled kerosene refineries in New york, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and talking over kerosene marketing terminal and distributors * September 4th, 1872 New York city’s Sun newspaper exposed the Credit Mobilier scandal * Massachusetts congressman Oakes Ames, together with director of the union pacific railroad, had formed a construction company which received large government contracts * Furthermore, congressman Ames had distributed shares of the company to other congressman, to official in the cabinet, and to Vice –president Schuyler Colfax * Till 1920 the majority of the US population was engaged in agriculture * Farmers and democratic candidates for office favored the coinage of silver, because some thought banks and financiers in the northwest manipulated the price of gold * March 4th 1874: President Grant began his second term March 11th, 1874: The Wisconsin legislature passed the potter law, which imposed state regulation of railroad freight rates * It was call “a Granger law”, because a farmer’s association growing in importance, the National Grange of the patrons of husbandry, called the “Grange” for short, had been pushing for government regulation of rail road freight rates * In 1874 what has been called “home-rule”, “the solid south”, and “the new south” was happening instead of boycotting the reconstructed state government, whites began voting in large numbers again, turning out carpet baggers, scalawags, and radical republicans and replacing them with Democrats * The discovery of gold and silver had been a major factor in drawing people from the east half of the U. S to California in 1849,, to Colorado and Nevada in 1859, and to south Dakota in 1875 * On the seventh ballot, it nominated Ohio governor Ruther Ford B. Hayes for president * June 26th 1876: in the battle of little bighorn, 265 cavalry under the command of Lt. Colonel George A. Custer were killed while pursuing the Sioux in Montana territory * January 16th, 1883: Congress passed a civil service act introduced by senator George H.
Pendleton of Ohio, the Pendleton civil service reform act, which set up a three member commission to oversee entrance exams for 14000 federal jobs, to which presidents could add in the future. * February, 1883: The senate ratified a treaty of friendship and commerce between the US and Korea * March 3,1886: Grover Cleveland a democrat took office as president * February 4, 1887: Congress passed the interstate commerce act, which prohibited railroads from discriminating among shippers, prohibited railroads from fixing prices, prohibited railroads from forming pools to divvy traffic among themselves and authorized the formation of a presidentially appointed five members interstate commerce commission to regulate rates. On April 22 1889: President Harrison officially opened part of Indian territory to settlement * July 2, 1890: Congress passed the Sherman antitrust act * The Sherman antitrust act outlawed Rockefeller-like “trust”, in which shares of stock were exchanged for certificates, and it outlawed other combinations and “conspiracies” which restrained interstate commerce and foreign trade * On May 19,1891, members of the farmer alliances and labor unions meeting in a convention in Cincinnati , Ohio, formed a new people’s or populist party * July 2, 1982: The newly organized populist party in Omaha, Nebraska, and nominated a recently defeated greenback party Iowa congressman, James B. Weaver, for president * The platform of the Populist party called for government ownership of railroads, grain storage facilities, telegraph lines, and telephone line. * It called for the coinage of silver * It called for a graduated income tax * It called for popular election of US senators * It called for the secret ballot Test 2 note * February 18th 1898: a US battleship Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, Cuba * Afterward “remember the Maine” became a slogan of some American who blames Spain for the explosion and wanted go to war * April 25th congress declare war on Spain * On July 1 – 2, 1898, US infantry under gen. Hamilton S.
Hawkins took San Joan Hill to the east of Santiago * Nearby, Colonel ( and recent Helpant secretary of the navy ) Theodore Roosevelt, on horse-back, charge up Kettle Hill, followed by the 9th and 10th African American regiment, on foot * February 6th,1899: the US senate ratified the formal treaty ending the Spanish – American war, the treaty of Paris is which Puerto Rico became US possession, the US paid Spain 20 billion for the Philippines and the independence of Cuba was recognized * September 6th,1899, secretary of state John Hay proposed to Britain, Germany, and Russia an “open door” policy for China: Chinese ports be opened to the trade of all nations * During the 1900 election campaign, both the democratic presidential candidates William Jennings Bryan, and the Republican vice-president candidate Theodore Roosevelt, attacked “trust” monopoly * December 2nd, 1901: President Roosevelt asserted in his first annual message to congress, “the government should have the right to inspect and examine the workings of the great corporations engaged in interstate business. * June 17th,1902: congress passed the Newlands reclamation act, authorizing the president to set aside more land for national parks * In august, 1902, president Roosevelt travelled through New England and the Midwest speaking out against abuses of “trust”, meaning, in the use if the time, monopolies. * President Roosevelt conspired with the former chief engineer of the French construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, in organizing a “revolution” against Columbia * On November 3rd,1903, a revolt against Columbia broke out in panama city with arm distributed by the city fire department * Marines from three US hips prevented Colombian troops from reaching Panama city * November 6th,1903 : secretary of the state john hay recognized the newly established country of Panama * March 14th,1904: the supreme court decided against the northern securities company in the Sherman antitrust case that the Roosevelt administration had brought against the company in 1902 and ordered the dissolution of the company * November 8th, 1904: president Roosevelt won the presidential election, to whom, some historians have asserted, a large percentage of growing urban white-collar vote went. * December 6th, 1904: in his annual message to congress, Roosevelt introduced the Roosevelt the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe doctrine: the US may act as an “international police power” in the western hemisphere when “chronic wrong doing” arises. June 4th, 1906: president Roosevelt released the Reynolds and nulls report, which confirmed unhealthy conditions in meatpacking * June 30th,1906: congress passed the pure food and drug act, which was aimed at mislabeling and adulteration of food, and, on, the same day, congress also passed the meat inspection act * During 1907 president Roosevelt set aside five national parks, sixteen national monuments, and fifty one wildlife sanctuaries * June 8th, 1908: after the national conservation congress, president Roosevelt appointed a national conservation commission to inventory the country’s natural resources * August, 1910: during a 16 state tour former president Theodore Roosevelt proposed regulation of corporate involvement in politics, a graduated income tax, inheritance taxes, federal labor regulations, conservation, and a tariff commission—all of which were called “new nationalism” or “square deal” * June 22nd, 1912: when the republican national convention was adjourning in Chicago, republicans who wanted to run Theodore Roosevelt again for president, instead of Taft, met at another location in Chicago and formed the progressive party, which was also called the “Bull Moose Party” * December 23rd, 1913: president Wilson signed the Glass-Owens Federal reserve Act, which would go into effect in November, 1914, setting up the federal reserve system of twelve regional bankers’ banks connected to national banks and optionally to state banks * A presidentially appointed board of governors set interest [“discount”] rates on loans to member banks * April 6th, 1917 congress declared war on Germany * January 1st, 1920 the Red Scared began with US attorney general A.
Mitchell palmer’s deportation of 500 resident Russians and arrest of more than 6000 other people, most of whom were released afterward * On June 8-12, 1920, the republican national convention met in Chicago and nominated a tobacco chewing, poker playing, whiskey drinking senator of Ohio, Warren G. Harding, for president and governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts for Vice-president * Harding was remembered particularly for the following line made in a speech a month before the republican convention: “America’s need is not heroics, but healing, not nostrums, but normalcy” * November 2nd,1920: republican senator warren G. Harding of Ohio won the presidential election with 16152000 popular votes and 404 electoral votes over 9147353 popular votes and 127 electoral votes for democrat James M. Cox * March 4th,1921 Warren G. Harding, republican, took office as president * March 4th, 1923: secretary of interior Albert B.
Fall resigned during a senate investigation into the lease of naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California, without competitive bidding * In addition to the Teapot Dome Scandal, the administration had been shaken by two suicides in March, 1923, and a Senate investigation and resignation of the director of veterans bureau, Charles R. Forbes, for mismanagement * August 2nd, 1923: president Harding died from an embolism in San Francisco during a trip to the West Coast and Alaska * October 24th, “black Thursday”, and again on October 9th, “black Tuesday”, 1929, the stock market crashed, beginning the Great Depression * June 27th – July 2nd, 1932: The democratic national convention also met in Chicago and nominate the Governor of New york, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, for president * Roosevelt campaigned for a “New Deal” and accused republicans of catering to special interest and big spending * On March 31th, 1933: Congress created the civilian conservation corps to employ young men in national forest reclamation project * April 19th, 1933: president Roosevelt, supported by act of congress, took the U. S off the gold standard purposely to devaluate the dollar and force the circulation of more money * June 16th, 1933: On the last of day of the Hundred Days, Congress passed the national recovery Act which created the national recovery administration, NRA, to draw up industrial codes, which included minimum wages, maximum hours, and collective bargaining, and created the public works administration, PWA, nder the secretary of the interior to fund public construction project * November 8th, 1933: the civil works administration was created by executive order to employ millions directly, bypassing the need of the state governments to match federal grants offered under federal emergency recovery administration * April 8, 1935 congress passed the emergency relief appropriation act, which authorized the president to disburse 5 billion by executive order for “work relief and to increase employment by providing useful project * May 6th, 1935: In pursuance of the act, the Works Progress administration, WPA, was set up * From 1933 to 1939 the US national debt had increased to $10,439,000,000 * On December 7th, 1941, Japanese armed forces made a surprise attack on the US pacific base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, as part of its strategy to take the Dutch East Indies, where there was oil Test 3 December 11th, 1941: Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini, allies of Japan, declared war on the US * November 7th, 1942: In operation Torch, US forces under general Dwight D. Eisenhower began landing in Morocco and Algeria * The US forces under General Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed the German and Italian armies toward Tunisia, while the British pushed them from Egypt. * June 6th,1944: D-Day a twelve nation allied expeditionary force (AEF) of 175000 soldiers, 5000 ships, and 6000 airplanes, invaded Normandy, France, from Britain * The invasion was called operation overlord * US General Dwight D. Eisenhower was top commander of the operation * September 12th,1944: US forces began entering Germany August 6th,1945: An US B-29, the “Enola Gay,” piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbett drop an atomic bomb, “little boy”, on a site of Japan’s defend industry, Hiroshima * August 9th, 1945: A US B-29, the “Bockscar,”, piloted by major Charles Sweeny dropped another atomic bomb on a second Japanese defend industry site, Nagasaki * March 5th, 1946: Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that “… an iron curtain has descended across Europe” in a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri * June 23th, 1947: Congress, in which Republicans outnumbered democrats, passed the Taft-Hartley Act over Truman’s veto * The Taft-Hartley Act authorized courts to issue injunctions imposing a from-sixty-to-eighty-day cooling off period on any strike jeopardizing public health or safety * The Taft Hartley act also made it illegal to use union dues to aid political parties * The Taft Hartley Act made the closed shop, hiring union members only, illegal, but it did not illegalize the union shop, requiring union membership after hire * US secretary of State George C.
Marshall indicated that the US would contribute to an European recovery plan that funneled US aid through an organization representing the participating countries, which became known as the “Marshall Plan” * December 19th, 1947, President Truman presented to Congress the European recovery plan that had been negotiated at Paris, the Marshall Plan, amending, though, the $28 billion originally negotiated to $17 billion * April 3rd, 1948, Congress passed the Foreign Helpance act, which appropriated $4 billion for the “Marshall plan” * June 28, 1948 The Foreign Aid appropriations Act directed $6 billion to the Marshall Plan and other foreign aid * July 12-15, 1948 The democratic national convention met in Philadelphia and nominated Truman for president * The democratic national convention adopted a civil right plank * July 17, 1948 Southern Democrats, “Dixiecrats” met in Birmingham, Alabama, formed the States Rights party, nominated Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for President, and adopted a segregationist plank * July 6, 1948 President Truman ended racial segregation in the US military by executive order and called for an end to racial discrimination in federal jobs * April 4th,1949 Representatives of the US, Canada, Britain, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, France, Italy, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland signed the north Atlantic security treaty in Washington DC, setting up an anti-communist, west European-North American, defensive alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO * February 7th, 1950 Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin said that there were Communists in the State Department when he gave a speech to a women’s club in Wheeling, West Virginia * 13 days later Senator McCarthy said that he had a list of Communist suspects * July 8th,1950 US general Douglas MacArthur was named Supreme Commander of the UN forces in South Korea, which were made up of mostly US personnel * July 20th, 1950 The Senate Foreign relations committee reported that Senator Joseph McCarthy’s allegations about Communist in the State Department ( made five months before) were unsubstantiated * July 7-11, 1952 The Republican National convention met in Chicago, and nominated General Dwight David Eisenhower for president and senator Richard M. Nixon of California for vice-president * The Republican national convention’s platform supported a balanced budget, reduction of the national debt, and the Taft-Hartley Act * January 20, 1953 Dwight D. Eisenhower, a republican, was inaugurated president of the United state * July 27, 1954 At Panmunjon, South Korea, near the North Korean border, U.
N and North Korean officials signed an armistice and conditions for prisoner exchange * January 12, 1954 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced a policy of “massive retaliation,” which he described as “keeping a large strategic reserve in the US to counter any communist threat to take over the Free World” * April 7, 1954 President Eisenhower told the press that he favored continuing US aid to the French in Indochina to prevent Southeast Asia becoming a “falling row of dominoes” to Communism * April 22 to June 17, 1954 A senate subcommittee investigated senator Joseph McCarthy after he had charged that there were Communists in the army, resulting in Senate censure of McCarthy on December 2, 1954 * On December 1, 1955 Mrs. Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in the front “white” section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama * A boycott of the bus system led by a local Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr. ollowed * From 1956 to 1959 the US slid into a recession, with declines in sales, productivity, and employment * In response, the Federal Reserve System lowered its discount rate, and Congress funded construction, especially highway construction, which had been proposed by the Eisenhower Administration * September 4-20, 1957 Governor Orville Faubus of Arkansas used the National Guard to block the entry of African America students into Little Rock Central High School till a federal injunction forced the removal of the Guard * September 23, 1957, rioting broke out a Little Rock Central High School * September 25, 1957 President Eisenhower sent the US army in to protect the nine African American students attending Little Rock high School * September 2, 1958 In the aftermath of Sputnik, President Eisenhower signed the National Defense education act, setting aside $800 million over four years for the teaching of science and foreign languages in school and colleges and for loans to college students * At the convention Senator Kennedy pushed for medical care for all aged Americans, and, in his acceptance speech, he called for sacrifices on a road to a “New Frontier” * January 17, 1961 In a live Farewell Address on TV, president Eisenhower warned about the increasing power of a “military industrial complex” * January 20, 1961 John F.
Kennedy, Democrat was inaugurated President of the US * March 1, 1961 By executive order President Kennedy created the Peace Corps, which funded Americans with particular academic knowledge or technical skills in developing countries where the knowledge or skills were needed * March 13, 1961 President Kennedy called for an Alliance for Progress in which US aid would raise health, education, and living standards in central and south America at the grassroots level * During April 17-20, 1961, about 1300 Cuban refugees landed at the Bay of Pigs, Cuba, to enter Cuba to set up a base of operations to overthrow Fidel Castro, but failed * The Cuban refugees had received military training under the auspices of the CIA since the Eisenhower Administration, they had been transported to the Bay of Pigs on US ships, and they had received US air cover * May 25, 1961 In a speech before Congress six weeks after the Soviets had placed a man in orbit, President Kennedy proposed sending a man to the moon by the end of the century * July 17, 1962 A proposal for Medicare, which president Kennedy supported, was defeated in the senate * October 22-28, 1962 Seven day long “Cuban Missile Crisis” occurred. President Kennedy demanded the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba and ordered the navy to interdict any shipment of Soviet missiles to Cuba * As soviet ship approached Cuba, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev backed off at the last moment in exchange for assurances that the US would not attack Cuba and would remove its missiles from Turkey if the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba * November 22,1963 President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas * January 8, 1964 President Johnson proposed reducing federal spending and proposed a “war on poverty: in the State of the Union Address * President Johnson increased the number of US military advisor in South Vietnam from 16000 to 21000 * July 2, 1964 a civil rights act outlawed racial discrimination in (1) facilities open to the public, (2) unions, and (3) federal employment, and it authorized the US attorney general to sue on the behalf of victims of discrimination * January 4,1965 In the state of the Union address, president Johnson recommended government spending in the areas of education, health care, the arts, urban renewal, reduction of pollution, and elimination of poverty for what he called the “Great Society” * February 7, 1965 president ordered bombing inside north Vietnam after a Viet Cong attack on a base at Pleiku, which was about 200 miles south of North Vietnam * The bombing would continue for three years, till March 31, 1968 * March 15, 1965 President Johnson sent a proposal for a voting rights bill to congress Test 4 July 28, 1965 President Johnson announced that he was sending 50000 more military personnel to South Vietnam, bringing the total to 125000 * July 30, 1965 President Johnson signed the Medicare Act in Independence, Missouri, in the presence of former President Harry Truman, who had pushed for national health care * August 6, 1965 President Johnson sign voting rights act, which authorized the suspension of literacy tests and the placement of federal registrars at locations where less than 50% of eligible voters had registered * November 3, 1966 President Johnson signed the Clean water restoration act, which was directed toward lakes and rivers * President Johnson signed the Air Quality Act, which appropriated $428,300,000 over three year to decrease air pollution * March 31, 1968 President Johnson stopped an any bombing above the 21st parallel in North Vietnam, which included Hanoi, and announced that he would not run for re-election * April 11, 1968 president Johnson signed a civil rights act supporting open housing * October 31,1968 president Johnson announced that all bombing of North Vietnam would stop the next day, November 1, 1968 * June 8,1969 president Nixon began the withdrawal of 250000 US military personnel from South Vietnam, explaining it as a turn-over of the war to the South Vietnamese, which the press called “Vietnamization” * September 16,1969 President Nixon further implemented “Vietnamization” by the withdrawal of 35000 more US military personnel from South Vietnam * April – November the US and Soviet Union negotiated a Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty in the Strategic Arms Limitation talks, SALT * April 20, 1970 president Nixon continued “Vietnamization” by withdrawal of 150000 more US military personnel from South Vietnam * April 30 – June 9, 1970 US ground forces crossed into Cambodia from south VN to destroy enemy supply bases – after having conducted 3500 secret bombing attacks inside Cambodia since 1969 * November 12, 1971 President Nixon continued “Vietnamization” by withdrawing 45000 more US military personnel from south Vietnam * November, 1971 – January, 1973 President Nixon imposed guidelines for wages and for prices, which he had been authorized to do by an act, the Economic Stabilization Act, recently passed by Congress * January 13, 1972 President Nixon continued “Vietnamization” policy by withdrawing 70000 more US military personnel from south VN * In February, 1972, President Nixon visited Communist China * The trip resulted in a joint communique announcing that steps would be make do normalize relations between the US and Communist China, which would be six years away , and announcing US recognition of Taiwan as part of China * May 26, 1972 President Nixon and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev agreed in Moscow to work for “peaceful coexistence” and signed, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, SALT, which was ratified by the US senate in August * June 17, 1972 five men employed by the Committee to re-elect the President broke into the offices of the Democratic national committee at the Watergate hotel in Washington, DC. August 12, 1972 President Nixon brought his “Vietnamization” policy to a conclusion by withdrawing US ground combat forces remaining in South VN * In October, 1972, the house of Judiciary committee began nearly 2 years of impeachment proceedings against president Nixon * The impeachment proceedings were the result of senate and special prosecutor investigations into the Watergate break-in in June, 1972, which contradicted a denial by president Nixon that he had anything to do with an attempted cover – up of the break-in * January 27,1973 US, South VN, Viet Cong, and North Vietnamese representatives signed a cease-fire agreement in Paris, France * June 13, 1973 President Nixon re-imposed guidelines on retail prices because of inflation * August 9, 1974 Facing the possibility of impeachment as a result of the Congressional investigations into Watergate, President Nixon resigned * July 15,1976 The democratic national convention met in New york city and nominated a Washington outsider, former engineer, naval, officer, farmer, and governor of Georgia, James E. Carter, for president * February 24, 1977 President Carter announced curtailment of foreign aid to governments violating human rights * August 4,1977 the department of energy was created On September 7, 1977, president Carter signed a treaty to turn the panama canal zone over to panama in October, 1979, and to turn the canal itself to panama in 1999, and the US senate would ratify treaty in march 1978 * September, 1978 Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, President Carter, and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat met at Camp David, Maryland, to negotiate a way to end the state of war that had continued between Egypt and Israel since Israel’s beginning in 1948 * On February – April, 1979, President Carter placed priced controls on oil in the US following a US embargo on Iranian oil and a 50% OPEC price hike * The embargo on oil from Iran had been imposed after Shah Pahlavi was overthrown in January by Shia Muslims under the leadership of an imam named Rubollah Khomeini * September 27, 1979 Congress approved President Carter’s request for the creation of a separate department of education * November 4,1979 students took 66 US citizens in the US embassy in Tehran, Iran, hostage, in protest of the US’s allowing Shah Pahlavi to come to the US for medical treatment * April 25, 1980, US military landed overnight near Tehran, Iran to rescue the US hostages but mishaps with the aircraft scuttled the operation * July 16, 1980 The Republican National convention met in Detroit, Michigan, and nominated former announcer and actor Ronald Reagan for president * Ronald Reagan ran on a platform calling for cuts in government spending, for strengthening national defense, and for holding the line on taxes * November 4, 1980 Ronald Reagan defeated Carter’s bid for re-election with an electoral vote of 489 to 49 and a popular vote of 43,899,248 to 36,481,435 * President Reagan’s policy of reducing taxes for business and people with high incomes in anticipation that economic growth would more than make up the difference was called “supply-side economics,” “trickle-down economics,” and “Reaganomics” * July 16-19, 1984 The democratic national convention met in san Francisco, California, and nominated former Vice-president Walter Mondale for president and New York congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro for Vice-President, the first woman to be nominated for the vice-presidency * Between November 3-6, 1986 the New York times and Washington post ran reports that representatives of Ronald Reagan, before he took office, had covertly agreed to the shipment of pare parts and ammunition from the US to Iran in exchange for the release of the hostages on January 20,1981, the day Reagan would take office * November 25, 1986, reports circulated that money received from the sale of arms to Iran had been funneled to the contras in Nicaragua during the period congress had only approved humanitarian aid * July 7-24, 1987 Congressional hearings were held on the reported exchange of arms for the hostages in Iran and diversion of profits to the Contras in Nicaragua, what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair * Secretary of State George Shultz and other administration officials were reluctant to identify the higher-up who had oversight of the exchange and diversion * On June 3,1989, from 300 to 400 pro-democracy demonstrators were at Tiananmen Square in Beijing as the Communist leaders of the people’s republic of China began a Military crackdown in which thousands may have perished * In June 26 1990, in what appeared to many contradict a statement at the 1988 Republican national convention, “read my lips.
No new taxes,” President Bush stated that “tax revenue increases” would be needed to reduce the deficit. * On August 2,1990 President Bush denounced an invasion and annexation of Kuwait by Iraq as “naked aggression” and warned the military dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, that the aggression “will not stand” * September 11, 1990 President Bush stated to joint session of Congress that administration’s policy to oppose control of southwest Asian oil resources by Saddam Hussein, whom he viewed as a brutal, unpredictable dictator. * On January 12, 1991. Congress authorized President Bush to use ground to liberate Kuwait * On January 17,1991, after the expiration of an U.
N deadline for Iraqi forces to evacuate Kuwait, US and a coalition of air forces began six weeks of attacks, called Operation desert Storm, targeting communications, nuclear and chemical weapons facilities, artillery, tanks, and troop positions in Iraq * August 15, 1991 four year after the beginning of the congressional hearings into the Iran-contra Affair, President Bush signed a bill requiring Presidents to report all covert action to congress and to authorized all covert actions in advance with a written presidential finding * February 21,1992 a little over two year after Tiananmen Square, the Bush administration lifted US trade sanctions against the People’s Republic of China * May 19, 1992 the 27th amendment was ratified, preventing a Congress form making salary increases for its members before the next Congressional election. July 16, 1992 the democratic national convention met in New York City nominated Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas for president * Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas campaigned as a “new democrat” and criticized supply-side economics, saying it had produced the highest federal deficit ever. * Governor Clinton placed emphasis on the global economy and promotion of democracy abroad, and he supported air strikes in Bosnia and human rights in China * November 3, 1992 Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton won the election, receiving 44909889 popular votes, which gave him an electoral vote of 370, to president Bush’s 36481435 popular votes and 168 electoral votes and Ross Perot’s 5719437 popular votes.