Timeline of the history of the United States (1820–1859)

This section of the timeline of United States history concerns events from 1820 to 1859.

1820s

1820s in the United States: 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823, 1824, 1825, 1826, 1827, 1828, 1829.

Presidency of James Monroe

U.S. territorial extent in 1820

• 1820 – Massachusetts divided in two with the admission of Maine as a state.
• 1820 – U.S. presidential election, 1820: James Monroe reelected president unopposed, Daniel D. Tompkins reelected vice president.
• March 4, 1821 – President Monroe and Vice President Tompkins begin their second terms
• 1821 – Missouri becomes a state
• 1821 – Florida becomes a U.S. territory; the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty goes into effect
• 1823 – Monroe Doctrine proclaimed
• 1824 – Gibbons v. Ogden (22 US 1 1824) affirms federal over state authority in interstate commerce. Gibbons' business partner is Cornelius Vanderbilt.
• 1824 – U.S. presidential election, 1824: Presidential results inconclusive. John C. Calhoun elected vice president.
• 1825 – John Quincy Adams elected president by the House of Representatives;

Presidency of John Quincy Adams

• March 4, 1825 – Adams becomes the sixth president; Calhoun becomes the seventh vice president
• 1825 – Erie Canal is finally completed
• 1826 – Former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die on the same day, which happens to be on the fiftieth anniversary of the approval of the Declaration of independence.
• 1828 – U.S. presidential election, 1828: Andrew Jackson elected president; John C. Calhoun reelected vice president
• December 22, 1828 - First Lady-designate Rachel Jackson dies of a heart attack.

Presidency of Andrew Jackson

• March 4, 1829 – Jackson becomes the seventh president; Vice President Calhoun begins second term

1830s

1830s in the United States: 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833, 1834, 1835, 1836, 1837, 1838, 1839.

U.S. territorial extent in 1830

• 1830s – Second Great Awakening is the religious revival movement
• 1830s – Oregon Trail which comes into use by settlers migrating to the Pacific Northwest.
• 1830 – Indian Removal Act
• 1831 – Nat Turner's revolt
• 1831 – The Liberator begins publication in 1831
• 1831 – Cyrus McCormick invents the mechanical reaper
• 1831 – Petticoat affair (also known as the Eaton affair)
• 1832 – Worcester v. State of Georgia the Supreme Court rules in favor of Cherokees; President Jackson ignores the ruling.
• 1832 – Maria Stewart is the first black American woman to give speech in front of a mixed audience.
• 1832 – Black Hawk War
• 1832 – Tariff of 1832
• 1832 – Ordinance of Nullification passed by South Carolina
• 1832 – Department of Indian Affairs established
• 1832 – 1832 United States presidential election: Andrew Jackson reelected president; Martin Van Buren elected vice president.
• 1832 – Jackson vetoes the charter renewal of the Second Bank of the United States, bringing to a head the Bank War and ultimately leading to the Panic of 1837.
• December 28, 1832 – Calhoun resigns as vice president.
• 1833 – The Force Bill expands presidential powers.
• March 4, 1833 – President Jackson begins second term; Van Buren becomes the eighth vice president.
• 1834 – Slavery debates at Lane Theological Seminary are one of the first major public discussions of the topic.
• 1835 – Mexican President Santa Anna annuls the 1824 constitution, precipitating a civil war which spawns the Texas War for Independence.
• 1835 – Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America published.
• 1835 – Second Seminole War begins in Florida as members of the Seminole tribe resist relocation.
• 1836 – Mexican President Santa Anna's army defeats Texas rebels at Battle of the Alamo
• 1836 – Battle of Goliad
• 1836 – Santa Anna deposed after losing the Battle of San Jacinto and recognizing Texan independence.
• 1836 – Creek War of 1836
• 1836 – Samuel Colt invents the revolver.
• 1836 – Original "gag rule" imposed when U.S. House of Representatives bars discussion of antislavery petitions.
• 1836 – Specie Circular issued
• 1836 – Arkansas becomes a state.
• 1836 – Texas is the Lone Star Republic
• 1836 – U.S. presidential election, 1836: Martin Van Buren elected president, no one is elected vice president.
• 1837 – Richard M. Johnson elected vice president by the Senate.

Presidency of Martin Van Buren

• March 4, 1837 – Van Buren becomes the eighth president; Johnson becomes the ninth vice president.
• 1837 – U.S. recognizes the Republic of Texas
• 1837 – Caroline affair
• 1837 – Michigan becomes a state
• 1837 – Oberlin College begins enrolling female students, becoming first coeducational college in the U.S.
• 1837 – Panic of 1837
• 1837 – Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge reverses Dartmouth College v. Woodward: property rights can be overridden by public eyed.
• 1838 – Forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from the southeastern U.S. leads to over 4,000 deaths in the Trail of Tears.
• 1838 – Aroostook War
• 1839 – Amistad case

1840s

1840s in the United States: 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, 1849.

U.S. territorial extent in 1840

• 1840 – 1840 United States presidential election: William Henry Harrison is elected president; John Tyler is elected vice president.
• 1841 – John Quincy Adams argues the Amistad Case before the Supreme Court.

Presidency of William Henry Harrison

• March 4, 1841 – Harrison becomes the ninth president; Tyler becomes the tenth vice president.
• March 6, 1841 – Supreme Court finds for Amistad defendants, freeing them.
• April 4, 1841 – President Harrison dies after only a month in office.

Presidency of John Tyler

• April 4, 1841 – Vice President Tyler becomes the tenth president
• September 11, 1841 – Tyler's cabinet resigns en masse. Only Daniel Webster remains.
• 1842 – Webster–Ashburton Treaty
• 1842 – The Dorr Rebellion: A civil war in Rhode Island
• July 10, 1842 - January, 1843 – Attempted impeachment of President Tyler.
• 1843 – Emigrants begin their  journey along the Oregon Trail.
• December, 1844 – Oregon passes its Black Exclusion Law.
• June 27, 1844 – Mormon leader, Joseph Smith Jr. assassinated.
• 1844 – U.S. presidential election, 1844, James K. Polk is elected president; George M. Dallas is elected vice president.
• 1845 – Texas annexation

Presidency of James K. Polk

• March 4, 1845 – Polk becomes the 11th president; Dallas becomes the 11th vice president.
• 1845 – Florida and Texas become states
• 1846 – Dred Scott sues for his freedom
• 1846 – The Mexican–American War begins
• 1846 – Bear Flag revolt in Alta California, which is momentarily independent.
• 1846 – Iowa becomes a state
• 1846 – Wilmot Proviso
• 1846 – The United States and  Great Britain sign the  Oregon Treaty
• 1847 – Abraham Lincoln introduces himself to the world by his introduction of the Spot Resolutions in the House.
• 1847 – Battle of Buena Vista
• 1847 – Battle of Veracruz
• 1848 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican–American War
• 1848 – Wisconsin becomes a state
• 1848 – Seneca Falls Convention
• 1848 – U.S. presidential election, 1848; Zachary Taylor is elected president; Millard Fillmore is elected vice president

Presidency of Zachary Taylor

• March 4, 1849 – Taylor becomes the 12th president; Fillmore becomes the 12th vice president
• 1849 – California Gold Rush begins

1850s

1850s in the United States: 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859.

• 1850 – Clayton–Bulwer Treaty
• 1850 – President Taylor threatens to veto Compromise of 1850 even if it means Civil War.
• June 3-11 –The secessionist Nashville Convention held in Nashville, Tennessee.

Presidency of Millard Fillmore

• July 9, 1850 – President Taylor dies, Vice President Fillmore becomes the 13th president
• September 9–20, 1850 – The Compromise of 1850, including the notorious Fugitive Slave Act passed
• September 9, 1850 – California becomes a state
• November 1850 – Nashville Convention reconvenes; Satisfied with the Compromise, it declares the Union intact-for the moment.
• 1852 – U.S. presidential election, 1852: Franklin Pierce elected president; William R. King elected vice president
• 1853 – Commodore Matthew Perry opens Japan

Presidency of Franklin Pierce

Further information: Bleeding Kansas

• March 4, 1853 – Pierce becomes the 14th president; King becomes the 13th vice president
• April 18, 1853 – Vice President King dies after only six weeks in office.
• 1854 – Gadsden Purchase from Mexico
• 1854 – Kansas–Nebraska Act; nullified Missouri Compromise
• 1854 – Ostend Manifesto
• 1854 – Whig Party collapses
• 1854 – Treaty of Kanagawa with Japan
• 1854 – Walker Expedition into Nicaragua
• 1854-1855 Know-Nothing Party, mushroom growth and sudden collapse
• 1855 – The Farmers' High School, which becomes Penn State University is founded.
• 1856 – Sack of Lawrence, Kansas
• 1856 – Pottawatomie massacre
• 1856 – Preston Brooks beats Charles Sumner with his walking stick on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building
• 1856 – U.S. presidential election, 1856: James Buchanan elected president; John C. Breckinridge, vice president

Presidency of James Buchanan

A writer at the Newberry Rising Sun of South Carolina aptly characterizes the forthcoming American Civil War from four years' distance

• March 4, 1857 – Buchanan becomes the 15th president; Breckinridge becomes the 14th vice president
• 1857 – Dred Scott v. Sandford 60 US 393 1857 declares that slaves and Blacks descended from slaves were not American citizens and cannot sue
• 1857 – Utah War
• 1857 – Lecompton Constitution rejected in Kansas Territory
• 1857 – Panic of 1857
• 1857 – San Francisco Board of Education established Minns Evening Normal School for current and prospective teachers, which becomes San Jose State University
• 1858 – Transatlantic cable laid
• 1858 – Minnesota becomes a state
• 1858 – Lincoln–Douglas debates
• 1858 – U.S. is party to Treaty of Tientsin
• 1859 – John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
• 1859 – Comstock Lode discovered

See also

• History of the United States (1789–1849)
• History of the United States (1849–1865)
• Timeline of the American Old West

Further reading

General survey

• Daniel Walker Howe. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. Oxford History of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. online
• Charles Sellers. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

1820s

• John S. Galbraith. "British-American Competition in the Border Fur Trade of the 1820s". Minnesota History, Vol. 36, No. 7 (Sep., 1959), pp. 241–249.
• Robert Henry Billigmeier and Fred Altschuler Picard, eds. The old land and the new : the journals of two Swiss families in America in the 1820s. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1965.
• Merrill D Peterson. Democracy, liberty and property; the State Constitutional Conventions of the 1820s. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1966.
• Robert A. McCaughey. "From Town to City: Boston in the 1820s". Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 88, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 191–213.
• James Brewer Stewart. "Evangelicalism and the Radical Strain in Southern Antislavery Thought During the 1820s". The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Aug., 1973), pp. 379–396.
• Anne M. Boylan. "Sunday Schools and Changing Evangelical Views of Children in the 1820s". Church History Studies in Christianity and Culture, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Sep., 1979), pp. 320–333
• Priscilla Ferguson Clement. "The Philadelphia Welfare Crisis of the 1820s". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 105, No. 2 (Apr., 1981), pp. 150–165.
• Barbara Cloud. "Oregon in the 1820s: The Congressional Perspective". The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1981), pp. 145–164.
• David J Russo. Keepers of our past : local historical writing in the United States, 1820s-1830s. New York : Greenwood Press, 1988.
• James L. Huston. Virtue Besieged: Virtue, "Equality, and the General Welfare in the Tariff Debates of the 1820s". Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Winter, 1994), pp. 523–547
• George A. Thompson, Jr. "Counterfeiter's Jargon of the 1820s". American Speech, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 334–335.

1830s

• Miguel Guelbenzu. "Gest's Recollections of Life in the Middle West in the 1830s". Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 73, No. 2 (June 1977), pp. 125–142.
• William R. Swagerty. "A View from the Bottom Up: The Work Force of the American Fur Company on the Upper Missouri in the 1830s". Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 43, No. 1, Fur Trade Issue (Winter, 1993), pp. 18–33.
• Curtis D. Johnson. "Supply-Side and Demand-Side Revivalism? Evaluating the Social Influences on New York State Evangelism in the 1830s". Social Science History, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 1–30.
• Mary Hershberger. "Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle against Indian Removal in the 1830s". The Journal of American History, Vol. 86, No. 1 (Jun., 1999), pp. 15–40
• Christine MacDonald. "Judging Jurisdictions: Geography and Race in Slave Law and Literature of the 1830s". American Literature, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Dec., 1999), pp. 625–655.

1840s

• Ralph Mann. "Mountains, Land, and Kin Networks: Burkes Garden, Virginia, in the 1840s and 1850s". The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Aug., 1992), pp. 411–434.
• Harlan D. Parker. "The Musical Cabinet: An Educational Journal of the Boston Area in the 1840s". Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, No. 116 (Spring, 1993), pp. 51–60.
• John W. Quist. "The Great Majority of Our Subscribers Are Farmers": The Michigan Abolitionist Constituency of the 1840s. Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 325–358. also
• Raymond L. Cohn. "Nativism and the End of the Mass Migration of the 1840s and 1850s". The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Jun., 2000), pp. 361–383.
• Patricia Junker. Thomas Cole's "Prometheus Bound:" An Allegory for the 1840s. American Art Journal, Vol. 31, No. 1/2 (2000), pp. 32–55.
• Ronald J. Zboray, Mary Saracino Zboray. "Gender Slurs in Boston's Partisan Press during the 1840s". Journal of American Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3, Part 1: Living in America: Recent and Contemporary Perspectives (Dec., 2000), pp. 413–446.
• Alice Taylor. "From Petitions to Partyism: Antislavery and the Domestication of Maine Politics in the 1840s and 1850s". The New England Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 70–88.

1850s

• P. L. Rainwater. "Economic Benefits of Secession: Opinions in Mississippi in the 1850s". The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Nov., 1935), pp. 459–474.
• Christopher Hatch. "Music for America: A Critical Controversy of the 1850s". American Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Winter, 1962), pp. 578–586.
• William W. Chenault, Robert C. Reinders. "The Northern-born Community of New Orleans in the 1850s". The Journal of American History, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Sep., 1964), pp. 232–24.
• Howard H. Bell. "Negro Nationalism in the 1850s". The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Winter, 1966), pp. 100–104.
• Jane H. Pease, William H. Pease. "Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s". The Journal of American History, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Mar., 1972), pp. 923–937.
• Howard I. Kushner. "Visions of the Northwest Coast: Gwin and Seward in the 1850s". The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Jul., 1973), pp. 295–306.
• Michael Fellman. "Theodore Parker and the Abolitionist Role in the 1850s". The Journal of American History, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Dec., 1974), pp. 666–684.
• Anne Firor Scott. "Women's Perspective on the Patriarchy in the 1850s". The Journal of American History, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Jun., 1974), pp. 52–64.
• James P. Morris. "An American First: Blood Transfusion in New Orleans in the 1850s". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Autumn, 1975), pp. 341–360.
• Marshall Scott Legan. "Railroad Sentiment in North Louisiana in the 1850s". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Spring, 1976), pp. 125–142.
• Carl Abbott. "Indianapolis in the 1850s: Popular Economic Thought and Urban Growth". Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 74, No. 4 (December 1978), pp. 293–315.
• Dale Baum. "Know-Nothingism and the Republican Majority in Massachusetts: The Political Realignment of the 1850s". The Journal of American History, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Mar., 1978), pp. 959–986.
• Susan Jackson. "Movin' On: Mobility through Houston in the 1850s". The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 81, No. 3 (Jan., 1978), pp. 251–282.
• Matilda W. Rice. "The 4th of July in the 1850s". Minnesota History, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Summer, 1984), pp. 54–55.
• Lori D. Ginzberg. "Moral Suasion Is Moral Balderdash: Women, Politics, and Social Activism in the 1850s". The Journal of American History, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Dec., 1986), pp. 601–622.
• Carla L. Peterson. ""Capitalism, Black (Under)Development, and the Production of the African-American Novel in the 1850s". American Literary History, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Winter, 1992), pp. 559–583.
• Marius M. Carriere Jr. "Anti-Catholicism, Nativism, and Louisiana Politics in the 1850s". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 455–474.
• Vincent J. Bertolini. "Fireside Chastity: The Erotics of Sentimental Bachelorhood in the 1850s". American Literature, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Dec., 1996), pp. 707–737.
• Larry Knight. "The Cart War: Defining American in San Antonio in the 1850s". The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 109, No. 3 (Jan., 2006), pp. 319–336.