Timeline of United States history (1820–59)

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

1820s

U.S. territorial extent in 1820

• 1820 – U.S. presidential , 1820: James Monroe reelected president, Daniel D. Tompkins vice president.
• 1821 – Missouri becomes a state
• 1823 – Monroe Doctrine proclaimed
• 1824 – Gibbons v. Ogden (22 US 1 1824) affirms federal over state authority in interstate commerce
• 1824 – U.S. presidential election, 1824: results inconclusive.
• 1825 – John Quincy Adams elected president by the House of Representatives; John C. Calhoun becomes the vice president.
• 1825 – Erie Canal is finally completed
• 1826 – Former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die within hours of each other on Independence Day
• 1828 – South Carolina Exposition and Protest published during the Nullification Crisis
• 1828 – Baltimore and Ohio Railroad construction begun
• 1828 – U.S. presidential election, 1828: Andrew Jackson elected president, John C. Calhoun continues as vice president
• 1829 – Andrew Jackson is inaugurated

1830s

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 – Black Hawk War
• 1832 – Tariff of 1832
• 1832 – Ordinance of Nullification passed by South Carolina
• 1832 – Department of Indian Affairs established
• 1832 – United States presidential election, 1832: Andrew Jackson reelected president; Martin Van Buren elected vice president
• 1832 – Jackson vetos 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
• 1832 – John C. Calhoun resigns as vice president
• 1834 – Slavery debates at Lane Theological Seminary are one of the first major public discussions of the topic
• 1835 – Texas War for Independence begins
• 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 – Battle of the Alamo; Battle of San Jacinto
• 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 – U.S. presidential election, 1836: Martin Van Buren elected president, Richard Mentor Johnson vice president
• 1837 – Martin Van Buren inaugurated
• 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 need
• 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

U.S. territorial extent in 1840

• 1840 – United States presidential election, 1840
• 1841 – William Henry Harrison becomes President
• 1841 – John Quincy Adams argues the Amistad Case before the Supreme Court
• 1841 – President Harrison dies after only a month in office
• 1841 – John Tyler becomes President
• 1842 – Webster–Ashburton Treaty
• 1842 – The Dorr Rebellion: A civil war in Rhode Island
• 1843 – Attempt to impeach President Tyler fails
• 1844 – U.S. presidential election, 1844
• 1844 – Oregon message
• 1845 – Texas annexation
• 1845 – James K. Polk becomes President
• 1845 – Florida and Texas become states
• 1846 – The U.S.–Mexican War begins
• 1846 – Iowa becomes a state
• 1846 – Wilmot Proviso
• 1848 – U.S. presidential election, 1848
• 1848 – Wisconsin becomes a state
• 1848 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican–American War
• 1849 – Zachary Taylor becomes President
• 1849 – California Gold Rush begins

1850s

• 1850 – President Taylor threatens to veto Compromise of 1850 even if it means Civil War.
• 1850 – Zachary Taylor dies, Millard Fillmore becomes President
• 1850 – Clayton–Bulwer Treaty
• 1850 – Compromise of 1850 passed
• 1850 – California becomes a state
• 1852 – U.S. presidential election, 1852
• 1853 – Franklin Pierce becomes President
• 1853 – Commodore Matthew Perry opens Japan
• 1853 – Gadsden Purchase
• 1854 – Kansas–Nebraska Act; nullified Missouri Compromise
• 1854 – Ostend Manifesto
• 1854 – Treaty of Kanagawa
• 1854 – Walker Expedition
• 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
• 1857 – James Buchanan becomes President
• 1857 – Dred Scott v. Sandford 60 US 393 1857 declares that blacks are not citizens of the United States and cannot sue
• 1857 – Utah War
• 1857 – Lecompton Constitution rejected in Kansas Territory
• 1857 – Panic of 1857
• 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

Further reading

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, 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

• 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. 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.

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