1841 in the United States

::William Henry Harrison (W-Ohio) (March 4 – April 4) ::John Tyler (W/I-Virginia) (starting April 4) - Vice President: ::Richard M. Johnson (D-Kentucky) (until March 4) ::John Tyler (W-Virginia) (March 4 – April 4) ::*vacant* (starting April 4) - Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney (Maryland) - Speaker of the House of Representatives: ::Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (W-Virginia) (until March 4) ::John White (W-Kentucky) (starting May 31) - Congress: [26th](26th-united-states-congress) (until March 4), [27th](27th-united-states-congress) (starting March 4) #### State governments ::data[format=table] | Governors and lieutenant governors | |---| | | :: ## Events ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/William_Henry_Harrison_daguerreotype_edit.jpg" caption="March 4: [[William Henry Harrison]] becomes the ninth U.S. president"] :: ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/John_Tyler_(cropped_3x4).png" caption="[[John Tyler]] becomes the tenth U.S. vice president"] :: ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Tyler_receives_news.jpg" caption="Tyler]] succeeds him as the tenth U.S. president"] :: - January 30 – A fire destroys 300 of the 500 housing units in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, Spanish Empire. - February 18–March 11 – First ongoing filibuster in the United States Senate. - February 24 – Richland County is chartered by the Illinois General Assembly. - March 4 – William Henry Harrison is sworn in as the ninth president of the United States, and John Tyler is sworn in as the tenth vice president. - March 9 – *Amistad*: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the case that the Africans who seized control of the ship had been taken into slavery illegally. - April 4 – President William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia, becoming the first president of the United States to die in office and at one month, the president with the shortest term served. He is succeeded by Vice President John Tyler, who becomes the tenth president of the United States. - April 6 – President John Tyler is sworn in. - April 20 – Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is published in *Graham's Magazine* (Philadelphia) (of which he became editor in February). The story will be recognized as the first significant work of detective fiction. - June 21 – Fordham University is opened in The Bronx by the Society of Jesus as St. John's College. - July 28 – Mary Rogers, the "Beautiful Cigar Girl", is found murdered in New York City. - August 2 – Benjamin Fitzpatrick is [elected](1841-alabama-gubernatorial-election) the 11th governor of Alabama defeating James W. McLung. - August 16 – President John Tyler vetoes a bill which called for the re-establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members riot outside the White House in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history. - September 13 – President John Tyler vetos another bill addressing his constitutional concerns. In response, the Whigs expel him from their party. - September 17 – John C. Colt murders Samuel Adams in an argument over a business debt in New York City. - c. November – The city of Dallas in Texas is founded by John Neely Bryan. - Frederick Douglass speaks at the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society Convention. - P. T. Barnum purchases Scudder's American Museum in New York City. - John Augustus develops the concept of probation in Boston, Massachusetts, by standing bail for lesser offenders. - The first steam self-propelled fire engine in the U.S. is completed by Paul Rapsey Hodge for use in New York City. ### Ongoing - Second Seminole War (1835–1842) ## Births - March 1 – Blanche Bruce, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1875 to 1881 (died [1898](1898-in-the-united-states)) - March 8 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (died [1935](1935-in-the-united-states)) - March 10 – Ina Coolbrith, poet (died [1928](1928-in-the-united-states)) - May 10 – James Gordon Bennett, Jr., newspaper publisher (died [1918](1918-in-the-united-states)) - April 8 – William J. Babcock, Medal of Honor recipient (died [1897](1897-in-the-united-states)) - May 15 - James Henderson Berry, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1885 to 1907 (died [1913](1913-in-the-united-states)) - Clarence Dutton, geologist (died [1912](1912-in-the-united-states)) - June 1 – Edward Lyon Buchwalter, businessman (died [1933](1933-in-the-united-states)) - July 5 – Mary Arthur McElroy, *de facto* First Lady of the United States from 1881 to 1885 (died [1917](1917-in-the-united-states)) - July 11 – James A. Barber, Medal of Honor recipient (died [1925](1925-in-the-united-states)) - September 8 – Charles J. Guiteau, assassin of President James A. Garfield (executed [1882](1882-in-the-united-states)) - October 12 – Joseph O'Dwyer, physician (died 1898) - October 18 – Bishop W. Perkins, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1892 to 1893 (died [1894](1894-in-the-united-states)) - October 29 – William Harris, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1897 to 1903 (died [1909](1909-in-the-united-states)) - November 6 – Nelson W. Aldrich, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island from 1881 to 1911 (died [1915](1915-in-the-united-states)) - November 13 – Edward Burd Grubb, Jr., American Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General (died 1913) - December 8 – Thomas R. Bard, U.S. Senator from California from 1900 to 1905 (died 1915) - Jennie de la Montagnie Lozier, physician (died [1915](1915-in-the-united-states)) ## Deaths ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/William_Henry_Harrison_by_James_Reid_Lambdin,_1835_closein_crop.jpg" caption="[[William Henry Harrison"] :: - February 25 – Philip P. Barbour, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1836 to 1841 (born [1783](1783-in-the-united-states)) - April 4 – William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States from March to April 1841 (born [1773](1773)) - September 25 – John Chandler, politician (born [1762](1762)) - October 6 – George Childress, lawyer and politician (born [1804](1804-in-the-united-states)) - October 21 – John Forsyth, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1818 to 1819 and 1829 to 1834 (born [1780](1780-in-the-united-states)) ## References ## References 1. Silverman, Kenneth. (1991). ["Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance"](https://archive.org/details/edgarpoe00kenn/page/171). *Harper Perennial*. 2. Meyers, Jeffrey. (1992). "Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy". *Cooper Square Press*. ::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1841_in_the_United_States) and is available under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the [article history page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1841_in_the_United_States?action=history). ::