1848 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal government

• President: James K. Polk (D-Tennessee)
• Vice President: George M. Dallas (D-Pennsylvania)
• Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney (Maryland)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Robert Charles Winthrop (W-Massachusetts)
• Congress: 30th

State governments

Events

January–March

• January 24 – California Gold Rush: James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, California.
• January 31 – The Washington Monument is established.
• February 2 – Mexican–American War: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the war and ceding to the U.S. virtually all of what becomes the southwestern United States in exchange for $15 million.
• March 18 – The Boston Public Library is founded by an act of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts.

April–June

• April 3 – The Chicago Board of Trade is founded by 82 Chicago merchants and business leaders.
• April 23 – The Illinois and Michigan Canal is completed.
• May 19 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2), ending the Mexican–American War, is ratified by the Mexican government.
• May 29 – Wisconsin is admitted as the 30th U.S. state (see History of Wisconsin).
• June 14–15 – The Liberty Party National Convention is held in Buffalo, New York. Presidential candidate Gerrit Smith establishes woman suffrage as a party plank.

July–September

• July 19 – Seneca Falls Convention: The first women's rights convention opens in Seneca Falls, New York.
• July 26 – The University of Wisconsin–Madison is founded.
• August 9 – The abolitionist Free Soil Party is founded by former president, Martin Van Buren in Buffalo, New York.
• August 14 – Oregon Territory is established.
• August 19 – California Gold Rush: The New York Herald breaks the news to the East Coast of the United States that there is a gold rush in California (although the rush started in January).
• September 12 – One of the successes of the Revolutions of 1848, the Swiss Federal Constitution, patterned on the U.S. Constitution, enters into force, creating a federal republic and one of the first modern democratic states in Europe.
• September 13 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage incredibly survives a 3-foot-plus iron rod being driven through his head.
• September 20 – The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is founded in Philadelphia.

October–December

• November 1 – The first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School (which later merges with Boston University School of Medicine), opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
• November 7 – U.S. presidential election, 1848: Whig Zachary Taylor of Louisiana defeats Democrat Lewis Cass of Michigan in the first U.S. presidential election to be held in every state on the same day.
• December 26 – The Phi Delta Theta fraternity is founded at Miami University.

No fixed date

• Rhodes College is founded in Clarksville, Tennessee as the Masonic University of Tennessee.
• The Shaker song "Simple Gifts" is written by Joseph Brackett in Alfred, Maine.

Ongoing

• Mexican–American War (1846–1848)
• California Gold Rush (1848–1855)

Births

• January 13 – Lilla Cabot Perry, painter (died 1933)
• February 20 – E. H. Harriman, railroad executive (died 1909)
• February 22 – Emily McGary Selinger, painter, author and educator (died 1927)
• March 8 – LaMarcus Adna Thompson, inventor (died 1919)
• March 19 – Wyatt Earp, lawman and gunfighter (died 1929)
• March 26 – Edward O. Wolcott, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1889 to 1901 (died 1905)
• May 10 – Lafayette Young, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1910 to 1911 (died 1926)
• June 15 – Sol Smith Russell, comedian (died 1902)
• July 22 – Winfield Scott Stratton, miner (died 1902)
• August 24 – Kate Claxton, actress (died 1924)
• September 4 – Lewis Howard Latimer, African American inventor (died 1928)
• September 29 – Caroline Yale, educator (died 1933)
• October 6 – Webb C. Ball, jeweler and watchmaker from Fredericktown, Ohio (died 1922)
• October 15 – Harmon Northrop Morse, chemist (died 1920)
• November 1 – Caroline Still Anderson, African American physician, educator and activist (died 1919)
• November 2 – Stephen Mallory II, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1897 to 1907 (died 1907)
• November 7 – B. B. Comer, 33rd Governor of Alabama, U.S. Senator from Alabama in 1920 (died 1927)
• November 20 – James M. Spangler, inventor (died 1915)
• November 27 – Henry A. Rowland, physicist (died 1901)

Deaths

• February 11 – Thomas Cole, landscape painter (born 1801 in the United Kingdom)
• February 23 – John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829 (born 1767)
• March 29 – John Jacob Astor, businessman (born 1763)
• April 29 – Chester Ashley, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1844 to 1848 (born 1790)
• May 18 – William Leidesdorff, businessman (born 1810)
• June 26 – Stevenson Archer, U.S. Congressman from Maryland from 1819 to 1821 (born 1786)
• July 20 – Francis R. Shunk, politician (born 1788)
• August 15 – Timothy Olmstead, composer, fifer in the American Revolutionary War (born 1759)
• August 30 – Simon Willard, horologist (born 1753)
• October 25 – Dixon Hall Lewis, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1844 to 1848 (born 1802)
• December 31 – Ambrose Hundley Sevier, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1836 to 1848 (born 1801)

References

References

1. Claflin, Alta Blanche (1915). [https://books.google.com/books?id=c10PAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA50 ''Political parties in the United States 1800–1914'']. New York Public Library. p. 50.
2. 0-252-02904-6.