January 1: William Lloyd Garrison publishes the first issue of The Liberator and emerges as a leader of the abolitionist movement in the United States.
February 12: Eclipse of the sun.
February 14: Congressman Edward Everett of Massachusetts speaks against Indian removal.
February 17: Correspondence between President Andrew Jackson and Vice-President John C. Calhoun is published.
March 7: Supreme Court hears arguments in Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge.
March 14: William Wirt, former attorney-general and lead counsel for the Cherokee Indians, addresses Supreme Court in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia.
March 18: Supreme Court issues decision in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia.
March 24: Dinner for Daniel Webster, senator from Massachusetts, at City Hotel in New York.
April 7: Resignations of Cabinet members in Jackson’s administration begin.
April 26: New York legislature abolishes imprisonment for debt.
May 10: Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave Beaumont arrive in New York from France and begin their tour of American society.
June 4-7: Meeting between Black Hawk, a Sauk warrior, and Major General Gaines of the United States Army at Rock Island, Illinois.
June 29: Magdalen Society Report on prostitution in New York is issued.
July 4: James Monroe, former President of the United States, dies.
Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina addresses the States Rights and Free Trade Party.
Representative William Drayton of South Carolina addresses the Union and States Rights Party.
John Quincy Adams, former president, addresses the town of Quincy, Massachusetts.
Hymn “America” performed for the first time.
July 25: Cyrus McCormick, a Virginia farmer and inventor, tests his mechanical reaper.
July 26: John C. Calhoun issues Fort Hill letter irrevocably linking him to nullification.
August 5: Frances Trollope arrives home in England with the manuscript of Domestic Manners of the Americans in hand.
August 22: Nat Turner’s rebellion begins.
August 25: John Quincy Adams delivers eulogy for James Monroe.
September 3: John James Audubon, artist and naturalist, arrives in New York.
September 24: Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story delivers consecration address at Mount Auburn Cemetery.
September 28: Anti-Masonic Convention in Baltimore nominates William Wirt as candidate for president.
September 30—October 7: Free Trade Convention, opposed to tariffs, meets in Philadelphia.
October 23: Charles Grandison Finney, a leading evangelical minister, delivers sermon “Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts.”
October 26: Friends of Domestic Industry Convention in support of tariffs is held in New York.
November 11: Nat Turner executed.
November 12: The John Bull, a steam-powered railroad car, makes its first trip.
November 25: Confessions of Nat Turner published.
December 12-16: National Republican Convention in Baltimore nominates Henry Clay of Kentucky for president.
December 14: Virginia legislature begins debate over the abolition of slavery.
December 24: Nicholas Biddle, director of the Second Bank of the United States, decides to apply early for rechartering of the institution.
December 26: Newspapers report that the cholera epidemic has reached England and is headed for the United States.