← 1823 1822 1821 1824 in the United States → 1825 1826 1827
Decades:	1800s 1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s
See also:	History of the United States (1789–1849) Timeline of United States history (1820–1859) List of years in the United States

Events from the year 1824 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal government

• President: James Monroe (DR-Virginia)
• Vice President: Daniel D. Tompkins (DR-New York)
• Chief Justice: John Marshall (Virginia)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Henry Clay (DR-Kentucky)
• Congress: 18th

Events

• March 11 – U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs formed by John C. Calhoun without authorization from Congress.
• April – The United States Literary Gazette, a semi-monthly, begins publication. It publishes poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Cullen Bryant, among many others.^[1]
• April 15 – To defend the Cherokees' possession of their land, chief John Ross petitions Congress, fundamentally altering the traditional relationship between an Indian nation and whites.
• May 15 – A boiler explosion occurs on the steamship Aetna, under way in Upper New York Bay, killing more than ten passengers and injuring many more.^[2]
• May 26 – Arkansas Territory split creates Indian Territory.
• August 16 – Lafayette visits the United States, departing on September 7, 1825.
• October 26 – U.S. presidential election opens. Andrew Jackson will receive more popular votes than John Quincy Adams in the first election in which this vote is reported.
• November 1 – Miami University (chartered 1809) delivers its first classes in Oxford, Ohio.
• November 5 – Stephen Van Rensselaer establishes the Rensselaer School, which becomes the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute – the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world.
• November 15 – Quapaw cede a considerable tract between the Arkansas and the Saline River.^[3]
• December 1 – U.S. presidential election: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task to decide the winner (as stipulated by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution).
• December 24
  • Chief Pushmataha of the Choctaw Nation dies in Washington.
  • The Chi Phi (ΧΦ) Fraternity is founded at Princeton University.

Undated

• Iowa tribe removed to a reservation in Kansas.
• A treaty between several tribes and the United States Government establish a Half-Breed Tract in present-day Lee County, Iowa.^[4]
• Harmony Society establishes the settlement of Economy, Pennsylvania.
• Thomas Say begins publication of American Entomology, or Descriptions of the Insects of North America in Philadelphia, including the first description of the Colorado potato beetle.

Ongoing

• Era of Good Feelings (1817–1825)
• A. B. plot (1823–1824)
• John Neal publishing serially the first written history of American literature (1824-1825)^[5]

Births

• January 21 – Stonewall Jackson, Confederate general (died 1863)
• February 14 – Winfield Scott Hancock, Civil War Union general and political candidate (died 1886)
• March 9 – Leland Stanford, tycoon, U.S. Senator from California from 1885 to 1893 (died 1893)
• March 25 – Clinton L. Merriam, politician (died 1900)
• March 26 – Levi P. Morton, the 22nd vice president of the United States from 1889 to 1893 (died 1920)
• March 31 – William Morris Hunt, painter (died 1879)
• April 20 – Alfred H. Colquitt, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1883 to 1894 (died 1894)
• May 16 – Edmund Kirby Smith, career United States Army officer who serves with the Confederates during the American Civil War (died 1893)
• May 23 – Ambrose Burnside, Union Army general, railroad executive, inventor, industrialist and Rhode Island Senator (died 1881)
• June 20 – John Tyler Morgan, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1877 to 1907 (died 1907)
• July 21 – Stanley Matthews, politician and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (died 1889)
• July 25
  • Richard J. Oglesby, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1873 to 1878 (died 1899)
  • George Boyer Vashon, African American lawyer, abolitionist, poet and scholar (died 1878)
• August 7 – Gideon T. Stewart, temperance movement leader (died 1907)
• August 15 – Charles Godfrey Leland, folklorist (died 1903)
• September 4 – Phoebe Cary, poet, sister to Alice Cary (1820–1871) (died 1871)
• September 27 – Benjamin Apthorp Gould, astronomer (died 1896)
• October 2 – Henry C. Lord, railroad executive (died 1884)
• October 5 – Henry Chadwick, baseball writer and historian (died 1908)
• December 11 – Jonathan Letterman, surgeon and "Father of Battlefield Medicine" (died 1872)

Deaths

• March 2 – Susanna Rowson, novelist, poet and playwright (born 1762)
• April 3 – Sally Seymour, pastry chef and restaurateur
• July 14 – Kamehameha II, King of Hawaii (born 1797 in Hawaii; died in London)
• August 12 – Charles Nerinckx, founder of the Sisters of Loretto (born 1761 in Flanders)
• December 24 – Pushmataha, Choctaw chief (born c. 1764)