1843 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President: John Tyler
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: John White , John Winston Jones
• Congress: 27th, 28th

  Governors

• Governor of Alabama: Benjamin Fitzpatrick
• Governor of Arkansas: Archibald Yell
• Governor of Connecticut: Chauncey Fitch Cleveland
• Governor of Delaware: William B. Cooper
• Governor of Georgia: Charles J. McDonald , George W. Crawford
• Governor of Illinois: Thomas Ford
• Governor of Indiana: Samuel Bigger , James Whitcomb
• Governor of Kentucky: Robert P. Letcher
• Governor of Louisiana: André B. Roman , Alexandre Mouton
• Governor of Maine: John Fairfield , Edward Kavanagh
• Governor of Maryland: Francis Thomas
• Governor of Massachusetts: John Davis , Marcus Morton
• Governor of Michigan: John S. Barry
• Governor of Mississippi: Tilghman Tucker
• Governor of Missouri: Thomas Reynolds
• Governor of New Hampshire: Henry Hubbard
• Governor of New Jersey: William Pennington , Daniel Haines
• Governor of New York: William C. Bouck
• Governor of North Carolina: John Motley Morehead
• Governor of Ohio: Wilson Shannon
• Governor of Pennsylvania: David R. Porter
• Governor of Rhode Island: Samuel Ward King , James Fenner
• Governor of South Carolina: James Henry Hammond
• Governor of Tennessee: James C. Jones
• Governor of Vermont: Charles Paine , John Mattocks
• Governor of Virginia: John Munford Gregory , James McDowell

  Lieutenant Governors

• Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: William S. Holabird
• Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: John Moore
• Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: Samuel Hall , Jesse D. Bright
• Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: Manlius Valerius Thomson
• Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: George Hull , Henry H. Childs
• Lieutenant Governor of Michigan: Origen D. Richardson
• Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: Meredith Miles Marmaduke
• Lieutenant Governor of New York: Daniel S. Dickinson
• Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Nathaniel Bullock , Byron Diman
• Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: Isaac Donnom Witherspoon
• Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: Waitstill R. Ranney , Horace Eaton

  Events

January–March

• January - Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is first published.
• February 6 - The Virginia Minstrels perform the first minstrel show.
• March 21 - The world does not end, contrary to the first prediction by American preacher William Miller.

  April–June

• April 30-May 16 - Naval Battle of Campeche: Naval Battle between the Mexican Navy versus the Texas Navy and the Yucatán Navy. The battle features the most advanced warships of its day.
• May 7 - Nakahama Manjirō lands in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the first known Japanese in the United States.
• May 22 - The first major wagon train for the American Northwest sets out with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri on the Oregon Trail.
• June 1–December - Fruitlands in Harvard, Massachusetts, led by Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane, functions

  July–September

• July 1 - Ulysses S. Grant graduates from West Point 21st from a class of 39.
• July 12 - Origin of Latter Day Saint polygamy: Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, receives a revelation recommending polygamy.
• August 19 - Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Black Cat" is first published, in The Saturday Evening Post.
• August 23 - Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna announces that the annexation of Texas by the United States would be considered an act of war by Mexico.

  October–December

• October - College of the Holy Cross opens as a boys' school in Worcester, Massachusetts, the first Jesuit college in New England.
• October 13 - In New York City, Henry Jones and 11 others found B'nai B'rith, the oldest Jewish service organization in the world.
• November 28 - Ka La Ku'oko'a : The Kingdom of Hawai`i is officially recognized by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and July Monarchy France as an independent nation.

  Undated

• Saint Louis University School of Law becomes the first law school west of the Mississippi River
• Abbeville, Louisiana is founded by descendants of Acadians from Nova Scotia.

  Births

• January 8
• *John H. Moffitt, politician
• *Letitia Stevenson, wife of Adlai Stevenson I, Second Lady of the United States
• January 10 - Frank James, outlaw
• January 29 - William McKinley, 25th President of the United States from 1897 to 1901
• February 2 - Knute Nelson, Norway-born 12th Governor of Minnesota from 1893 to 1895 and U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1895 to 1923
• February 3 - William Cornelius Van Horne, North American railway magnate
• February 9 - Andrew Traynor, soldier
• February 27 - Thomas Lowry, lawyer and businessman
• March 8 - Arthur Brown, U.S. Senator from Utah from 1896 to 1897
• March 17 - Henry Ware Lawton, general
• March 23 - Joseph F. Johnston, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1907 to 1913
• April 4 - William Henry Jackson, explorer and photographer
• April 8 - Howard Roberts, sculptor
• April 15 - Henry James, fiction writer
• May 6 - G. K. Gilbert, geologist
• June 4 - Charles Conrad Abbott, archaeologist and naturalist
• April 25 - Dwight M. Sabin, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1883 to 1889
• July 15 - Alfred W. Benson, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1906 to 1907
• July 19 - Francis J. Higginson, U.S. Navy admiral
• August 1 - Robert Todd Lincoln, statesman and businessman, son of Abraham Lincoln
• August 19 - C. I. Scofield, theologian
• September 25 - Melville Reuben Bissell, entrepreneur, inventor of the Carpet sweeper
• November 25 - Henry Ware Eliot, industrialist and philanthropist
• November 27 - Cornelius Vanderbilt II, railway magnate
• November 30 - Martha Ripley, physician
• December 28 - Prentiss Ingraham, military officer and author of dime fiction

  Deaths

• January 11 - Francis Scott Key, author of The Star Spangled Banner
• March 27 - Samuel McRoberts, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1841 to 1843
• March 31 - George A. Waggaman, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1831 to 1835
• April 1 - John Armstrong Jr., 7th United States Secretary of War
• April 17 - Samuel Morey, inventor
• April 25 - John McCracken Robinson, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1830 to 1841
• May 28 - Noah Webster, lexicographer
• July 7 - John Holmes, Maine politician
• July 9 - Washington Allston, painter, the "American Titian", and poet
• August - Sequoyah, creator of the Cherokee syllabary
• August 10 - Robert Adrain, mathematician
• September 11 - Joseph Nicollet, geographer
• September 30 - Richard Harlan, zoologist
• November 10 - John Trumbull, painter