1852 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Millard Fillmore
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Linn Boyd
• Congress: 32nd

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

• January 15 - Nine men representing various Hebrew charitable organizations come together to form what will become the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
• February 16 - The Studebaker Brothers Wagon Company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, is established.
• February 19 - The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity is founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.
• March 2 - The first American experimental steam fire engine is tested.
• March 4 - The Phi Mu fraternity is established at Wesleyan College.
• March 20 - Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is first published in book form, in Boston.
• April 23 - More than 150 Wintu people are killed by a militia under the guidance of Trinity County sheriff William H. Dixon in the Bridge Gulch Massacre.
• July 1 - American statesman Henry Clay is the first to receive the honor of lying in state in the United States Capitol rotunda.
• July 5 - Frederick Douglass delivers his famous speech on "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery" in Rochester, New York.
• August 3 - The first Boat Race between Yale and Harvard, the first American intercollegiate athletic event, is held.
• September 15 - Loyola College opens its doors to students in the City of Baltimore, Maryland.
• November 2 - U.S. presidential election, 1852: Democrat Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire defeats Whig Winfield Scott of New Jersey.
• November 25 - Monticello Convention: 44 people from the northern parts of Oregon Territory meet and draft a petition to establish a separate territorial government north of the Columbia River.

  Undated

• In Hawaii sugar planters bring over the first Chinese laborers on 3 or 5 year contracts, giving them 3 dollars per month plus room and board for working a 12-hour day, 6 days a week.
• Loyola College in Maryland is chartered in Baltimore.
• Tufts University is founded in Medford, Massachusetts.
• Mills College is founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in Benicia, California.
• Justin Perkins, an American Presbyterian missionary, produces the first translation of the Bible in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, which is published with the parallel text of the Syriac Peshitta by the American Bible Society.

  Ongoing

• California Gold Rush

  Births

• January 8 - James Milton Carroll, Baptist pastor, leader, historian and author
• January 14 - Cornelia Cole Fairbanks, wife of Charles W. Fairbanks, Second Lady of the United States
• February 16 - Charles Taze Russell, Christian restorationist minister
• February 18 - Ferdinand Lee Barnett, African American journalist, lawyer and civil rights activist
• February 26 - John Harvey Kellogg, Adventist doctor and health reformer
• March 25 - Charles Loomis Dana, neurologist
• April 1 - Edwin Austin Abbey, painter and illustrator
• April 13 - F. W. Woolworth, merchant and businessman
• April 23 - Edwin Markham, poet
• May 1 - Calamity Jane, frontierswoman
• May 11 - Charles W. Fairbanks, 26th Vice President of the United States from 1905 till 1909 and United States Senator from Indiana from 1897 to 1905
• May 14 - Alton B. Parker, judge and Democratic political candidate
• May 18 - Gertrude Käsebier, née Stanton, one of the most influential American portrait photographers of the early 20th century
• May 23 - Weldon B. Heyburn, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1903 to 1912
• August 16 - Charles Sanger Mellen, railroad manager
• September 15 - Edward Bouchet, African American physicist
• October 25 - Byron Andrews, journalist, statesman, author and businessman
• October 31 - Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, short-story and children's fiction writer and poet
• November 1 - Eugene W. Chafin, politician
• November 10 - Henry van Dyke, author, poet, educator and clergyman
• November 16 - Joseph R. Burton, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1901 to 1906

  Deaths

• February 14 - Thomas Carlin, 7th Governor of Illinois from 1838 to 1842
• February 24 - John Frazee, first American-born sculptor to execute a bust in marble
• March 9 - Anson Dickinson, painter of miniature portraits
• April 10 - John Howard Payne, actor, playwright, author and consul in Tunis from 1842, lyricist for "Home! Sweet Home!"
• May 6 - William Bellinger Bulloch, U.S. Senator from Georgia in 1813
• May 15 - Louisa Adams, First Lady of the United States as wife of John Quincy Adams from 1825 to 1829
• May 18 - Briscoe Baldwin, planter and Virginia politician
• June 8 - Perry Smith, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1837 to 1843
• June 17 - William King, merchant, shipbuilder, army officer and statesman
• June 29 - Henry Clay, U.S. Senator from Kentucky 1806-1807, 1810-1811, 1831-1842 and 1849-1852
• July 19 - John McKinley, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1826 to 1831 and in 1837, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1837 to 1852
• August 14 - Margaret Taylor, First Lady of the United States as wife of Zachary Taylor
• September 20 - Philander Chase, Episcopal Church bishop, educator, pioneer of the western frontier and founder of Kenyon College
• September 23 - John Vanderlyn, neoclassical painter
• October 4 - James Whitcomb, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1849 to 1852
• October 13 - John Lloyd Stephens, traveler, diplomat and Mayanist archaeologist
• October 24 - Daniel Webster, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts
• October 25 - John C. Clark, politician
• November 18 - John Andrew Shulze, politician
• November 30 - Junius Brutus Booth, actor, father of John Wilkes Booth and Edwin Booth
• December 18 - Horatio Greenough, sculptor