Battle of Backbone Mountain

Events from the year 1831 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal government

• President: Andrew Jackson (D-Tennessee)
• Vice President: John C. Calhoun (D-South Carolina)
• Chief Justice: John Marshall (Virginia)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Andrew Stevenson (D-Virginia)
• Congress: 21st (until March 4), 22nd (starting March 4)

Events

January–March

• January 1 – William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing The Liberator, an antislavery newspaper, in Boston, Massachusetts.
• March 18 – Cherokee Nation v. Georgia: An injunction requested by the Cherokee nation, claiming that Georgia's state legislature had created laws which, "go directly to annihilate the Cherokees as a political society", is denied.

April–June

• April 18 – The University of Alabama is founded.^[1]
• April 21 – New York University is founded in New York City.

July–September

• August 7 – American Baptist minister William Miller preaches his first sermon on the Second Advent of Christ in Dresden, New York, launching the Advent Movement in the United States.
• August 21 – Outbreak of Nat Turner's Rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Approximately 55 whites are stabbed, shot and clubbed to death. At least 125 enslaved people were killed in response.

October–December

• October 30 – In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave revolt in United States history.
• November 5 – Slave leader Nat Turner is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia for inciting a violent slave uprising.
• November 11 – In Jerusalem, Virginia, Nat Turner is hanged.

Undated

• Alexis de Tocqueville visits the United States.
• Founding of:
  • Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
  • Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio (as "The Athenaeum").

Births

• January 2 – Justin Winsor, historian and librarian (died 1897)
• January 14 – William D. Washburn, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1889 to 1895 and businessman (died 1912)
• January 15 – Ozora P. Stearns, U.S. Senator from Minnesota in 1871 (died 1896)
• January 26 – Mary Mapes Dodge, children's writer (died 1907)
• February 23 – Elizabeth Litchfield Cunnyngham, missionary and church worker (died 1911)
• March 3 – George Pullman, inventor and industrialist (died 1897)
• March 6 – Philip Sheridan, general (died 1888)
• March 12 – Clement Studebaker, automobile pioneer (died 1901)
• March 14 – Edward A. Perry, Governor of Florida (died 1889)
• March 20 – Solomon L. Spink, U.S. Congressman from Illinois (died 1881)
• May 16 – Daniel Manning, businessman, journalist and politician, Secretary of the Treasury (died 1887)
• June 1 or 29 {exact date unknown) – John Bell Hood, Confederate general (died 1879)
• July 5 – Cordelia A. Greene, physician, reformer, benefactor (died 1905)
• July 8 – John Pemberton, inventor of Coca-Cola (died 1888)
• July 21 – Martha Maxwell, naturalist and artist (died 1881)
• August 26 – Lucy Hayes, First Lady of the United States as wife of Rutherford B. Hayes (died 1889)
• September 3 – States Rights Gist, lawyer, militia general in South Carolina and Confederate Army brigadier general (died 1864)
• September 10 – William A. Peffer, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1891 to 1897 (died 1912)
• September 20 – Kate Harrington, poet, teacher and writer (died 1917)
• September 29 – John Schofield, general (died 1906)
• October 15 – Helen Hunt Jackson, poet, writer and activist (died 1885)
• October 16 – Lucy Stanton, abolitionist (died 1910)
• October 28 – Charles Colcock Jones, Jr., Georgia politician, attorney, historian and folklorist (died 1893)
• October 29 – Othniel Charles Marsh, paleontologist (died 1899)
• October 31 – Romualdo Pacheco, Governor of California (died 1899)
• November 19 – James A. Garfield, 20th president of the United States from March to September 1881 (died 1881)
• November 21 – John Franklin Miller, U.S. Senator from California from 1881 to 1886 (died 1886)
• November 22 – Thomas J. Latham, lawyer and businessman (died 1911)
• December 19 – Bernice Pauahi Bishop, Hawaiian aliʻi (died 1884)

Deaths

• March 26 – Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1794 (born 1760)
• April 4 – Isaiah Thomas, publisher (born 1749)
• May 11 – John Trumbull, poet (born 1750)
• May 24 –
  • James Peale, miniaturist and still-life painter (born 1749)
  • Benjamin Carr, composer, singer, teacher, and music publisher (born 1768)
• May 27 – Jedediah Smith, explorer, hunter, trapper and fur trader (born 1799)
• July 4 – James Monroe, fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825 (born 1758)
• November 11 – Nat Turner, leader of slave rebellion (born 1800)
• December 8 – James Hoban, architect of the White House (born 1755 in Ireland)

See also

• Timeline of United States history (1820–1859)

References

External links

• Media related to 1831 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons