1823 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: James Monroe
• Vice President: Daniel D. Tompkins
• Chief Justice: John Marshall
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Philip Pendleton Barbour , Henry Clay
• Congress: 17th, 18th

  Governors

• Governor of Alabama: Israel Pickens
• Governor of Connecticut: Oliver Wolcott, Jr.
• Governor of Delaware:
• * until January 21: Caleb Rodney
• * January 21-June 20: Joseph Haslet
• * June 20-June 23: Charles Thomas
• Governor of Georgia: John Clark , George M. Troup
• Governor of Illinois: Edward Coles
• Governor of Indiana: William Hendricks
• Governor of Kentucky: John Adair
• Governor of Louisiana: Thomas Bolling Robertson
• Governor of Maine: Albion K. Parris
• Governor of Maryland: Samuel Stevens, Jr.
• Governor of Massachusetts: John Brooks , William Eustis
• Governor of Mississippi: Walter Leake
• Governor of Missouri: Alexander McNair
• Governor of New Hampshire: Samuel Bell , Levi Woodbury
• Governor of New Jersey: Isaac Halstead Williamson
• Governor of New York: Joseph C. Yates
• Governor of North Carolina: Gabriel Holmes
• Governor of Ohio: Jeremiah Morrow
• Governor of Pennsylvania: Joseph Hiester , John Andrew Shulze
• Governor of Rhode Island: William C. Gibbs
• Governor of South Carolina: John Lyde Wilson
• Governor of Tennessee: William Carroll
• Governor of Vermont: Richard Skinner , Cornelius P. Van Ness
• Governor of Virginia: James Pleasants

  Lieutenant Governors

• Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: Jonathan Ingersoll , David Plant
• Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: Adolphus Hubbard
• Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: Ratliff Boon
• Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: William T. Barry
• Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: William Phillips, Jr. , Levi Lincoln, Jr.
• Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi: David Dickson
• Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: William Henry Ashley
• Lieutenant Governor of New York: Erastus Root
• Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Caleb Earle
• Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: Henry Bradley
• Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: Aaron Leland

  Events

• February 3 - Jackson Male Academy, precursor of Union University, opens in Tennessee.
• August 4 - Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop, the Mexican government administrator in charge of Anglo-American immigration into Mexico's state of Coahuila y Tejas, allows Stephen F. Austin to put together an 11-man police force, that will later be expanded to become the Texas Ranger Division.
• August 9 - The Arikara War breaks out between the Arikara nation and the United States, the first American military conflict with the Plains Indians.
• August 23 - Hugh Glass is attacked and mauled by a sow grizzly bear and left for dead in the Missouri Territory. He crawls 200 miles before reaching help, events depicted in The Revenant.
• September 22 - Joseph Smith first goes to the place near Manchester, New York, where the golden plates are stored, having been directed there by God through an angel.
• November 15 - Lone Horn succeeds his father, and becomes chief of the Minneconjou Sioux; he will be chief until his death on October 16, 1875.
• December 2 - Monroe Doctrine: US President James Monroe delivers a speech to the U.S. Congress, announcing a new policy of forbidding European interference in the Americas and establishing American neutrality in future European conflicts.
• December 23 - A Visit From St. Nicholas, attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, is first published.

  Undated

• United States jurisprudence first affirms the enduring rights of indigenous landholders.
• Orford Parish of East Hartford, Connecticut separates and is incorporated as the Town of Manchester by a special act of the Connecticut General Assembly.
• Middlebury College, Vermont, becomes the first US institution of higher education to grant a bachelor's degree to an African American, graduating Alexander Twilight.

  Ongoing

• Era of Good Feelings
• A. B. plot

  Births

• January 23 - Dan Rice, clown
• January 28 - Philip Spencer, founder of Chi Psi fraternity and midshipman aboard
• February 3 - Spencer Fullerton Baird, zoologist
• February 5 - Rachel Crane Mather, educator
• March 23 - Schuyler Colfax, 17th Vice President of the United States from 1869 to 1873
• April 1 - Simon Bolivar Buckner, soldier, politician and Confederate soldier
• April 3 - William M. Tweed, politician
• May 10 - John Sherman, 32nd United States Secretary of the Treasury, 35th United States Secretary of State
• May 15 - Thomas Lake Harris, poet
• May 22 - Solomon Bundy, politician
• May 26 - William Pryor Letchworth, businessman and philanthropist
• July 1 - Charles B. Farwell, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1887 to 1891
• July 9 - Phineas Gage, improbable head injury survivor
• July 18 - Leonard Fulton Ross, Civil War general
• July 24 - Arthur I. Boreman, U.S. Senator from West Virginia from 1869 to 1875
• August 3 - Thomas Francis Meagher, Civil War general
• August 4 - Oliver P. Morton, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1867 to 1877
• August 5 - Eliza Tibbets, mother of the California orange industry
• August 15 - Orris S. Ferry, Civil War general and U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1867 to 1875
• September 14 - Benjamin Harvey Hill, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1877 to 1882
• September 15 - Hugh Buchanan, politician from Georgia
• September 23
• * James Black, temperance leader
• * Sara Jane Lippincott, author, poet, correspondent, lecturer and newspaper founder
• September 27
• * Frederick H. Billings, lawyer and financier
• * Augusta Harvey Worthen, author and educator
• October 6 - George Henry Boker, poet, playwright and diplomat
• November 16 - Henry G. Davis, politician
• November 18 - Charles H. Bell, U.S. Senator from New Hampshire in 1879
• November 23 - Eliza Hendricks, Second Lady of the United States
• November 25 - Henry Wirz, Confederate military officer, prisoner-of-war camp commander
• December 22 - Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Unitarian minister and abolitionist
• December 28 - Thomas A. Scott, businessman and politician, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1874 to 1880

  Deaths

• January 21 - Gideon Olin, politician
• April 18 - George Cabot, merchant, seaman and U.S. Senator from Massachusetts from 1791 to 1796
• April 23 - John Williams Walker, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1819 to 1822
• September 28 - Charlotte Melmoth, tragic actress
• October 8 - Martin D. Hardin, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1816 to 1817