1853 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Millard Fillmore , Franklin Pierce
• Vice President:
• * until March 4: vacant
• * March 4–April 18: William R. King
• * starting April 18: vacant
• Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Linn Boyd
• Congress: 32nd, 33rd

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January - Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night", which is later adopted as the state song of Kentucky under the name "My Old Kentucky Home", is published by Firth, Pond, & Company.
• January 6
• * President-elect Franklin Pierce and his family are involved in a train wreck near Andover, Massachusetts. Pierce's 11-year-old son Benjamin is killed in the crash.
• * East Florida Seminary is established; it is the oldest institution of what later becomes the University of Florida.
• February 22 - Washington University in St. Louis is founded as Eliot Seminary.
• March - Levi Strauss & Co. is founded in San Francisco, California.
• March 2 - Washington Territory is created from Oregon Territory.
• March 4 - Franklin Pierce becomes the 14th President of the United States, affirming the oath of office.
• March 5 - Steinway & Sons, a piano maker, is founded in Manhattan by the German immigrant Henry E. Steinway and his family.

  April–June

• April 4 - Regular operation of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad begins between Montreal and Portland, Maine.
• April 18 - Vice President William R. King dies of tuberculosis in Selma, Alabama, without having carried out any duties of the office.
• May - An outbreak of yellow fever kills 7,790 in New Orleans.
• May 6 - Norwalk rail accident: A train runs off an open swing bridge into a river in Norwalk, Connecticut, killing 56.
• May 11 - Shimer College is founded in Mount Carroll, Illinois, with 11 students.
• May 23 - The first plat for Seattle, Washington, is laid out.

  July–September

• July 1 - The Latting Observatory is opened for selected guests in New York City as part of the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations. It is the tallest structure in the city at the time.
• July 2 - Koszta Affair: American Captain Duncan Ingraham commanding the USS St. Louis threatens to open fire upon an Austrian ship holding Martin Koszta as a prisoner. Koszta, who is in the process of obtaining American citizenship, is later returned to the U.S.
• July 8 - U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrives in Edo Bay with a request for a trade treaty.
• July 14 - The Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations world's fair begins in New York City.
• July 25 - Outlaw and bandit Joaquin Murrieta is killed in California.
• August 24 - Potato chips are traditionally said to have been invented on this date by George Crum in Saratoga, New York.

  October–December

• October 4 - The Great Republic, the largest wooden clipper ship ever constructed, is launched in Boston by Donald McKay.
• October 15 - William Walker sets out with 45 men to conquer the Mexican territories of Baja California and Sonora.
• November 11 - Voters in Massachusetts reject all eight proposals from the state's Constitutional Convention that was held from May 4 to August 2.
• December 7 - Erie Gauge War: Citizens of the Erie, Pennsylvania, area act to stop new track being laid to resolve rail gauge differences coming from neighboring Ohio and New York.
• December 25 - Cincinnati riot of 1853: Cardinal Gaetano Bedini's visit to Cincinnati, Ohio, sparks a Christmas Day protest that leads to the death of a protester in brawl with police.
• December 30 - Gadsden Purchase: U.S. Ambassador James Gadsden signs a treaty to buy approximately 29,600 sq mi of land south of the Gila River and west of the Rio Grande from Mexico to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest.

  Undated

• Yontoket massacre: More than 450 Tolowa people are killed at Yontocket, California, by a citizen militia from Crescent City.
• The high school known as the Wheaton Academy is founded in West Chicago, Illinois.

  Ongoing

• California Gold Rush

  Births

• January 1 - Harry A. Richardson, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1907 to 1913
• January 2 - Packy Dillon, baseball player
• January 6 - Woodbridge Nathan Ferris, 28th Governor of Michigan from 1913 to 1917 and U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1923 to 1928
• February 18 - Ernest Fenollosa, Orientalist
• January 19 - Stephen M. White, U.S. Senator from California from 1893 to 1899
• February 3 - Hudson Maxim, inventor, chemist
• February 16 - Charles J. Hughes, Jr., U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1909 to 1911
• March 4 - Alexander S. Clay, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1897 to 1910
• March 5 - Howard Pyle, artist and fiction writer
• April 8 - Laura Alberta Linton, chemist
• April 23 - Thomas Nelson Page, writer and lawyer
• May 3 - E. W. Howe, author and editor
• June 12 - Chester Adgate Congdon, Minnesota mining magnate
• July 24 - William Gillette, actor, playwright and stage-manager
• July 27 - Elizabeth Plankinton, Milwaukee philanthropist
• September 17 - Henry Churchill de Mille, dramatist and playwright
• October 14 - John William Kendrick, railroad executive
• November 9 - Stanford White, architect
• November 13 - John Drew, Jr., actor
• November 26 - Bat Masterson, lawman
• December 23 - William Henry Moody, 35th United States Secretary of the Navy, 45th United States Attorney General, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
• December 31 - Tasker H. Bliss, general

  Deaths

• January 16 - Robert Lucas, governor of Ohio
• January 26 - Sylvester Judd, novelist
• March 30 - Abigail Fillmore, First Lady of the United States and Second Lady of the United States as wife of Millard Fillmore
• April 13 - James Iredell Jr., 23rd Governor of North Carolina from 1827 to 1828
• April 18 - William R. King, 13th Vice President of the United States from March to April 1853
• May 2 - Jesse B. Thomas, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1818 to 1829
• July 24 - Hezekiah C. Seymour, civil engineer
• August 23 - Alexander Calder, first mayor of Beaumont, Texas
• September 5 - George Poindexter, 2nd Governor of Mississippi from 1820 to 1822 and U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1830 to 1835
• October 5 - Mahlon Dickerson, judge and politician
• October 27 - Maria White Lowell, poet
• November 15 - Charles G. Atherton, U.S. Senator from New Hampshire from 1843 to 1849 and in 1853
• December 28 - Sarah Goodridge, miniature painter