1817 in the United States

Events from the year 1817 in the United States.

Incumbents

February 7 - Baltimore becomes the first U.S. city with public street gas lighting.
March 3
*President James Madison vetoes John C. Calhoun's Bonus Bill.
*U.S. Congress passes law to split the Mississippi Territory, after Mississippi drafts a constitution, creating the Alabama Territory effective in August.
March 4 - James Monroe is sworn in as the fifth president of the United States, and Daniel D. Tompkins is sworn in as the sixth vice president.
March 6 - William W. Bibb is appointed by James Monroe as the only governor of the Alabama Territory.

April 15 - The first American school for the deaf opens in Hartford, Connecticut.
April 29 - The Rush–Bagot Treaty, between the U.S. and the United Kingdom, is signed.
May - The General Convention of the Episcopal Church founds the General Theological Seminary while meeting in New York City.
June 18 - Henry Perry, a former member of the Republican Army of the North, is defeated near Coleto Creek after leading a force to capture Presidio La Bahía.

July 4 - At Rome, New York, construction on the Erie Canal begins.
July 12 - Benjamin Russell, in his Columbian Centinel newspaper, coins the phrase "Era of Good Feelings", which is later used to describe American politics from 1817 to 1825.
August 15 - By act of the U.S. Congress, the Alabama Territory is created by splitting the Mississippi Territory in half, on the day the Mississippi constitution is drafted, four months before Mississippi becomes a U.S. state.
September 25 - William W. Bibb is sworn in as the only governor of the Alabama Territory.

November 20 - The first Seminole War begins in Florida.
December 10 - Mississippi is admitted as the 20th U.S. state, formerly the Mississippi Territory.. Then Alabama Territory is effective.
December 30 - Hawaii plants coffee for the first time.

John Neal published Keep Cool, A Novel, the first American work of fiction to use natural diction.
Hoffman's Course of Legal Study is published in Baltimore.

February 7 - LeRoy Pope Walker, 1st Confederate States Secretary of War
February 8 - Richard S. Ewell, Confederate general
March 22 - Braxton Bragg, Confederate general
March 26 - Herman Haupt, railroad civil engineer
July 1 - Hugh J. Jewett, railroad president and politician
July 12 - Henry David Thoreau, author, poet, philosopher, naturalist, environmentalist, surveyor, historian, abolitionist, tax resister and transcendentalist
August 4 - Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen, 29th United States Secretary of State
August 14 - Alexander H. Bailey, politician
September 13 - John M. Palmer, U.S. Senator for Illinois from 1891 to 1897
October 2 - Webster Wagner, inventor, manufacturer and politician
October 28 - Cornelius Mathews, writer
November 3 - Leonard Jerome, entrepreneur
November 17 - Benjamin Champney, landscape painter
November 19 - James A. McDougall, U.S. Senator from California from 1861 to 1867
December 23 - Warren Felt Evans, writer
December 29 - Eli Saulsbury, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1871 to 1889
December 31 - James T. Fields, publisher
Date unknown - George R. Riddle, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1864 to 1867, civil engineer and lawyer

January 16 - Alexander J. Dallas, statesman and financier
May 12 - William Goforth, physician and paleontologist
June 24 - Thomas McKean, lawyer, President of the Continental Congress, and signatory of the Declaration of Independence
August 7 - Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, French-born industrialist
September 18 - William Charles Wells, physician
September 23 - Solomon Metcalf Allen, professor of languages, killed in fall from college roof
Date unknown - Caleb Bingham, textbook author