1832

Events

January–March

• January 6 – Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison founds the New-England Anti-Slavery Society.
• January 13 – The Christmas Rebellion of slaves is brought to an end in Jamaica, after the island's white planters organize militias and the British Army sends companies of the 84th regiment to enforce martial law. More than 300 of the slave rebels will be publicly hanged for their part in the destruction.
• February 6 – The Swan River Colony is renamed Western Australia.
• February 9 – The Florida Legislative Council grants a city charter for Jacksonville, Florida.
• February 12
• * Ecuador annexes the Galápagos Islands.
• * A cholera epidemic in London claims at least 3,000 lives; the contagion spreads to France and North America later this year.
• February 28 – Charles Darwin and the crew of arrive at South America for the first time.
• March 24 – In Hiram, Ohio, a group of men beat, tar and feather Mormon leader Joseph Smith.

  April–June

• April 6 – The Black Hawk War begins in the United States.
• May 7 – The Treaty of London creates an independent Kingdom of Greece. Otto of Wittelsbach, Prince of Bavaria, is chosen King; thus begins the history of modern Greece.
• May 10 – The Egyptians, aided by Maronites, seize Acre from the Ottoman Empire after a 7-month siege.
• May 11 – Greece is recognized as a sovereign nation; the Treaty of Constantinople ends the Greek War of Independence in July.
• May 16 – Juan Godoy discovers the rich silver outcrops of Chañarcillo sparking the Chilean silver rush.
• May 30
• * The Hambacher Fest, a demonstration for civil liberties and national unity in Germany, ends with no result.
• * The Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario is opened.
• June 5–6 – The June Rebellion in France, anti-monarchist riots led chiefly by students, breaks out in Paris.
• June 7 – The Reform Act receives royal assent after passage by the British Parliament, reforming the electoral system and setting uniform law for voting rights in England and Wales, though not in Scotland or Ireland.
• June 9 – The Strasburg Rail Road is incorporated by the Pennsylvania State Legislature, making it the oldest continuously operating railroad in the Western Hemisphere.

  July–September

• July 1 – Global conglomerate Jardine Matheson is founded in Canton in Qing dynasty China by Scottish merchants.
• July 2 – André-Michel Guerry presents his Essay on moral statistics of France to the French Academy of Sciences, a significant step in the founding of empirical social science.
• July 4 – Durham University is founded in the north of England by an act of Parliament given royal assent by King William IV.
• July 9 – The Commissioner of Indian Affairs post is created within the United States Department of War.
• July 10 – The United States Survey of the Coast is revived within the Department of the Treasury.
• August 2 – The Bad Axe Massacre ends the last major Native American rebellion east of the Mississippi in the United States.
• August 7 – William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, has his coach attacked by an angry mob on his first official visit to Canterbury because of his opposition to the Reform Act in the United Kingdom.
• August 9 – Leopold I of Belgium marries the daughter of the French king Louise of Orléans in a dynastic marriage at the Château de Compiègne
• August 27 – Black Hawk surrenders to the United States authorities, ending the Black Hawk War.
• September 22 – Qasim al-Ahmad is appointed as the new Ottoman Governor of Jerusalem, after Sultan Mahmud II dismisses Muhammad Said Agha.

  October–December

• October 4 – Prince Otto of Bavaria, the second oldest son of King Ludwig I, is selected by Europe's major powers to become Othon, the first King of Greece, after the Hellenic nation's reacquisition of independence.
• October 20 – Principal Chief Levi Colbert and other leaders of the Chickasaw Nation of American Indians sign the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek with the United States, ceding their remaining 9,400 square miles of land to the U.S., in return for a promise that they will receive all proceeds of sales of the land by the federal government to private owners, along with expenses for relocation and food and supplies for one year. The area ceded includes the entire northern one-sixth of the state of Mississippi.
• October 29 - Alpha Delta Phi, the fifth-oldest college fraternity, is founded as a literary society by Samuel Eells at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.
• November 21 – Wabash College, a small, private, liberal arts college for men, is founded.
• November 24 – Nullification Crisis: The U.S. state of South Carolina passes the Ordinance of Nullification, challenging the power of the U.S. federal government, by declaring that it will not enforce national tariffs signed into law in 1828 and 1832.
• December 3 – 1832 United States presidential election: Andrew Jackson is re-elected president.
• December 4 – Siege of Antwerp: The last remaining Dutch stronghold, Antwerp Citadel, comes under French attack in the aftermath of the Belgian Revolution.
• December 10 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson responds to the Nullification Crisis by threatening to send the U.S. Army and Navy into South Carolina if it does not comply.
• December 21 – Battle of Konya: The Egyptians defeat the main Ottoman army in central Anatolia.
• December 23 – The Siege of Antwerp ends with the Dutch garrison losing the citadel.
• December 28 – John C. Calhoun becomes the first Vice President of the United States to resign.

  Date unknown

• George Catlin starts to live among the Sioux in the Dakota Territory.
• The first Baedeker guidebook, Voyage du Rhin de Mayence à Cologne, is published in Koblenz.
• Publication begins of Carl von Clausewitz's Vom Kriege.
• The City of Buffalo in New York is incorporated.
• The Cumberland and Oxford Canal connects the largest lakes of southern Maine with the seaport of Portland, Maine.
• Global watch brand Longines is founded in Switzerland.
• The first commutator DC electric motor, capable of turning machinery, is demonstrated by William Sturgeon in London.
• A local guide working for British explorer B. H. Hodgson during a Himalayan expedition claimed to have spotted a large bipedal creature running away in fear. It would become the first sighting of the so-called Yeti.

  Births

January–February

• January 1
• * Tom Jeffords, US Army scout and Indian agent
• * Charles N. Felton, American banker and politician
• January 4
• * Sir George Tryon, British admiral
• * Antoine Chanzy, French general and governor of Algeria
• January 6 – Gustave Doré, French painter, sculptor
• January 13 – Horatio Alger, Jr., American Unitarian minister, author
• January 21 – Carl Hubert von Wendt, German landowner and politician
• January 22 – Alonzo B. Cornell, 27th Governor of New York
• January 23
• * Édouard Manet, French painter
• * Charlotte Pousette, Swedish stage actress
• January 24
• * Joseph Hodges Choate, American lawyer and diplomat
• * Albert Arnz, German landscape painter
• January 25
• * Ivan Shishkin, Russian landscape painter
• * Paul Bronsart von Schellendorff, Prussian general and writer
• January 26 – George Shiras Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
• January 27 – Lewis Carroll, English author
• January 28 – Sir Charles Gough, British general, Victoria Cross recipient
• January 28
• * T. Muthuswamy Iyer, Lawyer, first Indian Judge of the Madras high court
• * Franz Wüllner, German composer and conductor
• January 29 – Wilhelm Böckmann, German architect
• January 30 – Infanta Luisa Fernanda of Spain, Duchess of Montpensier
• February 6 – John B. Gordon, attorney, slaveholding planter, general in the Confederate States Army, and politician
• February 9 – Adele Spitzeder, German actress, folk singer and confidence trickster
• February 18 – Octave Chanute, French-American engineer, aviation pioneer
• February 21 – Louis Maurer, German-American lithographer, and the father of painter Alfred Henry Maurer
• February 26 – John George Nicolay, German-American author, diplomat, and private secretary to Abraham Lincoln

  March–April

• March 4 – Samuel Colman, American painter, interior designer, and writer
• March 7 – Carl Neumann, German mathematician
• March 10 – John Owen Dominis, prince consort of the Kingdom of Hawaii as the husband of Queen Liliuokalani
• March 17 – Moncure D. Conway, American abolitionist minister and radical writer
• March 19 – Ármin Vámbéry, Hungarian Turkologist and traveler
• March 21 – Charles Altamont Doyle, illustrator, watercolourist and civil servant
• March 27 – William Quiller Orchardson, Scottish portraitist
• April 3 – James Sewall Reed, American soldier
• April 4 – Fedor Flinzer, German author, educator and illustrator
• April 5 – Jules Ferry, French premier
• April 7 – Ferdinand Kittel, German missionary, Lutheran priest and indologist
• April 8
• * Howell Edmunds Jackson, American politician, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
• * Alfred von Waldersee, German field marshal
• April 14
• * Wilhelm Busch, German humorist, poet, illustrator and painter
• * James H. Ledlie, civil engineer for American railroads and a general in the Union Army
• April 15 – John Irwin, American admiral
• April 17 – Robert Loyd-Lindsay, British soldier, politician, and philanthropist
• April 19
• * José Echegaray, Spanish writer, Nobel Prize laureate
• * Lucretia Garfield, First Lady of the United States

  May–June

• May 7 – Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, German Protestant theologian
• May 14
• * Charles Peace, English criminal
• * Rudolf Lipschitz, German mathematician
• May 20 – Garretson W. Gibson, 14th president of Liberia
• May 21
• * Hudson Taylor, English founder of the China Inland Mission
• * Edwin Warren Moïse, Jewish-American lawyer, Confederate officer, and Adjutant-General from South Carolina
• May 22 – Laura Gundersen, Norwegian actor
• March 26 – Michel Bréal, French philologist
• May 27 – Alexandr Aksakov, Russian writer
• May 28 – Heinrich XIV, Prince Reuss Younger Line from 1867 to 1913
• June 9 – Martha Waldron Janes, American minister, suffragist, columnist
• June 10 – Nicolaus Otto, German engineer
• June 11 – Jules Vallès, French journalist, author, and left-wing political activist
• June 12 – Pierre Théoma Boisrond-Canal, Haitian politician, 12th President of Haiti
• June 17 – Sir William Crookes, English chemist, physicist
• June 21
• * Louise Rayner, British watercolour artist
• * Joseph Rainey, American politician, first black person in the House of Representatives
• June 23 – Gustav Jäger, German naturalist and hygienist
• June 29 – Rafqa Pietra Chobok, Lebanese Maronite nun who was canonized