1848 in the United States

Events from the year 1848 in the United States.

Incumbents

April 3 – The Chicago Board of Trade is founded by 82 Chicago merchants and business leaders.
April 23 – The Illinois and Michigan Canal is completed.
May 19 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican–American War, is ratified by the Mexican government.
May 29 – Wisconsin is admitted as the 30th U.S. state.
June 14–15 – The Liberty Party National Convention is held in Buffalo, New York. Presidential candidate Gerrit Smith establishes woman suffrage as a party plank.

July 19 – Seneca Falls Convention: The first women's rights convention opens in Seneca Falls, New York.
July 26 – The University of Wisconsin–Madison is founded.
August 9 – The abolitionist Free Soil Party is founded by former president, Martin Van Buren in Buffalo, New York.
August 14 – Oregon Territory is established.
August 19 – California Gold Rush: The New York Herald breaks the news to the East Coast of the United States that there is a gold rush in California.
September 12 – One of the successes of the Revolutions of 1848, the Swiss Federal Constitution, patterned on the U.S. Constitution, enters into force, creating a federal republic and one of the first modern democratic states in Europe.
September 13 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage incredibly survives a 3-foot-plus iron rod being driven through his head.
September 20 – The American Association for the Advancement of Science is founded in Philadelphia.

November 1 – The first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School, opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
November 7 – U.S. presidential election, 1848: Whig Zachary Taylor of Louisiana defeats Democrat Lewis Cass of Michigan in the first U.S. presidential election to be held in every state on the same day.
December 26 – The Phi Delta Theta fraternity is founded at Miami University.

January 13 – Lilla Cabot Perry, painter
February 20 – E. H. Harriman, railroad executive
February 22 – Emily McGary Selinger, painter, author and educator
March 8 – LaMarcus Adna Thompson, inventor
March 19 – Wyatt Earp, lawman and gunfighter
March 26 – Edward O. Wolcott, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1889 to 1901
May 10 – Lafayette Young, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1910 to 1911
June 15 – Sol Smith Russell, comedian
July 22 – Winfield Scott Stratton, miner
August 24 – Kate Claxton, actress
September 4 – Lewis Howard Latimer, African American inventor
September 29 – Caroline Yale, educator
October 6 – Webb C. Ball, jeweler and watchmaker from Fredericktown, Ohio
October 15 – Harmon Northrop Morse, chemist
November 1 – Caroline Still Anderson, African American physician, educator and activist
November 2 – Stephen Mallory II, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1897 to 1907
November 7 – B. B. Comer, 33rd Governor of Alabama, U.S. Senator from Alabama in 1920
November 20 – James M. Spangler, inventor
November 27 – Henry A. Rowland, physicist

February 11 – Thomas Cole, landscape painter
February 23 – John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829
March 29 – John Jacob Astor, businessman
April 29 – Chester Ashley, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1844 to 1848
May 18 - William Leidesdorff, businessman
June 26 - Stevenson Archer, U.S. Congressman from Maryland from 1819 to 1821
July 20 – Francis R. Shunk, politician
August 15 - Timothy Olmstead, composer, fifer in the American Revolutionary War
August 30 – Simon Willard, horologist
October 25 – Dixon Hall Lewis, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1844 to 1848
December 31 – Ambrose Hundley Sevier, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1836 to 1848