1850 in the United States

Events from the year 1850 in the United States.

Federal government

 * President:
 * Zachary Taylor (W-Kentucky) (until July 9)
 * Millard Fillmore (W-New York) (starting July 9)


 * Vice President:
 * Millard Fillmore (W-New York) (until July 9)
 * vacant (starting July 9)


 * Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney (Maryland)
 * Speaker of the House of Representatives: Howell Cobb (D-Georgia)
 * Congress: 31st

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" ! Governors and lieutenant governors

Governors
• Governor of Alabama: Henry W. Collier (Democratic)

• Governor of Arkansas: John Selden Roane (Democratic)

• Governor of California: Peter Hardeman Burnett (Democratic) (starting September 9)

• Governor of Connecticut: Joseph Trumbull (Whig) (until May 4), Thomas H. Seymour (Democratic) (starting May 4)

• Governor of Delaware: William Tharp (Democratic)

• Governor of Florida: Thomas Brown (Whig)

• Governor of Georgia: George W. Towns (Democratic)

• Governor of Illinois: Augustus C. French (Democratic)

• Governor of Indiana: Joseph A. Wright (Democratic)

• Governor of Iowa: Ansel Briggs (Democratic) (until December 4), Stephen P. Hempstead (Democratic) (starting December 4)

• Governor of Kentucky: John J. Crittenden (Whig) (until July 13), John L. Helm (Democratic) (starting July 13)

• Governor of Louisiana: Isaac Johnson (Democratic) (until January 28), Joseph Marshall Walker (Democratic) (starting January 28)

• Governor of Maine: John W. Dana (Democratic) (until May 8), John Hubbard (Democratic) (starting May 8)

• Governor of Maryland: Philip F. Thomas (Democratic)

• Governor of Massachusetts: George N. Briggs (Democratic)

• Governor of Michigan: Epaphroditus Ransom (Democratic) (until January 7), John S. Barry (Democratic) (starting January 7)

• Governor of Mississippi: Joseph W. Matthews (Democratic) (until January 10), John A. Quitman (Democratic) (starting January 10)

• Governor of Missouri: Austin Augustus King (Democratic)

• Governor of New Hampshire: Samuel Dinsmoor, Jr. (Democratic)

• Governor of New Jersey: Daniel Haines (Democratic)

• Governor of New York: Hamilton Fish (Whig) (until end of December 31)

• Governor of North Carolina: Charles Manly (Whig)

• Governor of Ohio: Seabury Ford (Whig) (until December 12), Reuben Wood (Democratic) (starting December 12)

• Governor of Pennsylvania: William F. Johnston (Whig)

• Governor of Rhode Island: Henry B. Anthony (Whig)

• Governor of South Carolina: Whitemarsh B. Seabrook (Democratic) (until December 13), John Hugh Means (Democratic) (starting December 13)

• Governor of Tennessee: William Trousdale (Democratic)

• Governor of Texas: Peter Hansborough Bell (Democratic)

• Governor of Vermont: Carlos Coolidge (Whig) (until October 11), Charles K. Williams (Whig) (starting October 11)

• Governor of Virginia: John B. Floyd (Democratic)

• Governor of Wisconsin: Nelson Dewey (Democratic)

Lieutenant governors
• Lieutenant Governor of California: John McDougall (Democratic)

• Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: Thomas Backus (Democratic) (until May 4), Charles H. Pond (Democratic) (starting May 4)

• Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: William McMurtry (Democratic)

• Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: James H. Lane (Democratic)

• Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: John LaRue Helm (Whig) (until July 31), vacant (starting July 31)

• Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana: Trasimond Landry (Whig) (until January 28), Jean Baptiste Plauche (Whig) (starting January 28)

• Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: John Reed, Jr. (political party unknown)

• Lieutenant Governor of Michigan: William M. Fenton (Democratic)

• Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: Thomas Lawson Price (Democratic)

• Lieutenant Governor of New York: George W. Patterson (Whig) (until end of December 31)

• Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Thomas Whipple (political party unknown)

• Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: William Henry Gist (Democratic) (until December 13), Joshua John Ward (Democratic) (starting December 13)

• Lieutenant Governor of Texas: John Alexander Greer (Democratic)

• Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: Robert Pierpoint (Whig) (until October 11), Julius Converse (Whig) (starting October 11)

• Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin: John E. Holmes (Democratic) (until January 7), Samuel W. Beall (Democratic) (starting January 7)
 * }

January–March

 * January – Sacramento floods.
 * January 29 – Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to Congress.
 * January 31 – The University of Rochester is chartered in Rochester, New York; it admits its first students in November
 * c. January–February – The Liberty Head double eagle first issued for commerce.
 * February 8–17 – Battle at Fort Utah: The Nauvoo Legion kills Timpanogos hostile to the Mormon settlement at Fort Utah on the orders of Brigham Young.
 * February 28 – The University of Utah opens in Salt Lake City.
 * March 7 – United States Senator Daniel Webster gives his "Seventh of March" speech, in which he endorses the Compromise of 1850, in order to prevent a possible civil war.
 * March 16 – Nathaniel Hawthorne's historical novel The Scarlet Letter is published in Boston, Massachusetts.
 * March 19 – American Express is founded by Henry Wells and William Fargo.

April–June

 * April 4 – Los Angeles is incorporated as a city in California.
 * April 15 – San Francisco is incorporated as a city in California.
 * April 19 – Clayton–Bulwer Treaty is signed by the United States and Great Britain, allowing both countries to share Nicaragua and not claim complete control over the proposed Nicaragua Canal.
 * May 7 – The brigantine USS Advance (1850) is loaned to the United States Navy.
 * May 23 – The USS Advance (1850) puts to sea from New York City to search for Franklin's lost expedition in the Arctic.
 * June – Harper's Magazine published as a new monthly in New York City.
 * June 1 – The 1850 United States census shows that 11.2% of the population classed as "Negro" are of mixed race.
 * June 3 – Traditional date of Kansas City, Missouri's founding: it is incorporated by Jackson County, Missouri as the "Town of Kansas".

July–September

 * July 1 – St. Mary's Institute (the future University of Dayton) admits its first pupils in Dayton, Ohio.
 * July 9 – President Zachary Taylor dies in office; Vice President Millard Fillmore becomes the 13th president of the United States.
 * July 10 – President Fillmore is sworn in.
 * July 14 – John Gorrie makes the first public demonstration of his ice-making machine, in Apalachicola, Florida.
 * September 9
 * California is admitted to the Union as the 31st state (see History of California and An Act for the Admission of the State of California).
 * Utah Territory is established.
 * New Mexico Territory is organized by order of the U.S. Congress.
 * September 18 – The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is passed by the U.S. Congress. Harriet Tubman becomes an official conductor of the Underground Railroad.

October–December

 * October 19 – Phi Kappa Sigma International Fraternity founded at the University of Pennsylvania.
 * October 28 – Delegate Edward Ralph May delivers a speech on behalf of African American suffrage to the Indiana Constitutional Convention.

Undated

 * The American system of watch manufacturing starts in Roxbury, Massachusetts, with the Waltham Watch Company.
 * Mayer Lehman arrives from Germany to join his siblings in Lehman Brothers merchant business in Montgomery, Alabama.
 * Allan Pinkerton forms the North-Western Police Agency, later the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, in Chicago.
 * Astronomer Maria Mitchell becomes the first woman member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
 * The temperance organization, International Organisation of Good Templars, is established in Utica, New York, as the order of the Knights of Jericho.
 * One of the original segments of the historic Pacific Highway in Washington (state) in Clark and Cowlitz counties is established.

Ongoing

 * California Gold Rush (1848–1855)

Births

 * January 1 – John Barclay Armstrong, Texas Ranger lieutenant and a U.S. Marshal (died 1913)
 * January 10 – John Wellborn Root, Chicago architect (died 1891)
 * January 18 – Seth Low, educator (died 1916)
 * January 24 – Mary Noailles Murfree, novelist (died 1922)
 * January 27 – Samuel Gompers, labor union leader (died 1924)
 * January 28 – Edward Merritt Hughes, U.S. Navy officer (died 1903)
 * February 1 – Emma Churchman Hewitt, author and journalist (died 1921)
 * February 2 – Cassius Aurelius Boone, Mayor of Orlando and businessman (died 1917)
 * February 6 – Elizabeth Williams Champney, author (died 1922)
 * February 8
 * Kate Chopin, writer (died 1904)
 * Charles Rockwell Lanman, Sanskrit scholar (died 1941)
 * February 15 – Albert B. Cummins, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1908 to 1926 (died 1926)
 * February 27
 * Henry E. Huntington, railroad pioneer and art collector (died 1927)
 * Laura E. Richards, author (died 1943)
 * March 9 – Daniel B. Towner, hymn composer (died 1919)
 * March 26 – Edward Bellamy, Utopian novelist and socialist (died 1898)
 * March 31 – Charles Doolittle Walcott, invertebrate paleontologist (died 1927)
 * April 3 – Zina P. Young Card, Mormon leader and women's rights activist (died 1931)
 * April 8 – John Peters, baseball player (died 1924)
 * April 10 – Mary Emilie Holmes, geologist and educator (died 1906)
 * April 11
 * Rosetta Luce Gilchrist, physician and author (died 1921)
 * Isidor Rayner, U.S. senator from Maryland from 1905 to 1912 (died 1912)
 * April 18 – Joseph Labadie, labor organizer (died 1933)
 * April 20 – Daniel Chester French, sculptor (died 1931)
 * April 30
 * Ruth Alice Armstrong, temperance activist (died 1901)
 * Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller, novelist (died 1937)
 * May 8 – Ross Barnes, baseball player and manager (died 1915)
 * May 12 – Henry Cabot Lodge, statesman (died 1924)
 * May 14 – Alva Adams, 3-time Governor of Colorado (died 1922)
 * June 3 – Albert M. Todd, businessman and politician (died 1931)
 * June 5 – Pat Garrett, bartender and sheriff (died 1908)
 * June 15 – Charles Hazelius Sternberg, paleontologist (died 1943)
 * June 18
 * Cyrus H. K. Curtis, magazine publisher (died 1933)
 * Alice Moore McComas, author, editor, lecturer and reformer (died 1919)
 * June 21 – Daniel Carter Beard, Scouting pioneer (died 1941)
 * July 2 – Robert Ridgway, ornithologist (died 1929)
 * July 7 – William E. Mason, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1897 to 1903 (died 1921)
 * July 8 – Charles Rockwell Lanman, Sanskrit scholar (died 1941)
 * July 11 – Annie Armstrong, Baptist leader (died 1938)
 * July 12 – Newell Sanders, businessman and politician (died 1938)
 * July 18 – Rose Hartwick Thorpe, poet (died 1939)
 * July 20 – John G. Shedd, businessman (died 1926)
 * July 25 – Lydia J. Newcomb Comings, educator (died 1946)
 * July 28 – William Whittingham Lyman, vintner (died 1921)
 * July 31 – Robert Love Taylor, Tennessee congressman (died 1912)
 * August 28 – Charles H. Aldrich, Solicitor General of the U.S. (died 1929)
 * September 2 – Eugene Field, poet and essayist (died 1895)
 * September 6 – Marion Howard Brazier, journalist (died 1935)
 * October 1
 * David R. Francis, politician (died 1927)
 * Thomas Vincent Welch, politician (died 1903)
 * October 14 – Newton E. Mason, rear admiral (died 1945)
 * October 30 – John Patton, Jr., U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1894 to 1895 (died 1907)
 * November 5 – Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet (died 1919)
 * November 18 – John S. Armstrong, real estate developer (died 1908)
 * December 9 – Emma Abbott, operatic soprano (died 1891)
 * December 21 – William Wallace Lincoln, third son of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln (died 1862)
 * December 23 – Louise Reed Stowell, scientist and author (died 1932)
 * December 25 – Florence Griswold, art curator (died 1937)

Deaths

 * February 1 – Edward Baker Lincoln, second son of Abraham Lincoln (born 1846)
 * March 3 – Oliver Cowdery, religious leader (born 1806)
 * March 21 – Miguel Pedrorena, early settler of San Diego, California (born c. 1808)
 * March 28 – Gerard Brandon, fourth and sixth governor of Mississippi from 1825 to 1826 and from 1826 to 1832 (born 1788)
 * March 31 – John C. Calhoun, seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832 (born 1782)
 * April 12 – Adoniram Judson, Congregationalist and later Baptist missionary (born 1788)
 * April 24 – John Norvell, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1837 to 1841 (born 1789)
 * May 16 – William Hendricks, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1825 to 1837 (born 1782)
 * July 9 – Zachary Taylor, 12th president of the United States from 1849 to 1850 (born 1784)
 * July 19 – Margaret Fuller, journalist, literary critic and women's rights advocate, presumed drowned (born 1810)
 * November 19 – Richard Mentor Johnson, ninth vice president of the United States from 1837 to 1841, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1819 to 1829 (born 1780)