1817 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: James Madison , James Monroe
• Vice President: vacant, Daniel D. Tompkins
• Chief Justice: John Marshall
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Henry Clay
• Congress: 14th, 15th

  Governors

• Governor of Connecticut: John Cotton Smith , Oliver Wolcott, Jr.
• Governor of Delaware: Daniel Rodney , John Clark
• Governor of Georgia: David Brydie Mitchell , William Rabun
• Governor of Indiana: Jonathan Jennings
• Governor of Kentucky: Gabriel Slaughter
• Governor of Louisiana: Jacques Villeré
• Governor of Maryland: Charles Carnan Ridgely
• Governor of Massachusetts: John Brooks
• Governor of Mississippi: David Holmes
• Governor of New Hampshire: William Plumer
• Governor of New Jersey: Mahlon Dickerson , Isaac Halstead Williamson
• Governor of New York:
• * until February 24: Daniel D. Tompkins
• * February 24-June 30: John Tayler
• * starting July 1: DeWitt Clinton
• Governor of North Carolina: William Miller , John Branch
• Governor of Ohio: Thomas Worthington
• Governor of Pennsylvania: Simon Snyder , William Findlay
• Governor of Rhode Island: William Jones , Nehemiah R. Knight
• Governor of South Carolina: Andrew Pickens
• Governor of Tennessee: Joseph McMinn
• Governor of Vermont: Jonas Galusha
• Governor of Virginia: James Patton Preston

  Lieutenant Governors

• Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: Jonathan Ingersoll
• Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: Christopher Harrison
• Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: vacant
• Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: William Phillips, Jr.
• Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi: Duncan Stewart
• Lieutenant Governor of New York:
• * until month and day unknown: John Tayler
• * month and day unknown: Philetus Swift
• * starting month and day unknown: John Tayler
• Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Jeremiah Thurston , Edward Wilcox
• Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: John A. Cuthbert
• Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: Paul Brigham

  Events

January–March

• 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.

  April–June

• 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.

  July–September

• 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.

  October–December

• 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.

  Ongoing

• First Seminole War
• Era of Good Feelings

  Births

• 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 M. Saulsbury, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1871 to 1889
• December 31 - James Thomas Fields, publisher
• Date unknown - George R. Riddle, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1864 to 1867, civil engineer and lawyer

  Deaths

• 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