1816 in the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Events from the year 1816 in the United States.
Incumbents
Federal government
- President: James Madison (DR-Virginia)
- Vice President: vacant
- Chief Justice: John Marshall (Virginia)
- Speaker of the House of Representatives: Henry Clay (DR-Kentucky)
- Congress: 14th
State governments
Events

- April 11 â In Philadelphia, the African Methodist Episcopal Church is established by Richard Allen and other African-American Methodists, the first such denomination completely independent of White churches.
- April 27 â The Dallas tariff is passed in Congress seeking to protect American manufacturing against an influx of cheaper British goods following the War of 1812.[1][2]
- May 11 â The American Bible Society is founded in New York City, New York.[3]
- June â Fort Dearborn is reestablished in the place that will become Chicago, IL.[4]
- August 24 â The Treaty of St. Louis is signed in St. Louis, Missouri.
- November â James Monroe defeats Rufus King in the U.S. presidential election.
- November 7 â Jonathan Jennings is sworn in as the first governor of Indiana.
- December 11 â Indiana is admitted as the 19th U.S. state (see History of Indiana).
Undated
- 1816 was known as 'the year without a summer' in North America and elsewhere, with widespread unseasonal weather and crop failures.[5]
- The Second Bank of the United States obtains its charter.
- E. Remington and Sons (the firearm and later typewriter manufacturing company) is founded in Ilion, New York.
- George Bourne, possibly the first immediate and total U.S. abolitionist, publishes The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable.[6]
Births
- January 3 â Samuel C. Pomeroy, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1861 to 1873 and railroad president (died 1891)
- January 30 â Nathaniel P. Banks, politician and general (died 1894)
- March 1 â John Souther, mechanical engineer (died 1911)
- March 14 â William Marsh Rice, university founder (died 1900)
- April 25 â Eliza Daniel Stewart, temperance leader (died 1908)
- May 3 â Montgomery C. Meigs, career United States Army officer and civil engineer, who served as Quartermaster General of the United States Army during and after the American Civil War (died 1892)
- June 19 â William Henry Webb, industrialist and philanthropist (died 1899)
- July 4 â James B. Howell, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1870 to 1871 (died 1880)
- July 23 â Charlotte Cushman, actress (died 1876)
- July 31 â George Henry Thomas, U.S. Army general (died 1870)
- August 4
- William Julian Albert, Congressman (died 1879)
- Russell Sage, financier, railroad president and politician (died 1906)
- October 11 â William W. Eaton, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1875 to 1881 (died 1898)
- October 20 â James W. Grimes, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1859 to 1869 (died 1872)
- October 26 â Philip Pendleton Cooke, lawyer and poet (died 1850)
- November 3 â Jubal Early, Confederate general (died 1894)
- November 4 â James L. Alcorn, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1871 to 1877 (died 1894)
- November 29
- Henry Mower Rice, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1858 to 1863 (died 1894)
- Morrison Waite, 7th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (died 1888)
- December 12 â Thomas C. McCreery, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1868 to 1871 (died 1890)
- December 13 â Clement Claiborne Clay, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1853 to 1862, Confederate States Senator from Alabama from 1862 to 1864 (died 1882)
Deaths
- April 3 â Thomas Machin, military engineer (born 1744 in Great Britain)
- May 4 â Samuel Dexter, 3rd United States Secretary of the Treasury, 4th United States Secretary of War (born 1761)
- June 25 â Hugh Henry Brackenridge, writer and Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice (born 1748 in Great Britain)
- August 12 â Mary Katherine Goddard, publisher and postmistress (born 1738)
- September 18 â Bernard McMahon, horticulturalist (born c. 1775 in Ireland)
- November 8 â Gouverneur Morris, statesman and Founding Father of the U.S. (born 1752)
