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January 1 – William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing The Liberator, an antislavery newspaper, in Boston, Massachusetts.
March 18 – Cherokee Nation v. Georgia: An injunction requested by the Cherokee nation, claiming that Georgia's state legislature had created laws which, "go directly to annihilate the Cherokees as a political society", is denied.
April–June[]
April 18 – The University of Alabama is founded.
April 21 – New York University is founded in New York City.
July–September[]
August 7 – American Baptist minister William Miller preaches his first sermon on the Second Advent of Christ in Dresden, New York, launching the Advent Movement in the United States.
August 21 – Outbreak of Nat Turner's slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Approximately 55 whites are stabbed, shot and clubbed to death.
October–December[]
October 30 – In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave revolt in United States history.
November 11 – In Jerusalem, Virginia, Nat Turner is hanged after inciting a violent slave uprising.
Undated[]
Alexis de Tocqueville visits the United States.
Founding of:
Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio (as "The Athenaeum").
Births[]
January 2 – Justin Winsor, historian and librarian (died 1897)
January 14 – William D. Washburn, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1889 to 1895 and businessman (died 1912)
January 15 – Ozora P. Stearns, U.S. Senator from Minnesota in 1871 (died 1896)
January 26 – Mary Mapes Dodge, children's writer (died 1907)
March 3 – George Pullman, inventor and industrialist (died 1897)
March 6 – Philip Sheridan, general (died 1888)
March 12 – Clement Studebaker, automobile pioneer (died 1901)
March 14 – Edward A. Perry, Governor of Florida (died 1889)
March 20 – Solomon L. Spink, U.S. Congressman from Illinois (died 1881)
May 16 – Daniel Manning, businessman, journalist and politician, Secretary of the Treasury (died 1887)
June 1 or 29 {exact date unknown) – John Bell Hood, Confederate general (died 1879)
July 8 – John Pemberton, inventor of Coca-Cola (died 1888)
July 21 – Martha Maxwell, naturalist and artist (died 1881)
August 26 – Lucy Hayes, First Lady of the United States as wife of Rutherford B. Hayes (died 1889)
September 3 – States Rights Gist, lawyer, militia general in South Carolina and Confederate Army brigadier general (died 1864)
September 10 – William A. Peffer, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1891 to 1897 (died 1912)
September 20 – Kate Harrington, poet, teacher and writer (died 1917)
September 29 – John Schofield, general (died 1906)
October 15 – Helen Hunt Jackson, poet, writer and activist (died 1885)
October 16 – Lucy Stanton, abolitionist (died 1910)
October 28 – Charles Colcock Jones, Jr., Georgia politician, attorney, historian and folklorist (died 1893)
October 29 – Othniel Charles Marsh, paleontologist (died 1899)
October 31 – Romualdo Pacheco, Governor of California (died 1899)
November 19 – James A. Garfield, 20th President of the United States from March to September 1881 (died 1881)
November 21 – John Franklin Miller, U.S. Senator from California from 1881 to 1886 (died 1886)
Media related to 1831 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons
