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 – U.S. SenatorDaniel 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 by William Ticknor and James T. Fields in Boston (where it is set), selling 2,500 copies in ten days.
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 brigantineUSS Advance is loaned to the United States Navy.
May 23 – The USS Advance 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 9: Vice President Millard Fillmore becomes the 13th U.S. President with the death of President Taylor
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.[1]
September 9
California is admitted to the Union as the 31st state (seeHistory of California and An Act for the Admission of the State of California).
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 organisation, 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.[2]
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)
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)