Federal government edit

• President: Millard Fillmore (W-New York)
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney (Maryland)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Linn Boyd (D-Kentucky)
• Congress: 32nd

• January 15 – Nine men representing various Hebrew charitable organizations come together to form what will become the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
• February 16 – The Studebaker Brothers Wagon Company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, is established.
• February 19 – The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity is founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.
• March 2 – The first American experimental steam fire engine is tested.^[1]
• March 4 – The Phi Mu fraternity is established at Wesleyan College.
• March 20 – Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is first published in book form, in Boston.
• April 23 – More than 150 Wintu people are killed by a militia under the guidance of Trinity County sheriff William H. Dixon in the Bridge Gulch Massacre.
• July 1 – American statesman Henry Clay is the first to receive the honor of lying in state in the United States Capitol rotunda.
• July 5 – Frederick Douglass delivers his famous speech on "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery" in Rochester, New York.
• August 3 – The first Boat Race between Yale and Harvard, the first American intercollegiate athletic event, is held.
• September 15 – Loyola College opens its doors to students in the City of Baltimore, Maryland.
• November 2 – U.S. presidential election, 1852: Democrat Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire defeats Whig Winfield Scott of New Jersey.
• November 25 – Monticello Convention: 44 people from the northern parts of Oregon Territory meet and draft a petition to establish a separate territorial government north of the Columbia River (which becomes, in the following months, Washington Territory).^[2]

Undated edit

• In Hawaii sugar planters bring over the first Chinese laborers on 3 or 5 year contracts, giving them 3 dollars per month plus room and board for working a 12-hour day, 6 days a week.
• Loyola College in Maryland is chartered in Baltimore.
• Tufts University is founded in Medford, Massachusetts.
• Mills College is founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in Benicia, California.
• Justin Perkins, an American Presbyterian missionary, produces the first translation of the Bible in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, which is published with the parallel text of the Syriac Peshitta by the American Bible Society.
• Lowell, Indiana is incorporated
• Westminster College, a Presbyterian Liberal Arts School, is founded New Wilmington, PA.

Ongoing edit

• California Gold Rush (1848–1855)

• January 8 – James Milton Carroll, Baptist pastor, leader, historian and author (died 1931)
• January 11 – Elnora Monroe Babcock, suffragist (died 1934)
• January 14 – Cornelia Cole Fairbanks, wife of Charles W. Fairbanks, Second Lady of the United States (died 1913)
• February 16 – Charles Taze Russell, Christian restorationist minister (died 1916)
• February 18 – Ferdinand Lee Barnett, African American journalist, lawyer and civil rights activist (died 1936)
• February 26 – John Harvey Kellogg, Adventist doctor and health reformer (died 1943)
• March 12 – Mary Catherine Judd, educator, children's author, peace activist (died 1930s)
• March 25 – Charles Loomis Dana, neurologist (died 1935)
• April 1 – Edwin Austin Abbey, painter and illustrator (died 1911)
• April 13 – F. W. Woolworth, merchant and businessman (died 1919)
• April 23 – Edwin Markham, poet (died 1940)
• May 1 – Calamity Jane, frontierswoman (died 1903)
• May 11 – Charles W. Fairbanks, 26th vice president of the United States from 1905 till 1909 and United States Senator from Indiana from 1897 to 1905 (died 1918)
• May 14 – Alton B. Parker, judge and Democratic political candidate (died 1926)
• May 18 – Gertrude Käsebier, née Stanton, one of the most influential American portrait photographers of the early 20th century (died 1934)
• May 23 – Weldon B. Heyburn, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1903 to 1912 (died 1912)
• June 22 – Mary Canfield Ballard, poet and hymnwriter (died 1927)
• July 4
  • John H. Hill, African American lawyer and educator (died 1936)
  • Loretta C. Van Hook, Presbyterian missionary and educator (died 1935)
• August 16 – Charles Sanger Mellen, railroad manager (died 1927)
• September 15 – Edward Bouchet, African American physicist (died 1918)
• October 25 – Byron Andrews, journalist, statesman, author and businessman (died 1910)
• October 30 – Jane Kelley Adams, educator (died 1924)
• October 31 – Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, short-story and children's fiction writer and poet (died 1930)
• November 1 – Eugene W. Chafin, politician (died 1920)
• November 10 – Henry van Dyke, author, poet, educator and clergyman (died 1933)
• November 15 – Ella Maria Ballou, writer (d. 1937)
• November 16 – Joseph R. Burton, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1901 to 1906 (died 1923)

• February 14 – Thomas Carlin, 7th Governor of Illinois from 1838 to 1842 (born 1789)
• February 24 – John Frazee, first American-born sculptor to execute a bust in marble (born 1790)
• March 9 – Anson Dickinson, painter of miniature portraits (born 1779)
• April 10 – John Howard Payne, actor, playwright, author and consul in Tunis from 1842, lyricist for "Home! Sweet Home!" (born 1791)^[3]
• May 6 – William Bellinger Bulloch, U.S. Senator from Georgia in 1813 (born 1777)
• May 15 – Louisa Adams, First Lady of the United States as wife of John Quincy Adams from 1825 to 1829 (born 1775)
• May 18 – Briscoe Baldwin, planter and Virginia politician (born 1789)
• June 8 – Perry Smith, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1837 to 1843 (born 1783)
• June 17 – William King, merchant, shipbuilder, army officer and statesman (born 1768)
• June 29 – Henry Clay, U.S. Senator from Kentucky 1806–1807, 1810–1811, 1831–1842 and 1849–1852 (born 1777)
• July 19 – John McKinley, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1826 to 1831 and in 1837, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1837 to 1852 (born 1780)
• August 14 – Margaret Taylor, First Lady of the United States as wife of Zachary Taylor (born 1788)
• September 20 – Philander Chase, Episcopal Church bishop, educator, pioneer of the western frontier and founder of Kenyon College (born 1775)
• September 23 – John Vanderlyn, neoclassical painter (born 1775)
• October 4 – James Whitcomb, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1849 to 1852 (born 1795)
• October 13 – John Lloyd Stephens, traveler, diplomat and Mayanist archaeologist (born 1805)
• October 24 – Daniel Webster, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts (born 1782)
• October 25 – John C. Clark, politician (born 1793)
• November 18 – John Andrew Shulze, politician (born 1775)
• November 24 – Walter Forward, lawyer and politician, 15th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1841 to 1843 (born 1786)
• November 30 – Junius Brutus Booth, actor, father of John Wilkes Booth and Edwin Booth (born 1796 in England)
• December 13 – Frances Wright, freethinker (born 1795 in Scotland)
• December 18 – Horatio Greenough, sculptor (born 1805)

• Timeline of United States history (1820–1859)

•   Media related to 1852 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons