March – Victor Séjour's short story "Le Mulâtre", the earliest known work of African American fiction, is published in the French abolitionist journal Revue des Colonies.
November 7 – In Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot and killed by a pro-slavery mob while he attempts to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a fourth time.
John Greenleaf Whittier's first poetry book, Poems Written During the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, is published by Boston abolitionists.
Antonija Höffern becomes the first Slovene woman to immigrate to the United States.[8]