The Rappists establish a second American community, this time in Indiana, calling it New Harmony

American volunteers under Andrew Jackson defeat British regulars near New Orleans, two weeks after peace has been agreed at Ghent

Robert Finley, a US anti-slavery campaigner, founds the American Colonization Society to settle freed slaves in Africa

US poet William Cullen Bryant publishes Thanatopsis, written seven years previously at the age of 16

An informal financial market on Wall Street is transformed into the New York Stock and Exchange Board

Andrew Jackson, attacking settlements in Spanish Florida, launches the first of three wars against the Seminole Indians

The 49th parallel is agreed as the frontier between the USA and Canada

Spain sells Florida to the USA for $5 million, in return for the waiving of any American claim to Texas

Washington Irving tells the story of the long sleep of Rip Van Winkle in his Sketch Book

The Missouri Compromise, admitting Maine and Missouri to the union, keeps the balance between 'free' and 'slave' states in the US senate

7-year-old Henry Wadsworth Longfellow has a poem published in a newspaper in his home town of Portland, Maine

The Spy, a romance set in the American Revolution, establishes the reputation of US author James Fenimore Cooper

The Shaker settlements, now widespread in the US, form The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing

The spoken language of the Cherokee Indians is captured in written form – an achievement traditionally attributed to Sequoyah

The Saturday Evening Post is launched in Philadelphia as a weekly to provide light Sunday reading

The Sante Fe Trail, from Missouri to New Mexico, is opened up by the US trader William Becknell

Stephen Austin begins the process of American settlement in the Mexican province of Texas

A heavenly being appears to Joseph Smith in New York state – an event which launches the Mormon church

James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers introduces Natty Bumppo, frontiersman known for his 'leather stockings'

An American poem, A Visit from St Nicholas, describes in every detail the modern Santa Claus

US president James Monroe warns European nations against interfering in America, in the policy which becomes known as the Monroe Doctrine

The Republican party in the USA splits into National Republicans and Democratic Republicans

Work begins on the 363-mile Erie Canal that will link the Hudson River to Lake Erie

The English socialist Robert Owen purchases New Harmony from the Rappists, to test his utopian theories in a new context

In James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, Natty Bumppo sides with a Mohican chief