An Antislavery Convention of American Women meets in New York City with both black and white women participating. In New York, African-Americans petition the state legislature for voting rights. The U.S. Exploring Expedition sails from Hampton Roads, Virginia. Frederick Baily escapes slavery, making his way from Baltimore to New York City, and from there to New Bedford, where he takes on a new name, Frederick Douglass. A Philadelphia mob destroys the Pennsylvania Hall, where abolitionists have held meetings, then goes on a rampage burning and terrorizing African-American neighborhoods.
Municipal authorities do nothing to halt the carnage.
Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the first avowed abolitionist Congressman. Rev. James W.C. Pennington, who would minister to the Amistad Africans, pastors an African Congregational Church at Newtown, Connecticut. In 1840 he moves to a new congregation in Hartford. In 1841 he publishes A Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People , the first history of its kind. Two weeks later, several more slavers arrive in New York, the Butterfly and the Catharine , manned by British naval officers as prizes of another royal ship on the Africa squadron.