March 4, 1841 - Took oath of office; he was the oldest man to be elected President (68); a record that stood for 140 years, until Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 at the age of 69.

March 9, 1841 - U.S. Supreme Court rules, with only one dissent, that the 53 African slaves who seized control of the Amistad slave ship on July 1, 1839 had been illegally forced into slavery (captured in Africa, had left Havana, Cuba on June 28, 1839, aboard the Amistad schooner for a life of slavery on a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba), and thus are free under American law; August 26, 1839 - the USS Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island and escorted it to New London, Connecticut. January 13, 1840 - Judge Andrew Judson ruled that the Africans were illegally enslaved, that they would not be returned to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder, and that they should be granted free passage back to Africa. The Spanish authorities and U.S. President Martin Van Buren appealed the decision, but another federal district court upheld Judson's findings. President Van Buren, in opposition to the abolitionist faction in Congress, appealed the decision again. February 22, 1841 -  the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing the Amistad case. U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, who served as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829, joined the Africans' defense team. November 1841 - with the financial assistance of their abolitionist allies, the Amistad Africans departed America aboard the Gentleman on a voyage back to West Africa.