1838 in the United States
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[edit] Incumbents
- President - Martin Van Buren
- Vice-President - Richard Mentor Johnson
- Secretary of State - John Forsyth
[edit] Events
- January 6 - Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates the telegraph.
- January 8 - Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code)
- January 12 - Mormonism: Joseph Smith, Jr. and Sidney Rigdon flee Ohio for Missouri
- January 27 - Abraham Lincoln speaks at the Springfield Young Men's Lyceum
- March 8 - The New Orleans Mint strikes its first coinage, 30 dimes.
- May 26 - Trail of Tears begins - with the forced relocation of the Cherokee Native American tribe, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 4,000 Cherokee Indians.
- June 12 - Territory of Iowa established
- September 3 - Dressed in a sailor's uniform and carrying identification papers provided by a free Black seaman, future abolitionist Frederick Douglass boards a train in Maryland on his way to freedom from slavery
- September 4 - Potawatomi Trail of Death, the forced relocation of 859 members of the Potawatomi nation from Indiana to Kansas, begins. More than 40 Potawatomi die from disease and the stress of the march.
- October 16 - Hoax: Bill Stump's Stone allegedly discovered in Moundsville, West Virginia.
- October 27 - Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, ordering the expulsion of all Mormons from the state.
- November 4 - Survivors of the Potawatomi Trail of Death arrive at the present-day site of Osawatomie, Kansas.
