1838 in the United States: Map

Events from the year 1838 in the United States .

Incumbents

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 dime.
May 26 - Trail of Tears: The Cherokee removal 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 .