1838 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President: Martin Van Buren
• Vice President: Richard M. Johnson
• Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: James K. Polk
• Congress: 25th

  Governors

• Governor of Alabama: Arthur P. Bagby
• Governor of Arkansas: James Sevier Conway
• Governor of Connecticut: Henry W. Edwards , William W. Ellsworth
• Governor of Delaware: Cornelius P. Comegys
• Governor of Georgia: George R. Gilmer
• Governor of Illinois: Joseph Duncan , Thomas Carlin
• Governor of Indiana: David Wallace
• Governor of Kentucky: James Clark
• Governor of Louisiana: Edward Douglass White Sr.
• Governor of Maine:
• * until January 3: Robert P. Dunlap
• * January 3-January 19: vacant
• * starting January 19: Edward Kent
• Governor of Maryland: Thomas W. Veazey
• Governor of Massachusetts: Edward Everett
• Governor of Michigan: Stevens T. Mason
• Governor of Mississippi: Charles Lynch , Alexander G. McNutt
• Governor of Missouri: Lilburn W. Boggs
• Governor of New Hampshire: Isaac Hill
• Governor of New Jersey: William Pennington
• Governor of New York: William L. Marcy
• Governor of North Carolina: Edward Bishop Dudley
• Governor of Ohio: Joseph Vance , Wilson Shannon
• Governor of Pennsylvania: Joseph Ritner
• Governor of Rhode Island: John Brown Francis , William Sprague III
• Governor of South Carolina: Pierce Mason Butler , Patrick Noble
• Governor of Tennessee: Newton Cannon
• Governor of Vermont: Silas H. Jennison
• Governor of Virginia: David Campbell

  Lieutenant Governors

• Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: Ebenezer Stoddard , Charles Hawley
• Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: William H. Davidson , Stinson Anderson
• Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: David Hillis
• Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: Charles A. Wickliffe
• Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: George Hull
• Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: Franklin Cannon
• Lieutenant Governor of New York: John Tracy
• Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Benjamin Babock Thurston , Joseph Childs
• Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: William DuBose , Barnabas Kelet Henagan
• Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: David M. Camp

  Events

January–March

• January 6 – Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates the telegraph.
• January 8 – Alfred Vail demonstrates a telegraph using dots and dashes.
• January 12 – History of the Latter Day Saint movement: Joseph Smith 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.

  April–June

• 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 – Iowa Territory is created. At the time of its founding, Iowa Territory encompassed parts of modern-day Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, as well as all of Iowa. The river city of Burlington functions as the territorial capital until 1841.

  July–September

• July 3 – Iowa Territory is effective.
• 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–December

• October 5 – Killough massacre, believed to have been both the largest and last Native American attack on white settlers in East Texas; 18 casualties are either killed or carried away.
• October 16 – Grave Creek Stone, a probable hoax, allegedly discovered in Moundsville, West Virginia.
• October 27 – Governor of Missouri Lilburn Boggs issues Missouri Executive Order 44, ordering the expulsion of all Mormons from the state. This winter, Mormons fleeing this persecution are welcomed in Quincy, Illinois.
• November 4 – Survivors of the Potawatomi Trail of Death arrive at the modern-day site of Osawatomie, Kansas.

  Undated

• Duke University is established in North Carolina as the Brown School.
• Second Seminole War

  Births

• January 4 - General Tom Thumb, circus performer and entertainer
• January 29 - Edward W. Morley, chemist
• February 10 - Gustav Oelwein, founder of Oelwein, Iowa
• February 12 - Julius Dresser, writer
• February 16 - Henry Adams, historian
• February 22 - Margaret Elizabeth Sangster, poet
• March 3 - George William Hill, astronomer
• April 3 - John Willis Menard, African American politician
• April 12 - John Shaw Billings, military and medical leader
• April 16 - Martha McClellan Brown, temperance leader
• May 10 - John Wilkes Booth, actor and assassin of 16th President of the United States Abraham Lincoln
• May 12 - James McMillan, Canadian-born U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1889 to 1902
• June 16 - Cushman Kellogg Davis, 7th Governor of Minnesota from 1874 to 1876 and U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1887 to 1900
• July 8 - James B. McCreary, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1911 to 1915
• July 9 - Philip Bliss, Gospel composer
• July 18 - John A. Kimberly, entrepreneur, co-founder of Kimberly-Clark
• July 20 - Augustin Daly, dramatist and theatre manager
• July Full Date Unknown - Bass Reeves, one of the first black Deputy U.S. Marshals west of the Mississippi River
• July 30 - Henry A. du Pont, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1906 to 1917
• September 29 - Henry Hobson Richardson, city architect
• October 1 - Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1885 to 1897 and 1901 to 1907
• October 8 - John Hay, author, biographer, 37th United States Secretary of State
• November 13 - Joseph F. Smith, 6th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• December 3 - Cleveland Abbe, meteorologist

  Deaths

• January 12 - Joshua Humphreys, naval architect
• January 30 - Osceola, a leader of the Seminole during the Second Seminole War
• March 16 - Nathaniel Bowditch, mathematician
• August 1 - John Rodgers, naval officer
• August 19 - James Geddes, engineer, surveyor, New York State legislator and U.S. Congressman
• September 1 - William Clark, explorer
• October 3 - Black Hawk, a leader of the Sauk people