1838 | Human Rights, Social Justice
Human Rights, Social Justice
Parliament passes the Infant Custody Bill, largely through efforts by Caroline Norton (see 1837), but their father has sent her sons to school in Scotland, where the new law does not apply (see 1842).
Abolitionist Sarah Moore Grimké issues a pamphlet under the title "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman; Addressed to Mary Parker, President of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society" (see 1836). Now 46, she rejects any suggestion that women should not speak out on moral issues; as morally responsible individuals, she says, they cannot do otherwise, and she urges that women become ministers. Her sister Angelina has married abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld (see 1839).
U.S. abolitionists transport southern slaves to freedom in Canada via an "Underground Railway" that is formally organized under the leadership of Robert Purvis. Not actually a railway (although its members are called "conductors" and its safe houses "stations") nor literally subterranean, this escape strategy defies the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 (see Tubman, 1849), but slaving interests at Philadelphia work on the fears of Irish immigrants and other working people, who worry that freed slaves may take their jobs. A Philadelphia mob burns down Pennsylvania Hall May 17 in an effort to thwart antislavery meetings.
The "Trail of Tears" takes more than 14,000 members of the Cherokee Nation from tribal lands in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee miles westward along the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas Rivers to Little Rock and thence to lands in Indian territory west of the Red River, where thousands from other tribes have previously been relocated (see Supreme Court decision, 1831). Escorted with all of their horses and oxen by 7,000 troops under the command of General Winfield Scott, the Cherokee journey up to 1,200 miles by wagon and keelboat for anywhere from 93 to 139 days, an estimated 4,000—mostly infants, children, and old people—will die en route of measles, whooping cough, pneumonia, pleurisy, tuberculosis, and pellagra, and the last contingents will not reach Indian territory until March 25 of next year (some have refused to budge) (see Texas, 1839).
Sac chief Black Hawk dies in a village near the Des Moines River October 3 at age 71. He has been in the custody of his former rival, Keokuk (or Keokuck), since 1834.