1838
Trail of Tears
Under Jackson's Removal Act, federal troops rounded up some sixteen thousand Cherokee from Georgia and drove them west to Indian Territory on foot through winter. Four thousand died along the way - of cold, of dysentery, of heartbreak. The Cherokee had spelling books and a constitution. It did not save them.
People's Charter
In a Glasgow meeting, British reformers published the Charter - six demands including universal male suffrage, secret ballot, and annual parliaments. Chartism became the first mass working-class political movement in Europe. Its petitions gathered millions of signatures. Parliament rejected them all. Five of the six points would still be adopted, eventually.
Battle of Blood River
At a bend in the Ncome River in Natal, 470 Voortrekkers in a laager of wagons shot down three thousand attacking Zulu warriors. The river, they said, ran red. The Afrikaners took it as a covenant from God and marked the day for a century. For the Zulu kingdom, it was the beginning of a long erosion.
West Indies Slavery Ends
After a four-year "apprenticeship" system that had merely delayed freedom, slavery in the British Caribbean truly ended at midnight on July 31. Sugar islands from Jamaica to Trinidad saw crowds of freed people at church services that went on through the night. The British abolition experiment, for all its compromises, had come finally true.