Andrew Jackson Argumentative Essay

Many consider slavery to be the only, and most horrible ‘red mark’ in American history; these people forget the near extinction of a multitude of Indians civilizations that was initiated by our government and, most importantly, by our President at the time- Andrew Jackson. President Andrew Jackson’s accomplishment’s can be reduced to the lifelong practice of Indian removal, and extermination: first as a brutal military leader, then as treaty commissioner, and finally as the President.

Of what little education I had received on the life of President Andrew Jackson, three phrases came to mind: a man of the people, a poor diplomate that favored aggression, and a war hero. According to chapter 7 of Howard Zinn’s book, only one of these statements was true- that he favored violence. Zinn describes Jackson as “a land speculator, merchant, slave trader, and the most aggressive enemy of the Indians in early American history. He became a hero of the War of 1812, which was not (as often depicted in American textbooks) just a war against England for survival, but a war for the expansion

of the new nation, into Florida, into Canada, into Indian territory.”(1) He was interested in the profit from Indian land, and had no edversion on taking it by any means. Jackson’s portrayal of ‘friend and father’ to the Indian’s was purely manipulative, and allowed him to remove the Indians from profitable lands with less resistance by both the Indians, and Congressmen.

In the early 1800s, Andrew Jackson, the treaty commissioner at the time, created a Treaty that resulted in the removal of half of Creek Nation land.(Zinn 2) This negatively affected not only the Creek Nation, but Indian’s across America as it “granted Indians individual ownership of land, thus splitting Indian from Indian, breaking up communal landholding, bribing some with land, leaving others out introducing the competition and conniving that marked the spirit of Western capitalism.”(Zinn 2) Eventually, various treaties were created throughout State’s with Indian inhabitants that utilized trickery, or bribery to take Indian land and give it to Americans.

“From 1814 to 1824, in a series of treaties with the southern Indians, whites took over three-fourths of Alabama and Florida, one-third of Tennessee, one-fifth of Georgia and Mississippi, and parts of Kentucky and North Carolina.” (Zinn

2)

As a result of these treaties, the exchange of control over the Indians from federal to state power, and the manipulation of Andrew Jackson the Indians were forced out of their land and out to the East of the Mississippi river. However, some Creek families attempted to stay in Alabama, but they were attacked by marauders, and instead of the army removing the offending party “the army, claiming it was for their safety, removed them from Creek country to a concentration camp on Mobile Bay. Hundreds died there from lack of food and from sickness.”(Zinn 9) Then, those who lived, were sent to Mississippi anyway.

Overall, Andrew Jackson has been over glorified throughout history, and the Indians in the 1800s were completely mistreated by America as a whole. Even in 1838, President Van Buren announced that “it affords sincere pleasure to apprise the Congress of the entire removal of the Cherokee Nation of Indians to their new homes west of the Mississippi. The measure authorized by Congress at its last session have had the happiest effects.” which demonstrates the ignorance of Congressmen to the horrors they inflicted on all the Indians, and the ‘illusion of good’ men can create when profit is involved. America went against everything it stood for, when the Indians were removed from their homes.