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Born March 15, 1767 on the Carolina frontier, Andrew Jackson would eventually rise from poverty to politics after the War of 1812 where he earned national fame as a military hero. Jackson won the popular vote in the 1829 election and became the seventh United States President. As President, Jackson sought out to be a representative of the common man. Jackson remarks in his veto message of July 10, 1832 that, “It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.” Andrew Jackson put in place the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This act forced Natives off their homelands and onto the lands west of the Mississippi River. They encountered a journey, called the Trail of Tears, where they traveled by foot to what would be their new homes, which transformed the lives of thousands of Native Americans. The President’s intentions were to move all Natives west of the Mississippi River to open up the land to American settlers. “The decision of the Jackson administration to remove the Cherokee Indians to lands west of the Mississippi River in the 1830’s was [less] a reformulation of the national policy that had been in effect since the 1790’s [and more] a change in that policy.” The validity of this generalization can be evidenced by the moral, political, constitutional and practical concerns that shaped national Indian policy between 1789 and the mid-1830’s. Andrew Jackson believed that the only way to save the Natives from extinction was to remove them from their current homes and push them across the Mississippi River. “And when removal was accomplished he felt he had done the American people a great service. He felt he had followed the ‘dictates of humanity’ and saved the Indi... ... middle of paper ... ...tes which could not have happened if they stayed under state laws. Under the Jackson Administration, the changes made shaped national Indian policy. Morally, Andrew Jackson dismissed prior ideas that natives would gradually assimilate into white culture, and believed that removing Indians from their homes was the best answer for both the natives and Americans. Politically, before Jackson treaties were in place that protected natives until he changed those policies, and broke those treaties, violating the United States Constitution. Under Jackson’s changes, the United States effectively gained an enormous amount of land. The removal of the Indians west of the Mississippi River in the 1830’s changed the national policy in place when Jackson became President as evidenced by the moral, political, constitutional, and practical concerns of the National Indian Policy.
Throughout Jackson's two terms as President, Jackson used his power unjustly. As a man from the Frontier State of Tennessee and a leader in the Indian wars, Jackson loathed the Native Americans. Keeping with consistency, Jackson found a way to use his power incorrectly to eliminate the Native Americans. In May 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act. This act required all tribes east of the Mississippi River to leave their lands and travel to reservations in the Oklahoma Territory on the Great Plains. This was done because of the pressure of white settlers who wanted to take over the lands on which the Indians had lived. The white settlers were already emigrating to the Union, or America. The East Coast was burdened with new settlers and becoming vastly populated. President Andrew Jackson and the government had to find a way to move people to the West to make room. In 1830, a new state law said that the Cherokees would be under the jurisdiction of state rather than federal law. This meant that the Indians now had little, if any, protection against the white settlers that desired their land. However, when the Cherokees brought their case to the Supreme Court, they were told that they could not sue on the basis that they were not a foreign nation. In 1832, though, on appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokees were a "domestic dependent nation," and therefore, eligible to receive federal protection against the state. However, Jackson essentially overruled the decision. By this, Jackson implied that he had more power than anyone else did and he could enforce the bill himself. This is yet another way in which Jackson abused his presidential power in order to produce a favorable result that complied with his own beliefs. The Indian Removal Act forced all Indians tribes be moved west of the Mississippi River. The Choctaw was the first tribe to leave from the southeast.
The generalization that, “The decision of the Jackson administration to remove the Cherokee Indians to lands west of the Mississippi River in the 1830s was more a reformulation of the national policy that had been in effect since the 1790s than a change in that policy,” is valid. Ever since the American people arrived at the New World they have continually driven the Native Americans out of their native lands. Many people wanted to contribute to this removal of the Cherokees and their society. Knox proposed a “civilization” of the Indians. President Monroe continued Knox’s plan by developing ways to rid of the Indians, claiming it would be beneficial to all. Andrew Jackson ultimately fulfilled the plan. First of all, the map [Document A] indicates the relationship between time, land, and policies, which affected the Indians. The Indian Tribes have been forced to give up their land as early as the 1720s. Between the years of 1721 and 1785, the Colonial and Confederation treaties forced the Indians to give up huge portions of their land. During Washington's, Monroe's, and Jefferson's administration, more and more Indian land was being commandeered by the colonists. The Washington administration signed the Treaty of Holston and other supplements between the time periods of 1791 until 1798 that made the Native Americans give up more of their homeland land. The administrations during the 1790's to the 1830's had gradually acquired more and more land from the Cherokee Indians. Jackson followed that precedent by the acquisition of more Cherokee lands. In later years, those speaking on behalf of the United States government believed that teaching the Indians how to live a more civilized life would only benefit them. Rather than only thinking of benefiting the Indians, we were also trying to benefit ourselves. We were looking to acquire the Indians’ land. In a letter to George Washington, Knox says we should first is to destroy the Indians with an army, and the second is to make peace with them. The Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1793 began to put Knox’s plan into effect. The federal government’s promise of supplying the Indians with animals, agricultural tool...
As the frontier moved west, white settlers wanted to expand into territory, which was the ancestral land of many Indian tribes. Although this had been going on since the administration of George Washington, during the administration of Andrew Jackson the government supported the policy of resettlement, and persuaded many tribes to give up their claim to their land and move into areas set aside by Congress as Indian Territory. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Resettlement Act, which provided for the removal of Indians to territory west of the Mississippi River. While Jackson was President, the government negotiated 94 treaties to end Indian titles to land in the existing states.
Andrew Jackson signed the indian removal act in 1830. This act allowed him to make treaties with the natives and steal their lands. The Trail of Tears was a forced relocation of more than 15,000 cherokee Indians. The white men/people gave the natives 2 options: 1. Leave or 2. Stay and Assimilate (learn our culture). The natives couldn’t have their own government. There were 5 civilized tribes including the cherokees. They learned english and went to american schools and when the cherokees went to court they won.
Throughout the history of the United States, the discussion surrounding Native American relations has been fueled by prejudice and misunderstandings. In Andrew Jackson & His Indian Wars, Remini does not seek to excuse or exonerate Jackson. Consequently, Remini is more focused on analyzing what transpired and why. To support his central themes, Remini uses evidence spanning the entire spectrum of Jackson’s career. Beginning
To understand Jackson’s book and why it was written, however, one must first fully comprehend the context of the time period it was published in and understand what was being done to and about Native Americans in the 19th century. From the Native American point of view, the frontier, which settlers viewed as an economic opportunity, was nothin...
In May 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act which forced Native American tribes to move west. Some Indians left swiftly, while others were forced to to leave by the United States Army. Some were even taken away in chains. Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, strongly reinforced this act. In the Second State of the Union Address, Jackson advocated his Indian Policy. There was controversy as to whether the removal of the Native Americans was justified under the administration of President Andrew Jackson. In my personal opinion, as a Native American, the removal of the tribes was not in any way justified.
middle of paper ... ... I firmly believe that the betterment of one group of people is not worth the destruction of another. Works Cited Anderson, William L. Cherokee removal before and after. Athens: University of Georgia, 1991.
Prior to 1830 the Cherokee people in the Southern states were land and business owners, many owned plantations and kept slaves to work the land, others were hunters and fishermen who ran businesses and blended in well with their white neighbors, but after Andrew Jackson took office as President, the government adopted a strict policy of Indian removal, which Jackson aggressively pursued by eliminating native American land titles and relocating American Indians west of the Mississippi. That same year, Congress passed the Indian R...
He was the first president to be born in a log cabin, to be an orphan by the age of fifteen, and to be hardened by decades of military campaigns (195). In his first term he exercised the use of veto power more than all previous presidents combined (196). He ran the government the same way he ran his army (196). Andrew Jackson resolved the issue of breaking up the Union and was able to postpone it for another 30 years (197). He also moved all of the United States deposits from the Second National Bank and put them into state and local banks (198). Another thing he did while in office was to begin to move the Indians to Oklahoma (199). In 1830, the General Removal Act was passed (199). The next act passed was the Removal Act against the Choctaws (200). By 1833 nearly 11,000 were removed, and in 1838 nearly all Chickasaws were removed (200). In December 1985 the Cherokee Nation signed a treaty to move west, and in 1838 they walked the Trail of Tears, where 4,000 out of 18,000 died (201). Andrew Jackson’s policies moved 45,690 Indians across the Mississippi (201). This was his most controversial legacy
...The Indian Removal Act was all a part of Jackson’s expansion process, and he would stop at nothing until America made the most of its land.
The Indian removal was so important to Jackson that he went back to Tennessee to have the first negotiations in person. He gave the Indians a couple simple alternatives. Alternatives like to submit to state authority, or migrate beyond the Mississippi. Jackson Offered generous aid on one hand and while holding the threat of subjugation in the other. The Chickasaws and Choctaws submitted quickly. The only tribe that resisted until the end was the Cherokees. President Jackson’s presidency was tarnished by the way the U.S. government handled the Native Americans. Although financially, and economically Jackson truly was a good leader, some people view him in a negative way because of the “Indian Removal Act.”
Andrew Jackson signed many treaties. Over the next decade, President Jackson led the way in the Indian removal campaign and helped negotiate nine out of eleven major treaties. By the end of his term, he signed into law almost seventy removal treaties. One of his most prominent work is the Indian Removal Act itself. The Indian Removal Act led the way for future treaties of Indian removal and while highly controversial, it was very effective.
At the time Andrew Jackson was president, there was a fast growing population and a desire for more land. Because of this, expansion was inevitable. To the west, many native Indian tribes were settled. Andrew Jackson spent a good deal of his presidency dealing with the removal of the Indians in western land. Throughout the 1800’s, westward expansion harmed the natives, was an invasion of their land, which led to war and tension between the natives and America, specifically the Cherokee Nation.
In 1830, President Andrew Jackson passed the Indian Removal Act. This let him negotiate with the Native Americans for their lands. Although the si...