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Andrew jacksons indian removal act response
Andrew jacksons indian removal act response
Andrew Jackson and the development of America
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Native Americans lost everything once white settlers set foot on America. Their entire lives changed right in front of their eyes, all because people were taking things that didn’t belong to them. The white settlers took everything from them, almost all of them died, or had to relocate; today Native Americans are still going through the same stereotypes and racism, and are seen as very dangerous. During the 1820s, a military hero became a symbol of expanding America. That hero was Andrew Jackson. He rose at a time when national politics became extremely democratic, and created a trend that many historians call Jacksonian democracy, which brought many limitations. Free blacks, women, and Native Americans were not able to vote. But, many Southern voters had expectations that Andrew Jackson would help …show more content…
remove Indians living in the area. “Jackson’s victory in the Creek War of 1814 had led to the acquisition of millions of acres in Georgia and Alabama, and his 1818 war with the Seminoles paved the way for American control of Florida” (history 35). Many Native Americans still remained in the South including the Cherokees and Creeks who established American-style schools. They also owned private properties and formed constitutional republican governments. The Indians went to court to defend their rights when Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama moved to seize their land.
John Marshall ruled that Georgia’s seizure of Indian lands was unconstitutional in 1832, and the federal government had treaty obligations to protect the Indians, though Jackson refused to act on the ruling. Jackson urged Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This law was to negotiate a peaceful exchange of Indian lands in the south for new lands in the “Indian Territory,” which is now Oklahoma. The Choctaws and Chickasaws agreed to accept lands in the West, but many other groups resisted relocation, and this resisting caused violent conflicts. The United States military removed the Creeks from their lands, and the Seminoles fought the Second Seminole War, which ended with U.S. troops forcing most of them away from Florida. After this, troops forced more than 15,000 Cherokees to travel from the Southeast to Oklahoma. Many died of disease, exposure and hunger. “The name of the route they followed is known as the “trail of Tears,” which comes from the Cherokee nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi, for the “trail where they cried” (history
36) Today, Native Americans live on what are known as reservations. The U.S. government created a treaty for Native Americans to give up their lands and live on these reservations in exchange for protection from the ongoing attacks by white settlers. Indians were given a yearly payment, which payed for food, livestock, household products, and farming equipments. Native Americans still have battles for voting rights, as well as the elimination of offensive use of mascots by schools and sports teams, stereotypes and racism against Indians. Other issues Native Americans still face today is the digital divide and drug trafficking. They have yet to be connected by basic telephone networks, and the internet, which makes them at a greater risk of unemployment and loss of education, and the reservations are very close to borders, which allow many canadians or mexicans to smuggle their drugs. In 2010, the Tohono O’odham Nation was designated as a part of the Arizona High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) by the US Department of Justice. This region encompasses the western and southern counties of Cochise, La Paz, Maricopa, Mohave, Pima, Pinal, Santa Cruz, and Yuma, including the entire US- Mexico border in Arizona. The area is considered to be a major arrival zone for large quantities of marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin entering the United States from Mexico. (Revels 290) Over the years, Native Americans have been cheated out of their way of life, land and food. Federal government’s Indian policies forced them onto reservations, and many did not survive. Racism and drugs have caused the reservations to have a bad reputation, and many Indians face unemployment, lack of education, and suffer to survive.
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 Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress in order to allow the growth of the United States to continue without the interference of the Native Americans. Jackson believed that the Native Americans were inferior to white settlers and wanted to force them west of the Mississippi. He believed that the United States would not expand past that boundary, so the Native Americans could govern themselves. Jackson evicted thousands of Native Americans from their homes in Georgia and the Carolinas and even disregarded the Supreme Court’s authority and initiated his plan of forcing the Natives’ on the trail of tears. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Indians, however Jackson ignored the ruling and continued with his plan. The result of the Indian Removal Act was that many tribes were tricked or forced off their lands, if they refused to go willingly, resulting in many deaths from skirmishes with soldiers as well as from starvation and disease. The Cherokee in particular were forced to undergo a forced march that became known as the Trail of
... the unwilling tribes west of the Mississippi. In Jackson’s letter to General John Coffee on April 7, 1832, he explained that the Cherokees were still in Georgia, and that they ought to leave for their own benefit because destruction will come upon them if they stay. By 1835, most eastern tribes had unwillingly complied and moved west. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in 1836 to help out the resettled tribes. Most Cherokees rejected the settlement of 1835, which provided land in the Indian territory. It was not until 1838, after Jackson had left office, that the U.S. Army forced 15,000 Cherokees to leave Georgia. The hardships on the “trail of tears” were so great that over 4,000 Cherokees died on their heartbreaking westward journey. In conclusion, the above statement is valid and true. The decision the Jackson administration made to remove the Cherokee Indians to lands west of the Mississippi River was a reformulation of the national policy. Jackson, along with past Presidents George Washington, James Monroe, and Thomas Jefferson, tried to rid the south of Indians This process of removing the native people was continuous as the years went on.
In conclusion Native Americans were lead close to extinction after the discovery of the New World. They suffered damages from diseases and injuries the europeans brought. They had to relocate their tribes only to fulfill european demands. As well as to change their belief for the ones the europeans brought with them in order to survive and avoid the risk of extinction.
To some people Andrew Jackson is remembered as the, metaphorically speaking, “People’s King” and is accused of dictator-like political moves. However, Andrew Jackson was quite the contrary, he was exalted amongst the people for being the new era of democracy: instilling a political revolution, the protection of the American people, and social equality among the masses. Therefore, Andrew Jackson was a precedent of democratic rule in the United States.
Three specific ways in which American expansion shaped the Jacksonian period was through the advancement of technology, by way of slavery, and the Indian Removal Act. Jackson used any political and economic means necessary in order to see American frontier regions expand across the nation. Jackson’s Indian Removal policy had some of the most important consequences and paved the way toward American expansion. In the beginning of the Jacksonian era, colonial Americans’ settlements had not yet extended far beyond the Atlantic seaboard, partly because bad roads and primitive technology limited their ability to expand, and because both hostile Indians and British imperial policy discouraged migration beyond Appalachian Mountains. However, all of this changed after Jackson was in office and American expansion was well underway.
When John Quincy Adams was elected to the office of president of the United States in 1824, “hot headed” Jackson was infuriated. He started a campaign that would land him in the Whitehouse in 1828. With his place in office brought profound political change to America, and a direct effect that would last for the next 20 years after his two terms, until 1848. This time in American History is known as the Jacksonian Period, commonly referred to as the era of the “common Man.” It is reform movements and economic development that characterize this era.
The Jacksonians and President Jackson proved to be both keepers and offenders of political democracy. Jacksonians did not protect political democracy for non-white men. The Cherokees and African Americans were persecuted almost entirely by the Jacksonian Democrats. They protected the interests of the poor and rich white-man; protecting the interests of farmers, mechanics, and laborers by keeping the rich from gaining too much power. Jackson and his democrats did a great deal to protect the common man. Universal Manhood Suffrage was also an important factor in the political democracy of the United States. By giving all white men the right to vote it helped lessen the power of the upper class.
America’s most influential political figure during the 1830s, Andrew Jackson left a permanent imprint upon American politics and democracy. Born on the border of North and South Carolina, Jackson was left to confront the world on his own after the death of his parents. By the age of 29, he got involved in law and politics as he was elected as Tennessee’s first representative in the U.S. Senate. Jackson’s first successes came from war, specifically when he commanded American forces in the defense of New Orleans against the British in 1815. In 1824, Jackson decided to make his first run for the President of the United States and won both electoral and popular votes. Jackson is often connected to a new spirit of democracy that swept over the United
The Age of Jackson, from the 1820's to the 1830's, was a period of American history full of contradictions, especially in regard to democracy. The period saw an increase in voter participation, nominating committees replaced caucuses, and electors began to be popularly elected. Yet, all of these voting changes affected only a minority of the American people: White, Anglo-Saxon males. So, though one can easily tell that White, Anglo-Saxon males were gaining
Ultimately, the Jacksonian Era was filled with reform movements that sought to expand democratic ideals. Starting with the prison reforms in 1829 to women’s rights in 1848, all these reforms were very democratic. However, all of these reforms looked toward a brighter future; a future which democracy would be the framework in which the United States of America would function under.
One of the things that made Andrew Jackson unique and contributed to the style and tone of the new political age was his commitment to the idea of democracy. By democracy, Jackson meant majoritarian rule. “The people are the government”, he said, “administering it by their agents; they are the Government, the sovereign power”. In his message to Congress he announced his creed: “The majority is to govern,” he declared; and he repeated this commitment at every opportunity. He felt that the electorate should select all its officials in Washington, starting with the President. Jackson advocated a single term of either four or six years for the chief executive and he proposed this change to Congress. Jackson also felt that Senators should be elected to four-year terms by the people, not by the state legislatures. He would even have the electorate select its federal judges for terms of seven years which indicated his commitment to rotation of office as a means of democratizing the government. (Schlesinger pp.314, 402-406)
Native Americans had inherited the land now called America and eventually their lives were destroyed due to European Colonization. When the Europeans arrived and settled, they changed the Native American way of life for the worst. These changes were caused by a number of factors including disease, loss of land, attempts to export religion, and laws, which violated Native American culture.
An uncertain, disputable idea, Jacksonian Democracy in the strictest sense alludes just to the domination of Andrew Jackson and the Democratic party after 1828. All the more freely, it insinuates the whole scope of just changes that continued nearby the Jacksonians' triumph from extending the suffrage to rebuilding government establishments. From another point, notwithstanding, Jacksonianism shows up as a political drive fixing to subjection, the oppression of Native Americans, and the festival of racial domination to such an extent that a few researchers have expelled the expression "Jacksonian Democracy" as a logical inconsistency in wording. Socially and mentally, the Jacksonian development spoke to not the rebellion of a particular class
Andrew Jackson began a whole new era in American history. Amongst his greatest accomplishments were evoking the "common man" to be interested in government and tailoring democracy to satisfy the same "common man's" needs. Of course, Jackson could not go about making such radical changes without supporters, but that never surfaced as a problem. Jacksonian Democrats, as they came to be called, were great in number during the 1820's and 1830's. They advocated all of the issues that President Jackson did, and did so with great vigor. They thought of themselves very highly because they recognized their responsibilities as American citizens. They realized that as political leaders they had a true purpose- to protect and serve the American people. The Jacksonians justified their view of themselves in their sincere attempts to guard the United States Constitution by both promoting equality of economic opportunity and increasing political democracy, but they had their downfalls with issues of individual liberties.