President Andrew Jackson was “renowned as a skilled Indian fighter” after the battle of New Orleans in 1814. Over a decade later, with no surprise, Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokee tribe out of their homeland in Georgia. The Native Americans were under United States Military guard as they marched many miles on the Trail of Tears until they reached present day Oklahoma. A quarter of the tribe died on the trail due to starvation and disease; therefore, Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Policy was inhumane. President Andrew Jackson was known as an anti-Native American man; he wanted all Native Americans out of his territory. So much so that the Cherokee, who have lived in Georgia for more than one hundred years, took their case to the Supreme …show more content…
For example, I would have sent all materials necessary to start fires for when the temperatures are below freezing point. This would have decreased the pneumonia and hypothermia death rates. I also would have sent a mass amount of food and equipment to receive food, which would eliminate the chances of starvation. I would have provided the Native Americans enough clothing and foot wear to get through the harsh winter, which would provide more warmth and more comfort. I understand that the Trail of Tears was hard for the American Soldiers, but it was worse for the Native Americans. The Native Americans should have been treated with more respect on the Trail of Tears; especially since they were the ones being forced off their ancestral lands. Andrew Jackson only intended to help American citizens by removing the Native Americans; however, the way he chose to remove the Native Americans was completely inhumane. Jackson only cared that the Americans received more land, not about what happened to the Native Americans on the Trail of Tears or what happened to them after. The significance of the Trail of Tears is not that the Americans got a lot of new land, it is the thousands of innocent lives lost in order for the Americans to get the
Andrew Jackson was a General in The United States army, and the 7th president, throughout his presidency he experienced many struggles with the Native Americans like wars and land disputes. In the 1830s he wanted to end these conflicts so he put in place the Indian Removal Act of 1830. I believe Andrew Jackson rightly and correctly removed the Indians. Even though many Indians died along the way Jackson had a reason behind what he did and should not be to blamed for their deaths.
In Jackson’s mind, he expected the Indians to thrive as they did in their current home, except there would be no white men. Three chiefs, each one from the Chippewa, Potawatomi, and Ottawa tribes, came forward to the White House and told about their suffering. They said they were promised land as fertile as Illinois, but received land that a snake couldn’t live on. They could not live in the prairie when they were from the woods. Thousands of Indian people suffered because Jackson heard what they said
Throughout Jackson’s presidency, Jackson was prone to making questionable decisions. One of Jackson’s most monumental blunders was when he decided to relocate tens of thousands of innocent Native Americans. Jackson was a huge fan of the idea of Americans moving westward to unsettled areas. The Native Americans occupied the areas that Jackson wanted to transform into American cities. That did not halt Jackson from doing what he desired. Jackson displayed his egocentric behavior and called for the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Jackson wanted to move the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole nations from their southeastern homes to Oklahoma. The Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole nations all somewhat cooperatively deserted their homes at the request of the Americans with little fight. These nations forfeited their land, homes and possessions to walk the Trail of Tears, an 850-mile path from the southeastern states to Oklahoma. American soldiers forcefully kept the Natives moving without breaks. Throughout the trek, thousands of Natives died from sickness and starvation. One tribe, the Cherokees from Georgia,
“By 1837, the Jackson administration had removed 46,000 Native American people from their land east of the Mississippi, and had secured treaties which led to the removal of a slightly larger number ( indian removal policy). In 1830, just a year after taking office, Jackson pushed a new piece of legislation called the "Indian Removal Act" through both houses of Congress. It gave the president power to negotiate removal treaties with Indian tribes living east of the Mississippi. Under these treaties, the Indians were to give up their lands east of the Mississippi in exchange for lands to the west.” Jackson saw the indians as paternalistic and patronizing -- he described them as children in need of guidance. He clearly wanted them gone. In this piece of text evidence it says that Jackson pushed the indian removal policy through both houses of congress which shows that he enforces what he wants
Throughout Andrew Jackson’s eight years in office, many decisions he made were unsuccessful in helping our growing country continue to prosper. To this day, people still refer to him as King Andrew the First, seeing that many of his actions seemed like abuses of power. Though Jackson’s intentions had the common man in mind, the means by which he tried to please the common man, cast him as a king. Jackson’s abuse of power began when he passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830. This act authorized him to negotiate land exchanges with the Natives and led to treaties that paved the way for reluctant and forcible emigration of the Indians from their native lands.
In the year of 1828, the president Andrew Jackson was appointed to the office of the American government with this the fact of the remaining Indians tribes were important which were named “The Five Civilized Tribes” including the Cherokee and with the pass of the “Treaty of Etocha” forced the Cherokee out of the land of Georgia also known as the “Trail of Tears” where thousands upon thousands of Cherokee were killed during the extraction of the Cherokee’s land.
When it came to protecting individual liberties, Jacksonians favored the white male population, but totally ignored others. They wanted to move all of the Indians who lived in the eastern lands to western lands past the Mississippi River. Jackson bolstered their case. Even after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee tribe and its right to remain where it was, Jackson did
President Andrew Jackson only wanted the best for the Native Americans and wanted them to relocate to a place
With the unconstitutional Indian Removal Act, Jackson forced more than one native american tribe to move from their land. He had done this because he says he was looking out for them so the white people and natives didn’t fight anymore. The Native American tribes hadn’t done anything wrong but Jackson still forced them to move. The Cherokee tribe was considered one of the “civilized” tribes since they had a president, dressed like normal people in that time, and had a government like our own. The Cherokee tribe had been forced to move because some wealthy lawyers had signed the treaty and Jackson took the treaty knowing that the president wasn’t the one who had signed it (“Treaty of New Echota”). It wasn’t just the Cherokee tribe that had been forced to move but also the Creek, Chickasaw, Seminole,
Andrew Jackson has gone down as one of the best presidents in United States history and that’s because he did many great things to improve the United States. Throughout his presidency he constantly abused his power as the president and did many things that expanded the powers of the president. One of the biggest things that President Jackson did while in office was pass the Indian Removal Act. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was when Jackson forced all the Indians to move to the land acquired in the Louisiana Purchase, while the Supreme Court declared this unconstitutional. Many of the Indians went peacefully, but many of the Indians also decided to protest and take it to the Supreme Court (Darrenkamp). While the court did side with the Indians Jackson and Congress forced the Indians to give up their land. The federal troops were called in to escort the Indians to their new land. Fifteen thousand Indians were forced to move and while on their way about a third of the Indians died, and this event became to be known as the Trail of Tears (Darrenkamp). Jackson had
Both thought of Natives as wards of the state that could be controlled by the government, but had very different ideas on what to do with them. For Jackson, this culminated in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Though Jackson saw Natives as people, he did not see them as equal to whites, once again showing his conservative Southern ways. To expand the territory of the US, Jackson ordered the four remaining southern tribes to assimilate or move farther westward. His conviction that the Native Americans must be moved drove him to negotiate the terms of the Indian Removal Act himself, the only act Jackson himself pushed for in his eight year presidency. The Cherokees were the only tribe to refuse to go, and gained judiciary backing from the Supreme Court after presenting the cases Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831 and Worcester v. Georgia in 1832. Jackson’s immense support for the Native migration, despite the established unconstitutionality of it, manifested as advising Georgia to slowly move onto Cherokee territory, all the while secretly negotiating a treaty with rebels in the tribe. Jackson’s intense desire to preserve his own ideals of white supremacy and Manifest Destiny, even if it meant ignoring the rights of an entire race, exemplified his conservative nature, can be seen most clearly in his intentional
Andrew Jackson’s decision to remove the Cherokee Indians is still a controversial policy debated by historians today. This policy was important because it represented a significant turning point in United States history. The Jackson administration’s decision to remove the Cherokee Indians to lands west of the Mississippi River in the 1830’s significantly changed the political policy pursued by the United States but continued the social and economic policies.
Despite Andrew Jackson not being able to predict the outcomes and consequences of the Indian Removal Act, there is no justifying his actions. Andrew Jackson was the man who openly gave approval to committing mass genocide for the Native Americans, forcibly removed thousands of Native Americans from lands they had owned for thousands of years prior, and approved and appointed the individuals in charge of starting the trail of tears. In February 1830, the Indian Removal Act set in place that potentially allowed the president to grant land that was west of the Mississippi river in exchange for Native American’s land within existing state borders. In theory, this plan would allow the native to earn money if they wished to move, and in return the Americans could acquire more land. The outcome of this, however, was a bloody massacre. Many of the Native Americans did not want to move, since they have been living there for thousands of years, longer than the whites have been there. Since many of them did not want to move, the Americans used force in an attempt to push the Native Americans west in a movement that killed over 4,000 natives. There is no justifying what Andrew Jackson did in order to gain more unnecessary land.
Jackson strongly hated the Native Americans; just seeing what he did to the two Seminole chiefs in Florida defies his hatred towards this group of people. Jackson claimed that they were in America’s way, causing him to move various tribes of the East Coast. One of them was the well-known Cherokee tribe, who strongly opposed the decision, because they already adapted the American culture. Their opposition was taken to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that the Cherokees can stay. Andrew Jackson showed no sympathy and ignored the court’s decision and exterminated them from the East Coast to the West Coast on a winter season; the journey that we call today the Trail of Tears, because of the death of many during the travel.
One of the defining moments of President Andrew Jackson’s career, if not the most significant, was the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This was a controversial bill at the time and the impact from it is still felt today. The Indian Removal Act directly led to the displacement of thousands of Native Americans; including four thousand deaths during the Trail of Tears, the forced march from Georgia to Oklahoma. While overt racism played a clear role in relocating Native Americans past the Mississippi, it is possible that other factors were at play. The living conditions in many of the states were poor for Natives and Jackson hoped that giving them a new location to live could remedy these problems while opening the land up for white settlers.