What's a prez to do? Jackson and the Indians

Life was hard, in Andrew Jackson’s view. His ancestors had been driven from Scotland and then northern Ireland by economic distress. His father had died before he was born. At the age of fourteen he was taken prisoner by the British during the American Revolutionary War. His mother died effecting his release, leaving him an orphan. Jackson taught himself the law in North Carolina and started a law practice in Nashville when that western village was still surrounded by hostile Indians. He distinguished himself as an Indian fighter and eventually was elected commanding general of the Tennessee militia.

Jackson achieved national fame by leading a motley force of army regulars, state militiamen, Indians and pirates to victory over the British at the battle of New Orleans in 1815. He was the leading candidate in a four-way race for president in 1824 but lost when the election was thrown into the House of Representatives. He won in 1828 following a nasty campaign that included slanders against his wife, who died under the strain of the public abuse. As a result of all this, Jackson came to believe that life was a struggle and that the only path to success was to struggle harder and better than others.

During the late 1820s, a pressing question of American politics was what to do with the Indians. Under the pressure of disease and the growth of the settler population, most of the Indian tribes of the eastern half of the United States had retreated or scattered. The notable holdouts were in the South and included the Cherokees and their neighbors. The question was whether they would remain in place as self-governing tribes, assimilate into the larger population under the laws of the states within whose borders they lived, or relocate to the federal territories across the Mississippi River.

The question came to a head during Jackson's first term, largely because he brought it to a head. Jackson believed that the days of Indians’ independent existence in the populated parts of the United States were nearing an end. He’d lived among the settlers in Indian country and knew they’d never leave the tribes in peace so long as the Indians had land the settlers coveted. In Georgia the settlers eyed the lands of the Cherokees; farther west they liked the lands of other tribes.

As president, Jackson had a choice. He could fight against the whites on behalf of the Indians. He knew the states would never do so. Or he could try to separate the Indians from the whites. A third option was to persuade the Indians to abandon their tribal governments and agree to live under the laws of the states that included their lands.

The first option—to use federal troops to defend the Indians in their existing homelands—Jackson ruled out as politically impossible. Before the Civil War, the United States had a barely skeletal standing army. Jackson would have to go to Congress for funds to raise an army to defend the Indians, and he knew Congress would never agree. A few members of Congress lamented the decline of the Indian tribes, but almost no one wanted to raise taxes to resist what seemed the inexorable course of fate.

Jackson pursued the options that remained. He persuaded Congress to approve the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which gave the tribes east of the Mississippi a choice: Dissolve their tribal governments and agree to live under the laws of their states, or accept a federal offer of land west of the Mississippi and assistance in relocating.

In his annual message that December, Jackson explained the practical reasoning behind the law. “Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth,” he said. Tender hearts might wish things had been different, but they were unrealistic and shortsighted. “Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?”

Jackson recognized that the Indians would pay an emotional cost if they chose relocation. “Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers,” he said. “But what do they more than our ancestors did or than our children are now doing? To better their condition in an unknown land our forefathers left all that was dear in earthly objects. Our children by thousands yearly leave the land of their birth to seek new homes in distant regions.” Moreover, the whites moved at their own expense; the Indians would move at government expense. “Can it be cruel in this Government when, by events which it can not control, the Indian is made discontented in his ancient home to purchase his lands, to give him a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of his removal, and support him a year in his new abode? How many thousands of our own people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on such conditions! If the offers made to the Indians were extended to them, they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.”

Gratitude and joy weren’t the emotions felt by the Indians. Some, with greater or less reluctance, quietly left their tribes and took up life as citizens of Georgia and the other states. Others, retaining tribal identity and affiliation, grudgingly accepted Jackson’s offer of western land and support in relocating there. Most conspicuous were those who refused both choices the president offered. Cherokees under chief John Ross remained on their land until finally compelled by force to leave. The ensuing winter trek westward was marked by hunger and disease; thousands died on what came to be called the Trail of Tears.

Jackson by this time had retired to the Hermitage, his home outside Nashville. But critics of Indian removal blamed him for the Cherokees’ suffering and deaths.

He lived several more years. He expressed no remorse for his action and apparently felt none. Life was hard.