Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act

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John Ross, on the other hand, would not yield. As head of the National Party that opposed removal he was shrewd enough to recognize immediately that the President would attempt to play one party off against the other. ‘The object of the President is unfolded & made too plain to be misunderstood,’ he told the Nation. ‘It is to create divisions among ourselves, break down our government, our press & our treasury, that our cries may not be heard abroad; that we may be deprived of the means of sending delegations to Washington City to make known our grievances before Congress . . . and break down the government which you [Cherokees] have, by your own free will & choice, established for the security of your freedom & common welfare.’

Under the circumstance, Ross decided to go to Washington and request a meeting with the President in order to try again to arrange some accommodation that would prevent the mass relocation of his people to what was now the new Indian Territory, which Congress had created in 1834 and which eventually became the state of Oklahoma. He was tormented by the knowledge that his people would be condemned to a ‘prairie badly watered and only skirted on the margin of water courses and poor ridges with copes of wood.’ Worse, districts would be laid out for some ‘fifteen or twenty different tribes, and all speaking different languages, and cherishing a variety of habits and customs, a portion civilized, another half civilized and others uncivilized, and these congregated tribes of Indians to be regulated under the General Government, by no doubt white rulers.’ The very thought of it sent shivers through Ross’s entire body.

Since he had fought with Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend during the Creek War he reckoned that his service during that battle would provide him with a degree of leverage in speaking with the President. And, as Principal Chief, he could speak with the duly constituted authority of the Cherokee Nation as established under the Cherokee Constitution of 1827. He had another reason for requesting the interview. He had heard a rumor that Jackson had commissioned the Reverend John F. Schermerhorn, an ambitious cleric who had assisted in the removal of the Seminoles from Florida, to negotiate with Ridge and his associates and see if a deal could be worked out that would result in a treaty. Definitely alarmed, Ross asked to speak with the President at which time he said he would submit his own proposal for a treaty.

Jackson never liked Ross. He called him ‘a great villain.’ Unlike Ridge and Boudinot, said Jackson, the Principal Chief headed a mixed-blood elite, and was intent on centralizing power in his own hands and diverting the annuities to those who would advance his authority and their economic self-interests. Real Indians were full-blooded Indians, not half-breeds, he declared. They were hunters, they were true warriors who, like Ridge and Boudinot, understood the President’s concern for his red children and wished to prevent the calamity of certain annihilation that would ensue if they did not heed his pleas to move west. As for Ross’s authority under the Cherokee Constitution, Jackson denied that it existed. He said that this so-called Constitution provided for an election in 1832 and it had not been held. Instead the Principal Chief had simply filled the National Council with his henchmen — another indication, claimed Jackson, of an elitist clique who ruled the Nation and disregarded the interests of the majority of the people.

Despite his feelings about the chief, Jackson decided to grant Ross’s request for a meeting. Above all else he wanted Cherokee removal and if that meant seeing this ‘great villain’ and hearing about his proposal for relocating the tribe then he would do it. As a consummate politician, Jackson understood the value of playing one party off against another, so when he granted the interview he directed that Schermerhorn suspend his negotiations with the Treaty Party and wait for the outcome of his interview with the Principal Chief.

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Tags: 19th Century, American History, American Indian Wars, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, Politics

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