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dle, the president of the National Bank, which has led some scholars
to suggest his position was as much personal as ideological. He did
succeed in destroying the institution, however, much to the delight
of his supporters.
The Jacksonian Revolution, the Court, and Popular Opinion
35
But Jackson did not always work to give power to the com-
mon people; in fact, in many ways, he concentrated power in his
own office, or in the national government in general. His spoils
system plan of patronage meant that many government employees
lost their jobs so those positions could be filled by Jackson s friends
and supporters, regardless of training and experience. His informal
kitchen cabinet friends had far more influence on policy than his
appointed, credentialed presidential cabinet. He exercised the veto
more than any president before him. During the Nullification Cri-
sis, Jackson championed the power of the national government over
state governments, threatening the use of troops against South Car-
olina. Yet, contradictorily, he supported states rights when he
refused to enforce the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf
of the Cherokee Nation against the state of Georgia, opening the
door for the Trail of Tears. (This decision did, of course, promise
free land to many of the landless men in Georgia who voted for
Jackson.)
Despite the power Jackson the Man wielded, he was in some
ways not nearly as powerful as Jackson the Idea, as his common
man egalitarian rhetoric became the inspiration for a variety of
reform movements. Grassroots campaigns for temperance, public
schools, asylums for the mentally ill, and prison reform gained tre-
mendous strides as they rode the political wave of Jacksonianism.
So, too, did the abolitionist movement; William Lloyd Garrison s pa-
per The Liberator began publication in 1831, and the American
Anti-Slavery Society was established in 1833. The feminist move-
ment followed a similar path, with leaders such as Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the Grimke sisters building
national support for women s rights, paving the way for the 1848
meeting in Seneca Falls that would produce the Declaration of Sen-
timents and Resolutions. Another movement that took shape with
the Jacksonian revolution was Transcendentalism, based on the phil-
osophical objective to transcend mere intellect and gain emotional
understanding without the hindrances of institutional churches and
hierarchies. Transcendentalism produced works against repression
and for civil disobedience against unjust laws. Ralph Waldo Emer-
son and Henry David Thoreau were among the leaders in transcen-
dentalist thought.
Significantly, many of these movements wrestled with ques-
tions of justice, fairness, and the dignity of the individual. Because
of this, some of the key figures in these reform movements would
raise their voices in public protest against Jackson s policy of Indian
removal.
THE TRAIL OF TEARS AND INDIAN REMOVAL
36
The U.S. Supreme Court
The legal story of the Trail of Tears began not with the U.S.
Supreme Court, but with various treaties and agreements made by
the United States. Perhaps the most important of these was the Com-
pact of 1802, under which the state of Georgia agreed to relinquish
to the U.S. national government its claims on western land
(including what would become Alabama and Mississippi). In return,
the United States agreed to negotiate treaties of sale and removal
with the native nations that would, eventually, give Georgia control
of all the land within its borders. Such arrangements did not neces-
sarily contradict Jefferson s civilization campaign; in fact, he imag-
ined that most civilized tribes would assimilate to the point of
disappearance into the main U.S. population. Those separatists who
wished to live apart from white U.S. citizens could always choose to
leave and go West, Jefferson believed. Was this not one of the
options his Louisiana Purchase made possible? The assumption
behind this compact, however, was that the native nations would
have the choice to negotiate, without coercion or duress.
In 1817, a group of disgruntled Cherokee leaders went against
the wishes of the Cherokee National Council and agreed to the
Treaty of the Cherokee Agency, which ceded some lands in Tennes-
see and Georgia, and stipulated that those remaining on the land in
question would accept individual land allotments and U.S. citizen-
ship. Although the National Council members called for the treaty s
repeal, they only received a revision of the treaty in 1819. In the in-
terim, a number of Cherokees voluntarily moved West into present-
day Arkansas and Oklahoma. Most of these Cherokees preferred a
more traditional lifestyle; Sequoyah was among their number. The
Cherokee National Council was determined that no more land would
be surrendered, and the leaders put in writing the decision not to
meet with additional treaty commissions and ordered the death pen-
alty for any Cherokee who ceded additional lands.
With the election to the White House of Jackson the Indian
fighter, many Georgians assumed that the moment had arrived to
press the state s advantage against the Cherokee Nation. A series of
actions by the Georgia legislature made this clear. First, the state
redrew its county boundaries to claim Cherokee land. Second, the state
extended its laws over the Cherokees, in essence nullifying the Chero-
kee Nation s sovereignty as a political body. In 1830, Georgia set up a
system to redistribute Cherokee land to Georgia citizens. The Chero-
kees appealed to the national government, claiming that the Georgia
The Jacksonian Revolution, the Court, and Popular Opinion
37
state laws, by violating the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation, also
violated international treaties that the United States had made with the
Cherokees. In 1831 s Cherokee Nation v. Georgia decision, the U.S.
Supreme Court determined that treaties with the Cherokee Nation
were not international treaties because, in the words of Chief Justice
John Marshall, they were instead domestic dependent nations. 2
While the Georgia state legislature was planning ways to dis-
solve the Cherokee Nation, the 21st U.S. Congress passed the Indian
Removal Act of 1830, and Andrew Jackson enthusiastically signed it
into law. This act granted the executive the authority to negotiate
land-exchange treaties with native nations residing within the boun-
daries of the United States. Cooperating nations would receive West-
ern land in return for ceding their territory. Thus Indian Territory
in present-day Oklahoma was born.
The first treaty under this law was the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit
Creek, involving the Choctaws of Mississippi. During Jackson s ten-
ure in office, nearly seventy treaties with Native Americans were rati-
fied. Many of these pertained to land sales; many were coerced, and
some were legally illegitimate. As a result, approximately 45,000
members of native nations were relocated to the West during this
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