Fuck you, Andrew Jackson

The BBQ Pit
1

On a cold and rainy October morning, your soldiers, under your direct order, and in defiance of the United States Supreme Court, dragged thousands of docile, frightened people, barefoot and weeping, from their homes at bayonet point, and packed them like sardines into six hundred and forty-five wagons. An estimated three thousand of them died from starvation, exhaustion, and disease as your army hauled them across inhospitable terrain and through hostile territory held by squatters who disdained even to offer them food, medicine, or comfort of any kind.

Each day, dozens of people died from pneumonia as you forced them to sleep in your meat wagons and outside in the sleet and freezing rain without so much as a blanket. The elderly and the infants died first, despite that the women among them gave up their own clothes and what few coverings they had to provide some modicum of protection to the children. Legend has it that the women mourned and wailed so much that the Chiefs prayed for a sign that God had not abandoned them. From then on, a rose grew wherever a mother’s tear fell to the ground.

When the survivors arrived at the barren place where you abandoned them to their fate, they stood disoriented and helpless, stripped of their dignity and humanity, all their belongings two thousand miles away, everything they had worked for even now being pillaged by the lawless thugs whom you encouraged with your lawless action. You stole their gold, overran their land, and desecrated the graves of their ancestors.

You’re a murderer. And now, with the blood of thousands of innocents on your filthy hands, there are those who seek to revise history so we can all sympathize with your unfortunate plight. What were you to do about the problem of white squatters intruding on Cherokee land? You were only trying to help.

You vile, putrid, demon from the bowels of hell. You did what all tyrants have done when peaceful people are perceived to be a problem for them. You excused yourself from the morality of the human race and herded them like cattle into boxcars of death. From the beginning of your order’s execution, the wailing of women and the sad faces of children exposed your evil plan for what it was — a monumental and deliberate holocaust of quiet and defenseless people who were in your way.

Like all your soulmates, you declared these people to be a problem, and you masterminded a final solution. And now you have the unmitigated gall to plead for understanding?

I slap your face with six thousand dead hands. I gouge out your eyeballs with the arthritic fingers of old men who lie in graves along your Trail of Tears. I stuff your ears with the incessant cries and pleas of gentle people who beg for mercy as they die horrible deaths. I fill your memorial with the corpses of the babies and children whom you murdered.

Suck Satan’s puss infested dick, you fucking monster.

2

Wow.

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**A very apt analogy AFAIK. And as you say, Godwin be damned.

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Someone needs to explain to spoke-, since I don’t think I have the intestinal fortitude (getting over a bug), that one example of something happening does not make it a common occurrence or even tolerated.

5

I guess you’re refering to the scalpings, Punha.

Although the practice seems barbaric by today’s standards (as does nearly everything from ancient times), the scalping ritual was a spiritual ceremony commonly conducted by warriors upon their fallen enemies in battle.

The scalps were considered to be sacred reminders of victory and of a shared spiritual experience. They were treated by their owners with great respect, and adorned the most special places of warriors. Every warrior knew that his scalp would be taken upon his death, and that it would be a testament to his bravery in battle.

The scalps of deserters and other cowards were never taken, not by men of honor anyway. And certainly, no scalps were taken of innocent people except by criminals. Besides, trusting the documentation of the government at the time, cited by Spoke, is like trusting documentation about Jews ransacking German storefronts in the 1920s.

There were many warlike tribes among the Indians who lacked the honor and integrity of the Cherokee, most notably those from the northeast. But damn if I’ll let even that slide in as some sort of twisted mitigation of what Emperor Jackson did.

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Forgive me, but I’m just wondering whether I offended people. So few responses to such a travesty.

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A little taken aback perhaps; Just out of (perhaps quite inappropriate) interest, do you consider Jackson’s horrific actions truly unforgivable?

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Unforgivable? No. But inexcusable, definitely. What’s done is done. I think what angered me more than even the deed itself was the implication that there might be justification by some mitigating circumstance, and not only that, but that his true intention (or at least the true outcome) was to benefit the Cherokee.

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Libertarian: My Cherokee wife and I were not offended by your post. Made us cry, but didn’t offend.

It was moving, well written and contained nothing but truths.

Kushti bok,

Kal

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Wa’-do, Kal.

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I too found nothing to be offended about. Yeah I know I’m not American but I’m sure the newly arrived Irish played their part.

The book that most effected me in my life was “Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee”. I’ve only read it once because I found it so hard to read. I know you are talking about a specific incident but still.

Great post Lib. It was truly moving.

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When I was in high school (late 60s) US history books pretty much ignored Indians. However, I was fortunate enough to have a history teacher who was half-Chippewa. He made sure we were aware of such things as the Trail of Tears and the Sand Creek massacre. Mr. Goddard was a great teacher; he was also head of the Archeology Club and took us on field trips to the Kahokia Mounds. We would get together at his house sometimes and just sit around and talk. One of the things I learned from him was that history is not just facts in books and that there is always another side to every story. I dropped by the school a few years ago and he was still there (although he was about to retire) and I talked with him again about the old days.

Lib, your OP reminded me of him and for that I thank you.

I can only hope that there are more people out there like him and you who are not letting the revisionists and apologists be the only voices heard.

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Thank all of you for caring. God go with you always.

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My opinion of Andrew Jackson is the same as my opinion of Hitler or Cromwell.

Different times, same attitudes, same sort of men.

Harp and Sword

15

Some history teachers get it right. In high school we had one day a year for classes that were outside the normal school curriculum and I attended the one (I forget the general topic) given by the Junior/Senior history teacher. The first words out of her mouth were, "Custer is this shining star. And I’ going to pull him from up here (Hand motion grabbing above her head) and bring him down here (hand moving as low as it could go).

I guess my point is that while most history teachers teach what is in the approved books, sometimes you get one who’ll tell you the real and whole story. (She was like this in her classes, too).

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cleosia: Odd. I’ve never seen Custer as anything but an idiot who killed his own men through incompetence.

Libertarian: Bravo! Writer!

We need more like you writing for monuments and plaques to forever memorialize what humans have done to each other.

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Thank you for your understanding and eloquence about what happened to our people.

Wa’-do, Oginallii. Otsalanvlvi.

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Come on, Lib, you know this board better than that! If you’ve offended people, they will let you hear about it.:slight_smile:

Anyway, while I’m here: beautiful post. Well done, as usual.

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I think this was one of those OPs about which res ipsa loquitur can most aptly be said. To post to the thread would, for most of us, be effectively a “me too” post, and I for one was not about to sully your OP with “what he said”. It just takes the overall effect of the thing down for someone to read your post and then a “:frowning: Yeah”, or something like that.

It’s like in Tranq’s thread about the loss of his friend. I debated posting in that thread for a solid hour because I couldn’t come up with anything worthy of posting there. His post just … said what it needed to say in the amount of space it needed. And eventually I said, basically, “I can’t think of anything to say that deserves to be in this thread, so I’m here for support and a damn fine OP you have there.”

Same here. And thank you for enlightening me more as to what happened then. I, as probably countless others on this board, had little idea of what had happened. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it … well, defied most semantic description.

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When I was in high school (early 70s), I did a report on the removal of the Cherokee (interest prompted in part by my family’s own somewhat distant connection to the tribe). Our teacher required that we use original documents to get our information instead of just reading some book or encyclopedia. It was the first time I’d ever done that and the first time I encountered the extent of the perfidy of someone occupying a position I had been taught to respect (ie; The President of the United States). I was shocked and saddened and angered, but nowhere near as eloquent. Thank you for a moving expression of the only civilized view of and reaction to that episide of history.