How many US Presidents have killed someone?

Factual Questions
21

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. I can’t see any way that could be made true. General Jackson commanded US forces three times before becoming president, during the Creek War, during the Battle of New Orleans, and during the First Seminole war, and even if you consider Jackson singly responsible for all the Creeks, British, Spanish, and Seminoles killed in the fighting, that’s still way too high.

In the Creek War, about 1900 Red Sticks were killed in the fighting. At the Battle of New Orleans, about 385 British were killed.

The deaths resulting from the first Seminole War is harder to determine, but they wouldn’t add up to tens of thousands.
[/QUOTE]

I beleive that he is referring to the displacement of the Cherokee off of their own lands (and in defiance of a Supreme Court decision), the Trail of Tears .

22

[QUOTE=Si Amigo]
I beleive that he is referring to the displacement of the Cherokee off of their own lands (and in defiance of a Supreme Court decision), the Trail of Tears .
[/QUOTE]

Still wouldn’t add up to “tens of thousands.” The entire population of the Cherokee nation at the time was something like 18,000. Liberal tends to be wildly hyperbolic on this issue.

(And we are left with the question of why “Indian-hater” Jackson raised a Creeek orphan as his son. And the question of how many Cherokee would have died in conflicts with encroaching white settlers if the removal hadn’t happened.)

An old thread on the topic.

23

[QUOTE=Si Amigo]
I beleive that he is referring to the displacement of the Cherokee off of their own lands (and in defiance of a Supreme Court decision), the Trail of Tears .
[/QUOTE]

Plus he claims this was “before taking his throne [sic] in Washington”. The Cherokee removal didn’t happen until Jackson was no longer president.

24

I’m sorry if I seem wildly hyperbolic. I did edit my post to remove pejoratives about the Indian Hater. And despite whatever argument on technicality might be made with respect to his direct responsibility for the Trail of Tears, he did in fact champion the Indian Removal Act and other legislation, and completely disregarded the Supreme Court, to take steps which directly led to the Cherokee holocaust. His eight years in office were dedicated to making sure it happened the year after he left.

His attack on the Creek nation, incidentally, was in violation of US law (Article IX of the treaty of Ghent). And that wasn’t the only treaty he violated.

It may be the case that the victor writes the history, but Indians do not discount the deaths of those who were displaced or scattered by his terrorism, and driven into disease and starvation. He did not even have the decency to bury his victims, but instead left them to rot in rivers or on the ground where they fell. And he did not discriminate between innocent families and warriors. When he commandeered 23 million acres of Creek territory, he would not allow friendly Creeks to remain despite promises and assurances he had given them. He used tyranny and bribery to force Cherokee and Chickasaw warriors to fight for him, threatening death for insubordination. Their blood is on his hands as well.

In 1818, he cut a swath of murder and destruction through Florida, taking over Pensacola as he massacred the Seminoles and the British. That same year, he threatened the Chickasaw with violence, stole their annuities, and bribed their leaders to cede to him more massive acreage. He threatened war on the Cherokee if they did not give him all their land in the Southeast, whereupon he set into motion his final solution for what he called “the Indian problem”. And in 1820, he warned the Choctaw that if they did not sign his ridiculous treaty with them, their “nation will be destroyed”.

By the time he became Emperor, whole nations of people had been routed, bombed by artillery, shot, moved, threatened, desecrated, hounded, bribed, cajoled, and hunted like wild chattel for the sake of his ego-maniacal bigotry. His entire term was consumed with the annihilation of Indian culture, land, and people. In his seventh Annual Message to Congress, he announced the fruition of his inhuman labor, declaring that his “plan for their removal and reestablishment is founded upon the knowledge we have gained of their character and habits, and has been dictated by a spirit of enlarged liberality”.

Frankly, if I may be allowed to state an opinion (since others are doing so), his image should be removed from our currency and replaced with a more honorable American. Like Benedict Arnold, perhaps. Or Timothy McVeigh. Here are some other Indians’ views on the lecherous war whore:

http://www.americanindian.ucr.edu/discussions/jackson/views.html

25

[QUOTE=Liberal]
His attack on the Creek nation, incidentally, was in violation of US law (Article IX of the treaty of Ghent). And that wasn’t the only treaty he violated.
[/quote]

His attack on the Red Sticks faction of the Creek Nation was a direct response to the Fort Mims Massacre, during which over 500 men, women and children were massacred and butchered by the Creeks.

The Seminoles were raiding settlements in Georgia and disrupting shipping on the Apalachicola River. The British were arming the Seminoles to cause trouble for the US. Wikipedia article.

26

Nitpick: He flew the Avenger Torpedo/Bomber. 58 combat missions in WW2, Pacific Theatre. I dont think it’s too much of an error to speculate that he dropped live ordnance successfully, and someone died, on at least one of those missions.

(Not all combat missions are completed with the death of the enemy as a result. Aborts due to weather, engine trouble, or failure to locate a previously sighted enemy ship, still count as a combat mission. As do routine search missions, or ASW patrols that turn up nuthin.)

27

[QUOTE=Liberal]

His attack on the Creek nation, incidentally, was in violation of US law (Article IX of the treaty of Ghent). And that wasn’t the only treaty he violated.
[/QUOTE]

The treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24, 1814. The Creek War was ended by the treaty of Fort Jackson, on August 9, 1814, and there was nothing illegal about it. That the US held onto the land the Creek ceded in the treaty probably did violate the treaty of Ghent, but Jackson wasn’t involved in that.

Besides, your feelings of President Jackson’s Indian policies aside, do you have evidence that most estimates of the people whose deaths he was responsible for before he became President numbered in the tens of thousands, as you had earlier claimed?

28

Liberal, I understand your feelings run strong on these issues, but we are in a forum devoted to providing factual answers to questions. This is not the place for hyperbole, exaggeration, or propaganda.

29

[QUOTE=spoke-]
His attack on the Red Sticks faction of the Creek Nation was a direct response to the Fort Mims Massacre, during which over 500 men, women and children were massacred and butchered by the Creeks.
[/quote]
Which was itself a response to the Battle of Burnt Corn.

Pesky savages, eh? That sounds rather like the American take on Iraqi resisters. The Seminoles and other nations were there first.

The treaty of Ghent nullified the treaty of Fort Jackson, and required that the land be returned. It was after the end of the War of 1812 that, in direct violation of the orders of War Secretary, William Crawford, he went back into Creek territory to remove the native inhabitants. Crawford had given his order because the Cherokee had petitioned that part of the land stolen from the Creek actually belonged to them.

The evidence is in the logic. Since no one counted how many were slaughtered, we have to rely on our reason to tell us. A man so driven by hate and bigotry — fighting that many wars against that many nations, displacing that many families over that much territory — is likely to have killed far more than the numbers that someone has typed into Wikipedia. If you drove your family out of their home tonight and pushed them away into unfamiliar forests among unfamiliar enemies and animals, without food or water or weapons, how well do you imagine they would do?

By the time I enjoined this thread, Hillary Clinton was being blamed for the death of Vince Foster. And I am mindful of the forum, which is why I have reined in the normal rhetoric that I would use to reference this unspeakable monster.

30

[QUOTE=Liberal]

The treaty of Ghent nullified the treaty of Fort Jackson, and required that the land be returned. It was after the end of the War of 1812 that, in direct violation of the orders of War Secretary, William Crawford, he went back into Creek territory to remove the native inhabitants. Crawford had given his order because the Cherokee had petitioned that part of the land stolen from the Creek actually belonged to them.
[/quote]

Didn’t the Cherokee then cede that land, though, in a seperate treaty in 1816. I’m pretty sure they did.

That’s not the evidence of logic, though. That’s the evidence of your prejudice. Jackson was no particular friend to the tribes of the Southeast, but, and while Jackson certainly was good at hating people, there’s no evidence that he hated the tribes, or that his hatred drove him in this case, or even that he wished the tribes any particular ill. Jackson’s actions against the tribes were motivated by the fact that they were enemies of the United States, because, in the case of the Seminoles, they were harboring escaped slaves, and that they were in the way of Americans who wanted their lands. But other than that, he was indifferent to them.

And if I drove my family out of their home tonight into unfamilar forests,etc., I’d imagine they’d do poorly. But that’s not what the Seminoles did during the Seminole War. They retreated into the swamps that they knew, bringing with them the tools to survive. They knew ahead of the time that Jackson’s army was coming, and they had time to organize their flight.

31

And to be quite frank, was Jackson really unique in that respect? Surely he wasn’t the only one committing such heinous crimes.

32

Since there have been links to one of Cecil’s columns and also a link to another thread that discussed this, and MAINLY because another [del]debate[/del] thread about Andrew Jackson is too tiresome for General Questions, I"ve closed this one.

samclem GQ moderator