Not really, they developed scalping independently.
Not by any definition of “hypocrite” I’ve ever heard. A hypocrite is someone who doesn’t practice what they preach. Benefiting from a wrong, when choosing not to benefit from the wrong wouldn’t right the wrong, has nothing to do with hypocrisy.
Wrong: the Supreme Court IS the federal government. What you may mean is that the executive branch failed to carry out its legal obligation to enforce the decisions made by the other branches–in this case, failing to enforce the decision of the Supreme Court. He violated his oath of office, his pledge to defend and uphold the Constitution, in doing so.
Daniel
Re-introduced the concept, popularized it, one of them. One of my ancestors, by the way, was one of the ‘generally’ in the ‘generally’ dead. He survived and walked home, seducing an indian maiden along the way, at around the age of sixty-something. Village records claim he lived till 115.
As for what the Mohegans are doing now, well… not too badly over in Foxwoods. Not great, but they’re still around, more or less where they were.
Captain: There’s a bit of a difference between a bill of sale and something signed under undue force. I think I’ll let Lib handle it, if he so chooses.
He did not sign a treaty with the Cherokee nation. He signed a treaty with a bogus "chief " that he installed and bribed.
The Cherokee, on the other hand, were tricked with an illegitimate treaty. In 1833, a small faction agreed to sign a removal agreement: the Treaty of New Echota. The leaders of this group were not the recognized leaders of the Cherokee nation, and over 15,000 Cherokees – led by Chief John Ross – signed a petition in protest. The Supreme Court ignored their demands and ratified the treaty in 1836. The Cherokee were given two years to migrate voluntarily, at the end of which time they would be forcibly removed. By 1838 only 2,000 had migrated; 16,000 remained on their land. The U.S. government sent in 7,000 troops, who forced the Cherokees into stockades at bayonet point. They were not allowed time to gather their belongings, and as they left, whites looted their homes. Then began the march known as the Trail of Tears, in which 4,000 Cherokee people died of cold, hunger, and disease on their way to the western lands.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html
I’m not sure what you mean by that.
The Cherokee used legal means in their attempt to safeguard their rights. They sought protection from land-hungry white settlers, who continually harassed them by stealing their livestock, burning their towns, and sqatting on their land. In 1827 the Cherokee adopted a written constitution declaring themselves to be a sovereign nation. They based this on United States policy; in former treaties, Indian nations had been declared sovereign so they would be legally capable of ceding their lands. Now the Cherokee hoped to use this status to their advantage. The state of Georgia, however, did not recognize their sovereign status, but saw them as tenants living on state land. The Cherokee took their case to the Supreme Court, which ruled against them.
The Cherokee went to the Supreme Court again in 1831. This time they based their appeal on an 1830 Georgia law which prohibited whites from living on Indian territory after March 31, 1831, without a license from the state. The state legislature had written this law to justify removing white missionaries who were helping the Indians resist removal. The court this time decided in favor of the Cherokee. It stated that the Cherokee had the right to self-government, and declared Georgia’s extension of state law over them to be unconstitutional. The state of Georgia refused to abide by the Court decision, however, and President Jackson refused to enforce the law.
— Ibid
What’s happened to the OP? ToC where are you?
We have a winner. Love the description.
w.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
He did not sign a treaty with the Cherokee nation. He signed a treaty with a bogus "chief " that he installed and bribed.
Jackson didn’t “install” Ridge, and Jackson didn’t bribe Ridge. What would be the point of Ridge taking a bribe? He knew that by signing the treaty, his life was forfeit. He signed the treaty because he knew he had no choice…The Cherokee were going to be destroyed.
And who’s fault was that? Ross had two years to arrange the migration. But he did nothing to prepare for it…just kept on filing petitions to reverse the decision
What was he supposed to do? Go to war against Georgia?
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Yes.
Use the state militia to enforce the law, as was his Constitutional duty as President.
(That always kind of confused me: Jackson said the SC had to enforce its decision – no, that’s your job, actually, to carry out the law of the land.)
But even if he did that, it wouldn’t have changed anything. He still would have gotten Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act, and still made the treaties.
And Jackson “Marshall has made his ruling, now let him enforce it” or anything like that. That was Horace Greeley’s characterization of Jackson’s attitude.
It would have changed the fact that he was breaking his oath to uphold the Constitution, for one thing.
This is interesting–can you give a cite for this? This quote is commonly attributed directly to Jackson (here, for example). I’ve never heard that it was a paraphrase.
Daniel
I found a more definitive citation some time ago, but I can’t track it down right now. Here’s what I can find now.
Apparently, the authenticity of this quote has been in doubt since early days. However, everyone seems to agree that it accurately represents Jackson’s point of view.
w.
Interesting–thanks! I had never heard that the quotation was in doubt (and from those cites, I’m not seeing much evidence to refute it–e.g., Jackson’s strenuous denial that he ever said that quote). Given the fact that, as you say, it accurately represents Jackson’s point of view, this is an interesting bit of trivia, but trivia nonetheless.
Daniel
His actual quote was “the decision of the supreme court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate,” Like Wikipedia points out in its article on Worcester v Georgia, it’s an open question whether or not Jackson had any duty, or even the right to intervene:
Hmm. That particular Wikipedia claim is not cited; the entire paragraph is cited as in
page 212. Can anyone take a look and see what evidence Prucha offers that Jackson never said the famous quote? Certainly the fact that he said something else is not evidence that he didn’t say the famous words; everyone says more than one thing in their lifetimes.
Let’s look at what Marshall said:
Jackson swore to defend and uphold the Constitution. By allowing Georgia to act in a way “repugnant to the Constitution,” he was violating his oath of office. By supporting such an act, I think it’s fair to call him a traitor.
Daniel
In that the first mention of the “quote” is by Horace Greeley, 33 years after the events occurred, that’s not much strong proof that he did say it. I can try to find the Prucha book, though.
Well, he’s only a traitor if he “levied war against the United States or adhered to its enemies”. But given that the Supreme Court didn’t authorize marshalls to go to Georgia before it adjourned, and that Congress never passed any laws or resolutions authorizing or instructing Jackson to enforce the Court’s decision, and given that Georgia ended up freeing the missionaries and repealing the law in question anyway, I don’t know that Jackson’s failure to act was as horrible as you seem to suggest.
And, maybe you can help me here, but I don’t know…had the issue ever come up before? Was it established in 1833 that the President was obligated to enforce Supreme Court decisions? Had that ever come up before?
From “How Great Were the “Great” Marshall Supreme Court Decisions”, Michael Kleinman, 87 Va L. Rev. 1111 (footnotes deleted)
I have no wish to defend Andrew Jackson’s policies with respect to Indian removal. They were reprehensible in the extreme.
However, they were not pursued in defiance of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held that state laws didn’t apply to Indian tribes. Jackson effectively agreed and negotiated the Treaty of New Echota between the Cherokees and the federal government. Indian removal was carried out under color of federal law based on a treaty between an Indian tribe and the federal government. It wasn’t in defiance of either Cherokee-related Supreme Court ruling in any way, shape, or form.
It so happens that the Treaty of New Echota was fraudulent, as it was signed and ratified by a faction that represented perhaps 1% of the Cherokee Nation. It was sadistic and inhumane, as it forced the Cherokees into a rushed removal that made death and suffering inevitable. It was carried out in so brutal a fashion, with victims herded into railroad cars and starving in disease-ridden refugee camps, as to make comparisons with Nazi Germany inescapable.
But it wasn’t in defiance of the Supreme Court.
It’s unfortunate that this (probably apocryphal) remark is the first thing that many people remember about the affair. I understand why this is so, because the Supreme Court has iconic status today and Presidents don’t openly defy it. But the remark has little relevance to the actual sins of the removal, and quibbling over it makes the whole sordid affair sound like a mere legal dispute.
Nitpick: The Cherokee had two years from the date of the treaty to remove to Oklahoma. They could have done so on their own schedule within that time frame. Some did. Ross and the majority of the Cherokee declined to move. At the end of the two years, they were rounded up. The treaty as worded didn’t necessitate a rushed removal.
Nitpick 2: As an alternative to removal, each Cherokee family had the option to receive 160 acres of land and become citizens of Georgia or Tennessee.
Nitpick 3: Railroad cars? What railroad cars?
It was the fraudulent character of the treaty that made the two-year time limit especially odious. In other removal treaties, the support of the tribal leadership, however grudging, had in one manner or another been secured. In the case of the Cherokee, it wasn’t, and the leadership saw no reason to coordinate (and hopefully ease the horrors of) a removal to which it hadn’t agreed.
Of course, the privileges of state citizenship were at the behest of each state’s legislature, and the pre-14th Amendment federal government had no power to intervene. Indian “citizens” were helpless against such measures as Georgia’s prohibition of Indian testimony in court cases involving white persons.
Per Remini, “In June the first contingent of about a thousand Indians boarded a steamboat and sailed down the Tennessee River on the first lap of their westward journey. Then they were boxed like animals into railroad cars drawn by two locomotives. Again there were many deaths on account of the oppressive heat and cramped conditions in their cars.”