What Everybody Ought To Study About U.S. History From 1787 to 1838 For the CSET

Jul
05

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Answer: The rise of the “common man.”
1 - War against the bank and tariff were key issues for the new Democratic Party.
2 - Jackson iniated the spoils system (political enemies are replaced by political friends).
3 - Jackson pursued nationalistic policies


Question: What was the Trail of Tears?

Answer: In the spring and summer of 1838, more than 15,000 Cherokee Indians were removed by the U.S. Army from their ancestral homeland in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. Held in concentration-like camps through the summer, they were then forced to travel over 1,000 miles, under adverse conditions to Indian Territory, which is now Oklahoma. Thousands died. The Cherokees came to call the event Nunahi-Duna-Dlo-Hilu-I or Trail Where They Cried.

This catastrophic journey, one of the darker events in American history, not only affected the Cherokee, but has symbolized the removal of the other Southeastern and Eastern Indian tribes. The grim result of U.S. Government American Indian Removal Policy, the forced relocations devastated American Indian cultures.

Passed into law during Jackson’s second year as President, this Act set the tone for his administration’s handling of all Indian affairs. In fact, Removal outlasted his tenure: the last of the Cherokee were infamously forced on the Trail of Tears death march in 1838, two years after Jackson’s second–and final–term ended.

Though all Eastern tribes were eventually relocated West of the Mississippi, the government failed utterly in its pledge to enact the policy on a strictly voluntary basis (a policy notably not written into the act.) Nearly all relocation was carried out under duress, whether by military escort, or when no other option remained after tribal decimation by broken treaties, fraudulent land deals and the wars these often caused. Here is the Act’s preamble:

CHAP. CXLVIII.–An Act to provide for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi.

Indian Removal Policy
Developing & Applying the Removal Act
Andrew Jackson Addresses Congress.

In seven of his eight annual messages to Congress, US President Andrew Jackson devotes

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