·
Did the approach of “immediatist” abolitionists
reflect a reasonable solution to the problem of slavery? (Unit-wide)
·
To what extent were the moral imperatives
declared by abolitionists applicable to the problem of Indian Removal policy?
·
To what extent did economic motives drive
federal government policies toward the Cherokee?
·
How did attitudes about race influence this
federal policy and its opponents?
·
Were President Jackson’s policies toward the
Cherokee consistent with the principles of “Jacksonianism”?
Lecture (15
min) on the Panic of 1819, the Missouri Compromise and the rise of the
Democratic Party
Students read aloud in threes (15 min) document
excerpts from Jackson, Herring, Speckled Snake, Marshall, the Anti-slavery
Society, Webster, Christy.
Students write
short answers, in threes (20 min)
1)
define any words you don’t know
2) Was
the Cherokee Removal consistent with the broader Jacksonian agenda? Explain.
3) What
would be the economic impact of these policies? (Choose one or two specific items.)
4) What
ethical principles underlie these statements? Do the writers share any common
principles? Identify one specific quotation reflecting these principles.
5) Do
any of these statements reflect irreconcilable differences with the statements
of others? Identify specific quotations reflecting these differences.
Converse (15
min) results, questions, complaints
Students write,
individually (25 min) One paragraph: Did the Jackson Administration behave
responsibly when it put into place its Indian removal policy? Consider the
proper role of the federal government and the impact of the policy on as many
parties as possible.
1) from Andrew
Jackson's second annual message to Congress, December 6, 1830
It
gives me great pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of
the Government. . . in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white
settlements is approaching a happy conclusion. . . . Toward the aborigines of
the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go
further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them
happy, generous people.
Humanity
has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and
Philanthropy has long busily employed the means to avert it, but its progress
has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one many powerful tribes have
disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of this race and to tread
on the graves of extinct nations excites melancholy reflections. But true
philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does the
extinction of one generation to make room for another. . . . Philanthropy could
not wish to see this continent restored to the condition in which it was found
by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests
and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with
cities, towns and prosperous farms?
2) Report of the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ebert Herring, November 19, 1831
The humane policy, exemplified in the system adopted by this
government with respect to the Indian tribes residing within the limits of the
United States, which is now in operation, is progressively developing its good
effects; and, it is confidently trusted, will at no distant day be crowned with
complete success. Gradually diminishing in numbers and deteriorating in
condition; incapable of coping with the superior intelligence of the white man;
ready to fall into the vices, but unapt to appropriate the benefits of the
social state; the increasing tide of the white population threatened soon to
engulf them, and finally to cause their total destruction. . . . [The solution
to this problem] exists in the system of removal; of settlement in territories
of their own, and under the protection of the United States; connected with the
benign influences of education and instruction of agriculture and the several
mechanic arts, whereby social is distinguished from savage life.
3) Response to a
message from President Jackson concerning Indian removal by Speckled Snake
(Cherokee), 1830
Brothers! We have
heard the talk of our great father; it is very kind. He says he loves his red
children. Brothers! When the white
man first came to these shores, the Muscogees gave him land, and kindled him a
fire to make him comfortable; and when the pale faces of the south made war on
him, their young men drew the tomahawk and protected his head from the scalping
knife. But when the white man had warmed himself by our fire, and filled
himself with our hominy, he became very large; he stopped not for the mountain
tops, and his feet covered the plains and the valleys. . . Then he became our
Great Father. He loved his little red children, but said "You must move a
little farther, lest, by accident, I should tread on you." With one foot
he pushed the red man over the Oconee, and with the other he trampled down the
graves of his fathers. But our great father still loved his red children, and
he soon made them another talk. He said much; but it all meant nothing but
"move a little farther; you are too near to me."
4) John Marshall for
the Court in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
1831
If courts were permitted to indulge their sympathies, a case
better calculated to excite them can hardly be imagined. A people, once
powerful, numerous and truly independent, found by our ancestors in the quiet
and uncontrolled possession of an ample domain. . . have yielded their lands,
by successive treaties, each of which contains a solemn guarantee of the
residue, until they retain no more of their formerly extensive territory than
is deemed necessary to their comfortable subsistence. . . .
[However],
if it be true that the Cherokee nation have rights, this is not the tribunal in
which those rights can be asserted. If it be true, that wrongs have been
inflicted, and that still greater are to be apprehended, this is not the
tribunal which can redress the past or prevent the future. The motion for an
injunction is denied.
5) In 1833, William
Lloyd Garrison and Theodore Dwight Weld form
the Anti-slavery Society. Below are excerpts from the Manifesto of that group.
We
further maintain that no man has the right to enslave or imbrute his brother –
to hold or acknowledge him, for one moment, as a piece of merchandise … or to
brutalize his mind by denying him the means of intellectual, social, and moral
improvement.
The
right to enjoy liberty is inalienable. To invade it is to usurp the prerogative
of Jehovah. Every man has a right to his own body – to the products of his own
labor – to the protection of law … It is piracy to buy or steal a native
African and subject him to servitude. Surely, the sin is as great to enslave an
American as an African.
Therefore
we believe and affirm that there is no difference, in principle, between the
African slave trade and American slavery;
That
the slave ought instantly to be set free and brought under the protection of
law …
That
all those laws which are now in force admitting the right of slavery are,
therefore, before God, utterly null and void …
We
maintain that no compensation should be given to the planters emancipating
their slaves:
Because
it would be a surrender of the great fundamental principle that man cannot hold
property in man ….
Because
immediate and general emancipation would destroy only nominal, not real,
property; it would not amputate a limb or break a bone of slaves, but, by
infusing motives into their breasts, would make them doubly valuable to the
masters as free laborers….
We
regard as delusive, cruel, and dangerous and cruel any scheme of expatriation
[to Liberia, Africa] which pretends to aid, either directly or indirectly, in
the emancipation of the slaves, or to be a substitute for the immediate and
total abolition of slaves.
6) In 1850, Daniel
Webster, in support of the Compromise of 1850, wrote the following as
assessment of immediatists
Then,
sir, there are the abolition societies, of which I am unwilling to speak, but
in regard to which I have very clear notions and opinions. I do not think them
useful. I think their operations for the last twenty years have produced
nothing good or valuable…
I do
not mean to impute gross motives even to the leaders of these societies, but I
am not blind to the consequences. I cannot but see what mischiefs their
interference with the South has produced.
And
is it not plain to every man? Let any gentleman who doubts of that recur to the
debates in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1832, and he will see with what
freedom a proposition made by Mr. Randolph for the gradual abolition of slavery
was discussed in that body. Everyone spoke of slavery as he thought; very
ignominious and disparaging names and epithets were applied to it….
That
was 1832 …. These abolition societies commenced their course of action in 1835.
It is said – I do not know how true it may be – that they sent incendiary
publications to the slave states. At any event, they attempted to arouse, and
did arouse, a very strong feeling. In other words, they created great agitation
in the North against Southern slavery.
Well,
what was the result? The bonds of slaves were bound more firmly than before;
their rivets were more strongly fastened. Public opinion, which in Virginia had
begun to be exhibited against slavery, and was opening out for the discussion
of the question, drew back and shut itself up in a castle.
I
wish to know whether anyone in Virginia can, now, openly talk as Mr. Randolph,
Gov. McDowell, and others talked there, openly, and sent their remarks to the
press, in 1832.
7) from David
Christy, Cotton is King or, Slavery in the Light of Political Economy
(1860)
The author would here repeat, then, that the main object he had in
view, in the preparation of Cotton is
King, was to convince the abolitionists of the utter failure of their
plans, and that the policy they had adopted was productive of results, the
opposite of what they wished to effect;—that British and American
abolitionists, in destroying tropical cultivation by emancipation in the West
Indies, and opposing its promotion in Africa by Colonization, had given to
slavery in the United States its prosperity and its power;—that the institution
was no longer to be controlled by moral or physical force, but had become wholly
subject to the laws of Political Economy … [Abolitionists] had not discovered
the secret of [slavery’s] power; and, therefore, its locks remained unshorn,
its strength unabated. The institution advanced as triumphantly as if no opposition
existed. The planters were progressing steadily in
securing to themselves the monopoly of the cotton markets of Europe,
and in extending the area of slavery at home. In the same year that Gerritt
Smith declared for abolition, the title of the Indians to fifty-five millions
of acres of land, in the slave States, was extinguished, and the tribes
removed. The year that colonization [of slaves back to Africa] was depressed to
the lowest point, the exports of cotton, from the United States, amounted to
595,952,297 lbs., and the consumption of the article in England, to 477,206,108
lbs… In 1800, the West Indies exported 17,000,000 lbs. of cotton, and the United
States, 17,789,803 lbs. They were then about equally productive in that
article. In 1810, the West India exports had dwindled down to 427,529 lbs.,
while those of the United States had increased to 743,911,061 lbs.
