Arguing about Andrew Jackson

It's no secret our current president is a fan of Andrew Jackson. Historians have for years, for decades, for at least a century, really, criticized Jackson for his policies while president, and usually it was Democrats who defended him. But because Mulligan has taken him up as an avatar of sorts, now it's Republicans and right-wing hangers-on who feel the need, I guess.

Including on Twitter, where some of them assail as biased the historians and others with knowledge of our nation's history because they dare to point out facts about Jackson. I have not been keeping up on all this (really, I try not to pay attention) but this thread from the great writer Charles C. Mann (author of 1491, 1493, and The Wizard and the Prophet) caught my attention today.

Mann was responding to a Jackson apologist who claimed that "Indian Removal" was inevitable, that Jackson wasn't the only one who did it, and that the Trail of Tears began a year after Jackson left office. This is what Mann had to say about that:

[The critic] is right that Indian removal wasn't just Andrew Jackson’s baby. And it was approved by Congress. But that doesn’t mean it was inevitable, or not a stain on U.S. history. Indian removal dates back to Jefferson, who thought from Day 1 that most of the Louisiana Purchase should be an area free of European settlers into which he could push Eastern Indians. (In modern terms, Jefferson envisioned an apartheid state.) [Jeffersonian document snapshot provided in the original tweet thread.]

Congress gave Jefferson what he wanted in the legislation for the Louisiana Purchase (“An Act erecting Louisiana into two territories [one for whites, one for Indians], and providing for the temporary government thereof”). [document snapshot provided]

Jefferson came up with a plan for “persuading” native people to leave their homelands. He sent “Indian agents” to bamboozle them into huge debts. “When these debts get beyond what they can pay they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands” [link to National Archives provided].

It worked! Agents would swindle native peoples not trained in the wiles of a cash economy and force land out of them, promising that the U.S. would never ask for more. Then the next round of agents would swindle them again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

As an example, the Choctaw homeland in Mississippi was carved up in this way by six treaties between 1801-1830. [link provided]

Jackson faithfully carried out Jefferson’s ideas. For the Choctaw, the betrayal was personal. Jackson begged them in the war of 1812 for help in the Battle of New Orleans. 1000+ Choctaw answered; they played a key role in Jackson’s victory, which sent him to the White House.

Choctaw leader Pushmataha told Jackson at the talks for the Treaty of Doak’s Stand (1820) that the Choctaw wouldn't move across the Mississippi. Loving their homeland, relocation was out of the question—especially to the poor land suggested by Jackson. [document snapshot provided]

In 1828, Jackson was elected president. The southern states were his political base. They were also a problem, because their governments were forcefully encouraging settlers to pour into areas reserved by federal treaties as Indian homelands. Article VI of the Constitution is usually interpreted as making Indian treaties “the supreme law of the land,” superseding state law. Jackson had a clear legal duty to stop the states. And he knew and respected many of the native nations involved—some had fought for him.

In a virtuoso show of political spinelessness, Jackson rammed thru the Indian Removal Act. Passage was anything but “inevitable.” Opposition in the Senate was fierce; it barely passed the House, 101-97. Sen. Frelinghuysen’s denunciation was famous. [snapshot of the denunciation provided] [emphasis added]

The results were catastrophic—and exactly what the opposition had predicted. Jackson’s moral cowardice led to the death of thousands of people and a century of suffering.

Unlike Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, Jackson doesn’t have many countervailing accomplishments. He created the spoils system, an enduring pathway to corruption. He fought for slavery. He rejected judicial review. He cut back on scientific exploration.

For historians, this story of removal is old hat, not modern PC. Here’s an article from *1906* on Indian removal that won a prize from the American Historical Association. Allowing for language and new evidence, it tells the story I’ve just recounted. [link to 1906 article provided]

tl;dr: Jackson was a coward who did an enduring wrong in the name of political expediency.

And here's a great picture of Pushmataha, the Choctaw leader who Jackson made into a brigadier general for his service to the US in the Battle of New Orleans:

Historian Kevin Gannon had his own thread on Jackson, covering similar territory, but I will only quote the part that addresses the one-year gap between the end of Jackson's presidency and the Trail of Tears:

The Indian Removal Act, the enabling legislation for the Trail of Tears, was a crown jewel in Jackson's legislative agenda, something he lobbied for in his presidential campaign, and it passed Congress in May, 1830--which was during his presidency, if you're keeping track.

Jackson also saw his removal policy challenged by the Cherokees, who used the court system to (correctly) argue that this policy abrogated several decades' worth of previous treaties. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee nation, but Jackson ignored the ruling.

So, yeah, the Trail of Tears technically didn't begin until the year after AJ left office, but that's only because the Cherokees tried everything they could to resist removal, and would have succeeded were Jackson not so willing to ignore the Supreme Court.

All of which makes me think of an op-ed from today's Star Tribune, originally from the Washington Post, called Some who proclaim history don't know enough about history.