Jackson's Indian Wars

3 Pages 703 Words

“The result reminds us that the grand events of history often involve considerable suffering. Romanticizing them risks forgetting the ugly lessons that need to be learned. Demonizing them can have the same result.”
~Robert V. Remini

Considering Jackson’s support for Indian Removal and his refusal to follow the Supreme Court’s decision in Worcester v. Georgia, Jackson’s goals, motives, and intentions are clear, especially when paired with the political ideals of his contemporaries. It is easy, today in 2004, to claim that Andrew Jackson’s motives and intentions behind Indian Removal were nothing more than racist narcissism inherent of radical expansionist politics. However, it is also difficult for contemporary students to place ourselves in the mindset of the antebellum South.
Jackson had several reasons for going forth with the Indian Removal Act; perhaps reasons deemed indecent in the eyes of those studying his actions as history, but reasons not illogical when taken in context. Jackson, as president of a new and expanding nation, had to make the decision of removing Indians in order to benefit his own people; Indian Removal was a matter of opening up millions of acres of land to settlement and slavery, thus promoting the essential strengthening of the economy of a new nation.
During the time of President Jackson most of the people of the United States did not entertain the notion that the United States would ever expand west of the Mississippi River, therefore, forcing the native Indians further west would allow space for both the Indians and the white settlers. However, one idea gathered from the documents of Jackson’s era needs no clarification: Jackson’s personal perspective on Indian Removal was simply that it was not considered feasible for the Indians to live among white Americans.
Perhaps indeed a racist, Andrew Jackson did not make his decisions...