Quotations on Indian Removal

For the past week we have researched and debated the removal of several Native American tribes from their lands in Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Groups discussed the morality and the legality of this measure. Cherokee and Missionary groups argued that the law would be a violation of several treaties signed by the federal government. Southern farmers and the Jackson Administration pointed out how the nation as a whole would benefit from this land.

You are to choose two of the quotes regarding the Indian Removal Act. Some quotes are from members of government that debated the issue and from Native Americans who were impacted by the legislation. Others are from historians and authors who interpret and debate the actions that this country has taken.

Once you choose the quotes you need to answer the following questions on a separate piece of paper.

1. Place the quotes in your own words.

2. Did you need to look up any words from the quote? If so which ones?

3. Was the author a Native America, historian, or politician?

4. Is the author for or against the Indian Removal Act? How can you tell?

5. Choosing one of the quotes that you have analyzed, write a response where you take the opposing side of the quote. If the quote is for the removal of the tribes, you are going to respond against it.

Here are the quotes:

“The philanthropist will rejoice that the remnant of that ill-fated race has been at length placed beyond the reach of injury and oppression, and that the paternal care of the General Government will hereafter watch over them and protect them”

~ Andrew Jackson

The human capacity to convince oneself of something one wants to think true is virtually bottomless. Given the facts such as Indian removal, it has to be.

~ Jon Meacham

"The evil, Sir, is enormous; the inevitable suffering incalculable. Do not stain the fair fame of the country. . . . Nations of dependent Indians, against their will, under color of law, are driven from their homes into the wilderness. You cannot explain it; you cannot reason it away. . . . Our friends will view this measure with sorrow, and our enemies alone with joy. And we ourselves, Sir, when the interests and passions of the day are past, shall look back upon it, I fear, with self-reproach, and a regret as bitter as unavailing."

~ Representative Edward Everett

"Removal "is a gentle, almost antiseptic word for one of the harshest, most crudely opportunistic acts in American history."

~ Charles Hudson

“There is no other course for us but to turn our faces to our new homes toward the setting sun.”

~ member of the Choctaw

“If it be true that the Cherokee nation have rights, this is not the tribunal in which those rights are to be asserted”

~ Chief Justice John Marhsall

“General Jackson rules by his personal popularity, which his partisans in the Senate dare not encounter by opposing anything that he does”

~ John Quincy Adams

“ The government was to be a government of law, and not of prerogative, and especially not of executive prerogative; for if his will was to have the force of law, that would be despotism

~ Representative Henry R. Storss

We, the great mass of the people think only of the love we have for our land, we do love the land where we were brought up. We will never let our hold to this land go, to let it go it will be like throwing away (our) mother that gave (us) birth.

~ Chief John Ross