FREE ESSAY ON REMOVAL ACT OF 1830

REMOVAL ACT OF 1830

Wallace 
Two distinct cultures existed on this Earth with the migration of man many thousands of
years ago from Eurasia to the American continent. The people from the migration to the
Americas had absolutely no contact with the people in Europe and Asia after they
migrated. In fact, the two civilizations evolved in totally different manners, and at
different speeds. The people in the Americas, or Native Americans existed mainly as
hunter-gatherers using tools of bone, wood, and useful animal parts. Native Americans
formed their beliefs into many different religions, and resided happily perhaps in
buckskin wigwams or wooden longhouses. At the height of their civilization though, whites
in Europe had their own religions and sociological issues and beliefs. The two cultures
had evolved at different speeds, and in different directions. Civilization in Europe
started centuries before civilization in the Americas began, leaving Europe with a
massive head-start in key cultural areas; hence, a major cultural clash occurred when
Columbus sailed the Ocean blue in fourteen hundred and ninety-two. The whites from Europe
simply could not tolerate the Native Americans', or Indians', overall lack of
civilization, as the Europeans described themselves. For hundreds of years, the two
groups fought over land, religion, and other major components their separate lifestyles.
Eventually, whites started coming over in large masses in the mid-eighteenth century when
the riches of America enticed them to abandon their mother country and its growing
problems of the American Revolution. The Europeans, or Americans (as opposed to Native
Americans), and the Indians were fast approaching a do or die situation. The Indians were
desperately trying to salvage what land they could keep from the white settlers, after
all past attempts had more or less failed. On the other hand, the Americans were pushing
the Indians as hard as they could to the Western half of North America ( North America
being divided by the Mississippi). They wanted to settle the Eastern portion of their
land without the Indians revolting, getting in the way with their religions, and stirring
up the general racism that the majority of the white settlers possessed in that time
period. Basically, the whites did not want the Indians to live among them or near them,
and the Indians did not want to simply give up their land and move hundreds of miles
away. In the late 1700's and early portion of the 1800's, the Americans practiced an
unwritten removal policy, of unfairly acquiring Native American land, destroying Indian
tribes, and forcing Natives to recede into the depths of the land they have lived upon
for thousands of years. The Indians put up quite a resistance for a few hundred years,
but the time had finally arrived when the whites were seriously thinking about passing a
bill through their Congress that would demand that all Native Americans move on the
Western side of the Mississippi River. For the Americans, influential scholars, military
heroes, and religious leaders each had his own opinion on whether they had the right to
pass a rather finalizing law on such a major issue. Congress passed the Indian Removal
Act in 1830, which in short gives Americans the legal right to force Indians out of their
present homes east of the Mississippi, onto a reservation west of the Mississippi. The
margin of the Removal Act's victory in Congress was very narrow. Influential Americans
such as Lewis Cass, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Frelinghuysen, John Forsyth, John Ross, and
others expressed their opinions to the public and Congress before the passage of the
Removal Act. Lewis Cass, Andrew Jackson, and John Forsyth were three of the pro-removal
leaders who helped influence Congress to ratify Removal Act. Each of these famous
influences in American colonization expressed his strong opinion based on experience with
Americas' unwritten removal policy and his engagements with the Indians to date.
Lewis Cass was the governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs of the Michigan
Territory in the 1820's. As the foremost authority in the United States on the languages
and cultures of the northern tribes, Cass argued that Indian emigration west of the
Mississippi was morally necessary for Native Americans to survive and civilize without
extreme pressure from Americans living near and among them. This standpoint was not
originally his, but his experience with Indians and his writing skills helped his
credibility. In his study of Indian languages, he claimed that Indians were unable to
distinguish the abstract from the concrete and thus were incapable of logical reasoning.
This claim led to his proposal that Indians, though constitutionally equal, were inferior
to whites on a linguistic level. Cass also addressed that issue that the Indians were
still in a hunter state of civilization; a point in time that the European settlers had
surpassed centuries ago. He led to point out that although this alone was not a valid
reason for removal, but the path that it was taking was changing for the worse. He stated
that the Indians were stable in their hunter state when whites arrived, but after decades
of depleting valuable game to dangerous levels, trading for alcohol, fighting among other
tribes and settlers, the Indians were eventually ending up in poverty on reservations.
Cass proceeded to state that even though Indians could learn to plow and keep domestic
animals, they were incapable of reason and they were irredeemably attached to the
pleasures of the chase and the warpath. In Cass' writing in the North American Review in
1827, he stated that force and bribery should not be used to move the Indians, and that
persuasion would be all that was necessary for them to emigrate. In his writings, Cass
described the degeneration of Indian civilizations in the North, and how they could never
escape the depths of chaos in which they now lived. Lewis Cass used writings based on his
experiences and beliefs to influence a large portion of the public towards Indian
removal. Cass acted in conjunction with Andrew Jackson, a prominent figure in the process
of Indian removal. 
Andrew Jackson grew up during the American Revolution. He witnessed his country fighting
the Indians and grew up with the feeling that the Indians were cruel, bloodthirsty,
cannibalistic butchers that should be driven into submission or extinction. Jackson
served in the military and as many government officials and when he was elected
president, signed the Removal Act that he believed in and was prepared to enforce. In the
post-war land cession period, Jackson felt that the Native Americans were now a conquered
and dependent people. Jackson felt that the government must save the Indians from
extinction by helping them to the other side of the Mississippi River. As president,
Jackson sought to carry out the feelings of the Democratic Party; America as the redeemer
nation destined for continental expansion, was to drive the Indians over the Mississippi,
using racism as a justification. . . for the expulsion of Native Americans. Congress met
in 1829, and Jackson as president delivered his State of the Union Address. Jackson
attacked the issue of Indians in the South who did not want to leave. He recognized the
efforts of Southern tribes' civilization efforts, but that he ultimately saw the only
chance for Indians was to emigrate. He addressed the issue of Indians that would stay in
the South to pursue their new horticulture techniques. For those who remained, Jackson
said that they could keep their personal property including fields for crops and
livestock, but must surrender the land that they had claimed as their own for no good
reason. Jackson thought of this land as opportunities for whites to settle upon, and
eventually the Indians could merge into the population. Jackson envisioned an interesting
commonwealth for the Indians who would willfully emigrate West, as he stated that the
Americans would give them ample land over the Mississippi River. In 1830, a bill was
proposed to Congress. This bill authorized Jackson to basically set aside public lands
west of the Mississippi for Indian reservations that the Indians would absolutely own. It
also allotted money to Congress to help the Indians move over the river. This was the
bill that sparked the United States into debate over Indian removal. Both Houses of
Congress were deluged by hundreds of petitions and memorials, solicited by religious
groups and benevolent societies opposed to Indian removal. The chambers of Congress
sprung into active debate. An influential Whig, Theodore Frelinghuysen, pointed out that
the Indian removal policies of the United States were not carried out according to the
U.S. Constitution. Senator John Forsyth delivered a powerful rebuke to Frelinghuysen's
speech. Forsyth claimed that the Whig's speech was intended for his own religion's
purposes, and not for the well being of the general public. He alluded to the nation's
unwritten removal policy and pointed out the deplorable condidtions under which the
Native Americans now lived. Forsyth knew that the removal would not promote civilization
of the Indians, and that he supported this bill because it would relieve the states from
a population useless and bothersome. Forsyth used past legal issues to warrant his
statement that the United States had the right to remove the Indians. Debates proceeded
in scores, and eventually Congress ratified the Removal Act. Jackson, upon signing of the
act, took this major victory with his followers, and proceeded to enforce the law of the
land. 
Lewis Cass used his strong influence to express his theories on why he believed the
Indians should emigrate to the West. He outlined the history of the Native American and
their cultural weaknesses to reinforce the unwritten removal policy that the United
States operated on in the time period in question. Cass pointed out the inevitable; the
Indians only hope from this point was to emigrate to the western half of the nation. Cass
used his studies of the Indians as support for his claim that the Indians could never
live among the Americans due to their lack of logical reasoning. He showed how the
Indians went from their stable tribes, to those that were broken and impoverished due to
the mere co-habitation of Indians and whites in the North. Finally, Cass brought
attention to the slums in the wilderness that presently existed, and that their only hope
for any real future was to emigrate westward. Cass helped reinforce the ideals of Andrew
Jackson. As the leader of the Democratic Party, Jackson sought to fulfill the visions of
American frontiersman, destined for continental expansion. Jackson compassionately
addressed the state of the Native American affairs at his State of the Union Address, and
agreed to give Indians ample land west of the Mississippi River if they would just leave
the colonial areas. In the debates over the Removal bill, Senator John Forsyth reinforced
Jackson's pro-removal standpoint by pointing out present Indian conditions and the United
States' long history of its removal policy. Cass and Jackson were only two of the many
who supported removal of the Indians. They addressed the issues that could not be turned
around, such as the degeneration of tribes in the past, and the feelings of hatred that
the general public had towards the Natives. They looked for a moral solution to the
mayhem at hand, and took the proper measures to ensure the Removal Act of 1830. 
Bibliography
Wallace, Native American Indians