Mention Andrew Jackson to most Americans, and the phrase "Jacksonian democracy" may spring to mind. To the descendants of Native Americans who survived the period, however, the first comparative analogy may be the Bataan Death March of World War II. Comparisons to Joseph Stalin also spring to some Native American minds when Jackson's name is mentioned. There was very little that was democratic about Jackson's handling of relations with native nations.
President Jackson, Supreme Court chief justice John Marshall, and Cherokee chief John Ross became the three most influential leaders in the debate over removal of the Cherokees from their homeland in present-day Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, and Tennessee. Removal of the Cherokees and several other native nations during the 1830s allowed expansion of Anglo-American populations south and west through parts of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and neighboring states. At roughly the same time, industrial application of Eli Whitney's cotton gin created a mass market in moderately priced cotton clothing. Within a decade after the Trail of Tears, the Cherokees' homeland had been replaced, in large part, by King Cotton and a revival of slavery.
President Jackson, having retired from his army career of Indian fighting, avidly supported the Removal Act of 1830, which led to the Cherokees' Trail of Tears. Ross was the Cherokees' foremost advocate against removal, the man most responsible for taking two major cases to the Supreme Court. Marshall worked the facts of the conflict into legal doctrine that has shaped law regarding Native Americans for more than a century and a half.
The removal of the "civilized tribes" from their homelands is one of the most notable chapters in the history of American land relations. Jackson's repudiation of John Marshall's rulings, which supported the Cherokees' rights to their homelands, comprised contempt of the Supreme Court, an impeachable offense under the Constitution. The subject of impeachment was not seriously raised, however...........
