Racial Capitalism and the Indian Removal Act of 1830

Introduction

Andrew Jackson's Second Annual Message, delivered in 1830, served as his justification for the removal of Native Americans from white settlements in the South.¹ The idea behind the Indian Removal Act was that it would establish peace by granting Native Americans their own territory—but that territory lay far on the western side of the continent. Essentially, the Act was an exercise in racial capitalism, in which the US government justified its actions by arguing they were for the victims' own good. The Native Americans were simply in the way of developments that the states and federal government wanted to push through—which means they were in the way of capitalistic enterprise. The result of the Indian Removal Act was the Trail of Tears.

While Jackson was responsible for formally justifying the removal, the idea was not originally his. In fact, it traced back to George Washington, who first proposed it. The Choctaw and Cherokee had been progressively removed from their lands over the course of the 1700s and 1800s leading up to the Act.² The difference between Washington and Jackson, however, was that Washington did entertain the notion of entering into a treaty with the Native Americans. For Jackson, this was not an option. He fully advocated using the military to push the Native Americans off their land. His stated intention was for them to occupy land west of the Mississippi—it was not his stated intention to force them on a death march—but what happened cannot be disputed. Jackson effectively stole their land and forced them to relocate under brutal conditions. After all, it was America's "manifest destiny" to take the land it wanted, according to the prevailing doctrine of the times.³

Jackson's Second Annual Message in Context

The main point of contention was whether the state of Georgia had the right to take the land belonging to and occupied by the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee took the matter to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Cherokee were neither a recognized nation nor subject to the state. Instead, the Court essentially described the Cherokee as orphans subsisting on the charity of the US government—a depiction the Cherokee deeply resented. In effect, the Court confirmed that the Cherokee were a conquered people who had no right to their land. The Speeches on the Indian Bill in the House of Representatives in 1830 explored this topic in detail, even touching upon the rights of the Native Americans relative to the "discoverers of America," who were judged to have the right to take the land and lay claim to it.⁴

Some, such as Davy Crockett, sympathized with the plight of the Cherokee Nation.⁵ Others viewed the Cherokee as stubborn and unwilling to integrate and accept American values, mores, and culture. The governor of Tennessee, John Sevier, had been among the latter: in 1803 he requested permission from the Cherokee to establish a road through their territory. Sevier made condescending reference to President Jefferson's promotion of interstate travel and improved transportation infrastructure in his letter, talking down to the Cherokee as though they were both hard of hearing and hard of understanding—and as though they were already a conquered people. He attempted to explain the supposed benefits of these roads while completely omitting the negative consequences for the Cherokee:

"You have just now heard your Father's the President talk, sent to you and delivered by your brother Colonel Meigs. It is a request from your great Father that a road be opened for the good and benefit of all his children both red and white, and will be more so for our red brothers, as the road will be through their own land and they will have the benefit of the ferries, houses of entertainment and all opportunities of selling and disposing of their corn meat and provisions of every kind. The road will be of the same use to yourselves to travel on, to market, and for every other advantage that it can be of to your Brothers the white people…"⁶

The negative consequences, of course, would be more eminent domain seizures by the US government, more land confiscation, less territory for the Cherokee over time, and ultimately total displacement. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was merely the final, inevitable conclusion from the standpoint of the US government. These actions had been set in motion years prior; it was now just a matter of formalizing them. Jackson was the man to see to that.

His Second Annual Message laid it all out to Congress. Jackson made no illusions about what the Act would accomplish:

"By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites it will incalculably strengthen the southwestern frontier and render the adjacent States strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid. It will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those States to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power."⁷

The aim of the US government was to open territory to investment, secure the realm against intruders, and make the nation stronger than ever before. It was the same narrative that would be promoted time and again throughout the nation's history—whether it involved taking the land of the Cherokee, seizing Texas and the Southwest from Mexico, annexing the island of Hawaii, acquiring the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, or pursuing resources abroad in later eras.

Conclusion

Jackson's speech in 1830 set the stage for racial capitalism in the 19th century—a stage that had been a long time in preparation. From the days of the Founding Fathers, it had been in the air: the destiny of Americans to fulfill. The theft of Cherokee land and the Trail of Tears that followed; the wars that continued; the surrender of Black Hawk and the deaths of many others who fought the encroaching armies of the United States—all of it fed into the 19th-century narrative of American dominance. Some objected, like frontiersman Davy Crockett, but in the end the outcome sought was purely driven by economic interest. After all, as President Coolidge would put it nearly a century after Jackson's address to Congress, the chief business of the American people is business.¹³

Bibliography

ART. VI.—Speeches on the Indian Bill; viz.—Of Messrs. The North American Review (1821–1940); Oct 1830; VOL. XXXI., No. LXIX.; American Periodicals Series Online, pg. 396.

Black Hawk. Autobiography, 113.

Crockett, Davy. "On the Removal of the Cherokees, 1834." Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Coolidge, Calvin. 1925 speech. https://crackerpilgrim.com/2016/01/11/on-the-chief-business-of-america/

Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. Anchor, 2011.

Jackson, Andrew. "Second Annual Message," 1830. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3437t.html

Kutsche, Paul. "The Tsali Legend: Culture Heroes and Historiography." Ethnohistory 10, no. 4 (1963): 329–357.

O'Sullivan, John. "Annexation." United States Magazine and Democratic Review, vol. 17, no. 1 (July–August 1845): 5–10.

Perdue, Theda. "Chapter 2: Both White and Red." Mixed Blood Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South. The University of Georgia Press, 2003.

Sevier, John. Letter to the Cherokee. DPLA. https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/cherokee-removal-and-the-trail-of-tears/sources/1500