Confederate "Heritage" Month 2013, April 19: Abolitionists against Indian removal

Natalie Joy has an article on another issue that was a major theme for the Jackson Administration, Indian Removal. As I've said more than once here, even though this blog's name is a recognition of the vital democratic tradition that Jacksonianism represented, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 was one major accomplishment of his that was a bad decision, and an immoral one by the standards of the time.

Joy's article is on Cherokee Slaveholders and Radical Abolitionists: An unlikely alliance in antebellum America Common-Place 10/4 (July 2010). She gives the background of the Act this way:

The election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1828 famously signaled a new era in U.S. Indian policy, one that had dire consequences for thousands of Native Americans. Once in office, Jackson urged Congress to pass federal legislation authorizing him to sign removal treaties with all Indians living east of the Mississippi River, thus freeing up millions of acres of land for white settlement. The states most eager for such legislation were in the South, not coincidentally a region that had offered Jackson significant support precisely because he promised to make Indian removal a top priority of his administration. Georgia was particularly eager for the federal government to make good on its 1802 promise to extinguish Indian land titles within its borders, which included a significant portion of the Cherokee Nation. But Jackson's plan did not go unchallenged. In 1829, as both houses of Congress prepared their own version of what would become the Indian Removal Bill, reformers throughout the northern United States joined with Native Americans to fight its passage. [my emphasis]

I won't go into the complexities of Old Hickory's general approach to Indian policy here. I discussed it in this earlier post, Old Hickory and the Indians 04/08/2004, a review of Robert Remini's Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars (2001). My focus here is more on the "antiremoval" coalition, as Joy calls them. "Antiremovalists," she notes argued against removal on moral grounds and defended the sovereign rights of the native tribes. "Most importantly," she notes, "antiremovalists believed that Anglo-Americans had a moral duty to bring Christian civilization to Native Americans, a project that would be greatly hampered by removal."

Morality in their eyes was deeply connected to Christianity and capitalism:

Making Indians "civilized" had been a central component of federal U.S. Indian policy since George Washington's administration, but it was not formalized until the passage of the 1819 Civilization Act, which provided funds for missionary organizations eager to participate in the conversion of "savages." "Civilization," it was commonly understood, was the only way for Indians to avoid extinction—the inevitable fate of uncivilized peoples who came into contact with more advanced cultures. What exactly "civilization" entailed was a matter of debate in the nineteenth century, but most people agreed that to be civilized, Indians would have to be guided by Christian morality, live as settled farmers, and abide by a written system of laws and government. Most importantly, Indians needed to acknowledge and embrace private property, including individual landownership. In 1789, no less a figure than Henry Knox, Washington's Secretary of War and the architect of early national Indian policy, argued that the key to civilizing Indians was "to introduce among [them] a love for exclusive property."

Abolitionists believed, as did most Americans, in the myth of the "noble savage," whose innocence of civilization was the source of his virtuous purity, but also his greatest weakness, for it left him vulnerable to the introduction of unwanted vices ... [my emphasis]

This is a reminder to be cautious about anachronism, the projecting of current understandings onto an earlier time. By liberal or left standards of 2013, even the Indians' white partisans weren't interested in assisting the Indians by putting them under white American laws, practices and institutions, especially the institutions of Christian churches and private property.

The irony acknowledged in the title of Joy's article is that the Abolitionists opposing Indian removal to prevent the spread of slavery found themselves in coalition with Cherokee slaveowners:

Most Cherokees did not own slaves, nor did they radically alter their traditional ways of living to conform to the standards of American civilization, but those who did were part of a growing class of wealthy and politically powerful elites who lived on large plantations like their white neighbors. And it was this elite class with whom antiremovalists, including abolitionists, had the most contact in print and in person.

And that coalition had many of the problems of such the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend alliances:

Throughout the debate over Indian removal in the 1830s, abolitionist support of the Cherokee cause was contingent upon a romanticized picture of Indian slaveholding. As part of their support for the Cherokee Nation's fight against removal, abolitionists found themselves in the unusual position of acting as apologists for Indian slaveholding, mounting a defense that drew heavily from the testimony of Cherokee leaders. Abolitionists accepted such testimony as fact, even when they had good reason to doubt its truthfulness, because it reinforced their own ideas about Indians, slavery and civilization. [my emphasis]

Politics is politics, as Joe Stalin said shortly before he signed the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in 1939.

The antiremoval Abolitionists found themselves defending slavery in a kind of Hegelian way, arguing that the adoption of black slavery by the Cherokees was evidence of their progress in the American Christian form of civilization, including this unfortunately element of it. Joy observes that the establishment of classical liberal notions of constitutions and the rule of law, and slaveowning Cherokees were on board with that part of the program to some extent:

In 1827 the Cherokee Nation had written its own constitution, which included numerous provisions protecting the interests of slaveholders, including barring slaves and their descendants, free or enslaved, from holding office or voting. Many other laws including those against interracial marriage attest to the legal and political institutionalization of black chattel slavery in the Cherokee Nation.

... Abolitionists accepted that Cherokee slaveholding—at least in the short term—was compatible with and even evidence of civilization. The Cherokees' adoption of black chattel slavery, and the larger cultural, legal and political changes it wrought, proved their inherent capacity for progress. Because abolitionists did not believe slavery to be the basis of a civilized society, Indian slaveholding had to be merely an intermediary stage, not the end result of the process of civilization. [my emphasis]

But even given the complexities and moral ambiguities that politics often produce, the Abolitionists were fighting for the rights of the Indians, as they understood them. "Even after passage of the Indian Removal Act in May 1830, abolitionists continued to support Indian rights, often folding the plight of Indians into their condemnation of black chattel slavery," Joy writes.

Even though the Abolition movement was still relatively small, the conflicts between the North and the South due to slavery were already beginning to affect issues not directly connected with slavery as such:

Abolitionists joined the Indian cause because they saw in removal the influence of the slaveholding South. "One would think that the guilt of African slavery was enough for the nation to bear," one writer lamented in 1829, "without the additional crime of injustice to the aborigines." Although the Indian Removal Bill applied to nearly all Indians living east of the Mississippi River, southern slaveowners were clearly the most eager to obtain fertile Indian land, and abolitionists feared that removal would hasten the westward expansion of slavery at the expense of national honor. [my emphasis]

The Hegelian World Spirit was evidently at work in the alliance of the Abolitionists with Southern Cherokee slaveholders revealing to some of them the problems with their supported for colonization of African-Americans back to Africa after the abolition of slavery, i.e., mass deportation:

The fight over the Indian Removal Bill immediately preceded the radicalization of the antislavery movement in the early 1830s. This was no accident, as several historians have noted. Many reformers who supported the American Colonization Society and other moderate antislavery activities in the 1820s had been radicalized by their involvement with the antiremoval cause. Antiremoval activism convinced many antislavery reformers to reconsider the colonization of free blacks to Africa. They found themselves increasingly unable to justify their support for one policy (colonization) that bore such strong similarities to another (removal) which they strongly opposed. By 1831, leading abolitionists, including, most famously, William Lloyd Garrison, were denouncing the gradualism of colonization in favor of immediate emancipation, a crucial shift brought about, at least in part, by the debate over Indian removal in the late 1820s and early 1830s. [my emphasis]

The colonization idea for black Americans, which never gained more than marginal popularity among black Abolitionists, was nevertheless still seen by many whites as a viable option up until the Civil War.

And, if we count Theodore Bilbo, even long after.

But that's a topic for tomorrow's post.

Tags: abolitionism, andrew jackson, confederate heritage month 2013, indian removal act, robert rimini, slavery

Old Hickory and the Indians

A review of Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars by Robert V. Remini (Penguin; New York; 2001)

It is difficult for contemporary readers to place ourselves in the mindset of the antebellum South. There was a pervasive Southern code of honor, which dictated the conduct of both gentlemen like Andrew Jackson and the "ruffians" who would become his most enthusiastic admirers and political supporters. Descriptions of the honor code's actual practices may strike readers today as more like what we read of "honor killings" in remote parts of southern Asia than movie images of stoic Confederate generals.

And, given the enormous changes in attitudes toward race that have occurred since Jackson's time, it's hard to conceive that "race" at the time he was growing up was commonly used to refer to what we would call nationality: the French "race," the English "race," etc. "Scientific" notions of racial superiority were largely in formation during the later years of Jackson's life. Unquestionably, Jackson and his contemporaries viewed the "Red race" as inferior to whites. But even the Southern notion of "white supremacy" had not yet achieved the status of a "sacred institution" which Southern gentlemen had bestowed on it by the time of the Civil War.

This history by Jackson's best-known contemporary biographer focuses on his participation in the Indian conflicts in what is today the Southeast, although what is now Mississippi and Tennessee were known as "the West" at the time. Some of the conflicts recounted are little more than skirmishes. But others are known as more notable conflicts: the Creek War and two Seminole Wars. Remini also recounts the story of the Indian Removal Act of Jackson's Presidency and it's implementation.

Those who are not particularly fond of military history will find the descriptions of battles blessedly brief.

My particular interest in this book was to get a better understanding of Jackson's personal perspective on the Indian problem, as it was known. One thing that becomes very clear is that he did not consider it practical or desirable that the native peoples would either live in independent political entities in the midst of the Americans or that they would integrate into the American culture. The solution to conflicts with the Indians in his mind involved moving them away from the Americans.

The points of conflict involved conflicting desires for the same land, national security issues, mutual attacks by each side on the other, and the presence of the Indians as a haven for runaway slaves. (I use "Americans" rather than "whites" here partly because of the latter factor.)

Remini makes it plain that Jackson shared in the greed for Indian land that was general among the Americans near them. Jackson profited directly from land speculation made possible by treaties he negotiated with native tribes on behalf of the United States.

I also find Remini's argument credible that Old Hickory's main motive in trying to remove the Indians had to do with national security. Quoting from Jackson writing to President James Monroe, he says:

Jackson's obsession - and surely it had become that - centered on replacing red with white men in order to "give to that section of the country a strong and permanent settlement of American citizens, competent to its defence." Such a settlement would provide safety and peace along the frontier and lessen the possibility of foreign invasion augmented with Indian warriors. For General Jackson it was never his paramount wish to take the land from the Indians because of its intrinsic economic value, although he conceded it would bring vast sums to the government. National security was always his primary concern. (p. 113)

It's certainly tempting today to regard this as a cynical dodge on the General's part. But the national security factor was very real. With the Seven Years War (known as the French and English War in the American colonies) fresh in the minds of his fellow Americans, Thomas Jefferson included in the Declaration of Independence the accusation against the British kind that he "has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose know rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

The harsh American policy toward the Indians was certainly a major factor in the tribes' willingness to ally themselves with the British, French and Spanish in preference to the Americans. But the threat was real, however strange it may sound to us today.

Jackson didn't hesitate to use threats, intimidation and bribery in his negotiations with Indian leaders, though he continually claimed to be disgusted by the latter practice in particular. And he was conscientious in trying to enforce treaty obligations to protect Indians from marauding whites.

The massive removal of Indians to the west under Jackson's Presidency does not look good by today's standards. And not only by today's standards. Opponents of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 in Congress, one of Jackson's major Presidential achievements, made humanitarian and religious arguments against the measure. Church groups were active in opposing it.

Remini doesn't sugar-coat the ugliness of the actual Indian removal, probably best known today from the name Trail of Tears, which refers more specifically to the Cherokee removal from the Southeast in 1838, an action which was based on a subsequent Congressional decision late in Jackson's second Presidential term. Remini's description of the first of the removals under the Indian Removal Act, the relocation of the Choctaws, gives a glimpse at what happened:

[F]rom start to finish the operation of the removal policy was a horror. Deliberate fraud, corruption, mismanagement, and theft marked almost every step in the process. The Indians were abused and mistreated. Indifference and exploitation characterized white behavior toward these unfortunate people. The Choctaws requested General George Gibson as the guide to their new location, a man they trusted and admired. Bureaucrats deemed otherwise. Little sympathy was shown for the needs and wishes of these émigrés.

Universal sadness accompanied the first contingent of Choctaws as they left the land of their ancestors. And then the elements added to their agony. The winter of 1831-1832 was a "living hell." The suffering these Indians endured beggars the imagination. Those who watched their torment never forgot it. (p. 250)

If that description evokes images of "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans in the 1990s and other horrors of the century just past, so does his account of the Trail of Tears. Even though it took place under the Administration of Martin Van Buren, Remini rightly regards this as very much a "part of Andrew Jackson's legacy." (p. 270)

In a single week some seventeen thousand Cherokees were rounded up and herded into what was surely a concentration camp. Many sickened and died while they awaited transport to the west. In June the first contingent of about a thousand Indians boarded a steamboat and sailed down the Tennessee River on the first lap of their westward journey. Then they were boxed like animals into railroad cars drawn by two locomotives. Again there were many deaths on account of the oppressive heat and cramped conditions in the cars. For the last leg of the journey the Cherokees walked. Small wonder they came to call this eight-hundred-mile nightmare the Trail of Tears. Of the approximately eighteen thousand Cherokees who were removed, at least four thousand died in the stockades or along the way, and some say the figure actually reached eight thousand. By the middle of June 1838, the general in charge of the Georgia milita proudly reported that not a single Cherokee remained in the state except as prisoners in the stockade. (p. 269)

Perhaps the best that can be said of Andrew Jackson's attitude toward the Indians is that he was not as "savage" in his conduct and attitude toward them as many of his contemporaries. Or as many of those in the second half of the nineteenth century who fought the wars against the Plains Indians. Remini describes Jackson in 1814 showing the attitude toward the native peoples that he retained in some form throughout his life:

As always, Jackson was expressing the prejudices, fears, mistrust, and hatred of white people living on the frontier toward all Native Americans. Westerners knew only one thing: the Indian was a threat to their lives, and that danger must be eliminated - permanently. (p. 90)

But it would also be a mistake to try to define Jackson's approach to the Indians into a simple category of genocidal hatred. For instance, just before he became President:

Jackson ... suggested ... that a union among the Choctaws, Creeks, and Chickasaws [the tribes to be removed later under the Indian Removal Act] might result from a general migration of these tribes, which would create "a great, powerful and happy people" so that when their children were educated they might become members of the United States, as Alabama and Mississippi are." It is an interesting commentary that Andrew Jackson fully expected the Indians to become citizens and participate in civil government, once they were educated and transformed into cultural white men. (p. 224)

One of the frustrating things about the story of the Indian Wars in North America is that, on the one hand, there was a great deal of cruelty and injustice done to the native tribes that is impossible to excuse, either by the standards of today or the standards of the years in which they took place. On the other hand, it's also exceptionally difficult to think of what the "happy ending" might have been, of what alternative policies on the part of the Americans might have produced less destructive results.

Because when the Europeans came to North America, they brought technology and types of social organization that were drastically different from that of the native tribes, and which were certainly superior in the sense of giving the Europeans an overwhelming military advantage in any contest with the native tribes.

The difference in perspective is illustrated dramatically for me by Sitting Bull, the Lakota Sioux leader in the later nineteenth century who was considered one of the most successful Indian leaders against the Americans. Sitting Bull was an extremely flexible man, well-traveled in his later years. He even lived in Paris for a while and had a Parisian girlfriend. But throughout his life to the day he died, he was always very clear who the main enemy of his Lakota people were: the Crow Indians who lived to their west. (He wasn't entirely wrong; it was a Crow policeman on a reservation who killed him.)

Sitting Bull's tribal contemporary, the Lakota spiritual leader Black Elk, saw in his still-famous vision a time when the whites (Americans and British) would simply be pushed out of the world that the Lakota knew. They would just go away.

Aspects of that difference in worldview that Remini scarcely touches on in this book would include their vastly different conceptions of property in land and of the meaning of treaties.

And from the American point of view, the national security concern was very real. When the United States first gained its independence, it found itself confronting European powers that were holding, acquiring and seeking to colonize territory on all sides. None of those power were going to let concern about the Indians stand in their way, either.

Trying to become Americans, to integrate into the larger society, would have been one imaginable option. But, for the most part, the Indians did not want to do that, and the Americans did not welcome them.

Another option, which was partially successful for a limited time, would have been for the Indians to have some sort of self-governing enclaves within the boundaries of the United States. Remini's book does not describe much about the legal status of the tribes in US law in this book, though he does touch on it. But for that to have been a permanent solution, the central government in Washington would have had to be strong enough to prevent encroachments from either side. Jackson's experiences in trying to enforce India treaties against his fellow Americans show how difficult and ultimately futile a task that was under the conditions that actually existed.

The other alternative would have been for the native tribes to form large-scale alliances and unite militarily against the Americans. The most successful example of an attempt along these lines was the so-called Pontiac Conspiracy (aka Pontiac's War) of 1763-64, which took place in connection with the French and Indian War. It ultimately failed, and the factors prominent in that loss can be seen in the Indian Wars of the 19th century, as well. The tribal social organizations were unable to establish the stable military alliances of which European diplomacy was capable, or of coping with the sophisticated duplicity which was also a part of the latter. They were outgunned; the tribes had neither the technology nor the physical plant to produce weaponry to match that of the European powers. Their military experience ultimately could not match the strategic ability of the invaders. And the cultural gap was so great that the Indian tribes found it very difficult to understand their enemies' motives and goals.

None of this is to say it was impossible. History provides many examples, the American Revolution among them, in which politically united groups were able to offset the military and economic superiority of an opponent. One can find an example in contemporary (2003) news reports from Afghanistan, which describe the Americans using 2,000 lb. bombs to combat little bands of Islamic guerrillas equipped with small arms -an effort by no means assured of ultimate success.

But these "what if" games with history can quickly shade into a "blame the victim" kind of approach. Rimini in this work does not indulge in them, except for a passing reference. Instead, he stresses what actually occurred and looks at the motives and actions of various players.

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.

(Originally written March 15, 2003)

Tags: andrew jackson, robert rimini