Question

Based off of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 answer the following questions:

1. What were the arguments by both Jackson and "The Ladies" for and against Indian Removal?

2. How does Jackson benefit politically from this policy?

3. Do you think the "women's" voices were taken seriously by Congress? Explain. What if they were the wives of important people?

Answer 1

1. More than 60 women from Steubenville, Ohio, signed this 1830 petition begging Congress to reconsider Andrew Jackson’s plan to remove southern Native Americans beyond the Mississippi. (The petition is now held in the National Archives.)

In the early 19th century, the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Choctaw nations stood in the way of white settlement in the South, and Jackson made their removal one of the major goals of his administration.

While Jackson and his allies framed the issue as one of protection, arguing that removal would reduce inevitable conflicts between white settlers and Native Americans, lawmakers in the opposition—including Henry Clay—were inclined to be sympathetic to the Native Americans’ claim on the land.

These supporters, bolstered by advocacy in the Christian press, were particularly moved by the fact that some of these tribes had taken up agriculture and Christianity in response to white teachings.

2. Jackson's drive for party organization was spurred by his own difficulties with Congress. Unlike other famously strong Presidents, Jackson defined himself not by enacting a legislative program but by thwarting one. In eight years, Congress passed only one major law, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, at his behest. During this time Jackson vetoed twelve bills, more than his six predecessors combined. One of these was the first "pocket veto" in American history. The Maysville Road and Bank vetoes stood as enduring statements of his political philosophy.

Jackson strengthened himself against Congress by forging direct links with the voters. His official messages, though delivered to Congress, spoke in plain and powerful language to the people at large. Reversing a tradition of executive deference to legislative supremacy, Jackson boldly cast himself as the people's tribune, their sole defender against special interests and their minions in Congress. In other ways, too, Jackson expanded the scope of presidential authority. He dominated his cabinet, forcing out members who would not execute his commands. In two terms he went through four secretaries of state and five secretaries of the treasury. Holding his official subordinates at arm's length, Jackson devised and implemented his policies through a private coterie of advisers and publicists known as the "Kitchen Cabinet." His bold initiatives and domineering style caused opponents to call him King Andrew, and to take the name of Whigs to signify their opposition to executive tyranny.

3. As historian Mary Hershberger writes, the fight against Native American removal was the first time that American women became politically active on a national scale. Empowered by the ideology of republican motherhood, which argued that women had a political voice based on their place as educators of sons and guardians of the moral code, women decided to step into the debate.

This “memorial” (another term for “petition”) was humble to the extreme. Calling themselves “the feeblest of the feeble,” the memorialists acknowledged that the lawmakers might find such “presumptuous interference” to be “wholly unbecoming the character of American Females.”

Nonetheless, the women begged their readers to remember that in the United States ladies enjoyed a “generous deference” unknown in other countries. Could not the senators and congressmen listen to the women’s plea for a “hapless people”?

While, Hershberger writes, the campaigners succeeded in “deluging Congress with women’s petitions,” the campaign ultimately failed. Congressional Democrats scoffed, mocking anti-removalists for their inability to keep their ladies out of things. The Indian Removal Act was passed and enforced. Some tribes signed treaties and left voluntarily, while others, including most of the Cherokee, were forcibly removed.

Many of the women involved in the petition drive, including Harriet Beecher (Stowe) and Angelina Grimké, later took up the abolitionist cause, where they found more success.