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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Like many of his Scots-Irish contemporaries on the western frontier of the early United States, Andrew Jackson grew up despising and fearing his Indian neighbors. He proved to be a formidable enemy, campaigning against the Cherokee, Creeks, Chickasaws, and other peoples, some of them former allies against England in the Revolution and the War of 1812. In doing so, he established precedents that his compatriots would follow for the rest of the 19th century.
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Like many of his Scots-Irish contemporaries on the western frontier of the early United States, Andrew Jackson grew up despising and fearing his Indian neighbors. He proved to be a formidable enemy, campaigning against the Cherokee, Creeks, Chickasaws, and other peoples, some of them former allies against England in the Revolution and the War of 1812. In doing so, he established precedents that his compatriots would follow for the rest of the 19th century.
Robert Remini, the National Book Award-winning biographer of Jackson, here turns his attention to Jackson's relations with the Indian nations of the American South. Those relations, he writes, were tempered by the racism of the day, but, as both general and president, Jackson was also unusual in enforcing rights guaranteed to those nations by treaty, even in instances when he disagreed with the terms. Despite his sense of justice, Jackson kept to his conviction that "Indians had to be shunted to one side or removed to make the land safe for white people to cultivate and settle," and during his tenure as president he pursued a policy of forced removal through which the Indian nations were relocated to the so-called Indian territories west of the Mississippi River, which in turn would be overrun only a few years later.
Though critical of Jackson's policies and actions, Remini suggests that removal saved many of the eastern Indian nations from almost certain annihilation. That view, while capably argued, is controversial, and some scholars of American Indian history are sure to take issue with it. Still, this is a valuable addition to the historical literature, one of interest to general readers as well as Remini's fellow historians. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
"I want to assure the reader that it is not my intention to excuse or exonerate Andrew Jackson for the role he played in the removal of Native Americans west of the Mississippi River. My purpose is simply to explain what happened and why": so writes Remini, who won the National Book Award for his three-volume biography of the seventh president. This provocative book is sure to create controversy for scholars, the Native American community and lay historians, among others. Jackson was the president who "removed" the five "civilized" tribes from the South and forced them westward across the Mississippi River. Existing studies portray Jackson as a villain. Not so, says Remini, who examines Jackson's life to show that he was a product of his age, nothing more, nothing less. Indian tribes sided with the British during the Revolution, then repeatedly confronted the first generation of settlers who moved into the western frontier Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. Jackson vaulted to national prominence when he bloodily crushed the British-allied Creek tribe in 1814 during the War of 1812. Then, with or without presidential approval, Southern District Commander Jackson invaded Spanish-held Florida; acting as an "Indian commissioner," he proceeded to lever indigenous people off their ancestral lands in exchange for territory farther west. The idea, Remini says, was first espoused by Thomas Jefferson and was supported by the vast majority of frontier Americans. Despite or, indeed, because of its grave, catastrophic results, Jackson's policy deserves to be judged in light of early 19th-century America, argues Remini. He further contends that Jackson's removal policy may have actually saved the tribes from being exterminated. Expert reviewers, pundits and descendants may feel otherwise. Maps not seen by PW.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Citations
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21
books
cite this book:
- American Legend by Buddy Levy in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands by Lindsay G. Robertson in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)