Trail Of Tears Essay Thesis

At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on land in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida, land their ancestors had lived in for centuries. By the end of the 1830s, very few Native Americans remained in the southeastern United States. The federal government forced the Natives to leave their homes and walk thousands of miles to a new “Indian territory” in Oklahoma. This difficult and very deadly journey became known as the Trail of Tears, and it led to many conflicts between the United States and the Native Americans. The Trail of Tears was not just a sudden action taken by the US government, there were multiple things that led up to the trail. In his 1831 ruling in Cherokee v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall (who served on the Court from 1801 to 1835) upheld the Cherokee’s right to national sovereignty, however president Andrew Jackson (President of the US from 1829-1837) told the Georgia State Government that they didn’t have to listen to the ruling. In February of 1830, Senator Hugh White from the Committee of Indian Affairs proposed A Bill to provide for an
The House of Representatives voted on May 24 and passed it, 102 to 97. Section 2 of the Indian Removal Act States “…That it shall and may be lawful for the President to exchange any or all of such districts, so to be laid off and described, with any tribe or nation of Indians now residing within the limits of any of the states or territories…” that is the main reason the act was so bad. Section 8 of the Indian Removal Act also says “...the sum of five hundred thousand dollars is hereby appropriated, to be paid out of any money in the treasury, not otherwise appropriated.”, that means that the government spent over $500,000 to move the Indians. The Cherokee had been given two years to vacate their homelands and move to a new “Indian Territory” in present-day