Reply #7: And don't forget the other parties.

[ieoeja]

The bare outlines are enough: Between 1838 and 1840, the federal government – our government – used legal maneuvering to dispossess the Cherokees from their homes in Georgia. Once the legal niceties had been observed, Jackson sent 7,000 federal troops under Gen. Winfield Scott to drive the Cherokees from their homes. The troops then put the Cherokees into a forced march – without regard for age or sex – across the country from Georgia to their new home in the Indian Country, a land that became present-day Oklahoma.


And the Jackson administration did all of this opposed by both houses of Congress and in violation of a US Supreme Court order. It ultimately came to down to a showdown of raw power. Jackson, the man who actually popularized the phrase "the only good Indian is a dead Indian", let Congress and the Court know that he had the military in his pocket and would use them as he saw fit on this matter. In overruling all others on the issue of Cherokee statehood, Jackson's bigotry threw away the best chance the United States had of successfully integrating the Indian nations into that of the United States.