Indian Removal Act Of 1830 Essay

Throughout the duration of Andrew Jackson’s presidency there were many controversial events, one of these events was the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This bill was created by senator Hugh White who served on the Committee on Indian Affairs. He proposed a bill that would give the president the power to grant Native Americans land west of the Mississippi River if the agreed to give up their homeland. The bill passed the senate on April twenty fourth and through the house on May eighteenth before finally being signed into law by Andrew Jackson on May twenty eighth 1830. The reason this bill was passed into law was because the people of the United States saw the Native Americans as an obstacle to progress and they wanted to settle on Native American

He also attacked the Seminoles in Florida because they were harboring escaped slaves. He defeated them as well and took their land which was in modern day Florida. Andrew Jackson always believed that the Natives should be pushed West to make room for American settlers so when the bill passed he finally had the power to make that belief a reality. The tribes that would be affected by this new law was the Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and the Seminoles. Each of these tribes would lose their land in different ways but in the end they were all forced to leave their land and migrate West to their new land. Their forced mass migration would be later known as the trail of tears because one in four natives that would take the journey would die of either disease or starvation. The first group of natives to be forced to move was the Chickasaws. This tribe foresaw the removal as inevitable and they put up no resistance. They signed an agreement in 1832 which stated that the federal government would provide them with suitable land west of the Mississippi River and protection until the tribe moved west. However the settlers were two numerous and the government backed

However, morally I believe that Andrew Jackson’s actions were inhuman and that his mistreatment of the native tribes, especially those who agreed to go peacefully, was wrong. The trial of tears was one of the single worst events to be executed by the American government on American soil to this day. The of natives who had to undergo this forced migration from their homes one in four of them would die of disease or starvation. Another moral injustice was committed against the Chickasaws when the United States government made a deal to protect their remaining land in exchange for the majority of the land that they owned. When the government got the land and the burden of protecting them became too great they just backed out on the deal forcing the Chickasaws to retreat west of the Mississippi river and to pay the Choctaw tribe in exchange for use of part of their land. However when looked at objectively the Jackson administration did a commendable job fulfilling the purpose of the law, which was to clear the land of natives to allow American settlement. By the time Jackson’s presidency was coming to a close he had signed seventy plus removal treaties, removed fifty thousand native americans and had secured millions of acres of good land for American settlement in the span of seven years. This was both efficient and beneficial for