Trail Of Tears: Manifest Destiny And Westward Expansion

The Trail of Tears left by the Cherokee Indians

“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race.”

-― Martin Luther King Jr

The Trail of Tears helped the Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion lead to the Civil War in many ways. The Trail of Tears caused more tension to rise in the United States. Native Americans became angry and lost trust in the American governmentbecause the settlers forced and physically moved them out of their homes. The Trail of Tears helps the Manifest Destiny because it is mainly the idea that moving west will bring more comfort and new riches to the settlers. This is major expansion westward. The Trail of Tears helped the

1000 and 1500.Hornando de Soto was the first European explorer to come into contact with the Cherokees, when he arrived in their territory in 1540. Modern scholars and champions of human rights have described this event as one of the most notorious genocides during the 19th Century. Unfortunately, the Native Americans were treated very poorly when the white man arrived. As time went on it only got worse for them. In the 1830’s America was highly influenced by the Manifest Destiny which was the territorial expansion of the United States across North America towards the Pacific Ocean. The United States government believed that the Native Americans were a problem that was hindering Manifest Destiny from being fulfilled .At the trail of tears native Americans were persecuted against heavily. Until 1828 the federal government had Cherokee rights to their land and in that same year Andrew Jackson was elected president and this all ended. Throughout Jackson's life he had fought Indians, beginning with his campaign against the Northern Creek Indians of Alabama and Georgia. He led the Tennessee militia to fight Seminoles in Florida in a war known as the "First Seminole War" just seven years before his election into the presidency . Andrew Jackson, who had been fighting Indians for all his life, expressed his aggressive attitude towards Indians through land policies that were unfair and destructive to Indians throughout the United States. Jackson's policies were unfair and confusing to the Indians, leading to broader interpretation of the acts in later presidencies, Jackson's aggressive nature towards Indians carried on long after his presidency. President Andrew Jackson passed the Indian Removal Policy in the year 1830. The Indian Removal Policy which called for the removal of Native Americans from the Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia area,