Arguments Against Indian Removal

Imagine being kidnapped and taken, along with other victims, onto a boat. You are stuck on this boat for many weeks. Without sufficient food or water, you watch as one by one the other passengers die of starvation and disease, wondering if you will be next. When you finally arrive at the unknown destination, you are surrounded by people speaking an unknown language. Or picture this: your family has lived happily in your home for generations. One day, people ask if you would like to move to a new land. They would pay you for a year and protect your family from harm forever. You deny their request. Suddenly, seven thousand troops force you to leave. Looking back at what was once your home, you see people stealing your most precious belongings. …show more content…
After being captured from their homes, they were forced to sail for weeks in terrible conditions. Families were ripped apart. They were treated as possessions. Forced to pick cotton, harvest sugar cane, wash clothes, and much more, each plantation had approximately twenty slaves. Thirty five years before the end of slave trade, President Jackson passed the Indian Removal Act, the first of seventy removal treaties that he signed. This law allowed Indians to volunteer to move from their homeland to Oklahoma. Compensated with one year's pay from the government, the Indians were also promised financial and material assistance during their travels and protection by the United States forever. The Indians who did not desire to leave would become citizens of their home state. Eventually, they were forced by the government to move which lead to the infamous Trail of Tears. The United States gained twenty million acres of land by relocating the Indians. After it was auctioned off in forty acre plots, white men used it to farm. Throughout ten years, approximately sixty thousand Indians moved to