Indian Removal Injustice

In the long history of systematic and violent acts of injustice committed by the United States government against the indigenous peoples of America, perhaps no other effort can compare to the implementation and aftermath of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 for sheer sinister deliberation. By the end of the 1840s, an estimated 16,000 Cherokee indians were forced to leave their homes, 4,000 of whom died along the way from east of the Mississippi to Oklahoma (Teaching History.org, home of the National History Education Clearinghouse., n.d.). In the year 1828, Andrew Jackson swept the general election for the United States presidential office. It had been an utterly brutal campaign trail, characterized by vicious personal attacks between candidates unprecedented in American politics up until that time. A fierce populist, Jackson found thunderous support mostly from westerners and southern farmers. Jackson was seeking a benchmark for his presidency. At the time, the land that was currently occupied by the Cherokee nation in particular was noted for being excellent for agricultural purposes. Additionally, the general American populace held a …show more content…
This point is important because despite this, the general populace continued to characterize them as savages (The Trail of Tears — The Indian Removals, n.d.). The state of Georgia initially attempted to take the land away from the Cherokee via annexation, but the Cherokee people fought back by bringing the case to the United States Supreme Court. The Cherokee Nation won the case, but it didn’t matter; Jackson claimed authority over the Supreme Court, and despite the Cherokee’s peaceful efforts to resist blatant tyranny, the Cherokee people were nevertheless violently forced out of their homes, and made to travel to specific sections of land in