Page 267 - American Stories, A History of the United States

trail of tears in the winter of release Worcester from custody, which it eventually did. But the story reflects Jackson’s
10.1 1838–1839, the Cherokee were general attitude toward the Court’s decisions on federal jurisdiction. He would not
forced to evacuate their lands in protect Indians from state action, no matter how violent or coercive, and he put the
Georgia and travel under military
guard to present-day Oklahoma. weight of the federal government behind removal policy.
10.2 exposure and disease killed The Cherokee held out until 1838, when military pressure forced them to march
roughly one-quarter of the 16,000 to the territory that is now Oklahoma. This trek—known as the Trail of Tears—was
forced migrants en route. made under such harsh conditions that almost 4,000 of approximately 16,000 marchers

10.3 died on the way. (See Map 10.2.) The final chapter of Indian Removal was the Second
Seminole War, which lasted from 1834 to 1841. Although the government had con-
Quick Check vinced a few Seminoles to sign a treaty in 1834 agreeing to removal, most Seminoles
What did the Indian Removal policy renounced it and resisted for years, making the bloody conflict the most expensive
10.4 demonstrate about Jacksonian Indian war in U.S. history. The removal of the southeastern Indians exposed the preju-
democracy?
diced and greedy side of Jacksonian democracy.

The Nullification Crisis
During the 1820s, southerners became increasingly fearful of federal encroachment on
states’ rights. Behind this concern, in South Carolina at least, was a strengthened commit-
ment to slavery and anxiety about the use of federal power to strike at the “peculiar institu-
tion.” Hoping to keep slavery itself out of the political limelight, South Carolinians seized
on another grievance—the protective tariff—as the issue on which to take their stand in
favor of a state veto power over federal actions they viewed as contrary to their interests.
Tariffs that increased the prices that southern agriculturists paid for manufactured goods
and that threatened to undermine their foreign markets by inciting other countries to
erect their own protective tariffs hurt the staple-producing and exporting South.
Vice President Calhoun emerged as the leader of the states’ rights insurgency
in South Carolina, abandoning his earlier support of nationalism and the American

UNORGANIZED TERRITORY ILLINOIS INDIANA OHIO

VIRGINIA
MISSOURI
KENTUCKY
Springfield
CHEROKEE
CREEK ARKANSAS TENNESSEE NORTH CAROLINA
SEMINOLE TERRITORY Nashville
Fort
CHICKASAW Coffee CHEROKEE
CHOCTAW CHICKASAW New 1835,*1838 SOUTH
1832 Echota CAROLINA
ALABAMA CREEK
CHOCTAW 1832
1830
Vicksburg GEORGIA
MEXICO
MISSISSIPPI ATLANTIC
Mobile OCEAN
LOUISIANA FLORIDA
TERRITORY
New Orleans

Gulf of Mexico
SEMINOLE
Ceded lands and Routes of 1832
dates of cessions Indian removal
Indian reservations Cherokees’
Trail of Tears 0 100 200 miles
Boundaries of 1830 0 100 200 kilometers

MAP 10.2 INDIAN reMovAl Because so many Native Americans, uprooted from their lands in the east,
died on the forced march to Oklahoma, the route that they followed became known as the Trail of Tears.
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