The Trail of Tears

First they fell upon their knees
and then upon the aborigines.

-William M. Evarts

Andrew Jackson was certainly a different kind of President.

His predecessor John Quincy Adams, the son of a president, had spent a good part of his youth in Europe, accompanying his father to France and the Netherlands, studying in Leiden, travelling to Russia, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, even marrying his London born wife Louisa while abroad. He was by breeding and training a diplomat.

Jackson was born in a cabin. His father died from a logging accident just before his birth. Sporadically schooled, Jackson fought in the Revolution, was captured by the British and slashed by a British officer when he refused to clean his boots. After the war he became a rough and tumble country lawyer, disputing land claims, defending assault and battery charges, and speculating on Indian lands. In 1812 he became a military hero when he defeated the British in New Orleans, and continued his military career seizing Florida in the First Seminole War. Jackson was from the frontier, and he had no use for Indian rights.

There was no love lost between Adams and Jackson. Jackson had won the popular vote in 1824, but with no clear electoral majority, Adams won the election in the House of Representatives. In 1828 Jackson won both the popular and electoral majorities. When the time finally came for Jackson to assume the presidential office, he refused to pay the traditional courtesy call on the outgoing President; Adams, in turn, skipped the inauguration of Jackson.

Georgia had just passed a law prohibiting whites from living on Indian territory without a license from the state. The law’s intent was to get rid of white missionaries who were helping the Indians resist removal. When "Sharp Knife" Jackson took office, the struggle over Indian removal entered its final phase. Jeremiah Evarts urged the Cherokee to challenge the law in the Supreme Court. The Marshall court ruled that Indian tribes were indeed sovereign nations and state laws had no force on tribal lands, to which Jackson is said to have defiantly replied, "John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it!"

A federal Indian Removal Act was making its way through Congress with strong support from the South and West. Jeremiah Evarts started a petition campaign opposing the legislation and supporting the Cherokee's rights. Starting with a few carefully written memorials, he drew up petitions to be sent to Washington. Copies of the petitions were printed and sent to the ABCFM network of congregations to gather names, along with specific instructions for printing additional petitions:

Print a short memorial, on one leaf of a sheet of letter paper, and a circular on the other leaving the circular for the outside of the letter. To save press-work, you might have both printed pages face inwards; for the memorial part should have no writing on either side, and should go clean…

Petitions were sent from Bath, Brunswick, Bucksport, Bluehill, and Bridgton Maine; from Chester, Campton, and Cornish New Hampshire; from Andover, Brighton, Cambridge, and Dunstable Massachusetts; from Pittsford, Thetford, Weatherfield, and St. Johnsbury in Vermont.

Hundreds of petitions with tens of thousands of signatures were sent to Congress, but politicians ridiculed their efforts. Richard Wilde was disgusted by "these everlasting political homilies - this mawkish mixture of sentiment and selfishness -this rage for instructing all the world in their appropriate duties." Wiley Thompson charged the petitioners with drawing on "the vast accumulation of trash which appeared in the columns of the National Intelligencer over the signature of William Penn." President Jackson ridiculed the Indian land claims and remarked that they could not assert title to lands "merely because they have seen them from the mountain or passed them in the chase."

After vigorous lobbying and debate, the Jackson forces narrowly won the vote on the Removal Bill and President Jackson signed the measure on May 28th, 1830. Evarts was deeply disappointed that so many people failed to stand up for morality and justice. "My comfort is that God governs the world; and my hope is, that when the people of the United States come to understand the subject, there will a redeeming spirit arise; for I will not believe that the nation is yet lost to truth and honor."

Despite his disappointment, Evarts couldn’t stop working. He continued his travels and exhortations for the cause, but he was obviously exhausted. Returning from a trip to Cuba, he sensed that death was near:

"Whether I make my grave on the land, or in the ocean, I submit cheerfully to Him. It will be as He pleases; and so it should be."

Arriving in Charleston, he was dying, but he showed a happy tranquility in his final days. Given the last rites, "You will soon see Jesus as he is..," he exclaimed — "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful glory! We cannot comprehend — wonderful glory! I will praise, I will praise him! .... Wonderful — glory—Jesus reigns."

Jeremiah Evarts died on May 10, 1831 in Charleston, South Carolina. His body was returned to New Haven and buried in the Grove Street Cemetery.

In 1831 the Choctaw were removed to the west, the Seminole were removed in 1832, the Creek in 1834, then the Chickasaw in 1837, and finally the Cherokee in 1838. One in four Cherokee died from exposure, disease, and starvation en route to their new lands in Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears.

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“There are many humorous things in this world; among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages". - Mark Twain