Andrew Jackson by H.W. Brands

Author:H.W. Brands [Brands, H.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307278548
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2006-10-09T23:00:00+00:00

Jackson had nothing personal against Zuñiga, who seemed an honorable enough character. But he couldn’t help interpreting the governor’s cooperativeness as further sign of Spain’s pitiful weakness on the southern coast. Jackson might have moved at once against the Negro Fort had another issue not distracted him, one that changed his views of William Crawford. As the federal government had done for years, it sought to preserve Indian lands against illegal white encroachment. A desire to see justice done to the Indians, however belatedly, motivated the administration, but so also a concern for its own credibility. In addition, the Treasury in Washington was empty. Friction between whites and Indians might produce another war, which the federal revenues simply couldn’t sustain. In all of this, the position of the government at Washington in the late 1810s was analogous to that of the British government in the 1760s, when, after another costly war (against France), London tried to keep the Americans from settling west of the mountains. And the reaction of westerners in the 1810s was similar to that of the Americans fifty years earlier: cries of tyranny and vows of resistance.

Jackson found himself in the middle of things when Crawford ordered him to remove illegal settlers in southern Tennessee and northern Mississippi. Jackson was directed to post a proclamation—very much like the British Proclamation of 1763—giving squatters a brief period of grace to remove themselves. But once the grace period ended, Jackson must take action. “You will, upon the application of the marshal of any state or territory, cause to be removed by military force all persons who shall be found upon the public lands within your command, and destroy their habitations and improvements.” The order applied specifically to Indian lands. “Intrusion upon the lands of the friendly Indian tribes is not only a violation of the laws but in direct opposition to the policy of the government toward its savage neighbors. Upon application of any Indian agent stating that intrusions of this nature have been committed and are continued, the President requires that they shall be equally removed, and their houses and improvements destroyed by military force.”

Jackson was no apologist for lawbreakers, but he couldn’t escape the irony of being asked to play the role of Britain against Americans. And though he applauded fair-mindedness in principle, he thought the administration overlooked a fundamental difference between whites and Indians on the frontier: the former were citizens of the United States and almost certainly would fight for the Union against any foreign foe, while the latter were noncitizens and might well take the part of Britain or Spain, as they had in the past. Unlike many of his white contemporaries, who asserted a higher claim to the land on grounds that they were civilized Christians, Jackson rarely addressed the cosmic morality of the land question. Instead he asked whether a particular arrangement would make the Union more secure or less. And in nearly every case he concluded that white control served national safety.

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