University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2013 To the Indian Removal Act, 1814-1830 Kyle Massey Stephens [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Diplomatic History Commons, Legal Commons, Political History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Stephens, Kyle Massey, "To the Indian Removal Act, 1814-1830. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2013. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/2487 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Kyle Massey Stephens entitled "To the Indian Removal Act, 1814-1830." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in American History. Daniel Feller, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Stephen V. Ash, Lynn Sacco, Michael R. Fitzgerald Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) “To the Indian Removal Act, 1814-1830” A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Kyle Massey Stephens August 2013 Abstract This dissertation offers a history of Indian removal as a political issue from the War of 1812 to the signing of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Its central argument is that federal removal policy emerged and evolved due to a precise and largely unforeseen sequence of events. Drawing on Indian treaties, journals of negotiations, minutes of cabinet meetings, Congressional debates, personal memoirs, and a variety of other sources, the dissertation charts and elucidates the evolution of United States Indian policy from a diplomatic to a domestic concern. One of the central themes of the dissertation is how most white statesmen gradually, once Anglo-American dominion was established east of the Mississippi River after the War of 1812, abandoned long- held notions of “assimilation” and instead viewed the American Indian communities as the quintessential “other.” Chapter 1 examines American-Indian relations at the outbreak of the War of 1812. It argues that the federal government’s policy toward the Native Americans was both contradictory and incompatible with the nation’s desire for western expansion. Chapter 2 describes the establishment of American hegemony in eastern North America during and immediately after the War of 1812. Chapter 3 considers the efforts of the James Monroe administration to reform the contradictory modes of interacting with the Indians. It argues that these efforts were stymied by the determination of Georgia to remove all Indians from its territory, which led to clashes between the federal government and the state over Indian affairs. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the fraudulent Treaty of Indian Springs, concluded with the Creeks in 1825, and its aftermath. They argue that the controversy over the treaty and its subsequent annulment created a political environment in which removal came to be viewed by the majority of politicians as the only solution to the tensions both in the American government and in the southern borderlands. ii Chapter 6 argues that Andrew Jackson inherited an unofficial policy of Indian removal in 1829 and describes the efforts of his administration to codify removal as official policy. Chapter 7 delineates the debate over the removal bill in Congress and the subsequent vote. iii Table of Contents Introduction: To the Indian Removal Act.......................................................................................1 Chapter 1: America’s Indian Policy in 1812.................................................................................10 Chapter 2: In the Wake of Horseshoe Bend (1814-1817).............................................................26 Chapter 3: Mr. Monroe’s Message (1817-1825)...........................................................................56 Chapter 4: Indian Springs (December 1824-March 1826)..........................................................112 Chapter 5: “The Question Was What Should Now Be Done” (March 1826-February 1829)....152 Chapter 6: Jackson’s Mandate (February 1829-April 1830).......................................................183 Chapter 7: The Debate and the Vote in Congress (April-May 1830)..........................................215 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................241 Bibliography................................................................................................................................246 Appendix.....................................................................................................................................253 Vita..............................................................................................................................................262 iv Introduction: To the Indian Removal Act In Volume I of Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville relates a haunting scene he witnessed firsthand. In December 1831, while visiting Memphis, Tennessee, the young Frenchman watched a large group of Choctaw Indians cross the Mississippi River for lands west, never to return. The weather was wretched, with hard snow on the ground and ice in the river. The age of the Choctaws ranged, according to Tocqueville, from newborn to elderly. Many were sick, and they had few provisions and no shelter. “No cry, no sob was heard amongst the assembled crowd; all were silent,” he writes. “Their calamities were of ancient date, and they knew them to be irremediable.” As the Indians gathered onto the ferry that was to carry them across the river, their dogs “set up a dismal howl” and leapt into the frigid water after the boat. “The ejectment of the Indians,” Tocqueville continues, “very often takes place at the present day, in a regular, and as it were, a legal manner.”1 Tocqueville’s famous chapter on Indian removal reminds us that he was not an unabashed admirer of the United States. Though there was much about the young nation he did respect, Tocqueville was a commentator on American culture and institutions, not a champion of them. His language concerning the treatment of the Native Americans by the United States government, in fact, ranks among the most poignant, and acerbic, in the book. He believed the removal of the Indians from their ancestral lands to be a great evil. One source of Tocqueville’s outrage can be traced to the single word legal quoted above. This French nobleman was far from naïve; he well understood the way of empires in general and the history of North America in particular. The Spanish, for example, certainly acted brutally in their dealings with the inhabitants of the Americas, sacking the New World “with no more temper or compassion than a 1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vols. I & II. Trans. Henry Reeve (New York: Bantam, 2000), 394. 1 city taken by storm.” The distinction that caused Tocqueville discomfort was the fact that despite their “unparalleled atrocities” the Spanish did not succeed in either exterminating the Indians or entirely depriving them of their rights. The white citizens of the United States, however, “have accomplished this twofold purpose with singular felicity; tranquilly, legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, and without violating a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world.”2 Though Tocqueville was incorrect in his assertion that Indian removal was accomplished (or, if you will, committed) tranquilly or without violating moral principles, he was entirely correct in his recognition that the removal of Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi River was a definitive event in United States history. The process was controversial at the time, and its legacy remains so today. President Thomas Jefferson advocated the acquisition of Indian lands as early as 1803. At the time, however, this was largely wishful thinking. By the time Jefferson’s successor James Madison began his second term, however, the situation had markedly changed in favor of the United States. By the time his successor, James Monroe, completed his second term, Anglo-American hegemony was all but assured in the southeastern borderlands. The legal and systematic removal of the Indians that so concerned Alexis de Tocqueville was the result of politicians responding to rapid demographic, military, and economic changes in the Old Southwest, which was being transformed into what we recognize as the Old South. These changes resulted in an unprecedented diplomatic leverage over the American Indians that culminated in a singular piece of United States legislation—the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Yet the political history of Indian removal has been surprisingly understudied. Those works that have examined the phenomenon vary considerably in scope and analysis. Some 2 Ibid., 411-412. 2 scholars argue