ABSTRACT MCCALLUM, DOUGLAS FORBES. “Their Look is Onward”: The Politics of Cherokee Removal in North Carolina. (Under the direction of Dr. Craig Thompson Friend.) Some historians have argued that Indian Removal existed at the center of Jacksonian era politics. Yet, such interpretations have not trickled into North Carolina historiography. State histories have ignored or trivialized the political significance of Cherokee removal within the state. If Cherokee removal has been discussed, authors have portrayed it as outside the political narrative. Even in considering how North Carolina’s political leaders in the 1820s and 1830s widely disagreed about the Indian Removal Act, historians have dismissively concluded that such arguments demonstrate how North Carolinians were morally superior to neighboring southern states and the federal government. This study explores how white North Carolinians were not morally superior or disinterested. The “Indian question” became a test of partisan politics as divided North Carolinians fought over their distinct (and increasingly distorted) visions of republicanism and political economy. Analyzing politicians’ and newspaper editors’ evolving stances during the Indian Removal debate uncovers a pattern of partisanship that masked a larger debate about the state’s political economy and economic future. Letters to constituents, newspaper editorials, and voting and biographical data reveal that at both the national and state level, North Carolina’s leaders constructed two interpretations of Jeffersonian republicanism and two contrasting images of white patriarchal responsibility that sought to advance competing visions for either an exclusively agricultural or a diversified economy. Posturing on Indian Removal was a central tactic in this endeavor and a wedge that further divided white North Carolinians from one another and whites from non-whites at the advent of the Second Party System. White North Carolinians used Indian Removal as a political pawn, one as significant as the more historically recognized political issues of tariffs, banks, and internal improvements. Despite their competing rhetoric, North Carolina’s leaders always coveted the Cherokees’ land and gradually formulated a racist view of the Cherokees as innately inferior and, therefore, unworthy of citizenship and continued occupancy. Ultimately, the Cherokees suffered because partisanship and economic opportunity in Jacksonian America took precedent over law and morality.! © Copyright 2017 by Douglas Forbes McCallum All Rights Reserved “Their Look is Onward”: The Politics of Cherokee Removal in North Carolina by Douglas Forbes McCallum A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts History Raleigh, North Carolina 2017 APPROVED BY: _________________________ _________________________ Dr. Katherine Mellen Charron Dr. Mi Gyung Kim _________________________ Dr. Craig Thompson Friend Chair of Advisory Committee BIOGRAPHY Mac McCallum originally hails from Rockville, Maryland. After graduating from St. Andrew’s School (Delaware) in 2006 and Sewanee: The University of the South in 2010, Mac moved to Asheville, North Carolina where he spent five years as an administrator, teacher, and coach at Asheville School. There, he began what he hopes will be a long and rewarding career in independent schools; not before, however, pausing to fulfill his longstanding desire to pursue a Master’s degree in American History. Upon graduation, Mac will resume his career on the faculty at Pace Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. ! ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Western North Carolina has played a significant role in my life, not only as a source of inspiration for this thesis, but most significantly as the place of introduction, engagement, and marriage to my wife, Mary Pat. Asheville will always be our first home, even as life takes us to wherever we may go. This work is dedicated and attributed to Mary Pat and the steadiness, patience, and warmth with which she shapes our life and home every single day. The greatest influence upon this thesis was my adviser. I was fortunate to find myself in Dr. Craig Thompson Friend’s Early American Republic course in the fall semester of 2015, and more fortunate that he agreed to undertake the commitment, patience, and attentiveness necessary to bring a project such as this to fruition. Without his wisdom, humor, guidance, care, and sleepless evenings, this work would never have been possible. It is his advising, in all its forms, that deserves the loudest acknowledgement. I have also been blessed to find myself in the presence and care of many advisers throughout my academic life. I thank Peter and Darcy Caldwell and the rest of the faculty at St. Andrew’s School for teaching me to care about my future and that only through dedication to a task can one expect to realize their potential. I owe my tools of written and oral expression to the faculty, administrators, and fellow students at Sewanee, particularly Professors of History, John Willis and Houston Roberson. Professor Roberson’s sudden passing in December 2016 while this thesis was in process reminds us all to never delay an additional expression of thanks to someone who has enhanced our lives. To my former colleagues, administrators, and students at Asheville School, thank you for teaching me what it means to work hard on behalf of something you believe in. Finally, I attribute much of this work to my professors at North Carolina State ! iii University: Dr. Mi Gyung Kim, Dr. Katherine Mellen Charron, Dr. Noah Strote, Dr. Michael Weisel, Dr. Nancy Mitchell, Dr. Ross Bassett, and Dr. David Gilmartin. They have profoundly exercised my ability to think critically and skeptically about the world around me. Although I doubt he recalls our conversation over a proposal for one of my very early papers, Dr. Strote, addressing my concern about politicizing my argument too much, stated, “everything is political!” I derived much of the inspiration for undertaking this degree and thesis from my family. Conversations with my grandfather and father always and inevitably turn towards family history and the U.S. South. My curiosity is a direct product of theirs. Our ancestors’ early nineteenth century migration from Scotland to North Carolina and, subsequently, to Choctaw land in Mississippi, stoked an interest in the entire field of Indian Removal. Spending the first five years of my adult life in Asheville, North Carolina, and marrying into a family from nearby Sylva, generated an additional layer of curiosity about the history of the proximate Cherokee Nation. In some ways, I view my time and effort spent trying to understand the historical profession as a fulfillment of the interests held by my large and recently extended family. Their own passion for the subject fueled mine, but I was the one lucky enough to dedicate my full focus and attention to its exploration. I extend my most heartfelt thanks to my mother, father, Anne, Sissy and Franko, Aunt Emily and Uncle Ed, Pa and Grammy, all the Williamses, Patsy and Jerry, and of course, Millie. Their love and support is my greatest source of strength and they know I love them immensely. ! iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………… vi INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………….. 1 “DISAGREEABLE AND DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS” OR “PROFITABLE STOCK”? POLITICIANS AND DIVERGING CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY …………………………………. 32 “WHICH OF THESE PARTIES IS RIGHT IN THIS CLAIM?” THE POLITICAL PRESS AND THE RACIALIZATION OF THE JEFFERSONIAN LEGACY……………………………………71 CONCLUSION.………………………………………………………………………………111 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………….129 ! v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Map of North Carolina Congressional Districts, 1812-1843………………..... 53 ! vi INTRODUCTION In 1790, the state of North Carolina, in order to assist the new federal government retire its public debts and secure the nation’s western border, ceded to the United States its lands lying between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. Although North Carolina relinquished sovereignty over these lands, millions of acres remained claimed by various native nations, most proximately, the Cherokees. Within a decade, the United States secured over four million acres from the Cherokees, but the Cherokees still retained approximately two million acres within the boundaries of western North Carolina, northern Georgia, newly formed Tennessee, and the Alabama territory.1 As Indian Removal became a contentious political issue over the next forty years, North Carolinians operated through a different legal framework than did Georgians, a situation that constrained and frustrated them. Unlike North Carolina, by the early nineteenth century, Georgia had yet to negotiate a similar cession of its western territory to the federal government. To gain Georgia’s trust, in 1802, the United States agreed to remove remaining Creek and Cherokee inhabitants from the state borders, albeit at an unspecified future date. North Carolina had received no such promise in its 1790 cession.2 In treaties of 1817 and 1819, the United States obtained an additional million acres from the Cherokees, guaranteeing them public lands west of the Mississippi River in exchange for lands in the East. Cherokee families were to remove westward and would receive full 1 Hugh T. Lefler and Albert R. Newsome, North Carolina: The History of a Southern State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina