No Idle Past

In April and May 1830, heated debates occurred in Congress over whether to remove the Cherokee Indians from certain sections of Georgia and resettle them further west, in what would become Oklahoma. Numerous accounts exist examining the events surrounding removal, which resulted in the notorious “Trail of Tears,” and the various motivations of the debate participants. Historians have attributed desire for removal to land hunger, humanitarian concern for the Indians’welfare, a desire to shore up national security, and blatant racism. Some see it as part of a continuing struggle against the perceived Indian enemy, and even as a component of the new rhetorical struggle between the Democrats and Whigs as they sought to define political participation during the Second Party system.11. Francis Prucha, “Andrew Jackson's Indian Policy: A Reassessment,” Journal of American History 56 (December 1969): 527–39. No author yet, however, has undertaken an examination of the ways in which the debaters manipulated past events in constructing their arguments either in support of removal or against this policy. This article deals specifically with the uses to which history was put in the 1830 congressional debates on Indian removal

Adversary · Archaeology · Cherokee · Political science · Politics · Rhetorical question · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American Environmental and Regional History · American History and Culture · History · Law

• To Dismantle an Idle Past

  Grant Miller, Grant R Miller et al.•The Social Studies•2012

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• Andrew Jackson's Indian Policy

  Francis Paul Prucha•Journal of American History•1969

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• Chronicle of the Indian Wars

  Bruce J Dinges, Alan Axelrod•The American Indian Quarterly•1994

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