VARIOUS PROPERTIES
JACKSON, ANDREW, President. Autograph letter signed ("Andrew Jackson") as President, to Governor [Lewis] Cass, Secretary of War, 8 April 1833. One page, 8vo, address panel in Jackson's hand on verso of integral blank leaf, small marginal repair, seal hole repaired, tipped to a mat.
Details
JACKSON, ANDREW, President. Autograph letter signed ("Andrew Jackson") as President, to Governor [Lewis] Cass, Secretary of War, 8 April 1833. One page, 8vo, address panel in Jackson's hand on verso of integral blank leaf, small marginal repair, seal hole repaired, tipped to a mat.
JACKSON DEFERS TO THE INDIANS
"This will be handed to you by the Rev'd W Campble [i.e., Campbell] of Pittsburgh Pa. who I beg leave to make known to you. W Campble is one of the Executive Committee of the board of Foreign & Domestic missionaries. The Board has it in view to extend their missions to the Indians west of the Mississippi & has a desire to converse with you upon the subject, and see the provisions in the treaties, if any, on this subject. I have made known to him, that the Government cannot give permission, this must be obtained from the Indians, & when this is done, we will freely give our assent to any thing that may be agreed on by them, and for their benefit."
An interesting letter in the context of Jackson's relationship with the native American population. As a young Major-General in the Southeast, Jackson's often bloody encounters with the hostile Creek Indians in Tennessee and the Seminoles in Spanish Florida left him with an ingrained distrust of all Indian tribes, and a conviction that the native tribes were "children--cruel and vicious children--who need the stern punishment of a wrathful parent to force their compliance with civilzed conduct... Jackson emerged as a fire-breathing frontiersman obsessed with the Indian presence and the need to obliterate it" (Robert F. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, New York 1977, p. 71). Combined with Jackson's expansionist fervor, this vengefully paternalistic attitude toward the Indians -- hardly uncommon -- led him during his Presidency to effect the expulsion of the Indian tribes located east of the Mississippi to large tracts of land in what later became Arkansas, Missouri and Wisconsin -- areas that were considered wasteland, where no white man would every wish to settle. The idea of a "removal" of the Indians to make room for white settlement had been in the air since the beginning of the century, but it took a leader of Jackson's relentless determination to finally carry it out, with tragic results, especially for the large Southern tribes, the Creeks, Cherokees, Seminoles and others, who lost large percentages of their populations.
The removal had nonetheless been carried out through pressure, not force, through treaties signed by the chiefs of the various tribes; and most of the officers and men of the regular Army units assigned to oversee the massive migration exhibited sympathy toward the Indians. Lewis Cass, former Governor of the Territory of Michigan, appointed Secretary of War in 1831, was selected largely for his experience in Indian affairs, and "he advanced humane ideas for organizing the new Indian territory." The style of the iron hand in velvet gloves, which ruled the government's dealings with the Indians during the Jackson administration, is evident in this letter: "permission must be obtained from the Indians" -- but the manner in which the permission could be obtained was subject to few restrictions.
JACKSON DEFERS TO THE INDIANS
"This will be handed to you by the Rev'd W Campble [i.e., Campbell] of Pittsburgh Pa. who I beg leave to make known to you. W Campble is one of the Executive Committee of the board of Foreign & Domestic missionaries. The Board has it in view to extend their missions to the Indians west of the Mississippi & has a desire to converse with you upon the subject, and see the provisions in the treaties, if any, on this subject. I have made known to him, that the Government cannot give permission, this must be obtained from the Indians, & when this is done, we will freely give our assent to any thing that may be agreed on by them, and for their benefit."
An interesting letter in the context of Jackson's relationship with the native American population. As a young Major-General in the Southeast, Jackson's often bloody encounters with the hostile Creek Indians in Tennessee and the Seminoles in Spanish Florida left him with an ingrained distrust of all Indian tribes, and a conviction that the native tribes were "children--cruel and vicious children--who need the stern punishment of a wrathful parent to force their compliance with civilzed conduct... Jackson emerged as a fire-breathing frontiersman obsessed with the Indian presence and the need to obliterate it" (Robert F. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, New York 1977, p. 71). Combined with Jackson's expansionist fervor, this vengefully paternalistic attitude toward the Indians -- hardly uncommon -- led him during his Presidency to effect the expulsion of the Indian tribes located east of the Mississippi to large tracts of land in what later became Arkansas, Missouri and Wisconsin -- areas that were considered wasteland, where no white man would every wish to settle. The idea of a "removal" of the Indians to make room for white settlement had been in the air since the beginning of the century, but it took a leader of Jackson's relentless determination to finally carry it out, with tragic results, especially for the large Southern tribes, the Creeks, Cherokees, Seminoles and others, who lost large percentages of their populations.
The removal had nonetheless been carried out through pressure, not force, through treaties signed by the chiefs of the various tribes; and most of the officers and men of the regular Army units assigned to oversee the massive migration exhibited sympathy toward the Indians. Lewis Cass, former Governor of the Territory of Michigan, appointed Secretary of War in 1831, was selected largely for his experience in Indian affairs, and "he advanced humane ideas for organizing the new Indian territory." The style of the iron hand in velvet gloves, which ruled the government's dealings with the Indians during the Jackson administration, is evident in this letter: "permission must be obtained from the Indians" -- but the manner in which the permission could be obtained was subject to few restrictions.