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xv Claims and Evidence in SourcesAP %u00ae Claims and Evidence in Sources is a feature in each chapter that helps students learn to think critically and develop key AP %u00ae comparison skills by juxtaposing primary source texts written or spoken from two or more perspectives. The accompanying Questions for Analysis guide students and provide good preparation for the Document-Based Question (DBQ) on the exam. 365Indians who are willing to remove. And upon reasonable terms, because they are to receive other lands in exchange for those which they give up; just compensation for improvements made by them; the expense of their removal and settlement paid, and subsistence for one year furnished them. Would it not, therefore, have been reasonable to suppose, that those who have said so much about the high and sacred obligation of treaties . . . would be amongst the foremost and warmest supporters of the bill under consideration? EDWARD EVERETT, MASSACHUSETTS REPRESENTATIVE Speech, 1830 In the House of Representatives, Massachusetts congressman Edward Everett calls attention to the many shortcomings of the Removal Act. S ource : Gales and Seaton%u2019s Register of Debates in the House of Representatives, May 19, 1830, p. 1064 , memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html. The first step in this great policy of removal, was met by the obvious embarrassment, that the territory west of the Mississippi, toward which the removal was to be made, was itself occupied by numerous warlike and powerful tribes of Indians. . . . Previous, then, to removing the Indians from the left bank of the river, it became necessary to remove others from the right bank, to make way for them. . . . They are to go in families, the old and the young, wives and children, the feeble, the sick. And how are they to go? Not in stage coaches; they go to a region where there are none. Not even in wagons, nor on horseback, for they are to go in the least expensive manner possible. They are to go on foot. . . . The price . . . is to be screwed down to the least farthing, to eight dollars per head. A community of civilized people, of all ages, sexes, and conditions of bodily health, are to be dragged hundreds of miles, over mountains, rivers, and deserts, where there are no roads, no bridges, no habitations, and this is to be done for eight dollars a head. . . . I return to the cost of the operation, which I have calculated on official estimates. It is twenty-four millions. . . . This enormous sum is to be raised by a tax on the people. . . . The mode of its disbursement is still more exceptionable. . . . It is placed within the uncontrolled discretion of the department. . . . Here we have a vast operation, extending to tribes and nations, to tens of thousands of souls, purchasing and exchanging whole regions, building fifteen thousand habitations in a distant wilderness, and putting seventy-five thousand individuals in motion across the country, and not an officer or agent specified; the whole put into the pocket of one head of department, to be scattered at his will! CHEROKEE ADDRESS %u201cCommittee and Council of the Cherokee Nation to the People of the U.S.%u201d In this newspaper essay, representatives of the Cherokee Nation defend their right to their ancestral lands. S ource : Niles%u2019 Weekly Register , August 21, 1830, pp. 454%u2013457 . We are aware, that some persons suppose it will be for our advantage to remove beyond the Mississippi. We think otherwise. Our people universally think otherwise.%u00a0.%u00a0. . There are doubtless many, who would flee to an unknown country, however beset with dangers, rather than be sentenced to spend six years in a Georgia prison for advising one of their neighbors not to betray his country. And there are others who could not think of living as outlaws in their native land, exposed to numberless vexations, and excluded from being parties or witnesses in a court of justice. It is incredible that Georgia should ever have enacted the oppressive laws to which reference is here made, unless she had supposed that something extremely terrific in its character was necessary to make the Cherokees willing to remove. We are not willing to remove; and if we could be brought to this extremity, it would be not by argument, not because our judgment was satisfied, not because our condition will be improved; but only because we cannot endure to be deprived of our national and individual rights and subjected to a process of intolerable oppression. QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS 1. How is Cherokee society and culture described by Jackson? By Sprague? How do those descriptions play into their arguments for and against removal? 2. Adams and the Cherokee Address both make reference to treaty obligations. Who makes the more persuasive case? Is there any way to reconcile the claims of Georgia with those of the Cherokees? 3. Everett focuses on the practical and financial aspects of removal. How important are these considerations to a fair assessment of the removal policy? Indians who are willing to remove. And upon reasonable terms, because they are to receive other lands in exchange for those which they give up; just compensation for improvements made by them; the expense of their removal and settlement paid, and subsistence for one year furnished them. Would it not, therefore, have been reasonable to suppose, that those who have said so much about the high and sacred obligation of treaties . . . would be amongst the foremost and warmest supporters of the bill under consideration? EDWARD EVERETT, MASSACHUSETTS REPRESENTATIVE Speech, 1830 In the House of Representatives, Massachusetts congressman Edward Everett calls attention to the many shortcomings of the Removal Act. S ource : Gales and Seaton%u2019s Register of Debates in the House of Representatives, May 19, 1830, p. 1064 , memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html. The first step in this great policy of removal, was met by the obvious embarrassment, that the territory west of the Mississippi, toward which the removal was to be made, was itself occupied by numerous warlike and powerful tribes of Indians. . . . Previous, then, to removing the Indians from the left bank of the river, it became necessary to remove others from the right bank, to make way for them. . . . They are to go in families, the old and the young, wives and children, the feeble, the sick. And how are they to go? Not in stage coaches; they go to a region where there are none. Not even in wagons, nor on horseback, for they are to go in the least expensive manner possible. They are to go on foot. . . . The price . . . is to be screwed down to the least farthing, to eight dollars per head. A community whole regions, building fifteen thousand habitations in a distant wilderness, and putting seventy-five thousand individuals in motion across the country, and not an officer or agent specified; the whole put into the pocket of one head of department, to be scattered at his will! CHEROKEE ADDRESS %u201cCommittee and Council of the Cherokee Nation to the People of the U.S.%u201d In this newspaper essay, representatives of the Cherokee Nation defend their right to their ancestral lands. S ource : We are aware, that some persons suppose it will be for our advantage to remove beyond the Mississippi. We think otherwise. Our people universally think otherwise.%u00a0.%u00a0. . There are doubtless many, who would flee to an unknown country, however beset with dangers, rather than be sentenced to spend six years in a Georgia prison for advising one of their neighbors not to betray his country. And there are others who could not think of living as outlaws in their native land, exposed to numberless vexations, and excluded from being parties or witnesses in a court of justice. It is incredible that Georgia should ever have enacted the oppressive laws to which reference is here made, unless she had supposed that something extremely terrific in its character was necessary to make the Cherokees willing to remove. We are not willing to remove; and if we could be brought to this extremity, it would be not by argument, not because our judgment was satisfied, not because our condition will be improved; but only because we cannot endure to be deprived of our national and individual rights and subjected to a process of intolerable oppression. 364 Claims and Evidence in Sources The %u201cact to provide for an exchange of lands with the Indians,%u201d more commonly called the Indian Removal Act (1830), was deeply controversial. It was considered vital to the interests of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and other southern states, but the representatives of many northern states, especially in New England, viewed the act as a monstrous injustice. The Debate over Native American Expulsions ANDREW JACKSON Address to Congress, 1830 The expulsion of Native Americans was one of Jackson%u2019s highest priorities as president. In this speech to Congress, he argues that expulsion would benefit white settlers and Native Americans alike. S ource : Gales and Seaton%u2019s Register of Debates , 21st Congress, 2nd Session, Appendix, pp. ix%u2013x, memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html. The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves. . . . It puts an end to all possible danger of collision between the authorities of the General and State Governments, on account of the Indians. It will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters. . . . It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way, and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers; and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government, and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits, and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community. . . . Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government towards the red man is not only liberal but generous. . . . [T]he General Government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement. PELEG SPRAGUE, SENATOR FROM MAINE Speech, 1830 Opposing the expulsion of Native Americans from their ancestral lands, Maine senator Peleg Sprague argues that it was dishonest to portray them as nomads who lived by hunting. S ource : Gales and Seaton%u2019s Register of Debates in the Senate, April 17, 1830, pp. 354%u2013356 , memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html. Much has been said of their being untutored savages, as if that could dissolve our treaties! No one pretends that they are less cultivated now than when those treaties were made. Indeed, it is certain that they have greatly advanced in civilization; we see it in the very proofs introduced by the gentleman from Georgia to show their barbarism. He produced to the Senate a printed code of Cherokee laws, and a newspaper issued from a Cherokee press! Is there another instance of such productions from any Indian nation? . . . Time will not permit me to dwell upon their advances in the arts of civilized life. It is known to have been great. They till the ground, manufacture for themselves, have workshops, a printing press, schools, churches, and a regularly organized Government. . . . Whither are the Cherokees to go? . . . They now live by the cultivation of the soil, and the mechanic arts. It is proposed to send them from their cotton fields, their farms, and their gardens, to a distant and an unsubdued wilderness. ROBERT HUNTINGTON ADAMS, MISSISSIPPI SENATOR Speech, 1830 Mississippi senator Robert H. Adams reminds his fellow lawmakers that the United States promised Georgia access to Native American lands in exchange for its agreement to give up claims to additional western territory. S ource : Gales and Seaton%u2019s Register of Debates in the Senate, April 20, 1830, p. 360 , memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html. As early as the year 1802, the United States entered into a compact with the State of Georgia, which compact was ratified in the most solemn manner, being approved by the Congress of the United States and by the Legislature of the State of Georgia. By this agreement, the United States obtained from the State of Georgia a cession of territory sufficient, in extent, to form two large States, and in part consideration for such an immense acquisition of territory, agreed, on their part, in the most solemn manner, to extinguish, for the use of Georgia, the Indian title to all the lands situated within the limits of that State, %u201cas soon as the same could be done peaceably and upon reasonable terms.%u201d . . . The bill under consideration proposes a mode by which this agreement may be performed; by which the Indian title to all the lands within the boundaries of that State may be extinguished, peaceably, and upon reasonable terms. Peaceably, because it is only to operate upon those %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.