Andrew Jackson and Indian Removal

Andrew Jackson's 1828 election marked a real expansion of American democracy for white men: many states had dropped property requirements for voting, so ordinary citizens, not just wealthy landowners, could now vote in large numbers, and Jackson -- a war hero from a modest background -- rode that wave into office. Once president, Jackson rewarded his supporters with government jobs, a practice critics called the "spoils system," and he fought and won a bitter battle against the Second Bank of the United States, which he distrusted as a tool of wealthy elites.

Jackson's presidency also brought one of the clearest injustices in American history. The Cherokee Nation had adopted a written constitution in 1827, modeled partly on the U.S. Constitution, and published their own newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, using a writing system invented by Sequoyah. When Georgia tried to seize Cherokee land, the Cherokee Nation sued and won: in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Georgia's laws did not apply within Cherokee territory. Jackson, who wanted the land opened for settlement, simply refused to enforce the ruling. Congress had already passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, and in 1838 federal and state troops forced roughly 16,000 Cherokee men, women, and children to march about 1,000 miles to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in an event known as the Trail of Tears; roughly 4,000 died along the way from cold, disease, and starvation. The Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed as well, and the Seminole in Florida fought back militarily for years rather than leave.