Jacksonland: A Great American Land Grab (18 page)

The institution where he enrolled was the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut. It was a forerunner of the Fulbright scholarships and other American programs that would attract later generations of foreign students to study at American universities. The Foreign Mission School taught “
Latin, Greek, Rhetoric, Navigation, Surveying, Astronomy and Theology” to young people from “heathen lands” as far away as Malaysia and Hawaii. Some came from “heathen lands” closer to home. The record of “public exercises” during school exams in 1820 included a “declamation in English” by “Elias Boudinot, Cherokee,” and a “Dialogue” among Cherokee students on the possibility of “the removal of the tribe to the West.” Naturally, a good part of Boudinot’s education was simply walking around Cornwall and experiencing New England. Just as naturally, he met a girl. In 1825, after leaving the school because of illness, he wrote letters proposing marriage to the young woman, Harriett Gold.

Harriett Gold’s family went through agony. It was “
rash presumption & disobedience,” a relative told her, “going among the heathen” for a “selfish” reason like marriage. She was burned in effigy by a crowd in the town commons, where
Harriett’s own brother lit the fire. The community was especially outraged because Boudinot was the second Indian student who had proposed to a woman from Cornwall; the first, a few years before, was John Ridge, the son of Major Ridge. The fury
was revealing. The practice of interracial marriage between whites and Indians was more than two hundred years old—missionaries estimated that
one-fourth of the entire Cherokee Nation had at least some white ancestry from interracial marriages that could be traced back six generations. Cherokees accepted these marriages to outsiders, which suited a society in which people were expected to marry outside their clan or nation, and white society also seemed to accept these marriages when they involved white men far out on the frontier. An Indian man’s marriage to the youngest daughter of a white family in Cornwall was considered entirely different. The fury after Boudinot’s proposal was so great that the Foreign Mission School soon closed.

Harriett married Elias anyway. By the time Elias went to work on the
Cherokee Phoenix
, good sense had prevailed among her family. Her parents even visited the young couple in New Echota. Elias Boudinot seems to have embraced his new family, though in letters to his in-laws he did not avoid reminding them who he was. He told Harriett’s relatives that one of their children had “real Indian black eyes,” and closed the letter:

I remain your Indian

Brother,

Elias Boudinot.

Like his letters, the pages he composed for the
Cherokee Phoenix
sometimes called attention to the interactions of the white and Indian worlds.

AN IMITATION INDIAN—A person made his appearance in the city [of Boston] Thursday last, dressed in the costume of an Indian, and calling himself “Gen. William Ross,” which is engraved on an apparently silver breast plate. He says his father is Daniel Ross, who is Chief of the Cherokee Indians, and that he is an authorized agent of the nation.

The
Phoenix
also spread information about the elections of actual Cherokee leaders, informing candidates that they must pay a fee in order to place “
electioneering” letters and articles in the paper: Boudinot was charging for political advertising. But there were gaps in the political coverage, considering that 1828 was an election year to choose a president of the United States. One of the most savage campaigns in American history received little mention in the
Phoenix
until December 3:

Presidential Election.

The long contest is over, and we shall soon ascertain, who is to be the next President of the United States. From returns of the election received thus far, it is highly probable that Gen. Andrew Jackson will be Chief Magistrate of the Union.

It was an understandable oversight that the
Phoenix
covered the election so little. The campaign turned more on the personal qualities of the candidates than their contrasting views of Indian policy. And the
Phoenix
had more immediate issues to cover, like Georgia’s latest efforts to gain control of Cherokee land. But if the
Phoenix
did not focus on the next president of the United States, the next presidential administration paid attention to the
Phoenix
. After Jackson took office, he received a letter from his attorney general, who happened to be a Georgian, outlining two strategic moves that would be sure to undermine the Cherokees’ ability to resist removal.
The first was to take away their sources of money. The second was to take away their printing press.

J
ackson’s inauguration in March 1829 is remembered less for what he said than for what was done. After his speech at the East Portico of the Capitol (it was a “
serene and mild” day, witnesses reported, with such “an immense concourse of spectators” at the base of the Capitol steps that most could not get close enough to hear the words of their white-haired leader) the new president was mobbed. Margaret Bayard Smith, that perceptive denizen of the capital, was in the crowd: “
The barrier that had separated the people from him was broken down and they rushed up the steps all eager to shake hands with him. It was with difficulty that he made his way through the Capitol and down the hill to the gateway that opens on the avenue. Here for a moment he was stopped. The living mass was impenetrable.” Someone handed the new president the reins to a horse, a passage was opened through the crowd, and then “
carriages, wagons and carts” pursued the rider to the Executive Mansion, the building that is today called the White House, along with “country men, farmers, gentlemen, mounted and dismounted, boys, women and children, black and white.”

Though the ceremonial rooms could accommodate hundreds of people, the house was so stuffed with well-wishers that china was
smashed, people climbed through windows to escape with their lives, and the new president was nearly crushed against a wall. He
had to be wedged out of the house by a squad of men who formed around him. The near riot scandalized capital society but did Jackson no harm. In the long term the story of the irrepressible crowds would enshrine his inauguration as a triumph of the common man, and for the short term the general made a tactical retreat. He did not spend the first night of his presidency in the Executive Mansion. He slept at the new and luxurious National Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The National’s proprietor was John Gadsby, whose prior hotel had served as Jackson’s campaign headquarters in the winter of 1824–25. Back then Gadsby’s was where Jackson met Lafayette at the stairs, and where Rachel worried about his health shortly before his defeat. Now the city was filled with celebrations of his victory, but at Gadsby’s he was alone. Rachel was dead. She had fallen ill in December, and the shadow of this tragedy enveloped his triumph. While still at the Hermitage in January, he declined to attend an event in his honor, informing his would-be hosts in Kentucky that “
the present season is sacred to sorrow.” Days later he was compelled to answer a letter that had been written to Rachel shortly before her death. “
It pleased God to take her from this world,” Jackson informed Rachel’s friend, “depriv[ing] me of my stay and solace whilst in it.” His friends worried about him. Louisiana congressman Edward Livingston wrote from New Orleans to express confidence that Jackson would be able to focus on the presidency, though the phrasing of Livingston’s letter suggested doubts. He urged Jackson to “
abandon your just grief” in order to perform his duty.

Just before starting from Nashville to Washington, Jackson sent a sad letter to John Coffee: “
I have this day got my dear Mrs. J Tomb, compleated, and am notified that the Steam Boat will be up tomorrow for me. . . . Whether I am ever to return or not, is for time to reveal,” he said. “My mind is so disturbed . . . that I can scarcely write, in short my dear friend my heart is nearly broke.” Yet the same letter showed that
Jackson was wrapping up his western affairs and preparing for a new season. He gave Coffee detailed instructions to pay off and collect debts for him, $100 here and $130 there. Having sent these instructions, Jackson hurried on to other business, hiring an overseer to run the Hermitage and drawing up an
inventory of ninety-five slaves. Then he gathered his family (his nephew Andrew Jackson Donelson would serve as his private secretary, and Donelson’s wife, Emily, would become the official hostess of the Executive Mansion) and went to the waiting steamboat—downriver to the Ohio, upriver to Pittsburgh, and overland to Washington. Now, as he rested at Gadsby’s after the inauguration, his mind was turning to the challenges ahead.

Beyond the joyous crowds, as Jackson knew, the capital city was fractious. Secretary of State Clay and others in the Adams administration pretended to yield power cheerfully, though Margaret Bayard Smith was not fooled: “
Every one of the public men who will retire . . . will return to private life with blasted hopes, injured health, injured or ruined fortunes, embittered tempers and probably a total inability to enjoy the remnant of their lives.” The 1828 campaign had been the nastiest in decades. Jackson supporters had spent years hammering a single theme, which simultaneously smeared President Adams and turned Jackson’s campaign into a cause. The 1824 election had been stolen through the “corrupt bargain” between Clay and Adams; the 1828 election was a fight to restore liberty and limited government. Adams supporters responded with everything they had. By the evening of his inauguration, Jackson the habitual newspaper reader would have had all the opportunities he could ever want to revisit the ghosts of his past. They were all in print, having been turned into campaign literature. In 1828 a publication called
Truth’s Advocate and Monthly Anti-Jackson Expositor
reported on the execution of John Wood at Fort Strother in 1814. (“
Shoot the damned rascal! Shoot the damned rascal!”) Nor was that all.
A special edition of the
Kentucky Reporter
, linked with Henry Clay, investigated the $20,000 bribe Jackson paid to secure a treaty
from the Chickasaws. Unable to document the bribe, the author described his efforts to confront Jackson and his associates, pioneering a technique that would later become known as the ambush interview. The
Truth’s Advocate and Monthly Anti-Jackson Expositor
also published an extended report of Rachel’s disastrous first marriage and her too-early remarriage to Jackson. The writer warned that Jackson’s election would result in “
a degraded female placed at the head of the female society of the nation” and damage “the National character, the National interest, and the National morals.” Jackson was so bitter about these attacks in what turned out to be his wife’s final months that when he arrived in Washington, he refused to pay a courtesy call on the departing President Adams. The presidential transition did not include so much as a handshake.

The brutal campaign had finally and permanently split the old ruling Democratic-Republican Party, creating the opportunity for Jackson to begin shaping a new party of his own. To direct this effort, he had a new adviser: Martin Van Buren of New York, the former manager of one of Jackson’s rivals. Jackson welcomed this northerner who, like himself, had risen from modest circumstances to become a senator. Bald, sideburned, double-chinned, courteous, and clever, Van Buren made himself indispensable to Jackson. In an 1827 letter to a Richmond newspaper publisher, he sketched out the political coalition that would form the heart of Jackson’s new party. It was an updated version of the alliance that had borne Jefferson to power, “
the planters of the South and the plain republicans of the North.” The “plain republicans” were men like Henry Baldwin, the Pittsburgh industrialist with his iron and glass works and his devotion to Jackson; the planters were men like General Jackson’s friends John Coffee and James Jackson. Van Buren traveled to court southern leaders, and made sure the party paid the necessary price for southern membership in the coalition: absolute quiet on the subject of slavery. The pro-Jackson alliance was so effective that there could be no question about the election results this time. The hero of New Orleans swept most of the nation, and Jackson made Van Buren his secretary of state.

There remained the question of what Jackson would do once in power. Letters he received overflowed with suggestions. Some solicited positions in government;
one Caleb Atwater of Ohio wrote Jackson to say that the candidates for district judge in Ohio were unqualified, but that Caleb Atwater would do the job. Many of his supporters would indeed be rewarded with jobs, since Jackson proposed to fire long-serving elites and hire new employees. Jackson eventually justified this political patronage by proclaiming the principle of “rotation in office,” meaning that many citizens deserved to take a turn on the federal payroll. Other constituents expected more than a paycheck. Religious figures had lately united behind a cause, reinforcing the sacredness of Sunday as a day of rest. “
The curse of God will afflict a Sabbath-breaking nation,” warned a Tennessean, who suggested that if Jackson would only stop Sunday mail delivery, he would more easily follow Rachel to heaven. Another letter quoted extensively from Lyman Beecher, a Boston preacher, who said Jackson would “
distinguish himself as a patriot” by stopping Sunday mail. It apparently did not occur to Beecher that the hero of New Orleans might resent the implication that he was not already distinguished as a patriot. The new president would soon be falling out of step with clerics who claimed to represent a higher authority than Jackson, the Constitution, or the people. Before long some of the same clerics would be questioning Jackson’s treatment of Indians.

The mailbag also included warnings from the South. In 1828, the last full year of the Adams administration, Congress had approved new taxes on imported goods, and South Carolina politicians so fiercely objected to this “Tariff of Abominations” that they began talking of their power to nullify federal law. Jackson received a letter of advice from a friend who had recently traveled through the coastal South. The friend suggested that the new president should cement southerners’ loyalty to the union by making certain they saw something in return for their tax money—Jackson might commit, say, half a million dollars to public works on some “
decent pretext,” such as coastal defenses for South Carolina and Georgia.

 • • • 

Jackson at least had wide latitude to act. He was associated with no specific policy agenda. Even his inaugural address offered hints rather than commitments, though it was a good speech for those near enough to hear it. Standing behind a table draped in red cloth, Jackson promised to remember the “limitations” of presidential power. This could be read as a note of skepticism about Henry Clay’s American System; whereas Clay believed in a government that used its power to develop infrastructure and promote economic growth, Jackson often saw development projects as unconstitutional insider schemes. He promised “a strict and faithful economy” in federal spending. He pledged to honor states’ rights, trying to conciliate the firebrands of the South. (An early draft of his speech went further, pledging that
“I . . . shall be the last to cry out treason” against those who disagreed with him about the limits of federal power.) His solicitude for the states may have sounded ominous to natives, who were depending on federal protection from encroaching states, but Jackson offered kind words to the Indians too. “It will be my sincere and constant desire,” the new president said, “to observe toward the Indian tribes . . . a just and liberal policy, and to give that humane and considerate attention to their rights and their wants which is consistent with the habits of our Government and the feelings of our people.”

In this way he signaled respect for both the Indian map and the U.S. map without saying how he would resolve the conflict between them. He could have said; he already knew. Van Buren later recalled that Jackson had a few objectives in mind “from the first moments of his elevation to power.”

First, the removal of the Indians from the vicinity of the white population and their settlement beyond the Mississippi.

This was the president’s clearest goal, a signature domestic policy, which he meant to pursue just as later presidents would become known
for a single overriding goal such as a tax cut or a health insurance plan. Jackson got to work on it promptly, and by late 1829 it would be the first major initiative he sent to Congress for action. Why was it Jackson’s first big priority? In part, it was what he knew. He had strong opinions about banks and taxes and federal spending, which he would also act upon in time, but he had
experience
with Indians. Almost twelve years had passed since he believed he had accomplished the removal of the Cherokees with his treaty of 1817, which included incentives for their voluntary relocation. Cherokees spurned this offer, but Jackson was not a man inclined to quit. Even if he had wanted to put off a confrontation, the contending parties would not have allowed him to. The Cherokees’ constitution of 1827 had announced they wouldn’t surrender their land, and the Georgians escalated their pressure in December 1828. Georgia declared its state laws would soon extend over Indian territories within Georgia, effectively erasing the Indian map. The Georgia laws included measures that specifically targeted Indians, forbidding them from establishing their own governments, and adding: “
No Indian, and no descendant of an Indian not understanding the English language shall be deemed a competent witness in any court.” A white man could turn an Indian out of his house or even kill him, and no Indian witness could testify against him. Elias Boudinot, the editor of the
Cherokee Phoenix
, understood the purpose of such a law: “
expulsion.”

Georgia’s act compelled the federal government to choose sides. Jackson chose. “
The course pursued by Georgia is well calculated to involve her & the United States in great difficulty, unless the Indians can be got to remove west of the M,” Jackson wrote his friend John Overton in June 1829. He was already facing a delicate situation with South Carolina, and did not need another fight with other southern states. Less than three weeks after his inauguration, he composed a letter to the Creeks who still possessed parts of Alabama, which was also applying state law to Indian land:

March 23rd. 1829

Friends & Brothers,

By permission of the Great Spirit above, and the voice of the people, I have been made a President of the United States, and now speak to you as your father and friend, and request you to listen.