Andrew Jackson on Indian Removal

An unfortunate but recurring feature of U.S. history has been the tendency of political leaders to lie to the American people. The mainstream media have often simply reported these lies with little or no critique, functioning as “stenographers to power,” to borrow from the title of a book by media critic Norman Solomon. This is not to say that everything government leaders tell us is a lie. However, an informed and skeptical public is perhaps the best defense against statements that mask policies that undermine human rights, at home and abroad.
A U.S. history course should seek to nurture this informed skepticism in you, the student. It should encourage you to question the premises of textbooks, newspapers, films, and speeches of political leaders. It should ask you to check assertions against historical evidence. The speech Andrew Jackson delivered to Congress in December 1830 is a good example of how leaders rely on widespread ignorance to promote their policies. For example, anyone even remotely familiar with the Cherokee people at the time would know that it was ludicrous to characterize them as “a few savage hunters.” Some people surely knew that this was a wildly inaccurate description, but didn’t care because they supported Jackson’s Indian policy. But others almost certainly assumed that, since Jackson is president, he must know best. In instances such as this, people’s critical capacities, or lack of them, have life and death consequences.
You are in your right as a critical thinker to question those in power as well as the ability to critique the pronouncements of a U.S. president.

Assignment: Write a critique of Jackson’s speech. This could be formatted as an op-ed piece from a northern newspaper or as a letter to Jackson as if you are a Cherokee or Seminole. You might write this from the perspective of a Cherokee several years later who traveled west on the Trail of Tears n 1838, or from the point of view of an enslaved African-American uprooted by his or her owner to move west onto better cotton land. Use your imagination on this. A student previously wrote a letter to the U.S. government arguing that Jackson should be taken off the $20.

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