Surely you are not trying to use Jackson and Lincoln as Constitutional purists, are you? Jackson was a criminal (Trail of Tears and theft of Indian lands in violations of treaties) and Lincoln violate the rights of habeas corpus. There is even some question as to whether Jefferson violated the Constitution with the Louisiana purchase.

Bork has times where he also wanders off the farm. His stance on the 2nd Amendment is not exactly in keeping with original intent. And the “right to life” should have not been a federal issue but a 10th Amendment issue.

It was his lobbying for the Indian Removal Act that allowed him to removed Native Americans from their lands in Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina. The law would have never been passed had Jackson not lobbied for it so of course he signed it. He wanted the Indians out of the states, especially Georgia.

The treaty you speak of was the Treaty of New Echota, signed NOT by John Ross, the legal chief of the Cherokee Nation, but by John Ridge who assumed the authority not given to him by tribal elders. Ridge was under the assumption that if the Cherokee removed to land that no one wanted (Oklahoma) than the federal government would finally allow the Cherokee to live in peace. He was wrong.

15,000 Cherokee were forcibly removed from their lands at the point of a Federal soldier’s gun. Of those 15,000, over 4,000 died. Some starved to death, others froze to death. Rounding up thosands of people, forcing them to march without adequate provisions (like food, blankets, facilities to keep them from the elements) is nothing more than genocide.

Two men understood that Congress was wrong in passing the Indian Removal Act and fought against it: David Crockett and Abraham Lincoln.

I will always consider Andrew Jackson a criminal and his actions toward Native Americans no better than Hitler’s crimes against the Jews.

But Lincoln and Crockett had a vote. Crockett parted company with Jackson over the treatment of especially the Cherokee. By the time the Indian Removal Act was passed, Houston had already relocated to Texas.

Jackson did not agree with the ruling that came from the second case, Worchester vs. Georgia saying “the decision fell still born” as he knew the court could not enforce its ruling (quite different from today).

John Ross was the accepted head, and spokesman, for the Cherokee according to Cherokee law. John Ridge was not, but had managed to convince a small band of Cherokee to go along with his agreement to the removal of the Cherokee from their lands. He paid for that with his life as the Cherokee, themselves, later killed him.

You can argue that Jackson had legal authority to do what he did, or that Congress did not violate Constitutional law in the enactment of the IRA, but there is no argument that what ensued was simply reprehensible, it was in fact genocide, a genocide that has never been fully acknowledged. And you cannot argue that Andrew Jackson was as cruel a man to ever occupy the Oval Office.

but this is an issue near and dear to my heart.

I have been on some rezs that would make any Chicago ghetto look like Trump Tower. People, who are disheartened because they can’t even own the land they live on (rez land is federally owned in most cases), so the owners can’t decide what they want to do with their property. Rape, drugs, gangs, are becoming the norm on the rez and no one wants to talk about it.

We, as a nation, have spent billions of $$ trying to make up to certain races for the wrongs committed against them a century and half ago. Yet, the reservation remains the disgrace of this nation. Children are often expected to travel 90 miles one way to a public school. By the time they reach high school, they just drop out sealing their future of living hand to mouth on what ever Uncle Sam gives them. Drugs, alcohol and crime shortly follow.

It was the goal of our government to remove the Native American from their home lands, and we did by sending them to areas that was believed, at the time, wanted by no one. We made it illegal for them to participate in their own rituals (Ghost dancing), sent them to schools where we made them cut their hair, wear white man clothing, and sterlized them so they could not reproduce and their numbers would dwindle.

Now, I am not going to apologize for those Native Americans who have a chance and don’t take it. But if your ethnic group was treated in such a manner for generations that you were left with nothing, no pride, no honor, no culture, I think we would hear loud cries against that. Not so with the Native American. For generations we, as a nation, have destroyed the Native American, and it seems few care that we continue to do so.

Does the number have to reach 6 million as in the case of Hitler and the Jews?

Or do you think that marching 15,000 Cherokee, where over 25% of them were allowed to die from stavation and the cold (many froze to death) when they were being marched by Federal troops, not genocide? Is the CIC not responsible for the orders given to the military? Can we blame Andrew Jackson for not assuring that those who were being moved from Georgia to Oklahoma were given the provisions to make sure they arrived in Oklahoma alive? Read some of the accounts of the soldiers who were required to move the Indians. Even they decried the deplorable treatment of the those defeated Native Americans.

How many Native Americans were here when the white man landed on our northern shore and how many were left by 1860? I have read estimates that there were 6 million native Americans in the U.S. when the pilgrims landed.

When the orders you give eliminate over 25% of a people, that is genocide.

Where did I use the word “slaughter?”

Was the Trail of Tears the worst? Which one?

“Future generations will read and condemn the act and I do hope prosperity will remember that private soldiers like myself, and like the four Cherokees, who were forced by General Scott to shoot an Indian Chief and his children, had to execute the orders of our superiors.

Private John G. Bennett (soldier under Gen. Scott during the Cherokee removal)

So, want to compare the number of Native Americans Jackson, and his predecessor, allowed to die in the dead of winter due to lack of provisions to the number of blacks who were lynched in the South which we are never allowed to forget?

FYI, I didn’t go to public schools so I didn’t have union teachers. Just because you subscribe to revisionist history doesn’t mean all of us do. My education comes from the tribe itself. If you have any dispute with the history, take it up with the historians in Tehlequah.

you will be wiser for it.

Learn about Bear River, Sand Creek, Marias, and Wounded Knee. Learn about the Buffalo soldiers who were stationed at Fort Clark and Fort Martin Scott, Texas and what their purpose at those forts were.

History is always written by the victors, never by the defeated, but at least now we have the ability to learn that the history of the American Indian, and how they were treated by whites, is not a John Wayne movie.

I was not trying to start a peeing contest. I was trying to give you some information you might find interesting.

Yes, some American Indians were noble. And not all were “savages” (although I would like you to define “savage”). The Cherokee, in particular, had courts, schools, were merchants and farmers, some were very wealthy by 19th century standards. Most were literate. Yet, when gold was discovered in Georgia, all bets were off for the Cherokee.

How did the Indian disrespect property rights when the land that was being settled on was theirs to begin with? Tell me, if I moved into your home, and then decided that you could not live there anymore and I was taking over, would you fight me?

The Sand Creek massacre saw the U.S. army ride into a quite village, filled with most old men, women and children and when the Army left, 240 Indians were dead. Can you name a time when Indians killed a town filled with whites where the body count was 240 when the Indians were finished?

You obviously don’t want to learn any history. So I will leave you to others.