Condemning the federal government’s mandate were members of the National Republican and Whig Parties, including Congressman Abraham Lincoln (IL); Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen (NJ), Senator Daniel Webster (MA); and Senator Henry Clay (KY). Tennessee Congressmen Davy Crockett gave an impassioned speech in defense of the Indians.
Christian missionaries, such as Jeremiah Evarts, led resistance to the federal government’s removal of the Indians, with many being arrested by the state of Georgia and sentenced to years of hard labor.
General John E. Wool had sympathy for the Indians and hesitated carrying out the inhumane removal, resulting in Democrat President Martin Van Buren replacing him with General Winfield Scott.
46,000 Indians were removed by 1837. Then came the freezing weather of 1838-1839.
The last 17,000 Cherokee Indians were forcibly removed by the federal government from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina to the Oklahoma territory.
Christians ministered to the Indians along the trail, bringing them food and blankets. Not able give their dead a full burial, they simply sang “Amazing Grace,” resulting in that song being considered as a “Cherokee national anthem.”
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1 comment:
For all of the horrors and atrocities that were inflicted on the American Indians, our government should be so proud. The systematic extermination of total tribes, cultures, language, customs, and history of the indigenous people, is an American tradgity. Yet who does our government bend over backwards to house, feed, clothes, educate, and kiss up too? The negro, that has never done anything for this country, but scream about slavery. The negro was not killed for sport and exterminated deliberately by the US Army. Talk about something that is not right.
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