Fight for Geert Wilders

Amazingly, Geert Wilders still faces persecution in Holland for speaking the truth about Islam.

“It is irrelevant whether Wilder’s witnesses might prove Wilders’ observations to be correct”, the ‘Openbaar Ministerie’ stated, “what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal”.

Holland is proving the Pappas exclusion principle. It is becoming clear that Islam and liberty can not both exist in the same place at the same time.

Please continue to fight back: International Civil Liberties Alliance, Wilders' website, Gates of Vienna, New English Review.

Stand Up For Geert Wilders!

Geert Wilders, an outspoken critic of Islam, is facing criminal charges by the Dutch government for expressing his opinion. We must come to the aid of this great patriot. We owe it to Geert, to Holland, and to ourselves.

Holland was once the home to liberty's founders and defenders. In the 17th century Hugo Grotius advocated religious tolerance and natural law. Holland gave haven to Spinoza’s family, after Holland gained its freedom from Spain and established a tolerant regime. In 1683, John Locke, fled to Holland where he found freedom and fellowship only to return to England in 1689 during the Glorious Revolution. Locke’s defense of England's new liberal order would inspire the Americans in 1776.

Holland had played a key role in the world’s struggle for liberty. Sadly she is leading Europe’s decay into darkness. It started with the death of Pym Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. It continued with its betrayal of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The pace of Holland’s suicide has accelerated with the outrageous attempt to silence one of Europe’s brave patriots.

It must not be allowed to succeed. Speak out! Donate! Boycott Holland until it secures Geert Wilder's freedom and safety.

I join with other freedom-loving writers on the 'net: Jihad Watch, AOW, Caroline Glick, Pamela Geller, New English Review, Grant Jones, Gates of Vienna, Mark Alexander, Bosch Fawstin, Gandalf, John Ray, Robert Spencer, Robert Spencer, and Pamela Geller … more to come.

Update: The UK refuses Wilders' entry because of his views are deemed unacceptable. Reports: Charles N. Steele, Robert Spencer, IFPS, Mary Jackson, Jerry Gordon, Gates of Vienna, Lawrence Auster, Pastorius, Mark Alexander, Opinionator, John Derbyshire, Glenn Reynolds, Andrew McCarthy, Stephen Brown, Bat Ye'or, Theodore Dalrymple, Mary Jackson, Andrew Ian Dodge, Mike McNally, and the MSM: UK Telegraph, Associate Press via the New York Times, BBC, National Post, Brussels Journal, the Spectator.

Update2: Esmerelda Weatherwax reports from London: Fitna is shown while filmaker is banned.

Update3: This is the speech that was banned in Britain.

Update4: WSJ - Britain's Surrender to Islamists: "What makes this surrender of free speech and fairness -- the most noble of British traditions -- particularly depressing is its totality. All main British parties support the Labour government's ban against Mr. Wilders -- the so-called Liberal Democrats just as eagerly as the Tories."

Liberalism flowed from Holland to England to America. It appears that liberalism's end will follow that same path if we do not act.

Update5: Mr. Wilders goes to Washington: Pam Geller, Robert Tracinski, Robert Spencer.

Rogues' Island Nation

Prior to the United States constitution each state was essentially a nation unto itself. Most state governments were overwhelmingly dominated by the legislature. Democracy was unrestrained or if the state constitution had a bill of rights is was what Madison called a “parchment barrier” that was easily ignored when inconvenient. The will of the people was unfettered and impassioned.

In New England, many a landholder found himself in crushing debt. Farmers demanded relief. In 1785 the bailout party gained control of the Rhode Island legislature by championing the creation of paper money to pay off the debt. John Fiske writes:

“The legislature of 1786 showed an overwhelming majority in favor of paper money. The farmers from the inland towns were unanimous in supporting the measure. They could not see the difference between the state making a dollar out of paper and a dollar out of silver. The idea that the value did not lie in the government stamp they dismissed as an idle crotchet, a wire-drawn theory, worthy only of ‘literary fellows.’ What they could see was the glaring fact that they had no money, hard or soft; and they wanted something that would satisfy their creditors and buy new gowns for their wives, whose raiment was unquestionably the worse for wear.”

The script was not respected as a store of value or a unit of trade. It was heavily discounted as fast as it was printed. Fiske writes:

“But the depreciation began instantly. When the worthy farmers went to the store for dry goods or sugar, and found the prices rising with dreadful rapidity, they were at first astonished, and then enraged. The trouble, as they truly said, was with the wicked merchants, who would not take the paper dollars at their face value. These men were thus thwarting the government, and must be punished. An act was accordingly hurried through the legislature, commanding every one to take paper as an equivalent for gold, under penalty of five hundred dollars fine and loss of the right of suffrage.”

Those evil greedy merchants! How dare they want real money! What did those selfish mercenaries do next?

“The merchants in the cities thereupon shut up their shops. During the summer of 1786 all business was at a standstill in Newport and Providence, except in the bar-rooms. There and about the market-places men spent their time angrily discussing politics, and scarcely a day passed without street-fights, which at time grew into riots. In the country, too, no less than in the cities, the goddess of discord reigned. The farmers determined to starve the city people into submission, and they entered into an agreement not to send any produce into the cities until the merchants should open their shops and begin selling their goods for paper at its face value. … the farmers threw away their milk, used their corn for fuel, and let their apples rot on the ground, rather than supply the detested merchants.”

That’ll teach ‘em. Those damn farmers! The people are to blame!

“The farmers were threatened with armed violence. Town-meetings were held all over the state, to discuss the situation, and how long they might have talked to no purpose none can say, when all at once the matter was brought into court.”

The court ruled that no one had to take the paper money at face value but the legislature removed the judges. But …

“… among the farmers there were some who had grown tired of seeing their produce spoiled on their hands; and many of the richest merchants had announced their intention of moving out of the state. The new forcing act accordingly failed to pass, and presently the old one was repealed. The paper dollar had been issued in May; in November it passed for sixteen cents.”

The attempt to evade economic law leads to far worse consequences both materially and spiritually as society degenerates into warring factions.

“These outrageous proceedings awakened disgust and alarm among sensible people in all the other states, and Rhode Island was everywhere reviled and made fun of. … and forthwith the unhappy little state was nicknamed Rogues' Island.”

Events such as these motivated our founding fathers to “form a more prefect union” where legislative power was checked, mob rule discouraged, judicial review protected the rule of law, property rights respected, and economic regional warfare avoided.

Rhode Island sent no delegates to the convention and was the last to ratify the new constitution.

Have we become a Rogues’ Island nation?

Bailout?

Sometimes others just say it better:

Dick Armey on voting no to the bailout.

Thomas Sowell on bailout politicians.

Alex Epstein on bailouts without reform.

Robert Bidinotto on the bailout and the crisis.

Martin Masse on the bailout as socialism.

Yaron Brook: stop the bailouts.

Edward Cline on the history of bailouts, etc.

Jeff Perren comments on several aspects of the problem.

John Allison against helping the losers. (H/T Ghate)
John Allison on the “rescue.” (H/T Hicks)

Michael Graham on bailout and personal responsibility.

Nicholas Provenzo explains the history in clear terms.

Charles N. Steele celebrates the "no" vote.

Pamela Geller … well, let her say it.

Update1: Robert Trancinski: Kill it for good!

Remember Fort Mims

One the seventh anniversary of 9/11 I have to sadly report that this day will not live in infamy—not if today’s historians are any indication. Historians will one day argue that we brought death and destruction to Afghanistan and Pakistan for dishonorable reasons. There will be no reference to the WTC attack or the 3000 deaths.

Hard to imagine?

This past weekend, PBS presented a biography of the President that most only know from the picture we carry in our wallets: Andrew Jackson. I could only stomach an hour of the show. It was carefully crafted to vilify Jackson. The historians who damned him cited those events that furthered their case. The historians who praised him were only allowed to state generalities without presenting the detailed evidence. This made it appear that evidence supported Jackson’s critics.

The most egregious example was the defeat of the Red Stick Creeks in what was the greatest slaughter of Indian warriors in American history. No mention was made of the terrorist atrocity at Fort Mims that outraged our nation and led to Jackson’s military expedition. It was portrayed as a land grab to further slavery.

When I wrote “Remember Fort Mims” last spring, I was struck by deliberate attempts to hide this important event in our history. It is necessitated by the narrative that damns our country, damns its expansion, and damns the achievement of creating a great nation. The need to celebrate our achievement must always balance by the need to learn from our mistakes. But that requires setting matters in their proper context and applying proper standards of proportion. Justice requires it.

It is from history that we derive the principles we need to understand the present and face the dangers to our republic. The lessons taught by today’s academics undermine our resolve and leave us hopeless. We must reclaim history. Survival requires it.

Native Americans in our Nation's Early Years

I have finished my review of the conflict with aboriginal Americans during the first 50 years of our nation’s history. This history is lost and buried; it has been obscured by contemporary multi-cultural sensibilities. Nevertheless, I have endeavored to extract this history from a combination of contemporary and classic secondary histories of the period because I’ve found no one source that does justice to the facts. This is a rough pass at such a reconstruction with a very limited focus on the vast cultural differences and their implications.

Update:
Since I’m blogging as I study the subject, the blog entries were in reverse order. I have reordered them so that they can be read in a proper order and referenced by a single link.

The story starts with Washington’s decision to regard the aboriginal tribes as independent sovereign states, potentially future states of the union. The Creek Nation, recognized by Washington in the Treaty of New York, was a failed state that allowed terrorist attacks culminating in the worst terrorist attack in America’s history prior to September 11th.

Andrew Jackson reversed Washington’s policy. As a General he defeated the Red Stick Creeks and those that armed and supported the Indian terrorists, the British. As President he rejected Washington’s policy as unconstitutional; he demanded that the Indians assimilate and obey state law or leave the confines of the states of the Union.

The early states of the Union narrowly averted conflict by establishing civilized means of settling differences; they created a new national government defined by the Constitution. The Indian tribes could not fit into this fellowship, having political and cultural structures completely at odds with the principles of our founding.

The federal union remained heavily dependent on local rule. This left the frontier states in conflict with the tribes within their jurisdictions. The establishment of law and order slowly civilized the frontier while continued savage attacks encouraged harsh reprisals unpalatable to civilized sensibilities. Jackson led the fight to bring law and order to the southern frontier. Writers noted that the aboriginal aversion to a settled civilized liberal order hindered assimilation in most cases.

This sets the stage for an analysis, which I’ve delayed in order to describe the context.

Washington's Indian Policy: the Ideal

At our country’s founding, the most pressing military problem facing the first administration of our “more prefect union” was not the imperialistic Europeans across the ocean but the aboriginal tribes forming the Indian nations west of the Appalachians. Henry Knox, our first Secretary of War, was the major architect of our Indian policy. In which was to be considered a controversial policy, he brought Indian affairs under the umbrella of the federal government by regarding Indian nations as foreign entities.

Considering our Indian policy as a foreign policy, Knox and Washington embarked on a course of action that was anything but isolationist, as many conservatives and libertarians want to imagine. One can go even further and argue that our very first President embarked on a foreign policy of nations-building that has overtones of Wilsonian idealism and undertaken with the utmost stoic posture of upright principle.

Joseph J. Ellis, in his recent book, “American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic,” describes the transformation of Washington’s Indian policy. At first, according to Ellis “The American Revolution, as Washington saw it, was a continuation of the French and Indian War for control of the eastern third of North America. The Peace of Paris (1763) had eliminated France from contention. Now the Treaty of Paris (1783) had eliminated Great Britain.” [p87] American colonists sought to settle the land from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. With the aid of aboriginal populations, first the French and then the British sought to limit westward expansion by the colonists. The Declaration of Independence lodges the follow charges against the King of England:

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

Fully aware of the fate of aboriginal tribes along the Atlantic cost, Washington knew that the primitive hunter-gatherer cultures were no match for a expanding civilization rooted in the cultivation of the soil, able to sustain a population several order of magnitudes greater than the primitive means native to the North American continent. As noted at the time: “As our settlements approach their country … they … must, from scarcity of game, retire further back, and dispose of their lands, until they dwindle comparatively to nothing, as all savages have done … when compelled to live in the vicinity of civilized people.” [p132]

Washington’s outlook was radically influenced by Henry Knox, his Secretary of War. According to Ellis, Knox advocated regarding Indian tribes as sovereign states. The federal government could and would use its constitutional powers to make treaties with foreign powers. However, the viability of these sovereign territories would require a cultural transformation and modernization. Ellis says [p139]:

“All treaties would also contain a provision whereby the tribes would be provided with tools and instruction in husbandry so that they could make a gradual transition from hunting and gathering to agricultural economies, which would simultaneously allow Indian culture to evolve from a savage to a more civilized status and reduce the size of the territory necessary for Indian survival.”

“What Knox and Washington envisioned as the outcome of the new policy was a series of Indian enclaves or homelands east of the Mississippi whose political and geographic integrity would be protected by federal law. The wave of white settlements would be required to bypass these Indian enclaves, leaving several Indian territories east of the Mississippi that would eventually, over the course of the next century, be assimilated as new states.”

The spirit of the Washington administration is summed up as follows: [p161] “Knox and Washington, with an assist from Jefferson, chose to defy the odds and transform American policy toward the Native Americans. They did not do so because it was politically expedient, quite the opposite. They did so because the revolutionary fires still burned inside them and they knew, deep down, that Indian removal was incompatible with the republican values they cherished. … For, make no mistake, a referendum among the white citizenry would have produced an overwhelming majority for Indian removal.”

The problem was apparent almost immediately.

Alexander McGillivray was the head of the Creek nation. An educated man with a command of several ancient and modern languages, he was an accepted member of the Creeks by his tribal ancestry through his mother’s mother. For Ellis, he is the equivalent of an autocratic third world dictator playing one super power against the other. His rule was symptomatic of the corrupt leadership that rises in oppressive collectivist social systems.

The Creek nation encompassed present day Alabama and an equal-sized area from surrounding states. Homesteaders were expanding into Creek territory in western Georgia alarming McGillivray; uprooting farm communities once established is nearly impossible. To stop the expansion, McGillivray came to our nation's capital, New York, to sign the monumental treaty between the Creek nation and the federal government. “What became known as the Treaty of New York passed the Senate on August 7, 1790, by a vote of 15-4. Both Georgia senators voted in the negative …” [p156]

The treaty was unenforceable. What McGillivray wanted most was an end to the ‘illegal immigration’ into the Creek nation. It is the responsibility of a sovereign nation to secure its own borders; something beyond the ability of the Creeks. America had an open border policy welcoming immigrants to settle, work the land, and provide for their family. It certainly wouldn’t have an emigration policy restricting a person’s exit like a modern totalitarian state. Yet McGillivray had hoped the treaty would bring federal force against those seeking to settle in the Creek territory.

The federal government could not restrict travel across the Creek border; its army was minuscule during a period when the union relied on state militias. It had little desire to use the federal troops to confront one of its constituent states. Even John Quincy Adams, several decades later, would refuse to use federal troops to force Georgia to abide by the terms of federal treaties. Let’s remember that this was the late 18th and early 19th century. Eisenhower’s use of federal power in “Little Rock” would be more than a century away. The Creeks had more under arms than the federal government but the size of the border was too great. McGillivray turned to the Spanish for help but they had no manpower or desire to do what was virtually impossible.

A primitive hunter-gather nation of a few ten thousand could not protect a communal tribal enclave nor conceivably secure the borders of a nation twice the size of Alabama next to a country of four million, and doubling every 25 years. The dynamic of an expanding agricultural society that empowered and enfranchised the individual family overwhelms more primitive social orders. As settlers streamed into uncultivated lands seeking to “mix their labor with the soil” and provide for their families, a new social order was spreading west. Even without federal or state government interference, the influx would be overwhelming. Especially without federal interference!

Washington understood the ultimate clash with civilization and supplemented his foreign policy of recognizing sovereign rule with an outreach program to help transform these tribes into modern civilized entities by providing the tribes “with tools and instruction in husbandry so that they could make a gradual transition from hunting and gathering to agricultural economies” and thus transition “from a savage to a more civilized status.”

Instead of annihilation, nations-building was the policy. The creation of viable neighboring states, under the rule of law, living peacefully, and interacting profitably was the goal. This was an extremely ambitious program—and it failed. What went wrong?

(to be continued ...)

Remember Fort Mims!

Two hundred years ago we responded to savage attacks on civilization in a very different way. It is worth looking at the war on terrorism during the early days of our republic and the nation's response to the 9/11 of its day. Below I describe the Fort Mims Massacre and our immediate response. I'll continue to describe the changes in policy that followed in future articles.

Andrew Jackson and the Creek War

When Andrew Jackson arrived in Nashville in October of 1788 it was a frontier town with a few stores, several taverns, two churches and a distillery. Warring among Creeks, Shawnee, and Choctaws, had left this fertile land uninhabited until arrival of settlers a decade before. Now a small town of a few hundred inhabitants it was continually terrorized by Indians. The settlements “lost a man, woman, or child about every ten days, sometimes in the most ghastly fashion” in its first 15 years. [p61]

Jackson’s existential insecurity didn't revolve around the threat from aboriginal savages; his overriding concern and focus was the imperial threat of colonial European powers, Spain and England. The nation wasn’t secure on its southern border. It was not in control of the land, did not maintain adequate forts, and faced hostile Indian tribes that usually sided with the British. Jackson believed the war with Britain wasn’t settled. Since his appointment as commander of the Tennessee militia in 1802, he prepared for the inevitable.

The British continued to fund aboriginal proxies who were eager to wage war on the settlers. None was as eager, driven, and capable as the Shawnee chief Tecumseh. Together with his brother Tenskwatawa, called “the Prophet”, he called for the total annihilation of the whites from the North American continent. Fuelled by a religious mysticism creed, Tecumseh's call for a holy war, a jihad if you will, inflamed the souls of Indian tribes in the Western lands between the Mississippi and the Appalachians.

In the south, one group of Indians to heed Techumseh’s to annihilate the whites was the Red Stick Creeks. The British and their Spanish allies supplied the Red Sticks with munitions in Florida but the Indians were intercepted upon their return. Remini describes what follows:

“At noon on August 30, 1813, the Red Sticks, led by a new recruit, William Weatherford (Chief Red Eagle), counterattacked. They entered through an open gate, slaughtered the defenders, and burned the fort. It was one of the most appalling massacres in frontier history. ‘The fearful shrieks of women and children put to death in ways as horrible as Indian barbarity could invent’ echoed around the fort. The victims were ‘butchered in the quickest manner, and blood and brains bespattered the whole earth. The children were seized by the legs, and killed by batting their heads against the stockading. The women were scalped, and those who were pregnant were opened, while they were alive and the embryo infants let out of the womb.’ Red Eagle tried to stop this savagery, but many red clubs were raised over his head and he was forced to withdraw to save his own life. Between 250 and 275 white settlers, friendly Indians, and mixed-bloods were killed; between twenty and forty escaped.”

The barbarity of this attack outraged the nation. Calls for vengeance, considered a most righteous response, were loud and unequivocal. There were no apologists to argue that we brought it on ourselves; that Tenskwatawa practiced a peaceful religion hijacked by an evil one; or that liberation will reform these poor deprived souls. “Everyone knew what Tecumseh had been preaching. The Fort Mims attack showed that the sermon was being taken to heart. One didn’t have to be an alarmist to fear that the aboriginal war against all the whites had begun.” [p196] (Also, Willard p290-291.)

Jackson responded with all due haste but he knew the Indians were divided. He formed tactical alliances with Creeks who had been fighting the Red Sticks and with the Cherokees; and he drilled his own troops with a degree of discipline that earned him the nickname “Old Hickory.” The coalition defeated the Red Sticks in the battle of Horseshoe Bend. It remains the single greatest slaughter of Indians in American history. [p219]

In the core were a young Davy Crockett and Samuel Houston. Together with their fighting brothers they would put their training and experience to the test in an even greater challenge: the Battle of New Orleans. It was his stunning victory fighting the British in New Orleans that made Jackson the nation's enduring hero and ultimately propelled him to the White House.

His opposition to sovereign Indian nations in the American south continued undeterred and undiminished. (to be continued …)

Ref: H. W. Brands, Andrew Jackson, His Life and Times

Jackson’s Indian Policy

To understand Andrew Jackson’s Indian policy it is necessary to understand his view of the proper role of the federal government, the constitution, and the rights of the states. Jackson’s self-proclaimed political philosophy was anti-federalist in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. He was a strict constitutionalist, as the term is currently used. He was an ardent defender of the Union as the only means of defending the sovereignty of the states from foreign threats. It was his belief that George Washington’s policy of recognizing Indian sovereignty was a violation of the constitution’s prohibition against removing land from existing states for the creation of new political entities.

The above summary is not without controversy in Jackson’s day or today. Let’s examine some of the evidence.

Andrew Jackson ran against John Quincy Adams in the 1824 and 1828 elections. Jackson had a plurality of electoral and popular votes in the first election but lacking a clear majority, the House of Representatives decided the election. Henry Clay, the third runner up, threw his support to Adams creating a popular uproar against what was viewed as an affront to democracy. Lacking a clear mandate for his big-government programs, Adams’ single term as President was severely hampered. “For all of his setbacks and suffering, John Quincy Adams had never abandoned his moral vision of energetic government and national uplift. Protective tariffs, federal road and canal projects, and the other mundane features of the American System were always, to him, a means to that larger end.” [p307]

Adams’ policies and programs, in Jackson’s opinion, violated the bounds of the constitution and invited the corruption of special privilege. In addition to protective tariffs and federal public works projects, Adams was a supporter of the Second Bank of the United States and Indian treaties going back to Washington. When the state of Georgia defied federal rulings on Cherokee boundaries, Adams rejected this early example of nullification but failed to take action against Georgia given his lack of political support.

After Jackson took over the White House, he systematically opposed the policies of his predecessors. He abolished the Second Bank of the United States, opposed a tariff to protect sectional interests, paid off the debt for the first and last time in American history, opposed the nullification of federal laws by the individual states, and completely discarded Washington’s Indian policy. Above all, he cited the constitution as the authority for his policies.

The extent of his policy of strict constitutionalism can be seen in this early example of First Amendment absolutism: When asked for a religious statement during an epidemic of cholera he said “Whilst I concur with the synod in the efficacy of prayer and in the hope that our country may be preserved from the attack of pestilence … I am constrained to decline the appointment of any period or mode as proper for the public manifestation of this reliance. I could not do otherwise without transcending those limits which are prescribed by the Constitution for the President, and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion now enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.” [p451]

In each case, however, he saw the locus of decision-making in the states and not the individual. His opposition to a federal bank led to the use of state banks, corrupted by special granting of privilege on the state level. His opposition to federal civil engineering projects didn’t extend to state funding. Even as he opposed federal displays of religious sentiment he did not encourage similar restraint by the state Governments.

This then leads us to consider Jackson’s Indian policy. It was a simple issue of state sovereignty under Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution. The creation of Indian nations within states of the Union was a clear violation of the constitution. There are two logical alternatives that exhaust the possibilities: either Indians comprise sovereign states or they are subject to the laws of existing states of the Union. The Supreme Court saw a third option by declaring, in 1831, that Indian nations are not foreign nations that can sue state governments but merely “domestic dependent nations.” In the next year, the Court decided to uphold federal treaties with these types of nations! [p488]

Woodrow Wilson, then Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, writes in his textbook on 19th century American history [1]:

“Jackson had, it should be remembered, in his message of December, 1829, taken his stand upon the Constitution in regard to this question. Those who would judge for themselves between Georgia and the Cherokees must resolve this point of law: if the power of the federal executive to negotiate treaties be added to the power of Congress to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes, do they together furnish a sanction for the erection of a permanent independent state within the territory of one of the members of the Union, and so override that other provision of the Constitution which declares that 'no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State' without the express consent of the Legislature of that State and of Congress? Judgment was passed upon the law of the case by the Supreme Court, and Jackson should unquestionably have yielded obedience to that judgment; but the point of law is a nice one.”

Jackson’s response was simple: if the Court was going to legislate from the bench they would have to enforce their own laws. He refused to act against Georgia, on principle, just as Adams had previously refused to act, albeit from weakness.

This then is Jackson’s outlook of the federal government’s proper role, the President’s power, his literalism in constitutional matters, and his imperial manner—all in the name of the will of the people—in conducting the dissolution of Indian nations east of the Mississippi. (… to be continued …)

[1] Woodrow Wilson, Epochs of American History: Division and Reunion 1829-1889, New York and London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1898, p38

Update 4/6/09 My article above was based an analysis of several sources, all having major flaws in their approach. I now recommend the website of the University of Virginia for its brief but highly accurate treatment of Jackson's policies and motivation.

The Original Trail of Tears

Jackson’s life spanned the early years of our nation's history from a loose association of rebellious colonies that hugged the Atlantic coast, to the emergence of a major continental power about to extend its reach to the Pacific. He lived to see the election of James Polk (“Young Hickory”) but not Polk's incorporation of Oregon, California, and the vast South West. Physically the nation matured but in its aspirations for a liberal order it faced formidable challenges.

Jackson saw strength in Union: it brought independence, gave us the ability to maintain that independence in the face of hostile enemies, and the power to liberate vast lands from imperial and autocratic rule. After the Revolution, however, union was all but certain. Indeed, it seemed highly unlikely. The early days of our nation were one of constant turmoil.

In the post-Revolutionary period, Loyalists were continuously subjected to intimidation and violence. From 1783 to 1785 about 100,000 Loyalists, approximately 3% of the population, were driven from our nation. Our Founding Fathers condemned the vigilante vengeance, at times at the risk of their own safety. “Hamilton was roundly abused, and his conduct was attributed to unworthy motives. But he face the people as boldly as he had faced the court … setting forth in the clearest light the injustice and impolicy of extreme measures against the Tories.” [p128] Our statesmen opposed mob violence that might have resulted in a Reign of Terror.

Friction between the States led to a tariff and trade war that strangled commerce. The issuance of paper money to absolve debt led to a general economic upheaval. Massachusetts faced Shay's rebellious mob. In Rhode Island, the advocates of paper money gained control of the legislature and instituted legal tender laws to force merchants to accept these worthless bills. “The merchants in the cities thereupon shut up their shops. During the summer of 1786 all business was at a standstill in Newport and Providence, except in the bar-rooms.” [p173] (See Federalist #10 and #44.)

Territory was in dispute. New York and New Hampshire both laid claimed to the district of Vermont. “New York sent troops to the threatened frontier, New Hampshire prepared to do like wise, and for a moment war seemed inevitable. But here, as in so many other instances, Washington appeared as peacemaker …” [p152] (See Federalist #7 and #28.)

Perhaps the most painful story was the fight over Wyoming Valley on the Susquehanna River just south of present-day Scranton, Pennsylvania. John Fiske describes what can be called the original trail of tears:

“The chronic quarrel between Connecticut and Pennsylvania over the valley of Wyoming was decided in the autumn of 1782 by a special federal court, appointed in accordance with the articles of confederation. The prize was adjudged to Pennsylvania, and the government of Connecticut submitted as gracefully as possible. But new troubles were in store for the inhabitants of that beautiful region. …

The people were starving with cold and hunger, and President Dickinson urged the legislature to send prompt relief to the sufferers. But the hearts of the members were as flint, and their talk was incredibly wicked. Not a penny would they give to help the accursed Yankees. … But the cruelty of the Pennsylvania legislature was not confined to words. A scheme was devised for driving out the settlers and partitioning their lands among a company of speculators. A force of militia was sent to Wyoming, commanded by a truculent creature named Patterson. … Patterson sent a letter to President Dickinson, accusing the farmers of sedition, and hinting that extreme measures were necessary. Having thus, as he thought, prepared the way, he attacked the settlement, turned some five hundred people out-of-doors, and burned their houses to the ground. The wretched victims, many of them tender women, or infirm old men, or little children, were driven into the wilderness at the point of the bayonet, and told to find their way to Connecticut without further delay. Heart-rending scenes ensued. Many died of exhaustion, or furnished food for wolves.” (See Federalist #7.)

It was the anarchy and gathering threat of war that prompted the Founding Fathers to assemble in Philadelphia to "form a more perfect union." Their leadership brought a fractious confederacy from the brink of war to forge a great nation--the United States of America--united to insure liberty, security, and peaceful coexistence. It was not at all obvious that this could succeed. The founders knew of few examples in history that could serve as an model for success on such a large scale. They knew the immensity of this task.

With all the commonalty of values and with a history of a common struggle, the peace and mutual respect among the colonies still required a long and hard struggle. Peace between the colonies and Indian tribes had far less of a foundation for success. (… to be continued …)