-Caveat Lector-
>From Irish Times
> Saturday, June 26, 1999
>
> 'Trail of Tears' a huge blot on Jackson's life
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> -- LETTER FROM AMERICA/Joe Carroll
>
>
> My hero worship of Andrew Jackson is over. This rugged son of Ulster
> who became the seventh president of the US stands guilty of the most
> brutal ethnic cleansing in American history.
>
> Not that this will affect Jackson's towering reputation here where
> it's an American dream how an orphan boy came out of the wilds of the
> Appalachians, became a lawyer on the frontier territory of Tennessee,
> drank, duelled, gambled, courted women, fought Indians, humiliated the
> British, founded the Democratic Party and ended up in the White House.
>
> It is a more thrilling tale than the Kennedy family trek from
> Dunganstown to the White House with the help of Joe Kennedy's
> millions. But the Catholic Irish American immigrants have long ago won
> the public relations battle against the Presbyterian Scots-Irish. It's
> about time the Ulster unionists took pride in what their ancestors did
> in America
>
> My first encounter with the Jackson myth was to stand in the seaside
> cottage in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim from which his parents and two
> brothers emigrated to the American colonies in 1765.
>
> Next I walked the battlefield outside New Orleans where Gen Jackson
> routed a far superior British force in 1815 under another Irish
> general, Sir Edward Pakenham. One could only marvel at the scale of
> Jackson's triumph on the banks of the Mississippi which left some
> 2,000 British dead to 13 Americans.
>
> It was sweet revenge for Jackson, whose mother and two brothers had
> died as a result of harsh treatment from British troops in the
> revolutionary war.
>
> The battle made Jackson the biggest hero in America and helped him win
> the presidency in 1828. His legendary physical toughness earned him
> the nickname "Old Hickory".
>
> However, for the Indian tribes in the south-east like the Creeks, the
> Choctaws and the Cherokees, Jackson was the hated "Sharp Knife".
>
> Not only did he defeat them in bloody battles but he forced them to
> sign unjust treaties which drove them from their ancestral lands to
> settle over 1,000 miles to the west in what is now Oklahoma.
>
> For the Cherokees this was the infamous "Trail of Tears" when 4,000
> died in the trek in winter from the Carolinas and Georgia over
> mountains and through dense forests. Altogether some 50,000 Indians
> were forced at gun point to move west from their lands, largely due to
> Jackson.
>
> The Cherokees were probably more civilised than the English and
> Scots-Irish land-grabbers. They lived in log cabins, had their own
> sophisticated government and laws, wore turbans and even had their own
> English language newspaper called the Phoenix.
>
> Some of them fled into the Appalachians rather than march west and
> their descendants, called the Eastern Band, now live in the
> magnificent scenery of the Great Smoky Mountains dividing North
> Carolina and Tennessee.
>
> Today these gentle people show visitors to their reservation how their
> ancestors lived, but you sense a sadness. They earn a living only by
> being a tourist attraction.
>
> From there it is a day's drive to a beautiful mansion called The
> Hermitage outside Nashville, capital of Tennessee and of country and
> western music.
>
> The Hermitage is where Jackson lived the life of a plantation owner
> and where he ended his days after retiring from the White House,
> tended by his devoted family and not so devoted slaves. He and his
> wife, Rachel Donelson, lie in a tomb in the corner of the garden.
>
> It was a real love match between the high-spirited Rachel and "Old
> Hickory". He helped her escape from her first abusive husband and
> married her before she had legalised her divorce. This was exploited
> as a "scandal" by Jackson's political opponents when he ran for the
> presidency.
>
> There were happy days at The Hermitage where Jackson and Rachel
> entertained and where their adopted son, Andrew, grew up along with an
> Indian boy, Lyncoya, whom the general had rescued after a battle in
> which he slaughtered his parents.
>
> This was the tender side of Jackson who was noted for his rages and
> ruthlessness. As a boy who had been orphaned himself, he felt what he
> called "an unusual sympathy" for the abandoned baby which he brought
> to his tent and fed before sending him to The Hermitage.
>
> Just as Jackson was getting ready to travel from Tennessee to the
> White House after his election in 1828, his beloved Rachel suddenly
> died. It was a cruel blow and Jackson wept, saying: "My heart is
> nearly broke" as he left to live alone in the White House.
>
> The frontiersman had wrested the presidency from John Quincy Adams,
> representing the richer, commercial classes of the northeast who
> mocked the uncouth Jackson. But he was the darling of the common
> people and laid the foundations for the modern Democratic Party,
> introducing the political spoils system for the winners.
>
> Adams sneered at Jackson when he got an honorary degree from Harvard
> as "a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly
> could spell his own name".
>
> I would not hold that against him but the "Trail of Tears" is still a
> terrible blot on his record. Even the soldiers who had to do the dirty
> work were appalled at the suffering endured by the Cherokees.
>
> Jackson rationalised that it was for their own good that they were
> driven to Oklahoma but I have seen their descendants there in Talequah
> and they are still outsiders in their own country.
<<This is an example of the history of ethnic cleansing /
simplification from another time and place. Note that Arkansas was a
refuge/haven for various factions involved with the Cherokee and
others in nice and not so nice ways during the earlier years of the
resettlement to Oklahoma. AFTER the 'Trail of Tears' was not a
stable time either, among the tribes nor between the tribes and the
settlers, government, entrepreneurs, et al. If one looks at the
Oklahoma map, one can see place names ... >>
A<>E<>R
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