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Indian Removal Dbq

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If you were offered $5 million dollars and 70,000 square miles of land, would you agree to move away from home? For most of the Cherokee during the earlier 1800’s, the answer to this question was a firm no. During that time period, the United States government had been attempting to move Native American tribes west into their newly purchased Louisiana Territory. Previously, the Cherokee had sided against them in many wars, and had expressed violent attacks against them. The government wanted to move them off of their Georgia land. This caused the Indian Removal Act to be created. The president, Andrew Jackson at the time, suddenly had the power to negotiate treaties with Native Americans that would move them into Indian Territory. While many …show more content…
The article “Move the Cherokee to Indian Territory” says that, “ The people of Georgia will eventually take the Cherokee land by force. This may be wrong, but is the United States, government really going to risk a civil war to protect the land of a people who have been our enemies in two wars?” The Indian Removal Act was just trying to prevent the inevitable. The United States knew that the Georgians and Cherokee were eventually going to end up going to war, so they were just trying to prevent it. The decision to protect the Cherokee over the Georgians would be a hard one, and would eventually cause more hate violence to erupt between all sides. The smarter choice would definitely be to separate both of them from each other. In addition, the same article also states that, “...the United States Supreme Court ruled that the state of Georgia couldn't force the Cherokee off of their land. President Jackson should uphold the Constitution and the treaties signed between the United States and the Cherokee. He should send troops to prevent Georgians from taking Cherokee land.” This means that the United States even gave the Cherokee the option of staying on their land, and offered to protect them if the Georgians attacked. Georgians are United States citizens, so really the government should side with them, but they still said they would send people to protect and help the Cherokee if they ever were attacked. This is extremely admirable, feeling pity and having grace for their enemies. While it might have been better if the Georgians were forced by law to leave the Cherokee alone, trying to move the tribe would still be the safest and best compromise for both sides. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was justified because its whole purpose was just to try to stop fighting between the Cherokee and

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