In his paper, “Andrew Jackson in the Age of Trump,” the centerpiece of the much-discussed SHEAR2020 plenary session, Daniel Feller dismissed the perspective that Andrew Jackson’s “Indian removal policy was deliberately vicious and inhuman, if not overtly genocidal.” Several historians, commenting on Twitter, pushed back against Feller’s contention, claiming that Indian removal was indeed a genocidal policy. Interestingly, however, most recent scholarship on Indian removal, while supporting the view that the policy was vicious and inhuman, has not addressed the question of genocide. Historians have indicted the policy as “ethnic cleansing,” a serious allegation since ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity under current international law. They have also called for replacing “removal” with terms like “expulsion” and “deportation” on the theory that these terms more accurately convey the coerciveness of the policy. But specialists have not argued that the policy was genocidal. Was it?
Addressing this question requires considering the intent of Indian removal and its consequences. The stated intention of the policy was the opposite of genocide—to save Native people from an otherwise inevitable extinction. Speaking before Congress, President Jackson asserted that instead of “utter annihilation” should Indians remain in the East, removal “kindly offers . . . a new home.” To the extent that U.S. presidents are capable of inflicting catastrophic destruction while claiming to be benevolent, however, we should be cautious about accepting Jackson’s claims at face value. A more realistic assessment of the policy’s intentions requires an evaluation of its consequences and Jackson’s response to these consequences.
From the signing of the Indian Removal Act in May 1830 through the end of Jackson’s presidency in March 1837, the United States forcibly removed portions of at least nine Native nations (Choctaws; Creeks; Seminoles; Ohio Senecas, Sauks and Mesquakies; Shawnees; Ottawas; Ho-Chunks; Kickapoos; and Potawatomis). These removals resulted in substantial loss of life and unfathomable suffering. While at Memphis in December 1830, Alexis de Tocqueville provided a glimpse into the horrors of removal when he witnessed a party of Choctaws crossing the Mississippi and described an old woman “naked save for a covering which left visible . . . the most emaciated figure imaginable.” Year after year as the death toll mounted, Jackson had a choice. He could have acknowledged the destructiveness of Indian removal and ended it. Instead, he continued the policy, focusing with particular intensity on uprooting the Cherokees from their already reduced homelands. Jackson’s response to an unfolding catastrophe casts serious doubt on his initial claim to benevolence. It also opens him to a charge, in the language of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, of an “intent to destroy.” Although continuing to pursue a policy with genocidal consequences is not exactly the same as formulating a policy for the explicit purpose of genocide, using this distinction to acquit Jackson gets him off on a technicality. In the end, the burden of proof is on Andrew Jackson. He could have avoided an allegation of genocide by reversing his policy, but he did not.