States Rights Was an Indian Issue

Everyone thinks the Civil War was about the Negro. It wasn’t. It was about states rights. Looking at history more carefully, it is clear that the states rights issue was directly connected to American Indian land issues in the South. It all developed under General and President Andrew Jackson, over some thirty years, from 1810 to 1838.

David Yeagley

President Jackson’s management of the Indian land and Indian Removal issues, (the forced migration), set precedents in state law and authority which allowed and encouraged states to practice an independence of the federal government which Jackson deemed healthy.

An unusual, or unexpected source of this history is found in Michael Paul Rogin’s Fathers & Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (New York: Random House, 1975).

While BadEagle.com is not offering a literary critique or review of Rogin’s work, suffice it to say that it is fairly profound, and the scholarship is stunning. The book’s historical context is the 1970′s, when psychoanalysis was quite popular on university campuses, and Freud’s approach was applied to various academic fields. They key to success in this new approach was to pick the right historical figure, and work all the psychoanalytic magic there. Psychoanalysis always adds the illusion of a deeper plane of understanding, and all sorts of insights are generated at every turn. 

The fact is, Rogin (1937-2001) is an intense liberal, but so great the man, Andrew Jackson, any telling his story, for any author’s motives, cannot but aggrandize the grandeur of the man. Jackson was a giant, personally, and historically.

True, Jackson saw the Indian as simply in the way of American progress. He, nor any other government leader, ever entertained the idea of genocide; however, the challenged was to possess all the Indian land east of the Mississippi. How was this to be brought about in at least some feigned pretense of moral integrity? 

Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) was only the seventh president of the United States (1829-1837). There was much still unsettled in the way of government, actually. Before his presidency, Jackson was an army leader, a general, who had done much Indian fighting. The European population was increasing mightily in the East, and Indians, particularly in the southeast, were numerous, and held most of the land, at least in theory. And the fact was, ever since America had a “federal” government, the Indians everywhere were regarded as a federal entity, that is, a national enemy, people who were the U. S. government’s responsibility to deal with. State militias (armies), as indicated in the 2nd Amendment, were not the principle affront to Indians. (Before that, the colonists were on their own, as in King Philip’s War, 1675-1678.) Jackson’s concept that the state should have a lead role in Indian affairs might seem ironic, seeing that he himself had served as a federal office in numerous Indian campaigns of the 1800′s.

In any case, it was the Nullification Crisis of 1832 that first pitted states against the federal government, and that was not over any race, but over federal tariffs imposed on states. South Carolina (and Georgia) stood against it. Jackson finally compromised somewhat. But, in this case, Jackson took the position of a founding father, a patriarch, and advocated the Union, not independent states, severely reprimanding South Carolina for its independent streak against the federal government. 

This was the ironic shift from Jackson’s former appeal to state authority to deal with the Indian problems in the South. The words “rebellion,” “second revolution,” and “civil war” were already well in circulation by the 1830′s, having nothing to do with slavery. Jackson wanted the states to create laws that would result in expulsion of the Indians, so that the states could assume ownership of Indian land. Why, Indians should be happy and proud to move west! Westward expansion was the cutting edge of American development. Rogin writes (p.297):

The slavery issue…did not enter politics. Westward expansion, which worked for the south, did. …Jackson wrote in 1819 that his Seminole campaign [1818] would elect the next president. Jackson, Indians, and westward expansion, not slavery and Negroes, structured American politics for the next generation.

Indians were not American citizens, and as strangers on their own land, they could be related to first by the federal government. States had become lackadaisical, or so it seems, pushing the bills off on Washington. And so it was that, in regard to Indians, states were obliged to man up when it came to managing their own land and people affairs. 

Of course, finally, Jackson played the omnipotent parental role. Indians were never going to make it living in the same demographic of the rapidly expanding white population of the east. They needed their untouched independence, and therefore, it was for their own good that they all move west. The radical, coerced migration had to be morally justified. America was not to do wrong in the world.

So, in the end, or, we should say, in the beginning, states rights v. federal government was actually developed vis à vis relationships with the American Indians of the South. Who’s responsibility was the Indian, the federal government’s or the state’s? The Indian was neither citizen of the United States nor of the state. The neither white power was bound by any obligation to the Indian other than by their own treaties with Indians, their own word–which, very much due to overwhelming circumstances, was hardly ever kept, for long. 

But this is what BadEagle.com has been trying to say for over a decade now: Indians shaped America. There is an Indian sign on every turn in the American road. This is not only our homeland, but this America government is an exotic step-son. He belongs to us, whether we like it or not. Our mark is on him. It is we Indians who must start assuming some real, historical, transcendent responsibility. Our son is wandering quickly astray. If he goes, we go. We lose all our historical influence, and the dignity of our blood.

I say we raid Washington, and scalp all the traitors! 

Posted by David Yeagley · January 26, 2014 · 3:17 pm CT ·

Everyone thinks the Civil War was about the Negro. It wasn’t. It was about states rights. Looking at history more carefully, it is clear that the states rights issue was directly connected to American Indian land issues in the South. It all developed under General and President Andrew Jackson, over some thirty years, from 1810 to 1838. - See more at: http://www.badeagle.com/2014/01/26/states-rights-was-an-indian-issue/#sthash.JRl82wYz.dpuf

Everyone thinks the Civil War was about the Negro. It wasn’t. It was about states rights. Looking at history more carefully, it is clear that the states rights issue was directly connected to American Indian land issues in the South. It all developed under General and President Andrew Jackson, over some thirty years, from 1810 to 1838. - See more at: http://www.badeagle.com/2014/01/26/states-rights-was-an-indian-issue/#sthash.JRl82wYz.dpuf