There was a lot of literature coming out of the native lands in Georgia against the idea that natives were subhuman and if their expulsion would benefit whites then it should be done ASAP. This literature was widely embraced in the north and basically called fake news in the south. There were a number of pro expulsion politicians that saw how influential these writings could be and proposed they should be banned by all means necessary. There was one law passed in Georgia making it a treasonous act to write literature that was meant for the benefit of non-whites. They didn't state what the affect of these laws were.
When it came to trying to pass the expulsion act, There was a pretty significant divide between the south and north on the issue of native expulsion. The act passed easily in the senate as there were a lot of northern senators that had economic ties to the south. But in the house it was far closer and in the end it passed when three congressmen from Pennsylvania flipped to the expulsion side.
There was also a lot of rhetoric from the south calling northerners hypocrites because of their past expulsion of natives and current anti native laws. But that didn't really appear to be a factor. To my knowledge no northerners swapped sides because they admitted to being antinative hypocrites.
Ch 4 forked tongue and shallow heart
The whole relocation of natives thong was built on lies so Andrew Jackson and his cronies just kept telling the natives they wanted to move west even more lies. Mainly that they had staked out good land for the natives to live on West of the Mississippi. Truth is there just isn't any good farming land that way til you get to the other side of the continental divide. If you are an absolute imbecile you might claim that the racist assholes that we're getting rid of all the Indians just didn't know and were heading into this thing with the best intentions and being optimistic about the land in modern day Oklahoma and Kansas. But by the time ⏲️ those dipshits were marching women and children and elderly a thousand miles west they knew what we know now, Oklahoma and Kansas are shitholes incapable of supporting human life.
But the alternative was worse. In Georgia and Mississippi native people had no rights. Or rather they had similar rights to free blacks in that if you tried to live there you ended up a slave one way or another.
https://youtu.be/oDQXFNWuZj8
Ch 5
The expulsion process was a horrifying and barbaric one. Very little time or money was put into planning anything and the goal was to get the natives to Oklahoma by spring so they could plant crops so they marched hundreds of miles in the middle of winter to make their way west. Making things worse, this was the worst winter in fifty years. All the rivers froze over and part of the plan was to take steam boats on those frozen rivers so there ended up being even more forced marching than planned. There was no real plan for taking care of the I'll or infirm or children. Ten percent of the people on these marches died. And when the rivers unfroze enough it was even worse as the steam boats were hives of disease and lots of people died that way.
Ch 6
While all this expulsion is going on the military is also going to war against other Indian tribes. One such war was in northern Illinois and Abraham Lincoln at 23 participated in the murder of natives.
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