the morning to start his early prayers, henry clay was rollicking and after a night of drinking and cars so they were temperamentally very opposite but they found that they had, and political interest and that was enough for them to strike a bargain. it did happen. clay through his votes to adams, and adams then did appoint him secretary of state. ..

but what happened was, of course, jackson then is not present for the next four years, but more determined than ever to get the price. and the campaign of 1828, you know, when we despair about some of the things, the charges, countercharges of our time we should remember that campaign. the jackson people told john quincy adams he was a pound. their reason was, so preposterous, but the reason was that when he was the american ambassador to the court of

st. petersburg that he procured women for this are. now, you know, it is -- if there had been television and if anyone had been able to lay eyes on john come to television they would have known how preposterous this was. but, you know, it happens. i mean, the charges were made. and not that the other side was immune. the atoms people called jackson's mother a prostitute. his wife was an adulteress and claimed that he had negro blood. so, i think we can say that in this area we have made little progress. at any rate he then finally got the job he wanted, jackson.

and it was -- it was fascinating to the other party to see the celebration this set off in the united states. as daniel webster's brother noted, he said, you know, it is as though jackson has come to save the country from some great hapless john quincy adams, but there was that sense that he was -- jackson was going to defend the common man against the elites. they did not call them elites, but that was the sentiment. and, of course, we found out to the charities dismay that that election also meant the end of the cherokee territory and cherokee nation.

let me read a summary of what jackson, the speech that jackson gave when he was sworn in in 1829. jackson's inaugural address lasted a scant ten minutes. perhaps intentionally his remarks on the issue of the day were vague. he made no apparent -- mention of slavery cents it paid no part in the campaign. only one newspaper, the new york american, had condemned to jackson for owning slaves. instead, the national debate centered on the tariffs. but then soon afterwards jackson outlined his proposal for removing the cherokees from georgia. the uproar that followed that ignited, again, the simmering dispute, a dispute that had never gone away over slavery. so although i would not ever argue that it was a straight

line from jackson's behavior with the charity to the secession movement decades later , you can see that there was a beginning. the north organized, and they organized against the proposal that jackson had made, but they also were opposed to slavery, and the georgians knew that this was only part of a broader battle to come. when wilson of woke you, perhaps, many know of him. he was a congressman and governor. when he went to congress from georgia and 1827 his goal was to of expel the cherokee from georgia. that was his goal. and he described his legislation, however, as indian

reform. that was the way. but his opponents knew what his crusade was about. he put it this way. north fanatics' male and female had gone to work and got not thousands of petitions signed by more than a million of men, women, and children protesting against the removal of the port, dear indians from the states where they were located to west of the mississippi. now, president jackson, one can have a powerful ally. jackson had convinced himself that he was doing the charity a favor by insisting that they move. there was increasing friction between the white settlers -- excuse me, the white settlers and the cherokee. jackson felt that his humane answer was to force the cherokees to live their

traditional tribal land. what he didn't ever hear was the response of the charities themselves including schoolchildren. they learn that there might be driven west, their teachers told them study hard because you may be going where there are no schools. one boy asked about the white settlers. they have more land than they used. what to they want to get hours for? another had a more practical suggestion. he said if the white people want more land let them go back to the country they came from. but jackson believed, he persuaded himself that the majority of the charities actually agreed with him. they were being held back by the wealthy cherokees, oftentimes with a lot of white heritage. in fact, one of jackson's chief

opponents was only one 16th charity. he had to use a transmitter when he spoke to the tribe in its language. so, in jackson's view just as he had fought the northern establishment of the virginia plantation horrors of his life he was now again on this side of the common man, this time the condom , an indian. the problem is that he got it wrong. as it turned out those partially wiped indians with the wealth and education saw early on the futility of challenging him. they were the ones who voluntarily did move west. the people that john ross represented with the very poor and uneducated cherokee who,

however, put great store in the land with the ancestors were buried and had not been converted as many of the wealthier cherokees had been to christianity. they still maintain their original faith, and in that faith the spirits that they were shipped would come and protect them. they could not be german off the land. he really didn't understand his opponents. the fact was that if john ross had agreed to leave the massive -- we are talking 16 or 17,000, they would have risen up and deposed him as the chief. he was doing the bidding of his distance and see.

now, as jackson prepared to introduce this legislation, as you can imagine, the anxiety among the cherokees' was running high. i think it is interesting. i found it interesting to quote from a chief of 80 years who said this. when i sleep and forgiveness i hope my bones will not be decided by you. he had heard that the united states government planned to break its treaties. it may be so, the chief said, but it shall not be with our consent or by the misconduct of our people. as he reminisced the chief introduced a phrase that i find very poetic to describe the previous relations between the cherokee nation and the federal ministration. he said, the tribe was linked to the united states by a golden chain of. that change was made when our was worth the price.

if they act a tyrant and kill us for our land we shall in the state of unoffending in the sense sleep with thousands of art departed people. that insistence first surfaced ten years earlier when among gang cherokee's went to washington to negotiate one more treaty. they've made it clear that they would never take arms against the the state's government. on the other hand, the government, federal and the state of georgia never believed that. periodically the army would be put on alert because there were alarms that the cherokees were prepared to fight. as it turned out, the cherokees kept their word, and no battle ever happened. now, the first year of jackson's presidency was relatively

tranquil on this front because he was so distracted by what has been called the political wars. the story, he decided that his sainted wife who had died just before he took office had been killed by the slanders of the political campaign. it's true that she was devastated when she found out that she was being branded as an adulteress. she is an unusually appealing woman. she smoked a pipe. it was up crate match. she married early and to uproot. jackson who is a border and the home rescued her, took her out of the state, married her, and then found out that the marriage

was not considered legal. so that is where the rumor came that she was an adulteress. as soon as they could then married again and lived very happily together. she hated politics. she hated the idea of going to washington. they were subjected to the kind of life that was live there. so when she died jackson was desolate. he spent the night at her coffin never fully recovered. as a result when his secretary of war married a very spirited bowman named margaret egan that instinct in jackson that i, for one, admire of loyalty and a kind of almost unreasonable dedication to his friends

choctaw. when the society matrons decided that peggy easton who was a widow and the daughter of a boarding house man and probably a good deal more flirtatious then society permitted at the time they decided that she was of this woman and refused to receive her, even though she was the wife of his secretary of war. well, jackson took this up as a cause for the whole first year of his administration. he did everything to try to get her received. he told the cabinet members whose lives would not accept her that if they didn't force their wives to do it he would fire them. they responded that he had no business interfering with what their lives did.

it became a huge, huge scandal. the more he protested, of course, the more reputation became fair game. my own sense is that she was a lively woman, but not the common trap that was in circulation at that time. jackson said one time to cheer her up, margaret, i would rather have spoken somewhat back and the times of these washington women. i justified a detour into this whole kind of amusing story because it does show when jackson loyalties took control he could become mulish. he could become unreasonable, and that was what happened.

finally van buren found no way out of it and said i'll resign as secretary of state, and that will force everybody else to offer their resignations. that happened. the eagles went off to an ambassadorship, and it all died away. jackson returned to harassing the cherokees. while he was distracted, distracted with proving in his words that mrs. eaton was as chaste as the virgin, too much merriment, the state of georgia was coming up with its own solution to the cherokee problems. this is what happened. first they passed the cherokee code of 1830 which and next most of the cherokee territory that was five neighboring white

counties. that code declared the charity law within those areas was no and avoid. also prohibited charities from holding meetings were testifying against white man in the formerly cherokee territory. all previous contract between indians and whites were nullified a less to white men agreed to vouch for the validity the result of that, of course, rests ruinous for the cherokees and a massachusetts congressman spell that out for his colleagues, and now read from that. if white guaranteed they could cross into cherokee territory, and this is quoting the congressman, burn the dwelling, waste the farm, ponder the property, assaulting a person, murder the children, and though hundreds be permitted to be looking on, there is not one

that can be permitted to bear witness against the criminal. then came the legislation that banned all whites, including missionaries, from living on indian land unless there were licensed by the governor and swore an oath of obedience. several of the missionaries refused because they said to sign that kind of both would ruin their relationship with the people they had come to minister to. two of them who refuse to sign the oath were tried and convicted and sentenced to four years' hard labor. so, that was the same time the state legislature created something called the georgia guard which was a new unit specifically designed to enforce the provisions of this code.

when jackson's allies finally introduced the legislation to call for the removal it was a new jersey congressman, senator. theodore frelinghuysen -- theodore frelinghuysen led the charge against the legislation. he first spoke on april 6th 1830 and is booked for the next three days. and thanks to the wonders of the internet we can now read the whole transcript of the debate, and it was probably as substantial a debate as there had been in the house and senate up until that time. it went on and on. with a great deal of literacy and legal arguments. but frilling housing suggested

it was, if this removal is going to happen that it must be voluntary. everybody was convinced that jackson, whenever he said, was prepared to enforce it by military might if necessary. so, it was interesting to me the counterattack who made a pretty effective argument. he spoke about the hypocrisy of the northerners who had been a around for decades. the deal is they would with their own tribes and no hall for federal interference. he reminded the senators that the north and midwest had vanished. the tribes without promote -- provoking a national outcry, all

gone. when the main center against the removal birds people to listen to the still small voice of their conscience a center named robert adams of mississippi returned to the team of bud and hypocrisy. he called the indians barbarians and challenged his number colleagues to do justice to them before they lecture others. i take, again, this is something that we should remember. he said, call them back from the deep wilderness to which they have been driven. restored to them the fair and happy land from which they have been curly expelled. give them your field, your houses, your cities, your temples of justice and your hols of legislation. do that and then call upon us to

follow an example so were the. adams said he did not expect to see that sort of a northern repentance. instead, he was sure that rather than give up their own possessions the pretended philanthropist's would content themselves with permitting gays to remain as they are. you can see how that kind of argument resonated. you did these things through treaty and abuse. you did these things to the indian tribes, and now you're picking on us. we are just doing what you did and we have better cause because there were some agreements with the federal government going back 30 years. why a you doing this? this set at that point that the congressmen and others saw it as the first salvo in a war against

slavery. so, the vote came. it was closer than jackson's people had expected. on april 26183028 senators voted for removal, 19 against. the house vote was for jackson, but 97 against. jackson signed this bill on may may 281830. davy crockett had been one of the people to vote against jackson. he had been a jacksonian, fought at jackson's side, but on this issue you broke with the president. he lost his seat in congress, served two terms and lasted. he said, i would sooner be honestly and politically damned than hypocritically immortalized. at least, crockets said, his

vote would not make me ashamed in the last day of judgment. so, with the charities having lost in congress returns to the supreme court. the two issues facing the justices were imposing the two missionaries for refusing to swear allegiance and the whole question of the georgia code against the charities. so when john marshall scored struck down the church law as unconstitutional they also moved that the missionaries be set free at once. in new york horace greeley summarized jackson's response to this. jackson did not say these words, although there are often ascribed to him. it was really something up what was known to be jackson's

attitude. john marshall has made his decision, let him enforce it if he can. some at this point the president of the united states was siding with the state of georgia of the decision of the supreme court. and he did it and the charities knew this partially because he was being threatened in south carolina with the possibility of secession, and he did not want to go to war with the georgians over this issue. he gave then and thought that by doing so he was staving off what became the civil war. in many ways he may have been in some ways encouraging it. a charity chieftain was living in north carolina at the time. during the war of 1812 he fought with jackson at horseshoe bend

alabama against the british and their indian allies. his response when he heard about the ruling and jackson's flaunting of it he said, if i had known that jackson would drive us from our homes i would have killed him that last day at the horseshoe. by the time the removal actually began jackson's term handed, and it is left to martin van buren to enforce it. now, van buren had no interest. this was an emotional and personal issue, not even remotely for martin van doren. in fact, at one point when it was suggested that it could be deferred for removal from two years he went along and tell the georgians were so out rates to have to back down and go through the schedule that jackson had for said. so, the reason that van buren would have been happy to defer

it was the kind of economic chaos that i was talking about. the common market in new orleans had collapsed. there were bank failures all across the country. in fact, soldiers were patrolling the streets of new york city because of the fear of riots. so it was a terrible mess, and that had priority for van buren. meantime the removal when ford. so, as jackson left the presidency people started to some of his achievement, and it weighed on him heavily. what was history going to say about him as president. the one thing you can say, two tanks. one is he was the first military hero says george washington to be president. second, he was the only other president without a college and

education. i don't know -- i really don't know if that is even significant. but what is significant is the difference in temperament. washington had the temperament to deal in peacetime but political affairs of state. jackson did not. he saw himself this by talking about the charities. jackson had persuaded himself that john roth and his allies represented the sort of arrogant aristocracy he fought in his 1920, 1828 campaign against john quincy adams and indeed throughout his life. jackson could frame his crusade as one more populist issue like his attacks on the bank. by insisting on removal jackson could see himself as taking the side of the beleaguered masses against the wealthy oppressors.

privilege's charities might paint him as an enemy of their people, but jackson knew he had always championed the ordinary man, whether a white former or an indian. jackson could be unbending on removal because he knew he was not the enemy of the indian that he was being painted. he was simply following what he termed the dictates of humanity. his conscience was clear. i wonder because as he faded and knew death was upon him he returned regularly to the subject and wanting to know what history was going to say about him. i think -- i don't know. we have no way of knowing. a man as absolutely reluctant to express any kind of personal feelings as jackson did not leave any evidence for us to know, but it seems to me he may

have understood even if he felt his conscience was clear that, perhaps, history would judge him on a less favorable not. now, once again protested the way the northerners were using him. he said they were indicting his fellow georgians as atheists, diaz, infidels, and sabbath breakers labor and the curse of slavery. what i would suggest as a summation for the removal is this. within the precincts of the u.s. capitol selva have been fired in the nation's first civil war in the south won the opening round. i don't want tonight to explore

the misery of the forced migration to oklahoma. i worry sometimes, and i worry writing the book that we can become hardened to other people's pain if you dwell on it to turley. for instance, in los angeles when the police were accused of beating rodney king, rather celebrated case at the time, the defense attorneys played the tape of the being over and over and over. they found every pretext because they counted on that that the horror of it or the discussed would wear away and the jurors would be left with boredom and indifference. i think when you write about misery you have to be aware of that. i dealt with in marvelous diary kept by another that missionary

named tenure buttrick who he and his wife chose to go with their converts on the trail of tears. it is heartbreaking stuff. i don't think it would make anyone indifferent to the trail, but i did not really want to go into it much tonight. the same thing really about the fate of three of the charities to the reader of the book will come to know best. major ridge, his son john, and his nephew elias. these are three of the man who saw the futility of resisting jackson, made their separate peace with him knowing when they did it that they would pay for their lives -- with their life. in fact it happens. to me it is a sad and shocking

second of the book. but i would like to do, return to what i raised earlier about guilt and responsibility. i think i try to remember that those voices that were raised in congress against the removal did not represent the views of most americans. most americans were caught up with their own concerns, the concept of manifest destiny sweeping the country. we were entitled to occupy these lands. in fact, on the senate floor misery senator thomas hart benton, his remarks were probably more in keeping, closer to a national census, and i'll read them.

i think they do represent the way a lot of people were thinking. he said he considered the white race to be uniquely blessed by the find command to subdue the earth. put it this way. i cannot repine that this capital has replaced the wigwam, this question people replace the savages, the white matrons, the rats cause. indeed, i look upon the settlement of the columbia river by the caucasian race as the most momentous human event in the history of man since his discretion over the face of the year. and if the nation was in different to the point of the cherokees. beecher stowe was holding all of america, and not just the south to blame for slavery. i, at least, had not known her conclusion towel tom's cabin. one of those books that we all

know that nobody probably actually reads. what she wrote at the and was this. people of the free states have defended a man carries command participated in the evil of slavery. they were the more to blame because they did not have the excuse of their upbringing on the culture around them. both north and south had been guilty before god. the christian church has it had the account to answer. i understood that indictment better because i grew up during world war ii. i was 12, and at a saturday matinee at the neighborhood movie when i first saw those neutral pictures of g. i's and enacting the skeletons from the auschwitz death camp ever since then i felt a pang whenever people asked -- and they were

always asking in a friendly spirit, what nationality is that? and i was compelled to answer, german. that memory made me appreciate the pattern that kept repeating 20 years later when i was covering civil rights demonstrations in the south through the new york times. greensboro, jackson. i came to expect the fact that librarians and school teachers and shopkeepers would sidle up to me after some new outraged from bill connors, the sheriff and alabama. they would a rumor to me, you should know, we are not all like that. i realized that there were many georgians who were against the charity removal. it was not all militant.

they know more spoke out or could speak out that these people in the 1960's. so, they could champion the cause of civil rights. it was the social pressures just too great. during the vietnam war the anti-war activists launched a campaign to get protesters to sign of foul that they would not pay their income tax until the war was ended. i've remembered very clearly an incident in los angeles where a southern california man had actually not only signed a foul, but followed it. he was arrested. his property was seized. he was put in jail. that was of one day story.

what happened to him after that never made the newspapers, never made the television. i realized that very few of us, and and certainly not in that number, willing to pay the total price for a commitment to a cause. some people are, and i always admire it. it turns out the campaign against the war fizzled. even the people who organized it paid taxes. so, can i think what happens is then as now we go on deploring and protesting privately and ineffectually the actions being committed in our name by our government. during the research for this book i was to find that that hypocrisy has a long and

distinguished history. i had known that henry thoreau had not been paying his local taxes for five years before the beginning of the mexican-american war. when the shooting started he seized upon the war as his excuse for withholding from his local township money that had nothing to do with the war itself. i also can't to think that even non-to spoke out against -- on behalf of the charities were often patronizing and ignorant of the tribes that they were defending. ralph waldo emerson wrote a celebrated letter to van buren about the issue. even in the letter he described them as a race of savage men. in fact, his concern seemed more about the stain that the removal

was placing on the united states honor than it did upon the misery that the cherokees were being subjected to. the letter, though, has great literary force. he says, if then. went ahead and implemented the jackson policies you, sir, will bring down that renowned share in which you sit in to infamy if the seal is set to this instrument of profanity. the name of this nation headed to the swede, and of religion and liberty will stick to the world. before the georgian guard and state politicians i can hardly be surprised if they would refer to the charities as barbarians because they had taken them as their enemy. when we do that we have to deny

those people in the common humanity. peace marchers in that same protest were shocked by the crude and racist names that our soldiers and marines had for the vietcong. but if you are asking some young men to go to war and kill other young man pecan do it under a banner of universal brotherhood. you have to be humanized. you have to demonize. and so, however, we try in wartime to turn the guilt of an individual, with the individual may feel it to the general absolution for our troops. yet, we are reading these days regularly about the soldiers coming back from a rock in afghanistan. they are deeply troubled,

tortured by what they have seen and done. there is a price. during world war to the germans in my hometown minneapolis were not rounded up and put in concentration camps even though the german american women before the war had been disseminating very poisonous antiwar propaganda. but we were not seized after december 7th. the same time we were being scared american society was being bombarded on all sides by the constant vilification of the japanese. again, i was a child. i remember the movies, editorial cartoons, comic books, all of them portraying the japanese as subhuman creatures with buck teeth and stick -- thick

glasses, no better than a reference. they were not lying on yankee flash. the impact of that indoctrination does not end with a peace treaty. i was reminded again in 1996. i was in hanoi when robert mcnamara, former secretary of defense held a meeting with the conference with north vietnamese generals and members of the communist bureau. they received him with exquisite courtesy. they could afford to. they had won the war. there was one rough moment. only once in the three days to their tempers flare, and that was when mcnamara repeated the said that i heard time and again even from general william as

mollen, he explained that we americans have been a disadvantage because our culture put a higher premium than theirs on human life. well, on the table with the north vietnamese. they grew tense and silent. finally one communist leader said, and he barely disguised his fairy. let me assure you, mr. mcnamara. our mothers grieve for their sons every bit as much as your edges. the fact is that as a young officer during world war ii black america purchased the firebombing of tokyo. it seems to me he will still emotionally unable to see asians as fully human. so it is understandable for me that andrew jackson and the georgians of the era could not acknowledge the impressive credentials, impressive

achievements of the georgia cherokee nation. they were still man who they regarded as their enemy. after world war two, you remember the nuremberg trials in bavaria. it was our attempt to mitigate german collective kilts. the trials were intended to establish which individual nazis had been responsible for those unspeakable crimes. but post war literature out of germany and much of it written by writers far too young to have been blessed suggests that a collective standard of guilt can be hard to shake off. i've come to wonder whether we might not even feel guilty you're about in justices that occurred in our lifetime. again, from 1945 rehab this

example. reading the newspaper, on august 6th of that year and do something fundamental had changed in the world when america dropped the first atomic bomb. i was a kid. i knew it. all of the justification since then about the american servicemen who were scared and an earlier end to the war have not changed by uneasy feeling to it yet cannot i have seen my students at the university of southern california. their parents were not even born they regard america's use of the bomb as a historical footnote, nothing more. it certainly has nothing to do with them, nothing more than the salem witch trials. they did not live through that moment. i'm not suggesting that we go through life with constant guilt, but i do think that there are feelings that are below the

surface that we sometimes don't even the knowledge. i think of another category, the guilt of proximity. when a man goes on a murder spree his neighbors are inclined to wonder what they could have done to stop them. on a political example now that i have lived half a century in california i can attest that the rounding up of the japanese at the start of world war ii resonates more deeply in my state than it might hear atlanta. for white californians listed by and often profited while the japanese and native born japanese americans were rounded up and shipped off to concentration camps. the argument goes that they were sent to camps in wyoming, not the ovens.

wartime, no one could have done their fate for certain. we did not know. if we want to indulge in blaming all of the people of germany we must be very clear about what their crime was. when they permitted their neighbors to be rounded up and shifted away they send. their offense is little different from the actions of the californians and by extension all americans. if our treatment of the japanese ended less terrifically than the treatment of the jews, that is a blessing, not make skiers. as you may recall, the congress got around to apologizing in 1988. they offered a minimal monetary restitution for their losses. that congress refused for several years to make a similar apology to the charities. the other indian tribes that had been victimized, swindled and mistreated by our government.

republican senator sam brownback of kansas first introduced an apology as legislation in 2004, but it kept being tabled. and that bill was finally passed five years later as an amendment to the defense appropriations act. president obama cited one year ago this month. the language specifically forbids regarding the apology as a basis for any sort of monetary compensation. to sum up here is what i've taken away from the experience. sometimes because of panic and greed human beings and we americans are certainly human may act against our own high principles. eventually remorse will assert itself and the form of what lincoln memorably called our better. those will insist that we live up to our ideals. to still our conscience we may

tender an apology. it will always be too late and it will always be inadequate. bearing that in mind i believe we must resist every effort to demonize the mexicans without papers with the muslims living peacefully in our midst. if we insist on laboring them all as a drug lords are terrorists we're simply guaranteeing that one day our grandchildren will have to apologize for our blindness and a tree. i hope we don't pass on to them that burden. and of my sermon. thank you for listening, and now it's my turn to hear what you have to say. [applause] [applause] might i asked if you have questions, and i hope you do, that you come to the microphones.

when i first started teaching the person i was replacing told me about having a guest speaker. it turned out to be, i found out later, robert scheer who is a columnist and was at that time with ramparts magazine. it was a class of 25. they called for questions and nobody spoke up. he said, well, we're just going to sit here and tell somebody has a question. of course, you know, a challenge like that is irresistible. they sat absolutely silently for 45 minutes, the bell rang, and they went home. i will make that mistake. >> we have time for a couple questions. you spoke about the charities. quarter blood, have blood. when it came to the trial of

tears did as individuals have a choice as to whether they had to go or not if they had white blood in the? >> well, a lot of those mixed bloods, a phrase that comes a little hard to people of our generation, but they were called mixed bloods. many of them identified themselves as white and had nothing to do with the charities, did not live within the territory. people who did were for one reason or another, for instance, one of them with a very small fraction of charity heritage was dressed as a little white english journal when. he was so embarrassed and humiliated that he tore off the clothes and insisted on being

seen as a charity. you know, it is a little like what we know -- we will never know the full extent, but the light skinned black person passing as white. i think we are pretty well aware now that jefferson, when he was leaving paris, sally hemming skid have stayed on in paris as a white woman. very nice and. he had to make certain all of this is speculation, but he had to make certain promises by freeing her children if she were going to come back and live. so, yes, there was and is a lot of flexibility. we read that the census form has to be completely reorganized because people don't find it

easy to specify within six categories. yes. thank you. >> was there any pretense of compensating the cherokees? we took their land away. when they get to oklahoma were they given property? >> yes. that is one of the arguments. they got land. they got money for their removal i assumed -- this is the ignorance on my part. i did not know much about oklahoma. i thought well, i had seen this area of georgia. i thought this is a very bad bargain because this is a lovely part of the world.

i assumed that they got slapped with expenses, but actually that area is very handsome. in fact, the cherokees to camp early had hoped that when the great mass arrived they would see that this was not the wasteland that they had been told. it was fertile, attractive, but of course, that misses the point that it wasn't a tribal land. it was and where their ancestors are buried. >> thanks for being here. i just wanted to ask you. president jackson was often at odds with such as clay, callahan, and webster. i was wondering what their stance was on removal. >> well, the charities hope that play would be elected president. they felt that he was there one

champion. in fact, by the standards of the time he was. when he was secretary of state for adams and the issue cannot he said in the private cabinet meetings by the indians can never be assimilated. they will die out and may be given culture. it's no great loss. adams to recorded all this in his journal which he killed was shocked. the next day when one of his other cabinet officers came and said, you know, maybe we should not be fighting with the georgians. if with secretary place says is true we are just alienating our friends and a lost cause. adams was vigorously principled and said in a fact that is not a consideration. we will act on the law, not that

opinion. so that was play. he did -- he resisted the removal. i really came to light in replay a lot. he was very smart. a lot of good ideas. he proposed that, perhaps, countries could get together and create a canal in panama that would facilitate traffic. he was an early opponent of the good neighbor policy. he had many virtues. he fought -- thought that slavery would wither away at his own. as more and more settlers arrived and more and more labor was available the slavery would become untenable economically. so he had a lot of blind spots. for calhoun it was not -- the

indian issue as far as i can remember was not particularly interesting. he was very concerned with tariffs particularly. webster was a northerner. he had north sympathies, but was not a principled leader. you know, it is important for me to remember at least that i can get very caught up with their rhetoric of the anti movement, but remember that this was a relatively small number of people who really cared passionately on the issue. >> yes. >> yes. from reading -- review of your book one of the things that the review pointed out was the nexus that you made between the civil war and the removal of the indians. yes. i expected you to talk about

that, but he did not talk about it. you alluded to it, but offered very little evidence and examples. i would like for you to discuss it briefly. >> well, we start with the premise that i have a lifetime -- i've given a lifetime to john beecham because he did a very, very good review of my last book. [laughter] he can do almost no crime. now, the thing is that he has -- you know, he wrote a book and andrew jackson. he had a vested interest. and so to me we had a difference of opinion. jackson was fantastic in so many ways. almost literally fantastic. a fantasy figure. but i don't agree.

now, i mean, certainly entitled to his opinion. it ..