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tv   Book Discussion on Jacksonland  CSPAN  August 10, 2015 7:00am-7:59am EDT

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>> and now from politics and pros bookstore steve inskeep provides biography of andrew jackson and cherokee leader. >> our featured attraction is the great inskeep. he's been an on-air presence for 15 years. he's been one of the host of
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morning edition, the most widely heard united states program of the united states. i take your guys' word for it. he's back now to talk about his second book jacksonland. in it steve goes not abroad but back in time in the united states to the era of andrew jackson. he tells a story not only of jackson but john ross, tribal chief of the cherokee, ended up in opposing sides in struggle over land seizure that severely tested américa's young democracy
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. as steve notice in his acknowledgments authors have grappled with that period and protagonists in different ways at different times since. jackson has been portrayed as the hero of democracy and indian hater. ross is the moses of his people and the explosion of the indians were trail of tears, practical ineinin-- inevitable response. steve recounts the emotional story in a well researched balanced confident and lightly way. heartbreaking as that episode was he continues between those
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who champion the rights of the minority which makes steve's book not just a tale of the past for future. ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome steve inskeep. it was such a great introduction i'm tempted to just stop and ask you to buy the book. it's been hand honor in one of the best independent bookstores in the united states. [applause] >> it's an hon hor -- honor to know there are several colleagues of npr. i learned so much from my
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colleagues, i benefit so much from my colleagues and i even get to credit from some of them. i have to say, thank you, i was off today. [laughs] >> they just kind of assume i'm there. it's david greene, shap -- shapiro. it's an honor to work with them and be here tonight with you for my first public event of this book. i have been eager to fling this book over time. i won't do that because my wife is in the third row and i would not like to injury her.
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this is as bradley eloquently said it's story about andrew jackson and moss, set in an area when the democracy began to take shape. it was almost 200 years ago. we did a very small signing of some books yesterday at npr and there were people lined up. within a few minutes someone introduced themselves and said that she had creek ancestry and other cherokee and then a woman signs me a book and says, will you please sign me for a name that named his son after andrew jackson. today i was on a telephone with
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a man from tennessee, one of the places that i have to, i'm supposed to speak in a theater about which i knew nothing until this man told me that it is haroldly a -- hardly a building that's been there and one of the persons that had been there was andrew jackson. this feels very present. it feels very present when you get into the material as well. even though it also is a distant place, it feels sometimes like being in a dream where you see people that you recognize but they're doing different things or people that are not together but together. zig zags in and out of the state of tennessee and alabama on the
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way to the ohio and mississippi. he's going with the current which is really the only practical way to go on a boat. going down the river through what is then wilderness. anybody studying the boat would have seen four men on board. ross was black-haired handsome. old cherokee man and a servant as the man was called, but ross was harder to categorize, son of scottish trader whose family had lived among cherokees. ross at age 22 was an inspiring trader himself. he also had a solid claim as an indian. a man of mixed raised.
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received a new name as an adulthood. my 10-year-old goes around call me that, that's a good name, call me that. from now on i will only answer that name, she says. whether he was a white man or an indian, became a matter of life and death on december 28, 1912, we were held by a party of white men. the men on the recover bank called for the boat to come closer. give us the news. something bothered ross about the men. i told them i had no news worth to their attention. they had orders of soldiers
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nearby to stop any boat. come to us the men concluded or we will come to you. ross didn't come. damn my soul if those two are indians, referring of two of ross' crew. ross claimed that one of his companions was spanish. they mounted their horses and galloped off. ross had to assume the men were serious. the united states had declared war on britain and nations had
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taken the english. the frontier was in turmoil. the white horse men would not pause to find out that the cherokee was loyal to the united states and they could only travel to one direction. they had little to escape. ross decided on a precaution he whitened the boat. he told the horse men there were no indians on board and the best safe was to make the claim. he modified the racial composition of his crew leaving only those who could pass as nonindian. ross could pass as the interpreter which was english speaker. the servant who may have been a
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black man would have been ignored. his mere presence might even cause the others to be perceived as indians. this apparently was ros' thinking because he confided in a later, we concluded it was good policy to let out of the boat. this old men was set off over land and the remaining shoved the boat to whatever lay ahead. they spent two anxious days in the water. finally the old man rejoined the boat downstreamed and float today a safe haven. the horse men never reappeared.
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reflecting on this afterwards, ross said he was convinced that the independent manner in which i answered the horse men had confounded the apprehension of being an indian boat. dangerous but not so bright and expect today -- expected to address white men as well as elders. ross had talked in clear and defiant english. the future leader of the cherokee nation had passed as white. you see here evidence of how tremendously diverse the united states was at this very young moment. you see here a country in which there's a collision of different kinds of people who are try to go figure out their identities in a changing world and sometimes for their own safety
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obscure their identities, trying to figure out how it also works. it's growing at a tremendously rapid pace going up by millions of people every decade. the country was something like 12 million by around 1830, growing massively and the growing population was moving west. the iconic men moving west, the iconic frontier laider -- leader was andrew jackson. he came from very poor beginnings. his mother died when he was in early teens during american revolution. he started life with almost
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nothing. the natural thing to do, the prudent thing to do is go the carolina and gambled it all. there were stories of him partying all night and when they were done they decide today mark the occasion by burning the tables and chairs, breaking them apart and throwing them on the fireplace and smashing every glass bottled that they had emptied in the course of the evening. fascinating guy, self-educated. in most of america at that time you would study with another lawyer and pretty much figure it out all yourself. when the cases did not go well for andrew jackson he would
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challenge rival lawyers to duals which was sometimes was negotiated to something and sometimes not so much. he made all the way west to tennessee. jackson was born in 1767. he made it all the way to nashville. he became a planter, he became a politician, but he was always seen as a wild man but had remarkable self-control when it suited his interest and had terrible temper when it suited his interest. although his ownership of slaves
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was unremarkable in tennessee, he sometimes engaged in slave dealing, a business that even slave owners considered disreputable. he challenged men to duals, a practice that was common but illegal. it result to kill his opponent. jackson let the other men first. took a lead that will remain in his body, yet remained standing according to best accounts of this dual. he took time for aim. unfortunately for jackson, that reputation was colored by scandal. it was widely known that he had
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been with rachel for years before he completed divorce from abusive husband. they had to be remarried in 1794 to clear up doubts about the status. with no children of their own they adopted their son from rachel's family. he took what he wanted, his friends desired and what it felt to be right. he was guided by society than what he considered just in what he wrote in the letters often
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capitalizing the word. he was willing to endure decades of whispers and insults, a darker manifestation came out in his slave trading, it was acceptable human beings as property, would have been just assertive by which jackson refused to be governed. modern readers can wish -- instead he embraced them both when it suited his interest. his approach to slavery fore shadowed policy. he would reject what he saw as false and rewrite the policy in the way that it suited people like himself. i want to say something else about him here, for the first 45, 46, 47 years of this man's
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life the record of jackson's career suggest that talented man thrashing about in the dark, trying to locate a ladder that no man had ever climbed. his speeches made -- served briefly in the senate, quit that too. election in 1802 but for years couldn't find any wars to fight. he was very disappointed by this. he tried to start wars. didn't succeed. he speculated in land. he brought and sold the rights to tens of thousands of acres, land along the mississippi river that then became memphis.
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jackson was a politician himself but made the mistake with dealing with men more dreamy-eyed than he was. jackson struggled to avoid bankruptcy and the risk of debtor's prison. during the war, he was a general in command of an army, when it was over he applied relentless energy to the conquest of acreage, and that is the heart of the story of jacksonland. it's about the land. it baims in 1812, continues for more than 20 years after, and we trace jackson's efforts as a general and then as president of the united states to clear native american nations from the eastern half of what we now
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think of the united states. east of the mississippi primarily five powerful nations in the south, one of whom was the cherokee nation centered on north georgia and several surrounding states. when you buy this book, you'll see a number of maps which i will want you to keep in your head because in the early 19th century, the land at issue, quite a few future american states could be represented on two mutually incompatible maps. there was a white man's map and and indian map. the white man's map somewhat resembled the map of the united states today. many distinguished by straight license right across the map. you had a map of indian nations,
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much of the same land usually delineated by squiggly lines. it was the same land twice, and the federal government in washington for many decades recognized both -- recognized both maps. it had its reasons to embrace ambiguity, the legal reality was the indian map. there was the united states and indian nations that had been independent before the settlers. the ambition was the white man's map, the map of the united states, and the heart of this story is how that conflict over the course of more than 20 years was resolved, and the -- in my
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mind titanic struggled between two flawed human beings were who at the center of it all again and again. i want to read more of jacksonland and then invite some of your questions. there were a lot of different ways that land was contended over in the 20 years, there were wars, more often there were treaty negotiations, bribes paid, deals made, people coerced and threatened. sometimes they pushed back. i want to recount one bit of an episode from 1820, this is a time when john ross is a little bit older. andrew jackson is still a general, major general of the united states army, basically in charge of the south, and ross is
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rising in the relationship of the cherokee nation. he's on his way of becoming the principal chief of the cherokee nation. cherokees as some of you may know had made an effort to modernize their society to make it more compatible with white civilization. they had changed their clothing, they had changed their style of business, they were even on their way of changing their government as john ross rose, one of the things he took a lead in doing was creating a constitution for the cherokee nation, model on that of the united states. it begins, we do people of the cherokee nation, you can see the -- when you put them side by side, you can see the fluk -- influence there. you can see what ross wanted to do. he wanted to make the cherokee
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nation eventually a state. he actually said in a letter we consider ourselves as part of the republic of the united states. leaders had chosen to try to join this new vast country that was approaching them. i've come to think of them that people that are like immigrant except the new continue ri was coming to -- country was coming to them. in 1820 they still controlled a substantial amount of land, north georgia, tennessee, north carolina, i see marshall here this evening. thank you for wearing a tie. makes me less embarrassed. john ross was part of the cherokee leadership attempting to defend that land, and you had
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people we would describe as squatters. white families who were moving and simply grabbing farms and working farms and staying there until someone kicked them out. the cherokees asked the military to do something as they were required to do. amazingly general jackson did not have any troops to spare for this job, they were busy clearing shrubs on a highway and doing important things. it's clear that the leaders of the united states wanted one thing to happen. jackson suggested that they should do it themselves. they started a military unit or reorganized a military unit that had been in existence for
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sometime called cherokee horse. they went to a familiar from a man who hat threatened violent opposition if anybody would kick him off the land. the cherokees came and found no one around. they didn't know if anyone was hiding in the woods. farm had been abandoned, food lying around as if people had just left. you had to destroy things or would simply would not leave. this is a remarkable thing that happened. as his men set a flame the food at the farm, john ross was waiting response, but when he saw figures approaching at
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length it was not a party of white gunmen, it was one man, one women, some children and ross wrote in a letter. came across the river with wife and family to defend it, to defend his farm not by the force of pattern and lead but by the shedding of tears. this weapon of defense had more effect. his conviction of error and pitiful acknowledgeful, et cetera, et cetera, induced me to recross the river to the white side, white territory unmolested with a few sheep and geese. his crop was all destroyed.
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ross was angry. ross felt that they were part of the plan to grab land, which they were, but he couldn't do the maximum to this man. he watched him go away, which was probably all he owned. it was a central project of the frontier elite illegally occupying indian land was for the poor. this white farmer had probably taken cherokee property because he could not afford the abuntant real estate that was on sail in alabama. did not have support of family. nobody had rallied to help defend his farm. surely his poverty was evident
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to ross, and ross let the man go. ross wrote all of this in a letter to andrew jackson, reporting what he had done. ..
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a. >> and here was a subtle but significant difference between these two men who would contend for land over the years that followed. andrew jackson kuchar mercy and respect. he could have empathy for others. he could never the dispute as a politician otherwise but those qualities were governed by his ruthlessness. he must never lose a fight. they must always uphold his authority. ross, too, proved to be spiritually and stubbornly competitive. but there were moments when ross left his stubbornness give way to generosity, and ross hoped to jackson, which is what john ross would seek over the next 18 years, leading up to what we learned about in school, the trail of tears that i appreciate what bradley said at the beginning, that this is much
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greater detail of the story that perhaps you think you know, and to discover there's so much more to it and it is so closely related to the time in which we live. the book is "jacksonland." thank you very much for coming and i'll -- [applause] and i'll welcome to take your questions. there is a microphone here. go ahead and lined up. if you do favor, would you say your name so we can get to know each other a bit. fire away. >> my name is bert, and you said this is a long-standing interest of yours. where is that coming from? >> some of the comes from my day job. i feel this is something that is very closely connected to the news that i cover. i know this will shock you but three or four years ago i grew a little discouraged about the state of politics in this country. and that, in a couple of
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different directions. one of the ways to trophy was to ride with key -- rye whiskey. america was drunk on rye but the whole 19th century, i discovered it is coming back. i bought a few bottles abroad. i bought a few more bottles abroad. but also drove in history. more directly. i always been fascinated by the 1830s by this pre-went american democracy became. i began researching and found this story which i've learned a paragraph or a page about an elementary school or junior high school, sometime in school a happy memory of studying this for a minute. it felt visceral and alive to me even know. i began researching it and learning more and more. it felt really current. jacksonland, and they make it to this book is my description of the land of the american south
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which andrew jackson obtained through wars, treaties and a variety of other means. it is all of florida. it is most of alabama. it's a good part of georgia, a good part of tennessee, part of north carolina. is much of mississippi, tennessee, kentucky. it's a lot of land. it's also this city where i work, washington, d.c. it's the white house or the executive mansion as it was called within. it's the house of representatives. this kind of temple of democracy which meant in those days in statuary hall at the capitol -- have you guys been in statuary hall? just a beautiful building now failed with statues sent from every state of the union, one of whom is sequoyah, the inventor of the written cherokee language who was sent here by oklahoma, which is cherokees ended up after they were expelled from the appalachians, partly because of a vote in the room, statuary
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hall, who very nearly approved called the indian removal act. which was conceived of a jackson's administration, past narrowly by his supporters and signed by president andrew jackson in 1830. so to me this became an opportunity to look at my day job and a completely different and deeper way. to understand both the similarities and differences between this time in that time. for in this moment with the country is changing so radically, so rapidly demographically and in other ways. there's a different people from all around the world who have come here at a continuing challenge is to work through our differences in a democracy, respect the rights of every minority while also maintaining herself as one nation. please go ahead, ma'am.
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>> my name is jamie finch. steve, on "the pbs newshour" you said there was an alternative expansion of strategy that jackson could accuse but it's very difficult. i'd like to know what that alternative kinder strategy was, and how much, if at all, you know, pursued its? >> of course. first thanks to mention the new start. yes, i was on last night. that program should agree. i hope you get a chance to check out the it changed and improved a lot in recent times. it's a fair question, what else could be done. it was a rapidly growing country. the white population was rapidly growing. there was a massive push to move westward. it was a movement of poor white farmers like atkinson in our story. it was also a move by let us
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call them entrepreneurs who wanted to expand the territory that was available for slave plantations. they wanted to own slaves and grow cotton and make a fortune. they wanted to sell slaves that were getting too numerous in virginia. they wanted to move west. there was this irresistible it seemed social force driving for land, particularly in the south although similar things are happening in the north as well. and the question for jackson or any president is what to do about that. the state of georgia was particularly central in demanding the cherokees and other nato nations be cleared from its land as soon as possible. any president was going to be forced to deal with that. jackson's predecessor john quincy adams had a different view of indians and a different policy but ended up being effectively co-opted in prime the creek nation out of their
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land, their last lead in georgia because the pressure was so great from below. even in the 1820s, that so far back we are going, in the 1820s we are talking of civil war, stand to your arms, be ready to fight for your rights. there is a message from 1825 from the government of georgia talking about how there's a conspiracy of washington elites, new york liberals, the unelected justices of the supreme court, and an attorney general who is the mouthpiece of an untested -- untrustworthy president plotting against the state of georgia to take away georgia slates and not even pay for them. this is an actual message from the governor of georgia. i'm paraphrasing but that's been meaning. and georgia was insisting on its land. any president was going to to do with it.
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andrew jackson did at least one alternative that was especially discussed at the time which was continue the old policy. there was a policy that went back to the days of president george washington, which was to encourage the nt nations to symbolize as white people saw it, to sell them the tools to raise their living standards which actually could be good for native nations, to sell them that stuff and hope that as they change their ways from being hunters who need lots of land they would become farmers who didn't need nearly so much land. and what do you know? they would owe money for all the nice clothes and stuff that they bought and maybe they would sell white people some land. it was a win-win. consumer capitalism. so the was an old policy that was regarded as more humane, that nations like the cherokee actually did grab onto and get some benefit from.
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and alternative was to try to continue that polic policy but t would have had to been ferociously done. jackson as president risk civil anyone with the state of south carolina over different issues. he would also that the risk civil war with the state of georgia over the question of indians. there was an alternative that would've been extremely difficult. there was also by the way of mention john ross is alternative is to make the cherokee nation some kind of territory or state as part of the union by that would have required completely different racial attitudes that existed in the united states at the time. thank you. anybody else have a question? go right ahead, sir. >> my name is kevin. i was just wondering, how they been any other meaningful reparations paid for the past atrocities, and would you support such a policy speak with
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no. have they been meaningful reparations paid? now, i should mention that part of the story is that the cherokees through the great resistance, many years of resistance, managed to get paid for their land in the and. they were paid at the time $6 billion in change which was a fraction of its value but at least they were paid something. but a that they, the land back? no. in 2009 they did get an apology. how many people knew that trend has apologized to indians? okay, some people knew. that's also bigger was done in the quietest way possible. it was a bipartisan measure. i want to say stand brownback of kansas was then in kansas was then innocent maven behind this, a republican. it was attached to a defense authorization bill -- [laughter] and quietly signed by president obama. no ceremony, no formal anything but this language in the lossy we are really sorry about this
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whole land of income and other various abuses. but the language also states that the apology may not be used as a legal basis to recover land. i will say some cherokees remain in the eastern united states, they fled the soldiers who finally came for them in 1830 in the trail of tears which learned about in school happened. they remained on their land. you can still find them in cherokee, north carolina. i certainly didn't take the survey but i spoke with one of said the past is past, we don't want our land back. what we want is the truth to be told. it was an eloquent statement. and i will say that in cherokee north carolina instead of having to hide in hills as they had to do after 1838 unesco in two cherokee and it's a tourist town. that are markets and shops, tom-tom and shops, restaurants a
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safe indian held which is not a good thing, a giant harrah's casino tips another not been reparations of any kind but there has been in certain places a kind of integration into american life, maybe a little bit like what john ross would have liked. >> follow-up. would you agree a policy of monetary reparations or would it be -- >> thank you for asking. i'm going to doctor that as a journalist but i'll be interested if someone makes a serious play. i would think that at a minimum what you want to assure is that your cities are fully integrated into american life in the way that they want to be. and that their rights are respected. i would think that some kind of monetary something is possible. recovering the link is probably not. it's been bought over and built over too many times probably for that to be possible, although i should mention when you going to
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alabama, much of the land that was cleared for white settlement is not empty again. because rural areas have emptied out. it's become forest again. if you are a member of the creek nation and want to go back to alabama you could probably find a spot. and some have. that are now small creek reservations in alabama. yes, sir. >> delle montross. christian missionaries played a significant role in the education of many of the most influential cherokees as well as the supreme court cases. did you reach any conclusion as to whether their influence ultimately serve a positive or negative influence of? >> that is a facet in question, positive or negative. that's a huge part of the story and under the weight this felt very modern to me, the early 1800s was a period of religious survival in the united states. a spreading religious interest and also spreading religious
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political power. and that were missionaries who went among the indians, among the heathens as the they were called, just as they went to hawaii and china and other places, any place they could get to try to convert the heathen to christianity, or to civilization which a thing for many people at the time was so anonymous. there were missionaries who lived among the cherokees. i would say they were positive for the cherokee because the cherokee flipped them. these were representatives of the wide world to the native world who are supposed to change the natives, and they want some converts but they were also persuaded the cherokee had much of the should be respected so they became messengers from the indian world back to the wide world. and said these people are being abused and must be protected. it was sometimes a patronizing
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view of protection. they didn't always have respect for the people whose rights they wanted to protect but sometimes they did. and that helped the cherokee to flood in to a really powerful network of publishers and politicians and preachers who fought for the rights and defended their rights and very vocal and creative ways for years. the religious political activist of the time are fascinating because there was a kind of religious right that we would recognize as focusing on public morality. everything was there ought to be a sabbath. everything should stop in sunday's. that they campaign for years and years was to stop the delivery of the something the other it was an outrage that the mail could be picked up by people at post offices on sundays. we are all going to hell because of that. one preacher when andrew jackson
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was elected wrote in a letter, this is a guy who was the hero of the battle of new orleans, the greatest war hero of his today, and frase the preacher sn the letter that he would just stop the sunday mail service while he was president he would fight a distinction solve as a patriot. jackson was offended by these people for some reason. there was a recognizable kind of religious right focus on public morality, but often the very same people were performing acts that we would associate with perhaps a modern religious left, or pacifist left. they would denounce war. they would add up the perceived financial cost of the war of 1812, for example, in the same way people in recent years measured the cost in dollars to the war in iraq, as a way to build opposition. and they also quite vocally and in many cases quite eloquently fought for indian rights.
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and what of them, acy named jeremiah efforts suggested to a number of women that perhaps they should campaign for indian rights, and a number of them did even the women could not vote. they started petition campaigns across the country and it appears to me to be the first example of as political action by women in the united states. it was on behalf of indians. it did not succeed of course but it was noticed and it was memorable, and many of the same people after they failed to protect indians moved on to a given cause and became abolitionists and opposed slavery. one of the leaders, one of the organizers of the women's petition movement is a woman named catherine beecher it was an educator whose little sister was harriet beecher stowe, later wrote uncle tom's cabin which was hugely influential in changing white people's attitude
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about slavery. more questions. go right ahead. someone else with a tie, this is awesome, thank you. >> you spoke about the slavery that the white settlers wanted to bring to cherokee land but also can you speak to, but the cherokees themselves the old, i believe owned slaves implantations? and the other question i had was regarding him if he could speak a little bit about the supreme court case with john marshall. >> absolutely. i'm just delighted by the depth of knowledge in these questions. thank you for reminding me of that fact, that yes, indian nations, while they were busy copying of the white practices to slavery. and john ross himself, according to any evidence that i found, was a slave owner. he didn't like very much at all about his personal life but there is evidence.
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you can kind of see his slaves by inference and some of the things that he wrote in his letters. that is a bitter and difficult and complicated legacy. i have seen efforts to minimize it a little bit and to me than reason to minimize it a little bit. it appears in some of the native nations, some of the african-americans, even if they were classed as slaves may have enjoyed so much more freedom than in white society. in the seminal tribes, particularly in florida, some of them rose to positions of considerable leadership. but it occurs to me that it was still slavery. there's just only so much you can do with it. i would imagine you are on the large plantations own a major ridge who was a major cherokee fichter and major character in this book, i can imagine your life is that much better or different than if you're on a white transplantation 50 miles
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away. that is part of the legacy. absolutely part of the story. it's fascinating to me remains part of the story. when the cherokees and others were removed the elites who owned slaves were allowed to take their slaves. they have continued to live out west in oklahoma, and it's a continuing news a story which we come across from time to time and cover from time to time because now rather than being a huge disadvantage to be an indian, it can be a financial advantage to be in india because maybe your tribe has a good casino and then their questions about whether the african-american cherokees with african-american greeks get to be classed as indians which legally they should be or not. there are different kinds devoted to exclude black people from their own missed. it's a complicated story. it's an ongoing story and it's one of the reasons that i think of this as a story of to a wrote
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but flawed, deeply flawed men. this is a story of human beings what you think is another reason it's a story about democracy. we are all human. we are all sinners. we all mess up. hopefully not to that extent but we all mess up. we all have different views. we all argue with each other through the democratic process, and our hope is that even though so many of us are wrong, over the long run are different argument will produce the result that is right, or at least better than it used to be. thank you. any other questions? [inaudible] >> johjohn marshall, thank you o much. probably the most influential chief justice was made chief justice i believe in 1801 by the retiring president john adams.
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in the 1830s he was still there. there. he was basic one of the founding fathers. it was in george washington's army and decades latest the chief justice. you're right it's one of the ways that the defense of the democratic process. they started their own newspaper. they spread their own propaganda. they built white allies like the christians i was describing and they also sued in the supreme court. they sued once and lost. they sued another time and one. and marshall wrote a ruling which you can read excerpts in the book. you can find the whole thing on google. it's not hard. and it's a remarkably clear ruling in which marshall was old enough to have seen the oldest and best days as a country road that it was obvious that native nations owned the land that they owned, that they have the right to whatever land they have not lost through treaties or wars or purchases of some kind, that they could that be forced to
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move without the consent and get the right to govern themselves. under the umbrella of the federal government. because the nation's ended every have signed treaties by the time saying they would be under the protection of the federal government. it's funny, the word protection was in these treaties and the were advocates of indian removal who would say, well, they are under our protection, that means we can do with them what we think this. marshall has a line in his ruling what he says the word protection does not imply destruction. and he just writes this is obviously true, that cherokee specific have rights. and the center the ruling was ignored. the state of georgia which was a definite of innocent a loaded to defend a case, claim the supreme court had no jurisdiction, ignored the findings. it would've required a strong president to impose his ruling
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on them. the president at the time was andrew jackson, who was a strong president but was angry about the ruling and inclined to do nothing to envy and what he he did was a very quiet political imagination to make the case to solve, make the case, way. >> i've heard he stated marshall had his rulings as i can see if you can enforce it. >> yes, that's a very famous statement that he may never have exactly said. it was written in the book but horace greeley decades ago and historians have questioned whether andrew jackson abbasid judge marshall has made his ruling, let him enforce it. maybe he didn't actually say that but another scholar whom i quote in this book from five or six other contemporary statements jackson made which basically mean all the same thing. certainly. >> we have time for one more. >> one more, great. >> knowing what you know what
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you support the removal of jackson from the $20 bill? [laughter] >> i have answered that question, sir. asked and answered. no, i wrote a thing for the new york times the other day in which i suggested that the $20 bill would look very nice with john ross on it. and then you flip it over and you on the other side andrew jackson. might argument being that each of these were flawed men who fought in a democratic system and it is part of a great and important american story that should not be forgotten. this is different than a campaign that's got a lot of publicity everything is brilliant to put a woman on the $20 bill. yeah, go for it. that's great. they've been brilliant. it's a great idea. [applause] obviously i suggested putting two people who are not women on the $20 bill, so my proposal is
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a little bit broader than that. it's just putting two figures on every bill ar the pairing of the four founding fathers on a couple of bills, and then pairing of people and all the bills so that in effect they tell a story. people at the same era who have different perspectives. you could have ulysses s. grant on one side of the $50 bill whose armies effectively ended the civil war and on the of is that you could have harrogate beecher stowe this book help to start the civil war. you could have civil rights figures on both sides of a bill to you could have rosa park's on one side and cesar chavez on the other. it's an opportunity i would think they think really broadly about the incredible diversity of this country we will never capture every kind of demographic person on a handful of bills which we were promise of youth in a few years anyway, but if you put a couple of different features with different perspectives, then the
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bill itself tells a story of democracy which is what we really in this country. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. >> speaking of money -- [laughter] >> he will be a. happily signing, so please form a line to the right of the table and pleasure member to fold up your chair. >> booktv is on twitter and facebook, and we want to hear from you. tweet us, twitter.com/booktv or post a comment on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. >> booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask minutes of congress what they reading this summer speak was my summer reading list is driven by some experience i would have.

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