Ex Post Facto

Reading: Alisse Theodore [Portnoy], “‘A Right to Speak on the Subject’: The U.S. Women’s Antiremoval Petition Campaign, 1829-1831,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 5 (2002), 601-24.

In late 1829, Catherine Beecher anonymously published a circular letter addressed to the “Benevolent Ladies” of the United States. In this letter, Beecher sympathetically portrayed the “poor Indian[s]” as a dignified people, no longer “naked and wandering savages,” who had made much progress towards becoming Christian and civilized. Although Beecher showed little interest in the native cultures of the Indians of the South, her remarks showed no sign of racism (as distinct from ethnocentrism). Instead, she focused on the fact that the U.S. government had promised to protect these Indians and their lands. (The Indian nations in question included the Cherokee, Chocktaw, Creek, Seminole, and Chickasaw, which were often collectively referred to as the “Five Civilized Tribes” because of their notable adaptation to white, American ways.) Beecher was writing, she declared, because “it has become almost a certainty that these people are to have their lands torn from them, and to be driven into western wilds and to final annihilation, unless the feelings of a humane and Christian nation shall be aroused to prevent the unhallowed sacrifice.” Clearly, Beecher did not believe the rhetoric of the Jackson administration that removal would be voluntary and that it was necessary to protect Indians — instead, she said, Indians’s land would be “torn” from them, and their removal west would lead to their “annihilation.” In short, Beecher thought that she saw through the pro-removal rhetoric to the real reason that Indians were to move west — their “fertile and valuable” lands were “demanded by the whites as their own possessions.” [1]

This letter helped inspire a small but significant petition campaign on the part of American women. Alisse Portnoy has carefully studied this petition campaign. While her article helps document the political resistance to the Indian removal policy, it also shows how women in the early republic period began tentatively to assert a “right to speak” regarding political issues. Portnoy shows that how these women spoke is just as important as the fact that they did so.

Here are several questions to consider when reading this essay:

1. What main arguments does Portnoy make?
2. What evidence does she bring forward? Where did she get this evidence?
3. Where did the petitions come from? What might be the significance of their regional source?
4. Why are these petitions historically significant?
5. Why weren’t the petitions effective in changing Indian policy?

[1] Catherine Beecher, “Circular Addressed to the Benevolent Ladies of the U. States,” Dec. 25, 1829, in Theda Purdue and Michael D. Green, eds., The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005), 111-14.

Reading: Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians, ch. 2.

This chapter explores the shifting nature of U.S. Indian policy, starting with the late 1700s and moving forward to the 1830s.

• Officially, what was the relationship between the U.S. and Indian nations during the early 1800s?

Wallace also begins to explain the various programs intended to reform Indians, with the ultimate goal of assimilating them into mainstream American society. (Such plans would persist into the 20th century.)

• What were the two approaches to Indian policy during the early 1800s? How was the U.S. Indian policy divided against itself? What did the two approaches to Indian policy have in common?

Wallace also pays close attention to Lewis Cass, who stated his position in his 1830 article in the North American Review on the “Removal of the Indians.” (See especially page 439, in which Cass makes it clear that the Indians would voluntarily remove themselves rather than forcibly removed.)

• How, according to Wallace, did Cass misunderstand Indians?

Reading: Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), introduction and ch. 1.

In his introduction, Wallace describes the experiences of John Ross, who served as an important Cherokee leader (despite the fact that only one of his mother’s grandparents was of Cherokee descent) from the 1820s through the 1860s. Like Andrew Jackson, Ross had fought against the Creek Indians in the War of 1812, and he had gone on to become a successful plantation owner and slaveholder as well as an influential leader, politician, and diplomat for the Cherokee. Wallace goes so far as to call Ross a “mirror image” of Jackson (10). Because of these similarities rather than despite them, Ross represented a problem for President Jackson and for white settlers in Georgia who lusted after Cherokee land, with its rich soils (rich for cotton production and in some cases literally rich with gold). The problem was that Ross and his fellow Cherokee were not disappearing — they were becoming stronger, as they integrated themselves into the larger regional economy and adopted a written Constitution. In short, they gave the lie to official claims that all Indians had to be moved west for their own protection and benefit.

Wallace also provides a brief but helpful overview of Indian history from the Mississippian period (hundreds of years before European contact) through the War of 1812, which so devastated the Indian nations east of the Mississippi River. This context is important, because it helps to suggest the disadvantages faced by those Indians, like the Cherokee, who continued to resist removal.

These opening sections raise a couple of questions:

1. What kind of societies did the Cherokee create? How might you describe their history, up to the early 19th century?
2. How does Wallace’s description of the Cherokee fit with your own presuppositions about American Indians during this period?
3. Reaching back to the colonial period and moving forward to 1820, why did American Indians have such a problematic time dealing with European Americans?