Challenged after a tax law eliminated the penalty for not having healthcare insurance. Listen to the oral arguments live at 10 am eastern on cspan, live a report or on the cspan radio app. Hello and welcome to the atlantic History Centers virtual talk series, im sylvia prescott. Tonight i am talking about his new book on were the republic, the dispossession of native americans in indian territory. Purchase the book directly from a cappella books , theres a link in the chat and theres also a link provided on the atlantic institute. As claudia and i are talking about please use the q and a feature atthe bottom of your screen. And i will take as many as time allows. He is professor of american history, codirector of the virtual history and associate director of the institute of native american studies. He is the author of three previous books on american history, west of the revolution, black white and indian and a new order. Claudio saunt, thank you for joining us and welcome. Thank you for hosting. I look forward and thank you for sponsoring this event. In unworthy republic how is it that the expulsion of native americans as an inevitability and you uncover a lot of evidence of political and economic motivations so how much land first from india went before the asian states . They had a huge amount of of alabama, what became mississippi, about a fifth of georgia and its not just how much land but how valuable that landwas. Was among the most valuable agricultural lands only in the entire world at the time. And they cover the entire United States, think of it largely and it mostly was a southern story but there were people in the north and old northwest were doing this as well. You cover a number of other tribes. From new york to ohio and i know different from tribe to tribe and state to state but generally kind of economy did indians havelets say in the south . It would very and theres also to be impacted, its still consensus to this day but they were until a series of court cases a sovereign people. The only limitation being they could not sell theirland to a foreign power. The cherokees could not sell their property to france for example but in all other ways they were fully sovereign people. They had elections. Have court systems. Theyhad constitutions. Just in the same way as the United States was there in the early 19thcentury. Before the drive to indians from their native lands which is the focus of this book, the prevailing us policy towards indians pretty much since the jeffersonian area was colonization, can you give usan overview of how indians live with that approach . With Thomas Jefferson the indian policy was this was a federal policy that really existed from thebeginning of the republic. Since the removal act and it was ethnocentric and sometimes wellintentioned, sometimes not but the ultimate goal for the federal government was to as you say civilize these people. That is to teachthem english , to turn them into good christians. To make them foreign in the same way aswhite farmers did. That is the plow rather than with a hole. To dig up their seasonal, grass like white people. So in always to turn them into us citizens. And so this was the policy and it was a policy that people pushed back on in many ways. Also they embraced parts of it and sometimes they did that sincerely and sometimes they did that mischievously in order to make their way in the shadow of the new republic. With the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 was an absolute game changerin that policy , you saw the quote indian question by pushing indians west of the mississippi. This was presented as a humanitarian commission to rescue indians from extension so what evidence did proponents have for this and how was that framed . This is a fascinating part of the story and i should preface this by saying that people have been dispossessed of their land from the first moment that they set foot on the continent. And between the founding of the republic and 1840, there have been lots of native people who lost thousands of acres of their land. But there was no removal. There was no formal consistent federal policy to dispossess native people so it was a significant moment in the history of relations between native people and the United States. But to get this, this peoples legislation to congress, the advocates of the policy needed to find allies and they needed to kind of put up a good front. They couldnt say we want their land in alabama and mississippi. Instead they had to say this was the best to support them and if you as a congressman really cared about native people, then you would support this policy. So the key evidence which they presented and they attributed in the popular press and numerous articles was that the indigenous populations were diminished and if they were to remain, they could go extinct. And so they pointed to the significant decrease in the native population. It certainly had occurred between 1600 and the 1820s. Everybody knew that that these populations had diminished. But the dynamics of demography are quite complicated and the best evidence shows that in the early 19th century these populations in the United States, indigenous populations were perhaps given growth. And so many people send this over and over again and they were frustrated that they couldnt get thismessage out. They found some letters from cherokees and creeks writing to congress or to the president and saying you keep repeating this over and over again, its near diminishing butwere not. We are, we may be smaller numbers that we are a growing population. And we want to stay where we are. It is the voice of the natives, lets say those who were diplomats preconflict, petitions by the thousands against indian nobles and it is wellknown that indian removal as it was so genteel he called was his signature policy but what was new to me was its kind of argument for and against expulsion and who was making that. So there was vigorous opposition to indian removal. Who was aligned in that opposition and how organized where they . So obviously the opposition was rooted in revisionist communities and thats not to say that those peoples were unanimous, there were numbers of people who just simply wanted to cut their losses. He didnt think this was a just policy necessarily. But they felt that given the tremendous pressure that they were on and the squatters they were removing the fact that state governments and federal governments were not protecting them in any way and in fact were encouraging water to steal their land and their profits , given that the best thing to do was to cut their losses and leave. But the vast majority of people and in fact wanted to stay. They were deeply rooted in the land. They were very practical reason for why they wanted to stay. And then they also had this deeper connection to the land that they said their ancestors were buried in. And they wanted to stay there. So that was, the opposition they said theyre in a position as a community but they did find allies and missionaries and also on Church Basements in the north and in fact this is the single most controversial issue to come before the republicup to that date. And it prompted the first mass Petition Campaign to Congress Read there were thousands and thousands of americans who dropped petitions, both men and women and that was novel at the time because women were not seeing to theappropriate participants in the political process. They dropped petitions and it shows how deeply critical petitions to congress became for native people to be able to stay. Meanwhile some of the newspapers were condemning the north and piety and hypocrisy. You quote a letter from the georgia journal from 1825 saying if you want to make any citizens, negroes will be next, . This was a critical part of your analysis is the expulsion of the natives and expansion of slavery were really intertwined. So how would protections for slavery exposed in the argument that they were making for indian removal . In so many ways these two issues were deeply connected. And the first as we talked about is the native people were on this valuable land. This first tile soil that runs through georgia and alabama and mississippi and then runs right through it, the traditional homeland of the choctaw nation. So the fathers wanted that land. And they had experience with moving people because they had been engaged in the first the Transatlantic Slave Trade and then interstate slave trade. Also, they were used to commanding people and having absolute rights over people of color. So how people of color that is indigenous as americans living in the south and not under their command, not under their thumb was an insult to White Supremacy and i think that is also very much a part of their antagonism and hostility to native people. There were threats to succeed, disintegrating the union from the north. And also highly confrontational in congress and then the indian removal act passed in 1835 by five votes. This is their 3 5 clause against southern slaveholders but in these same southern slaveholders champion states rights to realize that theyre going to need the jackson government to forcibly remove tens of thousands of nativepeople. Anyone in jacksons administrationquestion expulsion . Your life, this is a great irony that we have these southern politicians and alliance ones in georgia who are checking states rights, but it is as you say they needed the help of the federal government they needed federal lands. They needed the federal government to pay for it and buy it. This operation. So there were a few folks in the president ial administration worked some quiet oppositionto this policy. But jackson quickly forced them out and appointed loyalists in their place. There congressman certainly who in both parties who opposed indian removal but jackson spent a tremendous amount of pressure on them and there are stories in pennsylvania and he said that jackson went around and threatened the political careers of these people and said, im going to rip the atoms out of your career if you dont for this. It was an important issue and the threat was the threat of the yellow change so there was a tremendous amount of arms twisting and wheeling and dealing behindthescenes. And this and acted by a mere five votes out of 199 in the house so it really did just barely sweet through this was in congress. So the southern plane also needed bankers in new york city and boston and london as it turned out because they gave the money to bankroll explosions. You referred to them as the northern equivalent of planters but thats one of the revelations of your book following all the money without the money spent is one powerful way that comes up just as the beard and who washe and why were people like him critical to the expulsion . This is one of the surprising part of the story i think that was the thrust of my research and i kept following trails and joseph beard or jb beard as he was commonly called was probably the central player in wall street in financing this operation. And he was born and raised in connecticut. And lived near the second decade of the 19th century and this was when wall street was really just emerging as a center of american finance. And so kind of got in on the ground floor. He was one of the most important financiers on wall street. In 1820, he would have been entering and financing common cultivation in the south so he knew the south. At least from a distance. And then saw this opportunity in 1830. He recognized that there was going to be a tremendous amount of extremely valuable land available and he wanted to get his hands on. So he formed the joint stock company. He wasnt alone by the way. Every single major banker in philadelphia and new york was involved in speculating in Indigenous Lands in the 1830s. And they bought vast quantities and were able to mask the amount of land that they bought in mississippi and its right in the most for thailand in the state. And then they slipped it for enormous profits. They owned 30 times what they had invested in that property. Interesting that for these financial circuits to lead back to wall street they also crossed theatlantic. There a london banking hospital also there and theyre investing at the same time. Its just this wild tranny speculation read a question alsocertainly, Land Companies springing up in the black belt. 53,000 people win the government lottery for access to lands appropriated by the state. Talk about 4. 2 million acres, a majority and a majority did not want to leave. So would it be millions of dollars in landfills mean those who are still on the land and were seeking for me . There was a particular variance from nation to nation and thats because each treaty was distinct and had these little technicalities that made a difference in how the story unfolded although the end result was the same but generally speaking, what happened is that these lands were flooded with hundreds of thousands of dollars and in unwilling sellers who did not want to part withland. So the values and gains were all these people had on their lands as cheaply as possible because they knew they could never sell the land for an enormous profit. So they were given strategies. They sometimes they captured creek indians, lock them and change them up and said were not going to free you until you make a mark onthis piece of paper basically , 80 transferring property or the four they would sometimes sees orphans and then go for a judge who would give them a deal and the judge would say this is on the up and up. So orphan can sell his or her inheritance for a pittance. They hired impersonators. There were plenty of desperate creek and choctaw chickasaw indians at the time who would, some of them were literally close to starvation so speculators which often say we will give you 10 if you go before this judge and say that you are such and such a person, even if youre not. Just make your mark on this piece of paper. Sometimes the same indian did that literally hundredsof times. So it was just this firestorm of fraud and violence and probably the worst of it was in alabama, right across the chattahoochee river. The speculators a lot of them were based in georgia. Some of the stories are incredible that you tell in the book. So they are dragging their chains right through somebodys field. People buying land and building like or plowing right up to the doorstep of other people. So they were leaving their homes and coming back and findingsquatters in them. And its a pivotal time not only in the history of the people in the us but also for young republic eager to flex its administrative muscles and i think one of the times on in your book is tracking government accounts showing how globally incapable it is for that path. You have examples of how those limitations played out in mark. So its a tremendous, its really about 80,000 people in the federal government wanted to deport which doesnt sound like a lot. It doesnt make for a lot of the 20th First Century funds but it was a huge operation for a very small and young republic that held, City Government had about nine or 10,000 employees and 7000 of them worked for the post office. So those were completely overwhelmed and they never been involved in any kind of operationbefore. It was a humanitarian operation in the sense that theyre not really soldiers, their collaborating and willingly moving in the direction you tell them to these are families, there are infants, there are pregnant women, there are infirm people and so theyre trying to make them hundreds, sometimes over 1000 miles west overland that dont exist and that are built up by education and maps are atrocious so they dont know where theyre going. They dont have that 21stcentury weather reports so they get hot in severe winter storms which lead to just people shivering in the cold for weeks on end. So they are completely overwhelmed by a just accept it. They simply dont have the capabilities and the other thing is they dont really care that much at the end of the day. And there people of color and so theres a certain disregard i think that at the end of the day it doesnt matter that much to these federal efficiencies involved in these operations but just to give one quick example there are well over 1000 choctaws get slandered on the banks of the Arkansas River in the 18 winter of 1833. Most of them are shoeless. Most of them dont have close to keep them warm. Theyre just a handful of tents, the steamboats are not where they are supposed to be. You are few supplies to feed these people and they get there, some of them for 6 to 8 weeks. Waiting for the rivers to bar so that they can continue their journey westward. So thats just one of numerous examples of the failure of the federal government to really see this operation throughand in the way that it had promised people in the 1830s. There are a number of ponds in this wheel and a lot of them in your book, it brings a lot of light to it there but one of them is george gibson. Hes the head of removable budget, hes a man known to calculate fractions of a penny and having precise instructions for clerks on how to hold up their reports. Account for a decade worth of tracks but i believe he a sympathetic field officer appealed for funds to help feed these people on the Arkansas River and he said its a disagreeable state of things but everything must be done to keep it selfreliant. There is this absolute lack of care and hundreds, relatively grim, maybe even worse when the war breaks out in the midwest and cholera is carrying by. And im wondering for you claudio, were you for doing this research, whered you go to as ahistorian when youre reading about this . Some of the stories are really hard to deal with. But its also astounding to see these records in the archives recording all of this and these records, you open these boxes and theres these crumbling records of just these atrocious terms of that. So the challenge of recovering those stories and then presenting them in a way that is understandable and digestible i think is one of the things that kept me going in during the research. It was a depressing progress in a lot of ways but i think an important one. And i was just amazed by the kind of evidence that was just sitting there in the federal archives waiting for someone to lookat. George gibson, even commissary general so hes in charge of supplying troops and if you read the correspondence before 1830, hes spending so many pounds to such and such a fort, here or there to feed his troops. Hes an old friend of johnsons, he had been there before the war of 1812 so as soon as they asked congress, jackson would think of this as the responsibility of the superintendent. That johnson takes the authority away and gives it