Such was the state of the West in 1832. Now in twenty years from that time the white population has advanced still farther and farther westward, removing at every step the Indian frontier. Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin have now taken their position as states of the Union, and religion and education are establishing true civilization in the former wilderness, and may atone to heaven for the wrongs done to the Indian on this very soil.
But we must now return to the events of our general history.
The tariff bill, which passed into operation at the close of the session of 1832, caused, as we have said, great excitement in the southern states. South Carolina was the head-quarters of the opposition; and the party adverse to the bill called themselves the State-rights party, afterwards “nullifiers,” because having in November held a convention at Columbia, they issued an ordinance in the name of the people, declaring that congress had exceeded its powers in laying on protective duties, and that all such acts should from that time be utterly null and void. And finally they declared, that should congress attempt by force to bring their act into operation, the people would not submit; and that any act of congress authorising the employment of a naval or military force against the state, should be null and void; and that in such case the people would hold themselves absolved from any political connexion with the other states, and would forthwith proceed to organise a separate government, and do all other acts and deeds which a sovereign and independent state has a right to do.
Further still; the legislature of South Carolina met on the 27th of November, when Governor Hamilton gave in his concurrence to the ordinance, and recommended that the authorities of the state and of the city of Charleston should request the withdrawal of the United States troops, which had been stationed there to guard against a slave insurrection; that the militia should be called out, and provision made for obtaining heavy ordnance and other munitions of war.
This novel doctrine, says Willson, of the right of a state to declare a law of congress unconstitutional and void, and to withdraw from the Union, was promptly met by a proclamation of the president, in which he seriously warned the ultra-advocates of “States-rights” of the consequences that must ensue if they persisted in their course of treason to the government. He declared that, as chief-magistrate of the Union, he could not, if he would, avoid the performance of his duty; that the laws must be executed, and that any opposition to their execution must be repelled if necessary by force.
This proclamation was extremely popular, and was supported even in South Carolina, where there existed a strong party called “Friends of the Union.” Party animosities were for the moment forgotten throughout the States, and all united in agreeing to support the president in asserting the supremacy of the laws. Nor did the president talk only; with his usual prompt decision he caused Castle Pinckney, a fortress which commands the inner harbour of Charleston, as well as the town, to be put in complete order of defence; strongly garrisoned Fort Moultrie, and ordered several ships of war to be stationed in the bay. Every one saw that he was in earnest, and even the most violent nullifiers shrunk back from a contest against the whole nation with a man like General Jackson at its head.
Fortunately for the peace of the nation, the cause of discord and discontent was in great measure removed by a compromise bill, introduced into congress by Henry Clay. This bill was for modifying the tariff, and ultimately reducing the duties to a proper standard. It was strongly opposed by the supporters of the manufacturing interests, but nevertheless, having passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate, received the president’s signature early in March, 1833. It was, however, accompanied by an act which provided for the collection of duties on imports, and was called the Enforcing Bill, which was strongly objected to as giving the president an almost unlimited power over commerce. On the 4th of March, 1833, General Jackson entered his second presidential term, Martin Van Buren, of New York, being elected vice-president. Very soon after the re-election of President Jackson, a great excitement was occasioned on account of the removal from the Bank of the United States of the government funds deposited there, and their transfer to certain state banks. The opponents of the administration censured this measure as an unauthorised and dangerous assumption of power by the executive; and the public confidence in the moneyed institutions of the country being shaken, the pecuniary distresses of 1836 and 1837 were charged upon the hostility of the president to the Bank of the United States; while, on the other hand, these very distresses were ascribed to the management of the bank, which the president declared to have become “the scourge of the country.”[[80]]
Again the pent-up and out-driven Indian tribes making, as it were, a dying effort to save themselves, rose into rebellion, and the story again is very sad. The Chickasaws and the Choctaws had, during the last few years, quietly emigrated west of the Mississippi, into the territory bordering on Arkansas, which had been allotted to them instead of their own lands, and as an inducement to remove voluntarily, the United States had paid the expenses of their journey, and supplied them with a year’s provisions. Other tribes there were, however, who were not so easily managed, and it is of their struggles to maintain a footing on their own lands that we have now to speak. The Cherokees were the most civilised of the Indian tribes; they had an established government, a national legislature, and written laws. Their rights had been protected during the administration of John Quincy Adams, against the claims of Georgia. Under the administration, however, of the unscrupulous and aggressive General Jackson, the legislature of Georgia, which acted very much in the spirit of the president, extended its laws over the Indian territory comprised within their boundaries, and among other severe enactments it was declared, that “no Indian nor the descendants of an Indian, residing within the Creek or Cherokee nation of Indians, should be deemed a competent witness or party to any suit, in any court where a white man is a defendant.” It was in vain that the Supreme Court of the United States protested against these acts as unconstitutional. Georgia persisted in its hard enactments, and President Jackson informed the alarmed and anxious Cherokees that “he had no power to oppose the sovereignty of any state over all who may be within its limits.” Their case was precisely as if a fly, caught in a spider’s web, had appealed for deliverance to another spider, when the advice would have been that of President Jackson to the Cherokees—“they must abide the issue, without any hope that he would interfere.”
They did abide the issue, until, worn out by oppressions and vexations, some of their chiefs were induced to sign a treaty of evacuation. In vain the Cherokees as a nation protested against it; lived quietly and inoffensively; availed themselves of the civilisation of the whites, and wished to profit by it; they were still the red men, the aborigines of the forest, and they must become once more dwellers in the wilderness. There was no help for them. Their general emigration was decided upon in 1835, but it was not effected until three years later.
The same year in which the removal of the Cherokees was decided, the Seminole Indians of Florida began to resist the settlement of the whites in their vicinity, the immediate cause of their hostility being again an attempt to remove them west of the Mississippi. In September, 1823, soon after the purchase of Florida by the United States, a treaty had been made with the Seminoles, by which they relinquished their claims to large tracts, reserving certain portions to themselves for residence. The terms of this treaty being disputed, a second was made at Payne’s Landing, in Florida, in 1832, when it was stipulated that the Seminoles should relinquish their reservation, and remove west of the Mississippi, a delegation of their chiefs being sent out at the expense of the United States to examine the country assigned to them, whither the Creeks were already gone; and, according to the treaty, if it were found that they, the Creeks, would live amicably with them, and that the country was agreeable to them, then the treaty should be binding. The report of the delegates was not satisfactory. The country which was assigned to them was of a stern character, unlike that of their native Florida; it produced no light-wood for fuel, which was easy to fell, and to which the Seminoles were accustomed. The savage wilderness of Nebraska did not allure them; and the Indians, they reported, were bad; they preferred to remain in Florida, and they accordingly maintained that the treaty was not binding. Macanopy, their king, opposed their removal, and Osceola, their most celebrated chief, said that he “wished to rest in the land of his fathers, and for his children to sleep by his side.”