Opinions on Cherokee RemovalAmerican History

Opinions In Favor of Removal

• Cherokee are miserable in Georgia• The U.S. and Georgia are going to keep making

it miserable

• They are uncivilized savages, who need to yield to white civilization

• They are not equal and are to be treated like orphans.

Elias Boudinot - Cherokee

Andrew Jackson – President of the United States

Wilson Lumpkin – Governor of Georgia

Opinions Against Removal

• The Cherokee are advanced and have assimilated

1) The Cherokee have treaties with the U.S. saying they have the right to stay

2) The Indian Territory is unknown, is full of hostile tribes, and lacks sufficient natural resources.

3) Even if it was a great new territory, it is not where our civilization has lived for generations.

• “[Indian Territory] contains neither the scenes of our childhood, nor the graves of our fathers.”

Theodore Frelinghuysen – Senator, New Jersey

John Ross – Chief of the Cherokee Nation