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Actual historian here.
1. You're a f*cking clown, @michaeljknowles.
2. Grad students in history *are* historians. You have a Bachelor's in History and Italian. PhD candidates like @HerbertHistory have forgotten more history than you'll ever learn
3. Allow me to refute... /1
1. You're a f*cking clown, @michaeljknowles.
2. Grad students in history *are* historians. You have a Bachelor's in History and Italian. PhD candidates like @HerbertHistory have forgotten more history than you'll ever learn
3. Allow me to refute... /1
2. The Trail of Tears was the climax of an Indian Removal policy Jackson had been contemplating since he waged a war of extermination against the Creek peoples in the War of 1812 years and the Seminoles about a decade later.
3. The Indian Removal Act, the enabling legislation for the Trail of Tears, was a crown jewel in Jackson's legislative agenda, something he lobbied for in his presidential campaign, & it passed Congress in May, 1830--which was during his presidency, if you're keeping track.
4. Jackson also saw his removal policy challenged by the Cherokees, who used the court system to (correctly) argue that this policy abrogated several decades' worth of previous treaties. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee nation, but Jackson ignored the ruling.
5. (This was the 1832 Worcester v. Georgia decision, btw. If you aren't familiar with it, @michaeljknowles, ask a grad student historian who studies Native history; they could tell you all about it.)
6. The apocryphal story is that Jackson said "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." Likely not true, but it does speak to the fact that Supreme Court decisions are not self-enforcing, and to Jackson's determination to plow ahead with removal.
7. So, yeah, @michaeljknowles, the Trail of Tears technically didn't begin until the year after AJ left office, but that's only bc the Cherokees tried everything they could to resist removal, and would have succeeded were Jackson not so willing to ignore the Supreme Court.
8. So your assertion, @michaeljknowles, that Indian Removal was "inevitable" is, to use a technical term, bullshit. It was the product of determined, consistent choices made by Andrew Jackson and enacted by him and his supporters and successors in the Democratic party.
9. What Jackson did was to inaugurate a new, even more overtly violent chapter in US Indian Removal policies and processes, which intensified during and after the Civil War. And it was a genocidal policy, make no mistake. Facts don't care about your feelings, I believe y'all say?
10. The only difference between Jackson's view of Native peoples and Philip Sheridan's remark that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" is about 40-50 years. To call removal "inevitable" is to try and obscure the explicit choices that made it US policy.
11. No genocide is "inevitable," @michaeljknowles. They are the product of human action, and are enabled and intensified by the complacency of apologists and clever "provocateurs" like...you.
12. And, as for your assertion that treaties and financial compensation for Native lands were observed (as if that somehow makes everything OK), you must not have learned much in your undergraduate studies about historical research, because that's a demonstrably false claim.
13. So, @michaeljknowles, you may be good at being a right-wing grifter (your Rush-Limbaugh-wannabe photos with the big ol' cigar are a nice touch), but you're dead wrong in your assertions about both US history and those who study it. You should've taken your L a while ago.
14. So to sum up: @michaeljknowles, who never earned anything beyond a BA in History, says PhD candidates aren't "real" historians because they handed him his ass in an actual exchange of ideas and evidence. Such a poor, delicate flower.
15. Of course he probably won't listen to any of this, because he's going to be too busy bleating about a left-wing conspiracy to silence his noble, conservative views.🙄That's the grift: claim persecution instead of admit the hot take is just plain *wrong.*
16. But, in case you need the confirmation, @michaeljknowles, everything people have said on here about how galactically wrong you are is true. You should have listened to them instead of showing your ass to the entire internet.
Signed, a "real historian."
Signed, a "real historian."
Coda: if you really want to understand Jackson's anti-Native Animus, this is the thread to read:
