The Trail Of Tears Essays - Cherokee Nation, Cherokee, John Ross

The Trail of Tears "We are now about to take our leave and kind farewell to our native land, the country that Great Spirit gave our Fathers, we are on the eve of leaving that country that gave us birth? it is with sorrow we are forced by the white man to quit the scenes of our childhood?we bid farewell to it and all we hold dear." This is the way that Cherokee Vice Chief Charles Hicks described, in 1838, the emotions that must have been felt after the mistreatment and the abuse that was wrought upon the Cherokee Indians. It was a trail of blood, a trail of death, but ultimately it was known as the "Trail of Tears". In this history of the Cherokee Nation we are trying, but without success, to be as unbiased as possible. It's the War of 1812. Andrew Jackson is mounting up forces against the Pro-British faction of the Creek Indians. The United States appealed for Cherokee support for aid in war against Tukumsa and another Indian known as Red Sticks. The Cherokee Nation replied with six to eight hundred of their best warriors. It was this war were the Indians fought side by side with Jackson. After a treaty in 1814 was forced on the Creek Indians, the Cherokees filed claims for there lose. There was no promise that their claims would be acknowledged. This would bring on the biggest betrayal on the Cherokee Indians, Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson demanded the session of twenty-three million acres of land to the United States. The Cherokee Nation, however, owned Four million acres of this land. The Cherokees protested again to Indian agent Jonathan Meigs in the War Department. Once again their former ally called these claims "Cherokee intrigue". Andrew Jackson then suggested with troops already in the field that this would be the perfect time to remove Cherokees as well as Creeks out of Tennessee. The Indian Removal Act was introduced by Andrew Jackson and was passed by Congress in 1830. This act was to force the Indians west of the Mississippi River. This was largely carried out by General Winfield Scott and his army of approximantly seven thousand troops, in May of 1838. When the army arrived in New Echota Georgia thousand of Cherokee Indians would be rounded up with dragnets and penned up in wooden stockades. By June 5, 1838 it was estimated that only 200 Cherokee had escaped. There were between fifteen to se venteen thousand Cherokee held in these crude jails, where they would await their long brutal journey west. This route from Georgia through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and finally ending in Oklahoma, would later be referred by Cherokees as Nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi, or "the trail on which they Cried". The journey on which the Indians traveled would bring many deaths due to starvation, droughts and disease. There were two main ways of travel, by land and river. River travel was difficult if not impossible because low river levels due to the drought. All in all it took 645 wagons, 5000 horses and oxen and river vessels used primarily for the ill. Grant Foreman, Dean of Indian Historians, recorded this appalling period. He stated that the weather was extremely hot, there was a drought, and water was scarce and there were suffocating clouds of dust mixed with the oxygen. He also stated that at least three but, up to five people died per day on the trail. By the end of June 1838 two to three hundred Indians were sick. On June 17, 1838 General Charles Floyd of the Georgia militia wrote to Governor Gilmen of New Echota that they were convinced that there were no longer any Cherokee in Georgia. This would hold true that they succeeded in removing the Cherokee from the state, but not compl etely from the east. This would bring on a great supporter of the Cherokee people, a white man by the name of John Ross. John Ross campaigned heavily for the Cherokees. Ross was part of the immigration management committee. Ross persuaded General Scott to approve a budget for the captive Indians of Seventeen cents per Indian per day. This was double the amount figured by congress. This money was

List of US Presidents With Beards

List of US Presidents With Beards Five  U.S. presidents wore beards, but its been more than a century since anyone with facial hair served  in the White House. The last president to wear a full beard  in office was  Benjamin Harrison, who served from March 1889 to March 1893. Facial hair has all but disappeared from American politics. There are very few bearded politicians in Congress. Being clean-shaven wasnt always the norm, though. There are plenty of presidents with facial hair  in U.S. political history. Where did they all go? What happened to the beard? List of Presidents With Beards At least 11  presidents had facial hair, but only five had beards. 1. Abraham Lincoln was the first bearded president of the United States. But he might have entered office  clean-shaven  in March 1861 were it not from a letter from 11-year-old Grace Bedell of New York, who didnt like the way he looked on the  1860 campaign trail  without facial hair. Bedell wrote to Lincoln before the election: I have yet got four brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President. Lincoln started growing a beard, and by the time he was elected and began his journey from Illinois to Washington in 1861 he had  grown the beard for which he is so remembered. One note, however: Lincolns beard was not actually a full beard. It was a chinstrap, meaning he shaved his upper lip. 2. Ulysses Grant was the second bearded president. Before he was elected, Grant was known to wear his beard in a manner that was described as both wild and shaggy during the Civil War. The style did not suit his wife, however, so he trimmed it back. Purists point out the Grant was the first  president  to wear a full beard compared to Lincolns chinstrap. In 1868, author James Sanks Brisbin described Grants facial hair this way: The whole of the lower part of the face is covered with a closely cropped reddish beard, and on the upper lip he wears a mustache, cut to match the beard. 3. Rutherford B. Hayes was the third bearded president. He reportedly wore the longest beard of the five bearded presidents, what some described as  Walt Whitman-ish. Hayes served as president from March 4, 1877 to March 4, 1881. 4. James Garfield was the fourth bearded president. His beard has been described as being similar to that of Rasputins, black with streaks of gray in it. 5. Benjamin Harrison was the fifth bearded president. He wore a beard the entire four years he was in the White House, from March 4, 1889, to March 4, 1893. He was the last president to wear a beard, one of the more notable elements of a relatively unremarkable tenure in office. Author OBrien Cormac wrote this of the president in his 2004 book  Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House: Harrison may not be the most memorable chief executive in American history, but he did, in fact, embody the end of an era: He was the last president to have a beard. Several other presidents wore facial hair but not beards. They are: John Quincy Adams, who wore mutton chops.Chester Arthur, who wore a mustache and mutton chops.Martin Van Buren, who wore mutton chops.Grover Cleveland, who wore a mustache.Theodore Roosevelt, who wore a mustache.William Taft, who wore a mustache. Why Modern Day Presidents Don't Wear Facial Hair The last  major-party candidate with a beard to even  run for president  was Republican Charles Evans Hughes in 1916. He lost. The beard, like every fad, fades and re-emerges in popularity. Lincoln, perhaps Americas most famous bearded politician, was the first president to wear a beard in office. But he began his candidacy clean-shaven and only grew his facial hair at the request of an 11-year-old schoolgirl, Grace Bedell. Times have changed, though. Very few people beg political candidates, presidents or members of Congress to grow facial hair since the 1800s. The New Statesman summed up the state of facial hair since then: Bearded men enjoyed all of the privileges of bearded women. Beards, Hippies, and Communists In 1930, three decades after the invention of the safety razor made shaving safe and easy, the author Edwin Valentine Mitchell wrote, In this regimented age the simple possession of a beard is enough to mark as curious any young man who has the courage to grow one. After the 1960s, when beards were popular among hippies, facial hair grew even more unpopular among politicians, many of whom wanted to distance themselves from the counterculture. There were very few bearded politicians in politics because candidates and elected officials did not want to be portrayed as either Communists or hippies, according to Slate.coms Justin Peters. For many years, wearing a full beard marked you as the sort of fellow who had Das Kapital stashed somewhere on his person, Peters wrote in 2012. In the 1960s, the more-or-less concurrent rise of Fidel Castro in Cuba and student radicals at home reinforced the stereotype of beard-wearers as America-hating no-goodniks. The stigma persists to this day: No candidate wants to risk alienating elderly voters with a gratuitous resemblance to Wavy Gravy. Author A.D. Perkins, writing in his 2001 book One Thousand Beards: a Cultural History of Facial Hair, notes that modern-day politicians are routinely instructed by their advisers and other handlers to remove all traces of facial hair before launching a campaign for fear of resembling Lenin and Stalin (or Marx for that matter).  Perkins concludes: The beard has been the kiss of death for Western politicians ...   Bearded Politicians in Modern Day The absence of bearded politicians has not gone unnoticed. In 2013 a group called the Bearded Entrepreneurs for the Advancement of a Responsible Democracy launched a political action committee whose aim is to support political candidates with both a full beard, and a savvy mind full of growth-oriented policy positions that will move our great nation towards a more lush and magnificent future. The BEARD PAC claimed that individuals with the dedication to grow and maintain a quality beard are the kinds of individuals that would show dedication to the job of public service. Said BEARD PAC founder Jonathan Sessions: With the resurgence of beards in popular culture and among today’s younger generation, we believe the time is now to bring facial hair back into politics. The BEARD PAC determines whether to offer financial support to a political campaign only after submitting the candidate to its review committee, which investigates the quality and longevity of their beards.