Quotes from the Indian Removal Act of 1830
These words are chilling in themselves.
"On May 28th, 1830, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, this act was passed which gave the president the authority to negotiate with Indian tribes in the Southern United States for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi, in exchange for their ancestral homeland." (italics mine).
"As early as the 1800's, the United States Government began a systematic effort to remove Native American Tribes from the southeast. These tribes were: The Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee-Creek, Seminole, and the original Cherokee Nations--referred to as "Five Civilized Tribes" by European settlers in reference to the tribes' adoption of aspects of colonial culture, and these five had been established as autonomous nations in the southeastern United States."
"The Removal Act paved the way for the forced expulsion of tens of thousands of American Indians from their traditional homeland to the West, an event known as the "Trail of Tears."
There are more details on the Wikipedia website, including the issues discussed in Congress and the Supreme Court. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_removal_Act
Yes, there was opposition, many Christian missionary groups, New Jersey senator Theodore Frelinghuysen and Congressman Davy Crockett of Tennessee (yes, that Davy Crockett) spoke out against the legislation. After a bitter debate in Congress, the Removal Act was passed.
Jackson viewed his position as a "wise and humane policy." Here are his words. This is long, but I had to include it.
"Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country and philanthropy has long been busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. . . . But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise of industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion."-- Andrew Jackson
Thank you, Wikipedia for all your help.