Isaiah Roman

Manifest Destiny Part I: Context

I began looking at this subject because Glenn Beck said he was going to tell us all about Andrew Jackson’s crimes against humanity. Glenn Beck is a Mormon. If he is a devout Mormon, steeped in Mormon doctrine that means he has a particular affinity towards aboriginal Americans (Indians). He also has a particular view of Judaism; one that closely mirrors dual-dispensationalism. These two things mixed with the words Manifest Destiny mean something to him that puts him in line with progressives on the subject. More on that later…

The reason Glenn Beck brought it up was because he believes that Jackson is the beginnings of the progressive movement in this country. The reason he believes this might be two fold; 1) Jackson believed in a strong executive branch and a broadened base of the electorate, thereby constituting a more democratic form of governance and 2) Jackson was a believer in the homogeneity of the American people.

The concept behind the current progressive movement is certainly not new. It’s ideals and structures date back as far as recorded time itself. As long as there have been men, there has been a progressive movement. The basics of it are the rule of the people over the rule of the elite, and the freedom from the structures of the past. Glenn Beck probably recognizes the increase in the voter base and attributes it to rule of the people, and the change from Jeffersonian government as an attempt at freedom from the past, but there are some problems with this thought process.

Jackson was not a believer in big government. He strictly believed in a small government, of the people, by the people, for the people. He believed that it was important to cycle out government leaders often because he knew that too much time in power would corrupt those who held the power. He also was in opposition to the congress because he saw the congress pass laws that he knew were detrimental to the nation; laws such as the banking act that established the federal bank, and the tariff act that would have bankrupted the nation.

However, what really got Jackson in deep water with historians is his Indian Relocation program. It was under President Jackson’s administration that the tribes of the South East were relocated to more western lands. Jackson, for ten years before his presidency, had negotiated many land buy-outs of Indian land, thereby peacefully removing Indians from the states of the Union. During his presidency he made a policy of removing even more. Why?

He gives his reasons in his First Annual Message to Congress, 8 December 1829. When you read the text of the message you don’t really have to read between the lines. You have to read the lines:

It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions;… and perhaps cause them gradually… to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.
Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people… For the justice of the laws passed by the States within the scope of their reserved powers they are not responsible to this Government. As individuals we may entertain and express our opinions of their acts, but as a Government we have as little right to control them as we have to prescribe laws for other nations.
…the Choctaw and the Chickasaw tribes have with great unanimity determined to avail themselves of the liberal offers presented by the act of Congress, and have agreed to remove beyond the Mississippi River. …they have preferred maintaining their independence in the Western forests to submitting to the laws of the States in which they now reside. These treaties, being probably the last which will ever be made with them, are characterized by great liberality on the part of the Government. They give the Indians a liberal sum in consideration of their removal, and comfortable subsistence on their arrival at their new homes. If it be their real interest to maintain a separate existence, they will there be at liberty to do so without the inconveniences and vexations to which they would unavoidably have been subject in Alabama and Mississippi.
Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and Philanthropy has been long 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. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes. Nor is there anything in this which, upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race, is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the conditions 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 or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?

Andrew Jackson was a pragmatist, who believed in the inevitability of conflict between the Indians and the Europeans. He believed in the simple fact that multiculturalism, and pluralistic ideals destroy a nation. The interactions between the white settlers and the natives had degraded severely over time. The Indians tried to maintain their own culture and identity, and the white men were expansionist and opportunistic. The clash of the two cultures was inevitable; just as the clash over slavery was inevitable. When you have two groups of people occupying the same land who have such different views of every aspect of life and living, you have a recipe for disaster. Thirty years after Jackson we see the results of another rift of ideology, a rift that caused the death of hundreds of thousands.

But, Jackson also believed that the white culture was superior to the native culture. He believed that the European white men with their “cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute” was a superior form of life to the native’s more “simple” and earthly culture. It was his opinion that the native should conform to the superior culture, leave behind their own habits, and join with the union as one. The Indians thought otherwise. The land in question had been their land for hundreds of years before the white man came. With good reason, they believed that the white man should respect that heritage.

In our modern world we tend to look back romantically at the American Indian and see a quaint, earthy culture that stressed conservation, organics and a love of the things of nature. We don’t see the constant warfare between tribes, ritual slavery, rape and pillaging. We don’t see the fact that the reason these tribes were nomadic was because they would pollute an area so badly that it would become unlivable, and so would have to move on to another spot. We hear of how innocent and honest these simple people were, but we don’t hear about the theft and murder committed at the hands of these people.

The simple truth is that in our culture we have a cowboys and indians mentality about the relationship between “white” and “red” cultures, but it’s simply not that simple. In fact, in our time if we learn history at all (high school history is currently an elective course and not required) we learn it in terms of broadly generalized eras, such as “The Renaissance” and “The Age of Enlightenment.” Unless one studies history in great depth, they will likely never even touch on the detailed causes of events in history. Yet, even with a quick, broad overview it’s easy to see that throughout all time there has always been one culture which endeavors to suppress another culture, whether for wealth, or food, or land, or possessions.

This is the beginning of the understanding of Manifest Destiny.

Manifest means “clear or obvious to the eye or mind.” Destiny means “events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future; the hidden power believed to control what will happen in the future; fate.” It is which definition of the second word you choose to use that determines your understanding of what Manifest Destiny means.

What Andrew Jackson was telling us, and what was codified later on by the writer John L. O’Sullivan is not what we understand today as Manifest Destiny. The difference is not subtle and it has had a profound influence on our lives in the world we live in today. Where we go from here depends greatly on what we can learn from Andrew Jackson. That’s right; Andrew Jackson.