Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle against Indian Removal in the 1830s

Abstract

Andrew Jackson's request Congress in December 1829 for federal monies remove Southeast Indians beyond the Mississippi River generated the most intense public opposition that the United States had witnessed. In six short months, removal opponents launched massive petition drives that called on Congress defeat removal and uphold Indian rights property. To block removal, Catharine Beecher and Lydia Sigourney organized the first national women's petition campaign and flooded Congress with antiremoval petitions, making bold claim for women's place in national political discourse. The experience of opposing removal prompted some reformers rethink their position on abolition and reject African colonization in favor of immediatism. The strength of antiremoval forces stunned Martin Van Buren who, writing of the events over twenty years later, portrayed the government's side as besieged from all quarters and stated flatly that a more persevering opposition public measure had scarcely ever been made. Though Jackson's former vice president consistently defended removal, he believed that the issue of Indian removal unlike histories of many great questions which agitate the public mind in their day will in all probability endure ... as long as the government itself, and will in time occupy the minds and feelings of our people. It was an issue, Van Buren concluded, in which the nation was responsible to the opinion of the great family of nations, as it involves the course we have pursued and shall pursue towards people comparatively weak. 1