"Marshall has made his decision: now let him enforce it"

The attorneys for the missionaries sought to have this judgement enforced, but could not. General Jackson was President, and would do nothing of the sort. "Well: John Marshall has made his decision: now let him enforce it!" was his commentary on the matter. So the missionaries languished years in prison, and the Cherokees were finally (1838) driven into exile, in defiance of the mandate of our highest judicial tribunal.
Horace Greeley, The American Conflict (1864), 106.

Some high school civics textbooks report a Constitutional crisis in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Worcester v. Georgia (1832). The issue in the case was Georgia law requiring a license from the state and an oath of allegiance to the state constitution for non-Indians living and working among the Cherokee. The bulk of the Cherokee Nation fell within the state boundaries of Georgia; the state sought to exercise its sovereignty over these lands. Samuel Worcester and Elizur Butler, missionaries among the Cherokee, refused to comply with Georgia's laws, were tried and convicted, and appealed their case to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Marshall wrote the decision, which affirmed the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation.

The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves, or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of Congress.
Worcester v. Georgia 31 U.S. 515, at 520

Marshall's decision, along with one nine years earlier (Johnson v. McIntosh) and one the previous year (Cherokee Nation v. Georgia) form the foundation of Federal Indian Law. The so-called Marshall Trilogy of cases has been celebrated and condemned and been the subject of countless books.

For the past few decades, I have occasionally checked high school civics and American government texts for how much space they devote to notions of tribal sovereignty, or to other Indian matters. The fishing rights cases of the 1970s sometimes appear, and sometimes there is a little bit about the American Indian Movement. However, the notion of tribal governments as sovereigns rarely makes an appearance. When Worcester v. Georgia is mentioned at all, Greeley's fabrication is the most frequent point.

Patriots and Peoples began as a blog concerned with two US history texts, one unabashedly liberal, and the other equally partisan on the right. Both mention Worcester. Jackson's alleged words appear no where in the historical record prior to Horace Greeley's 1864 book, published 32 years after the event.

Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen reveal no evidence of skepticism of the quote's authenticity:

Marshall's Court stated that Georgia could not violate Cherokee land rights because those rights were protected under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Jackson muttered, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it," and proceeded to ignore the Supreme Court's ruling.
A Patriot's History, 208

Howard Zinn does not pass on the quote, but makes reference to the putative Constitutional crisis:

John Marshall, for the majority, declared that the Georgia law on which Worcester was jailed violated the treaty with the Cherokees, which by the Constitution was binding on the states. He ordered Worcester freed. Georgia ignored him, and President Jackson refused to enforce the court order.
A People's History, 141

The conservative Schweikart and Allen and the liberal Zinn both cite as a leading source for these events the book Fathers and Children (1975) by Michael P. Rogin. It a strong testament to Rogin's scholarship that both skewed histories choose his work as the foundation for their claims.

Where Zinn differs from Schweikart and Allen becomes evident in what follows. Two paragraphs later in Zinn and the next sentence in Schweikart and Allen, we find contrasting interpretations of Jackson's views regarding states' rights, but neither highlights tribal sovereignty.

The same year Jackson was declaring states' rights for Georgia on the Cherokee question in 1832, he was attacking South Carolina's right to nullify a federal tariff.
A People's History, 141 

Ultimately, the Cherokee learned that having the highest court in the land, and even Congress, on their side meant little to a president who disregarded the rule of law and the sovereignty of the states when it suited him.
A Patriot's History, 208

I need to sit down with Rogin's book to examine whether he proceeds in either of these directions. I am also curious how he sources the claim. Greeley's own deployment of the alleged words 32 years after the event in question stretch the bounds of credibility. Questions drive me.

Misplaced Emphasis

The book table at Costco proves an irresistible lure, but the barbs there leave my jaw aching. Increasingly since the historic election of 2008, there have been stacks of right-wing diatribes by authors with little regard for accuracy of facts or analysis. But good books remain among the chaff. I'll be sorely tempted by Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol 1 (2011) on the next trip because I've found that the Kindle edition is not well suited for this sort of scholarly text and the price at Costco is $1.02 less than at Amazon. I nearly bought Life (2010) by Keith Richards, and may yet when the paperback comes out in a few months if they carry it. I've bought and read two books on the Battle of Little Big Horn--both were disappointing histories.

Off and on over the past week, I've been trying to labor through a book that I thought would be a quick and interesting read. I bought Richard Kluger, The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek (2011) from Costco in February with plans to read it during spring break. Last Monday I started. The Forward appalled me for its abysmal failure to mention tribal sovereignty while pretending to lay out the critical historical framework at the heart of the Medicine Creek Treaty of 1854. Reading further has been slogging through questionable factual assertions (I need to do some fact checking on several points) and episodes in misplaced emphasis.

This morning I came upon this sentence:

Scholars have estimated that by 1850, the aboriginal population in North America--besieged by the invaders' explosive weaponry, wondrous technology, contemptuous cruelty, and irresistible pathogens, as well as the Indians' own ever-deepening despair--was just one-tenth of what it had been when Columbus first ventured ashore. (57)

Kluger gets the demography correct, but fails to explain it well. Beginning with weapons and technology demonstrates that he has read neither my "Superior European Technology" nor Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (2005)--another text that I found at Costco. He also reveals his failure to comprehend the significance of ecological damage, easily rectified for starters by reading William Cronon, Changes in the Land (1983). Most egregious is the way that he seems to put disease behind conscious imperialism and technology in his explanation of traumatic demographic change.

Kluger sets up the reader to expect that he would comprehend the significance of ecological changes on the previous page:

Essential to this metamorphosis would be correcting the red race's attitude toward the land, which they shrank from actively cultivating but regarded as a hallowed preserve ... Such footloose practices were deemed unsuitable for a civilized society. Instead, the Indians needed to buckle down within far less expansive territory, where they would work the soil as the Scriptures directed (see Genesis 9:1) and make it flourish. (56)

The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek concerns peoples and events in the southern Puget Sound Basin, so the failure of a historical gloss to recognize the cultivation of corn, beans, and squash by everyone from the Pueblos of New Mexico to the Seneca of New York might be forgivable. The Neolithic Revolution emerged in Meso-America and southern China approximately the same time that it emerged in the Fertile Crescent. Even so, the U.S. Supreme Court encoded this common stereotype of Indian hunters and gatherers with respect to those indigenous to the Ohio River Valley in Johnson v. McIntosh (1823) and with respect to the plantation owning Cherokee in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1832). As a description of Anglo-American attitudes, if not American Indian realities, Kluger's gloss serves its purpose.

Ten years ago I revealed my own understanding of the role of disease in the European conquest:

Epidemic disease was the decisive factor in the European conquest. Epidemics not only eliminated entire communities, but the resulting sociocultural disruption created conditions that made Native peoples more receptive to European trade items and religious ideas.
James Stripes, "Native Americans: An Overview," Encyclopedia of American Studies, vol. 3 (2001), 198.

One of my first entries for this blog, "Practicing Objectivity," quoted that tertiary source. This morning I am reminded how easily historians searching for a new writing topic without adequate grounding in the scholarship will easily miss the critical significance and fall into popularly believed errors--technology conferred minimal advantages to Europeans, and when it did it was swords and cannons more than personal firearms. Disease was the decisive factor, followed closely by assaults on the land. Technology ultimately assisted, but only after the initially tenuous foothold was well established. Then, the plow did more to facilitate conquest than did the gun.

President Polk and the National Honor

Few United States presidents were as avowedly expressionistic as President James Knox Polk. During his administration (1845-1849) more land was added to the nation than during that of any predecessor save Thomas Jefferson. Only the Louisiana Purchase and the acquisition of Alaska were greater territorial gains than those made by Polk. He added California, the Territories of Oregon and New Mexico (embracing the Pacific Northwest and the American Southwest), and concluded the annexation of Texas.

Prominent in Polk's rhetoric of expansion is language concerning national honor and destiny. Indeed, it was one of his supporters, John L. O'Sullivan, who coined the expression "manifest destiny."* At crucial points in his communications to Congress, Polk's arguments rely upon imprecise vocabulary: adjectives such as patriotic, just, honorable, and noble abound--often in their noun forms. He opened his inaugural address, for example, by describing the Presidency as "the most honorable and most responsible office on earth"; his "countrymen ... [h]onored [him] with this distinguished consideration" (Richardson, 2223)** Similarly, in his first annual message to Congress he articulated his objections to the British proposal to settle the boundary issue in Oregon:

The British proposition of compromise, which would make the Columbia the line south of 49°, with a trifling addition of detached territory to the United States north of that river, and would leave on the British side two-thirds of the whole Oregon Territory, including the free navigation of the Columbia and all the valuable harbors on the Pacific, can never for a moment be entertained by the United States without an abandonment of their just and clear territorial rights, their own self-respect, and the national honor. (Richardson, 2247-48)

Asserting these "clear territorial rights" was his principal goal as President.

Polk explained the United States' claims with respect to those of European nations in terms which echo the Monroe Doctrine:

it should be distinctly announced to the world as our settled policy that no future European colony or dominion shall with our consent be planted or established on any part of the North American continent. (Ricardson, 2249)

This policy of reserving to the United States exclusive rights of expansion in North America is based on "the principle that the people of this continent alone have the right to decide their own destiny" (Richardson, 2248).

Such language could seem anti-imperialistic, supporting the rights of all peoples to choose their own forms of government; but Polk intends it to be more narrowly construed. Such rights only belong to members of an enlightened, civilized society with republican institutions. Indigenous peoples, as European law asserts, have their title to land extinguished to make way for civilization. Even the Cherokee, the most exemplary of the "civilized tribes", "have not yet advanced to such a state of civilization as to dispense with the guardian care and control of the Government of the United States" (Richardson, 2280). Consequently, disputes between different factions of Cherokee require the paternal intervention of the federal government for resolution. However, Polk's attempts to resolve these disputes by negotiating a new treaty overlooks the fact that it is the refusal of certain members of the tribe to sacrifice their nation's political sovereignty in a treaty with the United States that created the factionalism in the first place.

In his policies towards tribal peoples Polk followed the pattern established by his mentor, Andrew Jackson. Indian tribes were removed from their homelands to Indian Territory where they would be out of the way of white settlers. In his first annual address, Polk described the relations between the United States and the several tribes as "favorable".

Our relations with the Indian tribes are of a favorable character. The policy of removing them to a country designed for their permanent residence west of the Mississippi, and without the limits of the organized States and Territories, is better appreciated by them than it was a few years ago, while education is now attended to and the habits of civilized life are gaining ground among them. (Richardson, 2261)

Those tribal members who most fully assimilate, while they must live in that territory designated for Indians, will be accorded a measure of respect and political autonomy. John Ross, for example, representing "what is termed the government party of the Cherokees" (Richardson, 2309) has his opinions transmitted by President Polk to Congress.

Native Americans (as they would be called later) are not the "natives of this land" who may determine their own destiny in Polk's messages. Rather, it is necessary to "cultivate amicable relations" with the tribes beyond the Rocky Mountains because "care and protection ... is due from the Government in that distant region" (Richardson, 2246). Polk claims in his inaugural address that "[o]ur title to the country of Oregon is 'clear and unquestionable'" (Richardson, 2231). This title is strengthened by America's most patriotic citizens: settlers of western lands.

It is to the enterprise and perseverance of the hardy pioneers of the West, who penetrate the wilderness with their families, suffer the dangers, the privations, and hardships attending the settlement of a new country, and prepare the way for the body of emigrants who in the course of a few years usually follow them, that we are in a great degree indebted for the rapid extension and aggrandizement of our country. (Richardson, 2259)

These men, at the time of his inaugural, are "Preparing to perfect that title [to Oregon] by occupying it with their wives and children" (Richardson, 2231).

But this territorial "aggrandizement" is not a war of conquest. Rather, the structure of the United States as a "confederation of independent States," Polk suggests, assures that its "Government can not be otherwise than pacific" (Richardson, 2230). Even so, it was Polk who led the United States into war with Mexico. He said that this war should have been unnecessary because Mexico, like the United States, had been a European colony that cast off the rule of Europe to form a Republic. The republican government in Mexico proved weaker than that in the United States; under the military leadership of Santa Anna, Mexico pursued a course "of seizure and confiscation of the property of our citizens, the violation of their persons, and the insults to our flag" (Richardson, 2324). This list of Mexico's violations appears repeatedly in Polk's writing leading up to the war with Mexico, as well as in his retrospective comments as peace negotiations progressed. The order varies, but "violation of their persons" never comes first.

Polk prefers abstractions to specific terminology. Although his annual messages are filled with specific numbers listing desired appropriations, his arguments rest on language to which it was difficult to object. War was necessary because Mexico was not "restrained by the laws which regulate the conduct of civilized nations" (Richardson, 2324). Once war broke out, it was Polk's expressed "desire to terminate ... the existing war with Mexico by a peace just and honorable to both parties." The major obstacle to peace, indeed the true cause of the war, was "adjustment of a boundary between the two Republics which shall prove satisfactory and convenient to both" (Richardson, 2309).

Early in Polk's administration, he issued a presidential order mourning the death of Andrew Jackson. In the order George Bancroft, acting Secretary of War, memorialized Jackson as the nation's "most illustrious citizen ... Child of a forest region and a settler of the wilderness ... Crowned with glory in war, in his whole career as a statesman he showed himself the friend and lover of peace" (Richardson, 2234). As his mentor, Polk pursued "pacific" policies which resulted in such territorial gains that in his farewell address he could declare the frontier of the United States to be at its geographical center.



*See Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation (1963).

**James D. Richardson, comp., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. 4, part 3 (1911). Available since 2004 through Project Gutenberg.