Abuse of power: Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act of 1830
Abuse of power: Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act of 1830
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DOI：
10.1111/j.0018-2370.2003.00055.x
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发表时间：
2003-12-01
期刊：
影响因子：
0.2
通讯作者：
Cave, AA
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文献类型：
--
作者：
Cave, AA
几乎所有关于杰克逊时代的历史记载，无论是学术性的还是通俗性的，都用了一些篇幅来描述美国东部印第安居民迁移到密西西比河以西的印第安领地的过程，但很少有人承认，杰克逊政府实施的这一过程违反了国会授权迁移的立法中所包含的保证。事实上，历史学家经常误解和歪曲这部法律的规定。例如，最近的一位作家错误地声称，“1830年，美国国会通过了......一项授权使用军事力量迫使密西西比河以东的所有土著居民搬迁到西部的法令。”[1]一份被广泛阅读的美国历史调查报告认为，该法律授权“总统如果愿意，可以将任何东部部落送到密西西比以外，必要时可以使用武力”。其他教科书也有同样的说法。[2]虽然熟悉主要资料来源的专家们肯定知道1830年通过的立法的局限性，但他们一般都把重点放在驱逐程序本身上，而且在大多数情况下，几乎没有注意到法律规定与政府规定之间的差异。
WHILE VIRTUALLY ALL historical accounts of the Jackson era, both scholarly and popular, devote some space to the relocation of Indian inhabitants of the eastern United States to an Indian territory west of the Mississippi, very few acknowledge that the process as it was carried out by the Jackson administration violated guarantees contained in the congressional legislation which authorized removal. Indeed, historians frequently misunderstand and often misrepresent the provisions of this law. One recent writer, for example, claims erroneously “in 1830 the United States Congress passed... a statute authorizing use of military force to compel the relocation of all indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi River to points west.” 1 A widely read survey of American history maintains that the law empowered “the President to send any eastern tribe beyond the Mississippi if he wished, using force if needed.” Other textbooks contain the same claim. 2 While specialists familiar with the primary sources are certainly aware of the limits of the legislation passed in 1830, they have generally focused on the removal process itself and, for the most part, have devoted little if any attention to the discrepancy between the law’s provisions and the administration’s