Answer:
The 1830 Indian Removal Act is best understood as an illustration of the widespread hatred of Indians during the Age of Jackson.
Explanation:
When Jackson rose to power the situation with the American Indians was extremely tense. Just a few years before, in 1815, the country began to expand towards the west and ran into the tribes of American Indians who had inhabited the country for centuries. Those occupied lands aroused the desires of the colonies, which initiated a series of campaigns to get the Natives to travel further west in exchange for all economic royalties.
In fact, already during Jefferson's tenure (in office between 1801 and 1809) it had been established that the only natives who could stay east of the Mississippi would be those who had "civilized" and could coexist with the "white man." Based on this, those that had remained in the region were the Chicksaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole and Cherokee tribes. These, in exchange for maintaining their territories, had fixed their settlements, tilled the land, divided their land into private property and had adopted democracy. Some became Christian (at least in appearance) so as not to be expelled from the area.
In 1830, just one year after taking power, Jackson decided to solve the Indian problem by the brave. That is, creating a law to deport them further west. That year, the Indian Removal Act was passed, which obliged the Indians to move to lands west of the Mississippi and authorized the president of the United States to act against all those located to the east of the Mississippi river.
Officially, the politician made this decision because of the need for land to produce cotton and for "national security" (to avoid conflicts between Indians and Americans). However, in addition to these two causes and his own racism, Jackson also sought to create a human barrier between the United States and the regions under the control of other transatlantic powers. With them, Jackson not only sought to empty the Indian territories colonized west of the Mississippi Indian conflicts, but also create a security belt to the Spanish and British threat that was still installed in large North American territories.
Regardless of the cause, in practice, tens of thousands of Indians were urged to leave the houses in which they lived (their lands for centuries) to leave for "reserved" territories.
At the official level, Jackson claimed that the natives had the possibility of refusing this "relocation" and keeping their home in the United States. However, the reality was that the government (at the head of which was the president) exerted a brutal pressure on the tribal chiefs to leave. In addition, they made it clear that, in the face of the refusal, they would use force.
The delegates did decide to revise them. They were ineffective and couldn't unite the country.
He worked in South AfricaIn 1893, he accepted a one-year contract with an Indian company operating in Natal, South Africa. He became interested in the situation of the 150,000 compatriots residing there, fighting against laws that discriminated against Indians in South Africa through passive resistance and civil disobedience.
However, the incident that would serve as a catalyst for his political activism occurred several years later, when traveling to Pretoria, he was forcibly removed from the train at Pietermaritzburg station because he refused to move from the first class to the third class, Destined to the black people. Later, traveling on a stagecoach, he was beaten by the driver because he refused to give up his seat to a white-skinned passenger. In addition, in this trip, he suffered other humiliations when he was denied lodging in several hotels because of his race. This experience brought him much more in touch with the problems faced daily by black people in South Africa. Also, after suffering racism, prejudice and injustice in South Africa, he began to question the social situation of his countrymen and himself in the society of that country.
When his contract was terminated, he prepared to return to India. At the farewell party in his honor in Durban, leafing through a newspaper, it was reported that a law was being drafted in the Legislative Assembly of Natal to deny the vote to the Indians. He postponed his return to India and engaged in the task of elaborating various petitions, both to the Natal Assembly and to the British Government, trying to prevent that law from being approved. Although it did not achieve its objective, since the law was enacted, it managed, however, to draw attention to the problems of racial discrimination against the Indians in South Africa.
Gandhi in South Africa (1895).He expanded his stay in this country, founding the Indian Party of the Congress of Natal in 1894. Through this organization he was able to unite the Indian community in South Africa into a homogenous political force, flooding the press and government with allegations of violations of the Civil rights of the Indians and evidence of discrimination by the British in South Africa.
Gandhi returned to India shortly to take his wife and children to South Africa. Upon his return, in January 1897, a group of white men attacked him and tried to lynch him. As a clear indication of the values that would maintain throughout his life, he refused to report his attackers to justice, stating that it was one of his principles not to seek redress in court for damages inflicted on his person.
At the beginning of the South African War, Gandhi considered that the Indians should participate in this war if they aspired to legitimize themselves as citizens with full rights. Thus, he organized bodies of non-combatant volunteers to assist the British. However, at the end of the war, the situation of the Indians did not improve; In fact, continued to deteriorate.
In 1906, the government of Transvaal promulgated a law that forced all the Indians to register. This led to a massive protest in Johannesburg, where for the first time Gandhi adopted the platform called satyagraha ('attachment or devotion to truth') which consisted of a nonviolent protest.
Gandhi insisted that the Indians openly defy, but without violence, the enacted law, suffering the punishment that the government would impose. This challenge lasted for seven years in which thousands of Indians were imprisoned (including Gandhi on several occasions), beaten and even shot for protest, refuse to register, burn their registration cards and any other form of nonviolent rebellion. Although the government managed to suppress the Indians' protest, the denunciation abroad of the extreme methods used by the South African government finally forced the South African general Jan Christian Smuts to negotiate a solution with Mahatma Gandhi.
