Question

Why did Congress pass the Indian Removal Act of 1830Check all that apply

Answer 1

The correct answers about the Indian Removal Act's goals are: it was a way to free up land for white settlers to move onto (B) and also to keep white settlers from living alongside American Indians (E).

Since the beginning of the XIXth century, European Americans were trying to expand into Alabama and Mississippi present territories. This Act made it possible "within reasonable terms" to acquire Indian lands.

The Act was also based on President Jackson's arguments that the existence of an independent Indian nation within a state's borders was absurd and that was safer for Indians to live away from the whites because otherwise their land would be repeatedly invaded and their lives destroyed.

Jackson's and later Van Buren's Indian policy was strongly opposed and became one of the most intense debates of American politics of that century.

In the 1800s, the westward expansion was one of the greatest driving forces of American society. To own land and to work on it was the symbol of freedom thus it was everyone's goal. The potential that a frontier had within itself due to possible expansion represented the promises of America back then.