The Legal Ideology of Removal

Because the federal government upheld Native American self-dominion, southerners bent on expropriating Indian land sought a legal toehold through state supreme court decisions. This book shows how state courts enabled the mass expulsion of Native Americans from their southern homelands in the 1830s.

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This study shows how state courts enabled the mass expulsion of Native Americans from their southern homelands in the 1830s. Because the federal government upheld Native American self-dominion, southerners bent on expropriating Indian land sought a legal toehold through state supreme court decisions. As Tim Alan Garrison discusses Georgia v. Tassels (1830), Caldwell v. Alabama (1831), Tennessee v. Forman (1835), and other cases, he shows how proremoval partisans exploited regional sympathies. By casting removal as a states' rights issue, rather than a moral one, they won the wide support of a land-hungry southern populace.