Andrew Jackson: Conquest, Indian Removal and Power Over Law

By Christina Snyder

In 1817 General Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, and a decade later he made Indian Removal the centre of his presidency. This account traces how conquest displaced law — from executions without legal process to the 102-to-97 House vote for the Indian Removal Act — and why opponents warned it risked tyranny.

Florida 1817: war without authorisation

During 1817, General Andrew Jackson marched into Florida, territory formally claimed by Spain yet chiefly occupied by Seminole communities. His forces pursued a scorched-earth campaign — razing settlements, torching maize fields and looting depots — aiming to use fear and starvation to force a Seminole capitulation.

Soldiers slew fighters and noncombatants alike. They seized the Indigenous chiefs Hillis Harjo and Homathle Micco alongside Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert Ambrister, two Britons who had assisted those Native towns. Jackson ordered every one of them put to death absent legitimate legal process.

Those incursions into Florida proceeded with no congressional authorisation, despite the fact that warfare and dealings with Indigenous nations belonged to federal authority. Lawmakers opened an inquiry.

An imperial republic divided

Apologists contended Jackson was merely continuing his predecessors: James Monroe had cautioned European monarchies against meddling in America’s backyard, while Thomas Jefferson, an ardent territorialist, had arranged the Louisiana Purchase so that the “Empire of Liberty” might eventually rule the continent.

Backers of Jackson celebrated his forceful method of grabbing territory and imposing control upon alien peoples. Yet detractors cautioned that such despotic imperialism would plant the roots of national collapse.

Senator John Calhoun reminded his colleagues that the founding fathers saw their republic as an experiment in democracy not seen since the days of ancient Rome. He noted that, in Rome, Augustus Caesar had seized power from the Senate and, while the emperor “did not change the forms of the Roman Republic”, he “exercised a most despotic power over the laws, the liberty and the prosperity of the citizens.”

The present era echoes Jackson’s time in many respects. Then, as now, some championed the assertion of raw power while others worried about the rule of law. Adversaries of “King Andrew”, as they called Jackson, warned about the concentration of power in the executive branch. Their understanding of history suggested that unchecked power would lead to tyranny or the downfall of society.

The 1828 election and the Indian Removal Act

In spite of — or possibly due to — that condemnation, Jackson’s standing with voters, then limited solely to white men, expanded. Trading on martial renown, he captured the presidency by securing over 55% of the popular vote in 1828.

Central to his agenda was the measure remembered as the Indian Removal Act, designed to expel every eastern Indigenous American to an ill-defined zone termed “Indian Territory”, west of the Mississippi River. Jackson and his allies aimed to provide more land to their constituents; they were especially eager to seize the rich cotton lands of the Deep South.

Although citizens broadly endorsed national growth, they split over the imperial venture’s extent and methods. In the House, the Indian Removal Bill scraped through with 102 votes in favour and 97 against. Resistance ran deepest in the north-east.

The Christian Advocate, a weekly newspaper published in New York, warned that “Nations which establish themselves by acts of injustice toward others, which extend over them a cruel dominion merely because a stronger arm enables them to do so, need expect nothing less than the reaction of a retributive providence as a punishment for all such deeds of injustice.”

Treaties, sovereignty and “subjects”

Several House members from the South, among them Davy Crockett, likewise opposed the legislation. Crockett explained that he “had always viewed the native Indian tribes in this country as a sovereign people…recognised as such from the very foundation of the Government; and the United States were bound by treaty to protect them; it was their duty to do so.”

In legal terms, Crockett got to the heart of the matter: the United States had recognised the sovereign rights of Native nations in treaties, which identified and protected Native dominion over their lands. Forcing Native nations to give up land would violate these treaties, which are binding under the constitution.

Once agreements may be disregarded, federal statutes and judicial rulings may be too. Andrew Jackson knew this — he had personally negotiated many treaties with Native nations. But he viewed treaties as a relic of the founding era, when the United States was too weak to conquer Native nations.

In the aftermath of the War of 1812, the United States emerged as a continental power. Jackson argued that Indigenous Americans should be treated as “subjects” not sovereigns.

Jackson’s imperial style divided the nation and weakened its global standing. By brushing aside Indigenous compacts, it entrenched the notion that statutes become dispensable once strength suffices. With its new status and power, the country chose coercion over law, executive force over constitutional checks and balances, and conquest over treaty obligations.

Removal as endured disaster

For Indigenous nations this arrived less as philosophical doctrine than as endured disaster. Even though the Indian Removal Act did not authorise the use of force, violence came from all directions to compel Native people to leave their homelands.

Federal troops and state militias dragged people from their homes and imprisoned them in concentration camps. Ordinary Americans mimicked Jackson’s tactics, stealing property and possessions, burning houses, torching fields and using violence and the threat of famine to drive people away.

The Muscogee petition of 1832

Through their 1832 petition opposing Removal, Muscogee Nation chiefs invoked the past. They reminded Congress that all settlers were immigrants. Europeans came to North America “few in number and feeble in strength”, but Native people gave these newcomers “land on which to live” and “food to supply their hunger”.

Now that the United States had become powerful, Muscogees asked, “For which of our services to you…are we subjected to the penalties of forfeiture?” Native leaders called on American citizens to remember their own past and to consider the future, keeping in mind the precarious nature of political power.

Why the Jackson precedent still warns

Those cautions retain their force. Jacksonian imperialism wasn’t a regrettable aberration but an early stress test for American democracy. Perhaps cowed by his popularity, Congress chose not to censure Jackson over Florida.

Emboldened, he kept stretching presidential limits and ultimately drew a Senate censure in 1834 for withdrawing federal deposits from the Second Bank of the United States without its approval. Recalling America’s initial imperial experiment exposes an unsettling reality: when power expands faster than law, the United States sacrificed constitutional restraint, treated some as expendable “subjects” and risked descending into Augustus Caesar’s Rome.

Christina Snyder is the McCabe Greer Professor of the American Civil War Era at The Pennsylvania State University.

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