THE RISE OF THE NEW WEST: FRONTIER POLITICAL PRESSURE, STATE-FEDERAL CONFLICT, AND THE REMOVAL OF THE CHOCTAWS, CHICKASAWS, CREEKS, AND CHEROKEES, 1815-183

This dissertation examines the pressure that Georgians, Alabamans, and Mississippians exerted on federal officials to extinguish Indian title to all of the land within the limits of the three states between 1815 and 1837. It compares the attitudes and actions of the residents of these states toward the natives and explains why the frontiersmen in each commonwealth responded as they did. The dissertation also explores the role Indian policy played in increasing southern sectionalism and racism and in the development of the Second American Party System. The approach is narrative, comprehending three detailed state-level studies with some attention to events on the national level.;Georgians were the most determined to rid their state of its Indian residents. Mississippians were least hostile toward the natives, with Alabamans between the two extremes. Intense land hunger, high levels of Indian-white violence, and politicians who exploited dissatisfaction with federal Indian policy for political gain were among the factors that made Georgians bellicose. In contrast, the absence of these forces in Alabama and Mississippi, coupled with the persistence of Jeffersonian humanitarianism (which preached the need to treat the natives honorably), instilled patience among state residents.;As president, Andrew Jackson encouraged the hesitant Mississippians and Alabamans to extend state jurisdiction over the Indians. But only in Georgia was this legislation used to harass the natives. Jackson, nevertheless, exploited Indian fears of state control to convince the headmen to agree to leave their ancestral lands. Yet, the president was forced to grant the Indians several concessions. The allotment of small reserves to individual tribesmen proved the most unworkable of the concessions. When the whites who rushed into Indian territory were threatened with eviction by federal troops, state-federal relations deteriorated. The opponents of Jackson in Alabama and Georgia, whose primary objections to the president's actions lay in other areas, exploited dissatisfaction with the way Jackson implemented his Indian policy to break publicly with the popular Old Hero. Because the issue--one of the first contested by the political parties emerging in the 1830s--involved state-federal relations, state righters gained support for their extreme views under the guise of ridding the southern states of their Indian residents.