Abraham Lincoln's Political Agenda Summary

The debate over the legality of sovereignty and acquired lands from the native Americans, specifically the Cherokee, has long been debated. The issues involved have included treaties, land sold, and the right of the Government to physically enforce their rules on Indian land "sovereignty". This paper will examine the strategy used by the Federal Governments, the State Governments as well as those of the Cherokee Indians. The three-way relationship as well as the issues will examine how the interpretation of the Constitution changed society prior to the year of 1840.

The subject of tariff and internal improvement is the main question that had to do with the slavery struggle in the west. The first frontier had to meet “Indian questions,” and those questions dealt with the composition of the public domain, the intercourse with other older settlements, of the political extension organization. There were land policies such as having to know the mining experience in regions like Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, and the Indian policy had been a series of experiments on successive frontiers.

Some have said that Abraham Lincoln's beliefs are a mystery. He himself has never proclaimed his beliefs but a lot can be determined by his actions and words. Through observation, there have been quite a lot of conclusions to his faith. Some conclusions are: skepticism, deism, Christianity, theism, fatalism, and even atheism. It's an on-going debate for the conclusion to his faith although we won't be able to ever prove exactly what his beliefs were since he never made a profession, there are many facts leading to his belief in a personal savior.

President Lincoln's initial goal in the Civil War was to hold the nation together. And in this, the war and Reconstruction were a success. With the 13th Amendment, the federal government succeeded in banning slavery. With the 14th Amendment, they defined citizenship and protected all Americans under the law. Extended equal suffrage was given to all men regardless their race, color, or previous condition of servitude in the 15th Amendment. Federal low, such as the Freedman's Bureau and the Civil Rights Act, worked to give civil right to African Americans that allowed them to equally join the government, as well as society. They contributed their effort for equal rights and to establish facilities such as hospitals, schools, residences and railroads.

The purchase of Louisiana doubled the United States in size and was the key to the beginning of westward expansion. This expansion of the U.S. served as one of the defining topics of American history but contrarily, it nearly demolished the entire democracy. Because of Louisiana’s high birth rate and rapid immigration, the United States’ population increased from about five million to more than twenty-three million people. Such expeditious growth as well as economic depressions drove millions of Americans to the west in search of fresh territory and opportunities also known as manifest destiny. At the start of the 1830’s almost one hundred twenty-five thousand Native Americans lived on southeast acres that their ancestors had inhabited for generations. But then President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian removal act which gave the government the authority to trade native held land for land to the west that the United States had obtained with the purchase of Louisiana. By the closing of the decade, only a few Natives were left because the Federal government mandated that they abandon their homeland and go to designated Indian territory. This expedition was better known as the Trail of Tears. The purpose of these reservations was to bring the Native Americans under United States government control, eliminate conflict between the Indians and settlers, and finally to further encourage Native Americans to take on the habits of settlers. In exchange tribes usually received money but it was never a lot and the majority were spent on purchasing food and supplies from traders. But the daily living conditions of the reservations primarily had the most catastrophic results with devastating and long lasting effects. Overall, the rapid territorial expansionism resulted in relocation and brutal mistreatment of Native American occupants of territories now occupied by the United

In late 1863, shortly after major union victories at the battles of Gettysburg, congress alongside President Abraham Lincoln began to consider plans of reuniting the north with the south. This sparked the start of the reconstruction era. The goal of this era was to ultimately readmit the south into the Union and grant the slaves emancipation. Lincoln’s strategy for reconstruction included the Ten Percent Plan. This plan specified that southern states could be readmitted into the Union, if 10 percent of the eligible voters from the voter rolls in the 1860 election pledged their allegiance to the Union and support the emancipation of the slaves.

On April 10th, 1869, the United States Congress established the Board of Indian Commissioners. This establishment authorized the President of the United States to organize a board of ten or less people to oversee all aspects of Native American policy. The Board of Indian Commissioners was a committee that advised the United States federal government on Native American policy. The committee also had the purpose to inspect the supplies that were delivered to Indian reservations to ensure that the government fulfilled the treaty obligations to tribes. President Ulysses S. Grant wanted to come up with a new policy, which would be more humane, for Native American tribes. The policy would be known as the Peace Policy, which aimed to be free of political corruption. The Peace Policy was prominent on Native American reservations, where Christian Churches and the Office of Indian Affairs, would provide Native Americans with moral Indian agents who would establish churches and schools, teach agriculture. Therefore, creating the sense of “civilizing” and/or “Americanizing.” Within the Board of Indian Commissioners, annual reports were commenced. One of these reports, The Seventeenth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners of 1885, is an extremely contradictory document, which attempts to dismantle traditions, treat Native Americans in an inhumane manner, and regress any progress the United States government had with Native Americans.

The presidency of Andrew Jackson was marked by extreme government reforms which resulted in the birth of our modern democracy, but the darkest part of Jackson’s presidency was his policy with the Native American Indians. The relationship between the United States government and the Native Americans had long been considered unstable (Marsico 6). With the arrival of European settlers at Jamestown in 1607 two radically different cultures clashed. The meeting of these two worlds was often benign but other encounters proved hostile. The enticement of the new found world and the idea of a new start were powerful incentives for European settlers to flood into America. Indians roamed the land but the European influx brought diseases to which the natives had no immunity, the native populations were severely affected. As more immigrants arrived, the land sacred to the Native Americans was being taken by white settlers, the Indians couldn’t compete with the white man’s population and technology. From 1721 to 1819, more than 90 percent of Indian land had been surrendered, including Cherokee lands (What). With the European belief of superiority the Indians seemed like a far less advanced culture and a people easily conquered. As the white man overpowered various

his plan for Reconstruction was based on forgiveness. So he issued the Proclamation of Amnesty. The goal for the Reconstruction Era was for President Lincoln and his supporters, to rejoin all of the states to the Union and to help rebuild the south. Lincoln was going to grant amnesty to all that rejoined the Union without fear of punishment, but since he was assassinated he couldn’t follow through with his plan. It was all up to Andrew johnson and he was nothing like Lincoln. Lincoln was a Republican that passed important bills, protected freedmen, and wanted to give the states that succeeded punishment. Andrew did none of that when Lincoln was assassinated . Andrew was basically

“There were scores of Indian tribes living across Louisiana, but, given their lack of effective political organization, their inability to combine forces into an alliance, their utter dependence on whites for rifles, and the experience of Americans east of the Appalachians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and in Kentucky and Ohio in the 1790s, it could be taken for granted that the conquest of the Indian tribes would be bloody, costly, time-consuming, but certain.” The Indians’ government was no match for our government. We were and still are so far ahead of them when it came to politics, we needed to keep things in order by our government being in charge. In order for the westward expansion to be effective we needed to be in charge and take control of the land.

It has shown the difficulties when dealing with Native Americans and the manoeuvring that was required with each treaty. The challenges of working with the Indian Office. Not only this, the correspondence has shown the influence of the Office of Indian Affairs since its inauguration in 1824. James Calhoun’s correspondence has not been used extensively in order to show the dangers of the travelling during the nineteenth century as well as the challenges of the political environment. My work accepts the theory of borderlands as a cultural barrier as well as geographical one, however the reason the Santa Fe Trail was different to others was due to the cultural outlook. My argument is still that the Santa Fe Trail was only as dangerous as any other trail, James Calhoun faced the same challenges as other in his trade. Challenges faced with Native Americans were similar throughout the country, and James Calhoun did everything possible to help ease the passage of Americans as well as Native Americans through the South west. This argument takes the arguments of borderlands and adds the political component, revealing that the politicians and policies used to protect the traders. They used military escorts, treaties and agreements with Native Americans in order to establish a safe trading state throughout the time period. Prior to the injection of James Calhoun in the

This brief essay considers the struggle of Indians and the U.S. government in the 1830s to resolve conflicts over land acquisition and the scope and nature of Indian rights under treaties.

Despite this special government-to-government relationship, deeply rooted in the history of the United States and its treatment of Indian nations, federal policies for dealing with Indian nations have not always been faithful to this trust responsibility. Federal policy has varied radically from a policy of annihilation, to assimilation, to termination, to self-determination. Each has been influenced by the political and social climate of the era originating to the policy. So, for example, when gold fever spurred non-Indians to invade Indian Country to extract this precious metal, federal legislation removed this land from the Indian Country, resulting in broken treaty promises and removal of tribes from place to place. The trust relationship and federal supervisory authority over Indian nations rests upon Congress' plenary power over Indian affairs.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates were “one of the most exciting political contests that has ever occurred” (Guelzo xii). Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas participated in seven debates across the state of Illinois in the weeks leading up to the 1858 senatorial election. The debates were formatted so that the first speaker spoke for an hour, the second spoke for ninety minutes, and then the first had an additional thirty minutes to speak. Slavery was one of the main issues covered in all of the debates. These debates were of monumental importance to Lincoln’s political career, as they launched him into the national stage and prepared him for a run at the presidency.

v. Lincoln argues that not allowing slavery to expand, gradual emancipation and the colonization of free slaves were logical ways to address the issues