Kansas-Nebraska Act: Andrew Jackson's "On Indian Removal" (December 6, 1830)

    Kansas-Nebraska Act: Andrew Jackson's "On Indian Removal" (December 6, 1830)

      Slavery strife wasn't the only issue plaguing the people of Kansas and Nebraska during the 1850s.

      As a result of the Indian Removal Act, passed in 1830, many Native American tribes had been forcibly relocated from their ancestral homelands to land west of the Mississippi, known then as Indian Territory. Some of those folks ended up in what came to be known as—that's right—the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas.

      (Adding insult to injury, most of those tribes were relocated again in the late 19th century.)

      This speech is President Andrew Jackson's justification of the 1830 Act, and though he uses words like "benevolent" and "happy" in his speech, we have a feeling a lot of people affected by the Act were feeling anything but.