Following up on the decision to put
Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, former senator Jim Webb tried to defend Andrew Jackson.
Jim Webb claims uninformed 'political correctness' used to denigrate Andrew Jackson
By Meteor Blades
Webb's claim:
Robert Remini, Jackson’s most prominent biographer, wrote that his intent was to end the increasingly bloody Indian Wars and to protect the Indians from certain annihilation at the hands of an ever-expanding frontier population.The reality:
As for Jackson’s alleged desire to protect the Indians from clashes with whites, it should not be forgotten that the forcible cession of millions of acres of Indian land was one of Jackson’s claims to fame. He did it to make space for white settlers throughout the South and for his personal profit in the real estate boom that followed the Indians’ ceding of land at gunpoint.
When the Tennessee River Valley in what is now Alabama was ceded, Jackson and his favored pals took 45,000 acres for themselves. As Steve Innskeep pointed out last year, “Jackson both created and scored in the greatest real estate bubble in the history of the United States up to that time.”
Indians who had allied themselves with Jackson in the so-called Red Stick Creek War were much praised by him, but when they later sought government payment for losses incurred in their support of Jackson, he told the secretary of war that their claims were a “complete tissue of groundless falsehood.”Comment: Give Webb a Stereotype of the Month nomination for his ignorance of the definition of genocide, and for minimizing Jackson's genocidal actions. Removing the Indians was about stealing their land and eliminating them, not keeping them from harm.
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