Quote:
Originally Posted by victimofGM
My high school years was in the 80s in south Louisiana and we did touch upon WW2 as well as the “Trail of Tears” as part of US History. They didn’t cover the more disturbing aspects of what the Nazis did and never mentioned the things the Japanese did except for Pearl Harbor attack. Learning about those details later in life made me understand why it was delayed until university level. However I believe that as high school juniors and seniors we should have been mature enough to learn about such things.
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A key point about the Trail of Tears is not only about the forced removal
per se. It's about the fact that the President of the United States defied the Supreme Court decision upholding the Cherokees' right to remain on their ancestral land. He famously said, [Supreme Court Chief Justice] "John Marshall has made his law. Now let him enforce it!" And he commanded the army to round up the Cherokees and march them off to the "Indian Territory", now Oklahoma.
IOW, the Supreme Court doesn't have its own police force to enforce the legal decisions it makes. The Executive Branch of government, which commands the armed forces, is supposed to assist in upholding the law. Pres. Andrew Jackson didn't agree with the Supreme Court decision, though, so he used his power as Commander-in-Chief of the army to break the law, and there was nothing the Supreme Court could do about it. This provoked an unprecedented Constitutional crisis.
It's quite a Civics lesson in how the branches of government are supposed to work, and of the extent to which things can go wrong, when there's a strong-willed President with his own agendas, who scoffs at the law. It's also the first of many subsequent examples of when Native people win a Supreme Court case, the repercussions ultimately result in their losing, after the dust settles.