About this Project

Project Overview

This project was conceived by Drew Thorson, a senior majoring in American Literature at George Mason University. It aims to look at Indian Removal through the lens of those who stood in its opposition, taking special interest in the Christian Missionary groups who opposed it, and attempting, along the way, to discern and expose the leadership backbone of this outfit of opposition. With this project, perusing mainly primary materials—congressional documents, essays, etc.—I aim to explore and decipher what it is that motivated their opposition, and to examine how exactly they conveyed and demonstrated this opposition.

My research and findings led me to the writings of one of the spearheading voices of Christian opposition to the Removal Act—Jeremiah Evarts—and to this conclusive, culminating statement: The United States is, historically, a predominately Christian nation; as such, the majority of the nation’s people’s ideologies were in line with that of Jeremiah Evarts and his colleagues. The Christian American citizen was and is the average American citizen, and Evarts’ expressed opposition channeled the voices of countless, voiceless, average citizens. Thus, given this, and given the vehement opposition offered by Christian missionary groups—in tandem with the small margin by which the Removal Act was passed within the House, as well as Andrew Jackson’s strong urging of Congress to endorse the bill—the passage of the Indian Removal Act marked a hotly-contested, hastily-passed bill, which violated the desires and moral values of the majority of the citizens of the United States of America. In short, this bill should never have been passed, because it did not reflect the ideals of the American people.

Site Navigation

The left side of this site features an expandable and collapsible “pages” button, which divides the project into various, distinct sections. Follow and enter, from top to bottom, the various sections, to learn about the background history of Indian Removal, as well as the major actors and voices of opposition to this violent, tumultuous time in American history.