Toward Cherokee removal : land, violence, and the White man's chance / Adam J. Pratt.

Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2020]

©2020.

xii, 221 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Cherokee Removal excited the passions of Americans across the country. Nowhere did those passions have more violent expressions than in Georgia, where white intruders sought to acquire Native land through intimidation and state policies that supported their disorderly conduct. Cherokee Removal and the Trail of Tears, although the direct results of federal policy articulated by Andrew Jackson, were hastened by the state of Georgia...Adam J. Pratt examines how the process of one state's expansion fit into a larger, troubling pattern of behavior. Settler societies across the globe relied on legal maneuvers to deprive Native peoples of their land and violent actions that solidified their claims. At stake for Georgia's leaders was the realization of an idealized society that rested on social order and landownership. To achieve those goals, the state accepted violence and chaos in the short term as a way of ensuring the permanence of a social and political regime that benefited settlers through the expansion of political rights and the opportunity to own land. To uphold the promise of giving land and opportunity to its own citizens--maintaining what was called the white man's chance--politics within the state shifted to a more democratic form that used the expansion of land and rights to secure power while taking those same things away from others."--Adapted from back cover.

English

February 04, 2021

Early American places.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-214) and index.