Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, May 28, 1830, another in what I think we can say is a through line in this show and in American history.

Let's call it, hey, guess what? They knew it was wrong at the time.

So, yes, here we are May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson, signing the Indian Removal Act into law,

authorizing the president to grant lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands

within existing state borders.

Tribes would be relocated by force over the next nine years, culminating in the Cherokee

Trail of Tears in 1938 and 1939.

We have, of course, talked about this story and Indian removal a bunch on this show from

a number of angles, but today we're going to focus not so much on the

tragedy of Indian removal, which we have looked back on a lot, but the fact that there was

at the time serious political and cultural and moral pushback to this effort. Jackson, of course,

got his way, but not without a fight. So here to discuss, as always, Nicole Hammer

of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello, Jody. Hey there.

Obviously the big lesson we're going to lead to here is the, we have to remember that there,

some of these moments, there was resistance. And even if the final story is they got their way,

the resistance really matters and has an impact. But let's paint a little bit of the political

picture here. It starts mostly with Georgia, right? And Jackson is trying to cut a deal with Georgia

and trying to clear up some space in Georgia. So how does this all come together that we get to this

moment where Jackson is signing these treaties and these packs and forcing Indian removal?

I mean, a lot of this, I think, comes down to the expansion of slavery.

Jackson really wants this land and this territory so that he can expand land ownership that slave owners have.

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