tv documents america's story. on sunday book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for cspan2 comes from these television companies and more. including medco. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ medco along these television companies support cspan2 as a public service.

>> they are a huge amount half of alabama two-thirds of what became mississippi, about a fifth of georgia, and it's not just how much land they own but how valuable that land was. it was among the most valuable al cultural land -- agricultural land in the world at the time. removal covered the entire united states and think of it larger than seven story, and mostly the seven story but there were indian people in the north and northwest that moved as well and had much smaller plots of land by the early 19th century. >> you cover a number of other tribes who were also expelled from new york and ohio, and i know it ishi different from trie to tribe and state to state but generally, what kind of rights did they cast in the south. it was also contested.

it still contested to this day. but but they were until a series of court fully sovereign peoples with the only limitation being that they could not sell their lands to a foreign power that ch >> they could not sell the property tobu french for example and other way with sovereign people and had elections and they had court systems, they had constitutions so in the same way of the united states was fully sovereigned and so too were they in the early 19th century. >> before the draft to dispossess indians from the native lands in the 1830s, which is the focus of the book. the prevailing u.s. policy towardpr indians sense that jefferson with that approach.

>> we also called the indian policy if this was a policy that really justha happened from the beginning ofg the republic rigt up to the removal and it was eccentric and sometimes well intentioned and sometimes noted but the ultimate goal was to teach them english to have christian to make them farm in the same way as white farmers did with the time to get owl their seasonal hunt and dress like white people. ensuring all ways that is good

and cynical. this was the 308 seizure disorders and it was a policy that invaded people's personal background in many, many ways and sometimes they did that sincerely and s sometimes they d that strategically and that was in a way in the shallow. with the election of andrew jackson in 1828, it was a game changer in that policy. he ran on the promise to solve the indian question but pushing indians east -- or west of the mississippi. they should present this as a humanitarian solution to rescue indians from extinction. what evidence did proponents have for this and how was that framed? >> i should probably start by saying they've been dis-processed from their land

from their first moment they could set foot on the continent and between the republic and 1830, the people were in -- passed in 1830 and there was no formal consist federal policy to dispossess native people and it was training between native peoples and the united states. the policy needed to find the space and they couldn't say

simply whether or not their allands in alabama and mississippi. instead they have to say it was in florida and women made the purpose policy and they had in the popular troughs and numerous articles they planted and the decrease in the population and it may have occurred between the

dynamics of the quite comparable and where it was and they were frustrated they couldn't get this message out where they found some letters of cretes writing to the presidente and saying, you know, you keep repeating that over andov over again that we're de-mentioned but we're not. may are a growing population and stay where we are.

>> the against indian and the noble and it is well known that indian removal as it was so gentipu leave and who was making them. so there was vigorous opposition to the indian removal who was aligned in that opposition and how organized was it? >> that's opposition that was rooted in envisionist community and that's not to say that there were a number of people who just simply wanted to cut their losses. they didn't think this was a just policy necessarily but they felt that it's not protecting

them in any way and showing the man and their property and the one thing to do was to cut their losses and in fact they want to stay and the lamb. there were very practical reasons for them to stay and then and said we're going to do and on the missionaries who lived among them and church age groups and the north and this is the single most controversial group for the republic and up to

that date and propsed thousands and thousands with both men and women in this novel with this participants and the petition being fouled and it's a critical petition to congress. >> they were condemning the northern hypocrisy and it's in 1825 saying if you want to make indian citizens, negroes will be next and the expulsion of natives and expansion of slavery

werere really intertwined so how were protections for slavery exposed in the argument that southerners were making for indian removal? >> yeah, in so many ways as we talked about was if the native people were on this valuable cottonth produced in the land ad they're sort of through alabama, georgia and mississippi and runs right through the traditional homeland of the greek and choctaw nation. they had experience with moving people because they had been engaged in sort of transatlantic slave trade and engaged in the industry of trade.

so sot americans -- the americans found insult to white supremacy and i think that's was also very much apart of their antagonism. >> confrontations and in 1835 and in the southern slave holders, these champion states rights didn't realize they're

going to need the jackson government to g forcibly remove thousands of native people. did anyone in jackson administration and this is a great island we have the southern politicians and down in georgia and championing stage right andhe the help of the federal government. they need federal lands and the federal government to pay for it and supervise this operation so the administration who are quickly with congressmen who in

both parties who uphold the congressman congressman and the threat of that and it's an active admonition of 199 tasks in the house and this was in a

congress that was overwhelmingly. >> they bankrolled this expulsion and un-equivalent and coming out and joseph d biers and going down and it was probably the central player on wall street in financing this operation and he was born and raised in connecticut and on the

second day of the 19th century and it's kind of emerging as the senator of american finance and he kind of got it on the ground floor and they became important financier on wall street and in 2018 in financing cultivation and turning the distance and see him emerging in 1830s. he recognized instantly there was going to be tremendous amount of land available and the lemon down and it was the deal

of 1830s and that last quantity and the the massive amount of land that they got in mississippi and it's right in the most versus frequency tile land in -- fertile land in the state and they slept it for enormousus profit and 10, sometimes 30 tribes they have invested in this property.

>> 53,000 people win government land foror access to government property and 4.2 million acres and majority of cherokee, choctaw and more didn't want to go. >> it made a difference in how the. story unfolded but the end result was the same. but generally speaking with them and the gang was to separate these people from their land as

cheaply as possible and now they could flood their land for an enormous profit. they slammed and sometimes they captured crete indians, basically chained them up and said we're t not going to have e same. plenty of people

speculators that will say we'll give you $10 if you go before this judge and say you indeed are suchd and such a person. even if you're not. sometimes claiming it was just a fire storm and speculators were based in georgia and based in columbus, georgia. >> the stories are just incredible that you tell in the book. surveyors dragging their chains right through somebody's fields, people buying land and building

right up -- plowing right up to the porch or doorstep of other people and some people leaving their homes and coming back and finding squatters in them and it was just a disgrace. this is a point of view toll time not pivotal time in the history of europe and young republic and administrative muscle and the point of your book showing how woefully incapable it was for that task. do you have some examples of how those limitations played out? >> so, it's a tremendous -- it doesn't -- about 80,000 people in the federal governmentmented to deport, which doesn't sound like a lot. the government make as lot of choices.

theygi were completely overwheld with the logistics and had never been dealing with those operations and they were not moving soldiers around, who are moverring in the direction you tell them to. there are families, infants, pregnant women, elderly folks, farm people, and so they're trying to mover them over a hundred, sometimes a thousand miles to the west over roads that don't exist. they have to build roads on occasion. they don't know where they're going. they don't have 21st century weather reports and they get caught in severe winter storms,

that lead to just people shivering in the cold for weeks on end. they're completely overwhelmed by the logistics of it. basically don't know the capabilities and they're -- there's a serve disregard i think and -- most of them don't have clothes to keep them warm. there's just a handful of tents,

the steam boats are not where they're supposed to be, there are people there for weeks waiting for the river to thaw so they can continue their journey west ward. but that's just one of numerous examples of the issue with the federal government. >> a lot of confidence and it bring as lot of life to accounts but one of them is george gibbson and he's the head of the budget for the war department and the man known to calculate cost to a fractions and price instructions and getting the

report and you account for a decade worth of track and there's aat man with a field for funds to help feed these people on the arkansas river he said. it made even worse when the stock wall broke in the midwest and a quick carry.

>> the federal archives recording all of this and just these atrocious, atrocious events so the challenge of the cover and it's then presenting them in a way and you're getting it in a lot of ways but a important one and&waiting for someone to look at. supplying troops with food and

it's correspondence before 1830 pending so many pounds of beef or pork here or there to feed the troops. he's an old franked of jackson, he's known him from before 1812 so interesting as soon as they asked council, jackson you would think the operation would be the responsibility off the superintendent but jackson takes the authority away from the superintendent and gives to the commissary general. he gets the invitation and obsessed with every dollar and every cent to the faction of a penny and he'd scour these accounts and it's obsessed with

this and don't see they were pictured and doesn't really see he came in misery that this operation has created and that would be operation down the line.

>> it's harder to be asympathetic when you're suffering and some say it's preposterous to move a thousand people 800 miles when you've god children in some mile high any medicine or to not have a doctor. why would you not pay for a doctor and then respond and say i'm not authorized to pay for that. they were available to move folks it's much more valuable and making it the single most important thing.

>> people in a way were charged for the cost of their deportation. what are some of the things they were billed for? >> thehe removal and so they're receiving a bill and this goes on and on so goes after the fact and i'm still trying to rectify the account and they receive a bill a bit later and the people who move down the line and say this ishi not right. we had a fraction of people or we have to pay for the ration of so many of these scores of people but they died. they died soon after we set out

and you're still billing us for last year inti the indian territory. they are billed for the cost of postage. they were billed for the fee, for the hide and horse oaf an indiannd region. they're billed for pencils, they are billed for a new bookcase for the commissary general and they're every little item. they'd add it up and they'd send the bill to the operation. >> it is really incredible and leading to starvation, some even beingin hunted in the woods for

poached for food and there's extreme pressure fore. them to leave and intensified a great deal and the seminal in 1836 in the middle of the decade and the question, and they're able to remain on the historic land west of north carolina. >> probably the seminals and it was going to be the people who

had different calls to yield and these mountains are so precipitous and they're so dense that if we have an area that's going to be a disaster for us. it's not interesting of suggesting the possibility a of kind of an alternative possibility and the cherokees and even if they're late 1837,

they still think the windows still open or there's some small possibility they could still stay in hair homeland. with nothing admiral about this. >> it sends a shutter through white planters who by this time are outnumbered by enslaved people in alabama and mississippi.

>> it really lace i think what the policy is all about and there's pretense in the first half of the decade in the early years of the policy that's humanitarian. we can become citizens of the state and the vast majority of them take that option and reasonable listen to this, great disappointment of planters and you want that land desperatety

based on speculators in new york and abroad. this is what we now call the second seminal war, which runs frommb 1835 to 1842 and these really become wars of extermination and i know there's federal officers that explicitly

become the war of extermination and license have correspondence say that the secretary of war wants to exterminate the seminal. there's environment where they're dying by the score from disease, but they're also chasingn down seminal families and there are these awful stories of parents of seminal family, husband and wife and their two children. i remember this one and they

were certainly northwest. >> there's a comment here and make the point and the blacks going down the line. >> planning and if not it had people holding onto their land and they're forming an alliance and the turn together and they

are so pressed with indians and indians who used and enslaved people to pick cotton and they somewhat resemble life planters across the south and they were small in number. there were also lots-over native

families embraced and the most important thing when they put this in the spectrum and the native community. >> just want tofy clarify for pe who asked a question about rather thanra civilizing the savages wasn't the goal of the u.s. policy both before and after and being able to take indian lands. i beef we're answering that question but i didn't know if you had that to answer there. >> policy, you could step down and suggest there was a

sentiment from 1500 up to the present and desire to eliminate the people and we talk specifically about policies, about this highly debative and the question and the american

revolution and the tyranny that existed in europe and really truly. >> to see and read some of the things that native americans argued for, you know, appealing to the constitution and liberty and the concept of equality in the book. but i want to move forward before we have to close and we find, you know, may of 1836 and

by the deadly weaponsive and how the u.s. government and 80,000 and by your calculation it's $75 million. that's about a trillion dollars today equal to $12.5 million per depor tee. can you account for some of those numbers. >> converting from then to the present and there's multiple ways of doing that and so, you know, that's the kind of decision you need to make and

down the line for households or house and the chicken broad creek and cherokee and you can imagine that all of your family's wealth was overnighted

nightedand it's so look at the f the shock saw or chick saw -- choctaw or chick saw land taken from them and it was a capital nation and more at the time. and more overnight. this is multigenerational which is stolen from you and it

resinates and one thing that strikes me when i come back to jv beards with the numbers and amazingly his great, great, great grandmother died in 1990. she was married according to the society pages and it's choctaw

and chickansaw nation and it's extremely profitable and and a lot more pressure from more labor in the south that separated families. getting discussed by policymakers and citizens alike in ways that would be unimaginable just a couple of years ago. have there been any calls for

reparation and what did that qumean? >> so there a arrives an indian and account for errors and the admonition and the -- a lot of them passed with indigenous

americans and that was consolation. >> there's a lot of analysis at the end of this book about the expulsion being the war that slave holders wanted. can you tell me what that means to you. >> on the border and find out we'll defend our slaves and

until they got what they wanted. at the end of the day, they did did get exactly what they wanted and what they wanted was to expand across the south, to move the slaves from the chapel of virginia and south carolina west and african american families were broken up. hundreds of thousands and they had visions of them and they're

going -- >> claude -- caludio, thank you for -- claudio, thank you for your time. we recommend you purchase it from combined effect pee lines o atlantahistorycenter.com to see the schedule and i want to thank you all for being here. thank you for your time. >> the guest on c span with more than 70 appearances and here's a

look at some of those appearances. >> how important it was to continue to do this kind of event. when you think of what we have

in this country and in our public library system, there's nothing like it in the world. when you walk through the doors of a public library anywhere in the country, little town, big city, doesn't matter. when you walk through those doors, you're walking through the portals of freedom. curiosity, curiosity is one of the essential elements of being a human being. curiosity is what separates us from the cab damages and it's accelerative like cabbage and i encourage students to ask questions, not just to know the answers to every question, but to ask questions because by asking questions that you find things out. >> if i tell you that the king died and then the queen died, that's a sequence of events.

if i said the king died and queen died of grief, that's a story. i'm moved by the story and if i'm really moved by the story and excited about pursuing that subject, that story for three, four, five or more years. is this the book i have to write right now? i know it is and so far it's happened many times. >> this was a young man's revolution and a young man's cause. in washington being a member of congress was known by the other -- others in congress and they picked him because of the war being over and washington

did return the command to the congress. he did something that had never been done before. when george iii was told that washington might do this, george iii said if he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world. he stood back from power as he had promised to do in the beginning.

# >> john adams went out under the stars and so inspired by the sermon he said in a state of euphoria but also seemed bay feeling of relief that his

decision not to become a minister was at last resolved. he wrote of the glorious shows of nature overhead and intense sensation of pleasure they evoked.

>> i think the first page of a book is critical, crucial. how it both ends is critical.

>> they're there and if everything were easy they'd do nothing but sit around and not only not accomplish much of anything. i don't think we'd be very happy. people need help and all these advances that's happening and happening right now under our very noses will be written about for years and years and maybe the most important events of our time. it's exciting and it's all human ingenuity and human perseverance. admiral use of the mind, all of it.