Perspectives

These documents represent a sampling of some popular and scholarly opinion and analysis of the Cherokee removal.  Note the varying conclusions presented.

1.  Ralph Waldo Emerson to Martin Van Buren

2.  Helen Hunt Jackson, "Georgia's Dishonor"

3.  Fredrick Jackson Turner, "The Advance of the Georgia Frontier"

4.  E. Merton Coulter, "Georgia's Destiny"

5.  William G. McLoughlin, "Georgia's Role in Instigating Compulsory        Indian Removal"

Ralph Waldo Emerson - This letter to President Van Buren represents one of the few political vocalizations by the transcendentalist author.

1.  Ralph Waldo Emerson to Martin Van Buren, in Louis Filler and Allen Guttmann, eds., The              Removal of the Cherokee Nation:  Manifest Destiny or National Dishonor? (Boston:                D.C. Heath and Company, 1962), 94-7, from Complete Works (Centenary Ed.),               (Boston:   Houghlin Mifflin, 1903-04), XI, 89-96.

Helen Hunt Jackson - Academic who, in 1881, published A Century of Dishonor, a scathing attack on state and federal Indian policy.

2.  Helen Hunt Jackson, "Georgia's Dishonor," in Filler and Guttmann, eds., Removal of              Cherokee, 98-101, from Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor (New York:              Harper and Brothers, 1881), 270-79.

Fredrick Jackson Turner - Influential theoretician and historian of the American frontier. 

3.  Fredrick Jackson Turner, "The Advance of the Georgia Frontier," in Filler and Guttmann,              eds., Removal of the Cherokee, 102-05, from Fredrick Jackson Turner, The Rise of the              New West (New York:  Harper and Brothers, 1906), 309-13.

E. Merton Coulter - respected Georgia historian.

4.  E. Merton Coulter, "Georgia's Destiny," in Filler and Guttmann, eds., Removal of the              Cherokee, 106-10, from E. Merton Coulter, Georgia, A Short History (Chapel Hill:              University of North Carolina Press, 1947), 230-37.

William G. McLoughlin - is currently a professor of history at Brown University.  Dr. McLoughlin is regarded as the authority on Cherokee history.

5.  William G. McLoughlin, "Georgia's Role in Instigating Compulsory Indian Removal," The                Georgia Historical Quarterly 70 (Winter 1986):  605-32.