Andrew Jackson, People of Color and the Word

Andrew Jackson, who was President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, believed strongly that the Bible justified oppression of not only Black people, but American Indians as well. He passed himself off as one who really knew the Bible; he would boast that he had read three chapters of the Bible every day for 35 years prior to his election as President. Victories he had as a soldier he attributed to God; when his forces had defeated forces from Great Britain, then the “greatest nation on the earth,” none would deny, he would say, that the outcome had been providential. He rather viewed himself as “God’s right hand,” carrying out God’s ultimate will. Destruction of people who were not even people, he reasoned, was part of that ultimate will.

Forrest G. Wood writes in “The Arrogance of Faith,” that he considered his campaigns against Indians as … Holy Wars! He resented interference in his battles from the government because it was like the government was putting itself between him and God. At the Battle of Horseshoe Run, where loss of life amongst the Indians was great, Jackson said that it was “ Providence which was dispensing partial evil to produce general good.” In a court case, The Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) the then- President refused to enforce a U.S. Supreme Court ruling which had favored the Indians.

Jackson had grown up in Tennessee, amongst ministers and preachers who thought it their duty to find sanctions of slavery in the Bible. One preacher, the Rev. B.M. Palmer, said that God had entrusted the Black race to the care of the white – which meant that the South was obliged to preserve and perpetuate the institution of slavery.

Therefore, President Jackson saw nothing wrong when, in December of 1830, he called for the “removal of Indians” because God would not prefer a country covered with savages.” He said that the land was occupied by 12 million “happy people,” including the more than 2 million Black slaves. Whites were to take care of the slaves but eliminate the Indians. The Bible endorsed it, he believed.

Jackson believed, based on his understanding of the Bible and the way it had been taught to him, that God had put white people over Blacks because Blacks were not really humans, but beasts. He and others pointed to Genesis 1:26, where God gave man (in their understanding, “man” meant “the white man”) dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the livestock and over all the earth. In Jackson’s view, as in the view of many white religious church-goers, there was God, man (the white man) and the angels on one side of a dichotomous world, and everything else on the other. It was the duty of the white man to take care of the beasts, including Negro slaves, because they were in fact beasts and could not be anything else. Moreover, God was the author of perfect order and said competition was a law of nature. “Nature is neutral,” a preacher wrote. “She submits to those who most effectively assail her, and grants to the fittest… without regard to any other considerations.”

Jackson had these beliefs and as President, was free to share them. He could not see himself as bad, nor would he let anyone see himself as bad, who made it their goal to eliminate Indians and to subjugate Africans.