Grace Hart
Editorializing Creek Removal
Monroe’s presidency from March 1817 to March 1825 as an “Era of Good Feelings,” in which both the North and the South largely supported the Democratic-Republican Party in a period of one-party rule, but this unity masked the underlying roots of sectionalism.51 The two regions had been developing along different economic, cultural and political lines since the colonial era, and these differences became more pronounced during the early 19th century.The North underwent a market revolution in which its economy became increasingly industrialized, and the region developed transportation and commercial infrastructure to facilitate long-distance trade.52 In the South, however, Eli Whitney’s 1793 invention of the cotton gin enabled cotton cultivation across the Deep South, leading to the emergence of a cotton-based plantation economy and deepening the region’s commitment to slavery.53 These differences in northern and southern economies and cultures led to different political interests and thus sectional tensions. Many in the North believed the Constitution’s ‘three-fifths compromise’ unfairly enabled the South to capitalize on its rapidly growing slave population to gain representatives in Congress.54 Tensions over the sectional balance of power peaked during the 1820 controversy over the admission of Missouri, a slave state, into the Union. Even though members of Congress brokered a compromise, the episode highlighted the different political interests of the two regions and convinced many southerners of the North’s hostility toward slavery and lack of respect for Southern honor and property.55 Federal Indian policy was an important component of this developing sectionalism. Indian removal was debated throughout the 1820s, and the debate at the end of the decade divided along regional lines and became so contentious that some southern politicians raised the possibility
of secession.56 President Jackson advocated Indian removal, but the policy had limited support in the North, even among members of his own party.57 After Jackson introduced the Indian Removal Bill to Congress, northern senators and representatives spoke against the bill and introduced proposals to block it, while southerners and westerners supported the bill and defeated northern proposals.58 In addition, northern churches, missionary societies, abolitionists and other reformers led a popular movement against the Indian Removal Act. 59 Even though Indian removal became a point of sectional contention by the end of the 1820s, in 1825, opposition to the Treaty of Indian Springs crossed sectional lines. While they may have had different motivations for criticizing the treaty, newspapers from every region in the country nevertheless published nearly identical arguments against the treaty. This 1825 consensus is particularly remarkable given the development of sectionalism in this era and the heated sectional debate over Indian removal that took place only four years later. While newspaper opposition to the treaty crossed sectional lines, editorial coverage of the aftermath of the Treaty of Indian Springs was neither completely homogenous nor divorced from politics. In Georgia, many newspapers, such as the Georgian, Milledgeville Republican, and Macon Messenger, supported the treaty and Troup’s efforts to execute it. While Georgians had a clear interest in promoting the treaty to obtain Creek land, the state political context is also reflected in the Georgia press’ coverage of the treaty’s aftermath. There was heightened interest in Georgia state politics throughout 1825 in anticipation of the November 1825 gubernatorial election. Even though state politics in Georgia had not yet developed largescale, organized political parties during the early 19th century, there were two main factions centered around Governor Troup and John Clark.60 There were not consistent significant differences on state or national policy between Troup and Clark, and instead the factions generally split along family feuds, personal vendettas and historic rivalries.61 In addition, Troup
51 Paul Finkelman, “Introduction: Congress, the Rise of Sectionalism, and the Challenge of Jacksonian Democracy,” in Congress and the Emergence of Sectionalism: From the Missouri Compromise to the Age of Jackson, ed. Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon, 1-16 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008), 3. 52 John Lauritz Larson, The Market Revolution in America: Liberty, Ambition, and the Eclipse of the Common Good (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 58-63. 53 Ibid, 127-8; Adam Rothmann, Slave Country: American Expansion the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 48-50. 54 Finkelman, 5-6. 55 Robert P. Forbes, “The Missouri Controversy and Sectionalism,” in Congress and the Emergence of Sectionalism: From the Missouri Compromise to the Age of Jackson, ed. Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008), 81-2.
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56 Garrison, 98. 57 Ibid, 118. 58 Ibid, 118-121. 59 Ibid, 118. 60 Anthony Gene Carey, Parties, Slavery and the Union in Antebellum Georgia (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1997), 20-2. 61 Harvey H. Jackson, “John Clark,” American National Biography Online, http:// www.anb.org/ articles/03/03-00098.html (accessed February 18, 2013); Carey, 22.
FOUNDATIONS • Fall 2013
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