It was Dec. 6, 1830. Eager to ensure congressional abbettance, President Andrew Jackson delivered a typically detailed, second annual address whose centerpiece was the Indian Removal Act - a working blueprint for the White annexation of nearly all Indigenous lands east of the Mississippi River.
Jackson was (for his dour self) relatively upbeat: “It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly 30 years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation.”
But not every member in attendance left the Capitol Building convinced. Six months later, the blueprint did indeed become law, but by narrow margins in both chambers: 102-97 in the House, 28-19 in the Senate.
Once passed, Jackson wasted no time mobilizing his plan. Three separate governmental departments were tasked with pressuring and threatening tribal leaders to vacate; and when those tactics weren’t enough, the U.S. army was called upon to finish the job.
Over the next 15 years an estimated 60,000 Indigenous persons from 18 tribes were sent west: One-sixth would die during, or related to the ordered march known as the Trail of Tears.
For Americans with functional feelings, the Jacksonian era is forever stained by these events. Less so, the 45th and 47th president fixated with “Old Hickory” to the point of hanging his likeness in the Oval Office (Joe Biden famously had it removed as part of his remodeling process) and repeatedly praising Jackson for his “true leadership” and “putting America first.”
Donald Trump’s gift for remaking historical figures in his own image is legendary, but not every parallel between the two presidents is a figment of Trump’s kookiness. And that’s not good news for this and at least three other sovereign nations.
Reduced to his essence, Trump is a real estate guy. Gold, Bitcoin and autographed Bibles make for cheap press and upwardly markets, but the true art of the deal almost always involves property and how to make money off it. It’s about land.
Trump’s land-related governing policies to date have been mere extensions of his own appetites for speculating, buying, exploiting and flipping. It would be the height of naivete to expect anything other than more of the same.
What’s new are Trump’s recent, mind-bending remarks about retaking the Panama Canal, buying Greenland and along the way, bestowing Canada with 51st state status - a sentence never before uttered in human history.
The braggadocio is embarrassing, even dangerous, but it’s here that Trump’s passion for Jacksonian-style land annexation is most on display, albeit even more panoramic in scope.
The formulas behind the land-grabs are strikingly similar: 1) Assume near-total influence over a political party; 2) Use political majorities to influence policy; 3) Impose a strictly business model for governing; 4) Commodify and accumulate land, and 5) Leverage land to achieve political ends.
It’s a sinister, yet effective, political calculus.
Jackson was by no means the only sitting president to illegitimately annex broad swaths of property - see James K. Polk circa the 1840s — but whether by whim or consideration, Trump has chosen a land-greedy colonizer as his model for office.
Don Rollins is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister in Jackson, Ohio. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2025
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