Born on the Trail of Tears

The discovery of gold in Georgia in 1829 and political pressure from the southern plantation owners demanding more land for cotton production, caused unscrupulous politicians to force native Americans from their ancestral lands.
The Treaty of New Echota was signed in December 1835. It was an agreement between the American Federal Government and a small number of Cherokee men. For the sum of 5 million dollars the Cherokee Nation ceded all their lands from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean, to the U. S. Government.
The great majority of the Cherokee people knew nothing of the treaty and received none of the money, however they were forcibly removed from their homes and ordered to relocate to the newly created Indian Territory north of Texas.
Many Americans were outraged by the treatment of the Cherokee and the doubtful legitimacy of the treaty. The government was called upon to stop forcing the Cherokee people to move west to the desolate lands of the Indian Territory.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to President Martin Van Buren, urging him not to inflict “so vast an outrage upon the Cherokee Nation.”
President Van Buren ignored such pleas, and in May 1838 he ordered General Winfield Scott to escalate the forced removal.
General Scott issued the infamous Order 25, which resulted in a death march to become known as The Trail of Tears.