Editing Indian removal (section)

=={{anchor|Opposition to removal from US citizens}}Opposition to removal from US citizens==
Although Indian removal was a popular policy, it was also opposed on legal and moral grounds; it also ran counter to the formal, customary diplomatic interaction between the federal government and the Native nations.<ref name="Sturgis" /> Author and critic [[John Neal]] wrote fiction in opposition to Indian removal policy.<ref>{{cite book | last1 = Watts | first1 = Edward | last2 = Carlson | first2 = David J. | chapter = Introduction | page = xxi | title = John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture | year = 2012 | publisher = Bucknell University Press | location = Lewisburg, Pennsylvania | editor1-last = Watts | editor1-first = Edward | editor2-last = Carlson | editor2-first = David J.}}</ref> The short stories "Otter-Bag, the Oneida Chief" (1829) and "David Whicher" (1832) was his response to Jacksonian policy, as well as prevailing themes in American literature depicting white and Native Americans as irreconcilable enemies.<ref>{{cite book | last = Watts | first = Edward | chapter = He Could Not Believe that Butchering Red Men Was Serving Our Maker: 'David Whicher' and the Indian Hater Tradition | page = 209 | title = John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture | year = 2012 | publisher = Bucknell University Press | location = Lewisburg, Pennsylvania | editor1-last = Watts | editor1-first = Edward | editor2-last = Carlson | editor2-first = David J.}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last = Halfmann | first = Ulrich | date = September 1990 | title = In Search of the 'Real North American Story': John Neal's Short Stories 'Otter-Bag' and 'David Whicher' | url = https://www.jstor.org/stable/366371 | journal = [[The New England Quarterly]] | volume = 63 | number = 3 | doi = 10.2307/366371 | jstor = 366371 | page = 444}}</ref> [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] wrote the widely-published letter "A Protest Against the Removal of the Cherokee Indians from the State of Georgia" in 1838, shortly before the Cherokee removal. Emerson criticizes the government and its removal policy, saying that the removal treaty was illegitimate; it was a "sham treaty", which the US government should not uphold.<ref name="Sturgis">{{cite book |last1=Sturgis |first1=Amy |title=The Trail of Tears and Indian Removal |date=2007 |publisher=Greenwood Press |location=Westport, Connecticut |isbn=978-0313336584 |page=135}}</ref> He describes removal as <blockquote>such a dereliction of all faith and virtues, such a denial of justice{{nbsp}}... in the dealing of a nation with its own allies and wards since the earth was made{{nbsp}}... a general expression of despondency, of disbelief, that any goodwill accrues from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sturgis |first1=Amy |title=The Trail of Tears and Indian Removal |date=2007 |publisher=Greenwood Press |location=Westport, Connecticut |isbn=978-0313336584 |pages=136–137}}</ref></blockquote> Emerson concludes his letter by saying that it should not be a political issue, urging President Martin Van Buren to prevent the enforcement of Cherokee removal. Other individual settlers and settler social organizations throughout the United States also opposed removal.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Satz |first1=Ronald N. |title=American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era |date=1975 |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=0-8061-3432-1 |page=42}}</ref>