The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic 97dependence from Britain. Jackson's mother and his brothers died
during the war, leaving him an orphan. He worked at various jobs,
then studied law and was admitted to the bar in the Western Dis
trict of North Carolina, which would later become the state of Te n
nessee. Through his legal work, most of which related to disputed
land claims, he acquired a plantation near Nashville worked by 150
slaves. He helped usher in Te nnessee as a state in 179 6, then was
elected as its US senator, an office he quit after a year to become a
judge in the Tennessee Supreme Court for six years.
As the most notorious land speculator in western Te nnessee,
Jackson enriched himself by acquiring a portion of the Chickasaw
Nation's land. It was in 1801 that Jackson first took command of the
Tennessee militia as a colonel and began his Indian-killing military
career. After his brutal war of annihilation against the Muskogee
Nation, Jackson continued building his national military and po
litical career by tackling the resistant Seminoles in what are known
as the Seminole Wars. In 1836 , during the second of these wars,
US Army general Thomas S. Jesup captured the popular Anglo at
titude toward the Seminoles: "The country can be rid of them only
by exterminating them." By then Jackson was finishing his second
term as the most popular president in US history to that date, and
the policy of genocide was embedded in the highest office of the US
government. 5
In the Southeast, the Choctaws and Chickasaws turned exclu
sively to US traders once the new US republic effectively cut off ac
cess to the Spanish in Florida. Soon they were trapped in the US
trading world, in which they would run up debts and then have
no way to pay other than by ceding land to creditors who were of
ten acting as agents of the fe deral government. This was no acci
dental outcome but was foreseen and encouraged by Jefferson. In
1805, the Choctaws ceded most of their lands to the United States
for $50,000, and the Chickasaws relinquished all their lands north
of the Tennessee River for $20,000. Many Choctaws and Chicka
saws thus became landless participants in the expanding plantation
economy, burdened by debts and poverty. 6
The division of the Muskogee (Creek) Nation and the rise of
Andrew Jackson as a result led to his eventual elevation to the