IN NORTHERN GEORGIA in these late autumn and early winter months of 1835–36, Jackson’s men were completing the work of Cherokee removal. On Tuesday, December 29, 1835, the administration signed the Treaty of New Echota, a pact purportedly with the Cherokee Nation setting terms for the final removal of the tribe west of the Mississippi. The Cherokees who signed the treaty, however, were not representative of the tribe as a whole. They were part of what was known as the “Treaty party,” a group in opposition to Chief John Ross’s “National party.” Ross, who represented an estimated 16,000 out of
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