This first removal resulted in about twenty-five million acres of formerly Indian land, including large tracts of Georgia and Alabama, freed up for the market and slave economy. Jackson’s predecessor, John Quincy Adams, had tried to use the proceeds generated by the sale of western public land to fund what he called a “national program,” to build roads and canals but also hospitals, schools, and other social institutions. Jackson, though, pledged to “put an end forever” to this “subversive” use of public land for government revenue. He instead started to distribute, or let states distribute,
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