Under Jackson, southerners determined to get in on the cotton boom adjusted their vision of democracy to justify their seizure of vast swaths of land owned by the Cherokees and Chickasaws. The Cherokees had embraced formal education, adopted a constitution, and even developed a capitalist economy, including slave owning. They had launched their own newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, in 1828, and some of their leaders lived in plantation homes that rivaled those of local white elites. Jacksonians nonetheless defined their Indian neighbors as “savages,” ignoring their assimilation and
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