Albert Bender: Don't honor Andrew Jackson's genocidal legacy

We can never forget or minimize the fact that Jackson carried out the most murderous removal campaign against American Indians — Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles — in U.S. history. He was directly responsible for the hideous, agonizing deaths of tens of thousands of Native Americans, beginning with the Creek War of 1813. Jackson was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Muscogee Creek people in that conflict. Jackson led armies, largely composed of Tennessee volunteers, who conducted war against noncombatants, women and children.

According to contemporary Creek sources, hundreds of Creek women and children were sold into slavery. They were starved, raped and murdered. Creek children, mostly little boys, were sold for $20 each as "pets." Orphaned children were taken off the battlefield from the bodies of their mothers as "trophies."

Subsequently, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Bill of May 28, 1830, and militarily enforced fraudulent treaties that sent thousands on the death marches. Of the Cherokee "Trail of Tears" it was said that no one under 6 or over 60 survived the hideous march west.

A relatively little known fact is that Cherokees held captive in concentration camps were deprived of the use of soap, so bent was Jackson on Indian extermination. When Cherokee leaders were able to finally prevail upon the Army for the issuance of soap, Jackson, upon hearing of this, flew into a rage at The Hermitage and demanded that the order allowing for the use of soap be rescinded. This is the so-called "Peoples President." What people? Surely not Indian people!

Yet, the Andrew Jackson Foundation wants to elevate this monster, this ethnic cleanser, to the status of a great president. Jackson was a racist devil incarnate — an early-day American Hitler whose deadly legacy for American Indians remains extant to this very day.