"History takes us to the intersection of principles and practice, the place where ethical ideals uneasily coexist with the necessity of choice. Like historical explanations in general, history's moral lessons are deeply embedded in life's messy specificity. Adding or subtracting a significant detail or shifting the narrative's emphasis can often change the moral analysis in powerful and sometimes unpredictable ways. Only by attempting to get the story as straight as we can, bringing to bear everything we believe to be significant, trying to weigh as many factors as possible, and acknowledging various points of view, can we grapple with what the people we study did and what they might or should have done." James J. Sheehan

Source: Chief of the Little Osages (ca 1807)
NARA Pictures of Native Americans

If we were to focus solely on the rise of democracy, we would see the disappearance of property qualifications for voting. Thus for white males, this period witnessed the expansion of democratic principles. For Native Peoples, however, this period witnessed the continued erosion of property rights as tribes were forced to move across the Mississippi. As president Jackson noted:

"By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites it will incalculably strengthen the southwestern frontier and render the adjacent States strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid. It will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those States to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power. It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community."

In other words, removal served the dual purpose of conserving Native culture and spreading American cultural values among the tribes. Yet this process of 'Americanization' did not go unchallenged. Native writers such as William Apess (also see Norton Anthology) preached against the abuse of Native society and America's growing preoccupation with race.

From our perspective, the life of William Apess illustrates the problems of defining race and culture in America. From the perspective of Jacksonian America, the definition was to be found in science and reason. And so race was constructed according to purported scientific principles in works such as Samuel Morton's Crania Americana, which categorized human species by morphology.

When we look at popular culture, we see the same debates about race, culture and nationalism. American romantic and transcendentalist writers struggled with the issue of equality. Their thoughts would influence later generations of activists. These American writers were defining a new national character and a distinctly American culture. At times, this definition coincided with the great sweep of national politics. James Fenimore Cooper's views of Native American society, for example, were in harmony with the general public opinion regarding Indian removal.

"As a rule, the red man disappears before the superior moral and physical influence of the white, just as I believe the black man will eventually do the same thing, unless he shall seek shelter in some other region. In nine cases in ten, the tribes have gradually removed west; and there is now a confused assemblage of nations and languages collected on the immense hunting grounds of the Prairies."

The exclusion of Native Peoples mirrors a parallel development in American society as a whole. The great age of Jacksonian democracy held forth the promise of an egalitarian society, yet it also accelerated the process of social and economic exclusion. This separation is apparent in an increasing gap between rich and poor. Accompanying this widening discrepancy was a concurrent expansion in:

• Urbanization
• Immigration
• Economy
• Slavery
• Women's Movement
• Westward Expansion

The American Gothic explored the ominous social conflicts of this American experience.

In the North, the inequities were demonstratively present in the cities. It was in the city with its changing population that the dynamic social forces of antebellum American were rapidly altering daily life. German and Irish immigrants fled Europe to built new lives for themselves in America. Their arrival, however, was not always welcomed.

Still, reformers, whether religious or social, struggled to bring meaning to the great American experience.