The Long, Bitter Trail by Anthony Wallace Essay Example

The Long, Bitter Trail by Anthony Wallace Essay The Long, Bitter Trail deals mostly with the policies of removal in relocation of the Indians living in the American south east during the 1800s. Thefirst thing that I noticed right on the cover of the book is the subtitle, Andrew Jackson and the Indians. From this I expected the book to focus more on Jackson himself. In the introduction, there is a fair amount of time spent describing Jackson and his background. Thefirst several pages of the introduction are actually an abbreviated biography on Jackson. However what I found surprising was the fact that the author chose to focus not only on the policies of Jackson himself but Jacksonian policy towards dealing with the Indians as well as its opposition. There is also a great deal of time spent on various tribes affected by the policies of the time. The focus here in not so much on their culture and customs, but rater how they responded to the polices of the United States. One thing that I noticed throughout the book was that the autho r usually takes the time to justify the polices of the time and their opposition by using the same logic that was used in the 1800s. This is not necessarily based on the authors own beliefs or opinions but simply on what the popular beliefs of the time were. This was something that I found very refreshing, it seems that many time when dealing with topics such as those discussed in this book the author will usually try to force his own beliefs and opinions on the reader. The introduction dealing mostly with Jackson and giving a basic overview of the state of the country during the time period focused on in the book, chapter one really seemed to serve almost as a more complete introduction whose purpose is to allow the reader to make sense of chapters two and three, whereas chapters two, three, and four are necessary for the reader to be able to fully make sense of the final chapter or in this case the AFTERMATH. In