This is the last book I shall write about Andrew Jackson; at least I hope so. But it is a book I have wanted to write for a long time, not only because it involved an important and highly controversial subject, but because that subject is so charged with prejudice and misunderstanding. However, before proceeding, I want to assure the reader that it is not my intention to excuse or exonerate Andrew Jackson for the role he played in the removal of Native Americans west of the Mississippi River. My purpose is simply to explain what happened and why.

Today Americans are quite prone to fault Jackson for the removal without understanding the circumstances surrounding the event. They have little appreciation of the mood of Americans at the tail end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. They prefer to single out one culprit for blame, just as King George III is singled out for initiating the American Revolution (or Columbus for initiating the Columbian Exchange). They do not understand the fear and mistrust that existed between the white and red people during the early years of the Republic. To begin to understand that situation, modern Americans must first appreciate the fact that the mood and temper of Americans during Jackson's lifetime tolerated and actually condoned removal.

And that toleration produced an indifference to the plight of Native Americans after their removal, an indifference that extended from the 19th well into the 20th century. When I went to school, little was taught about Indians, much less their removal, and that was true of high school, college, and graduate school. John Spencer Bassett, the first modern biographer of Jackson, discussed Indian removal in a chapter entitled "Minor Problems of the Two Administrations." Minor problems!  The next modern biographer, Marquis James, whose study won him a Pulitzer Prize, devoted only a few paragraphs to Indian removal, and they were scattered in different parts of the book. Not until the civil rights movement began after World War II did Americans suddenly come awake to their violent past and their disregard of the rights of other people. And those acts of violence occurred not only in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, but the 20th century as well. They occurred as recently as 60 years ago.

I lived through and fought in World War II and I remember distinctly the fear and revulsion that spread across the country when Japan declared war against the United States by attacking and bombing Pearl Harbor. American hatred toward "Japs" was palpable. I remember sitting in a subway train in New York City and staring at a group of Asians sitting across the aisle - they were probably Chinese-Americans - and wondering if they were Japanese. And I remember overhearing one Caucasian male say to his neighbor, "Do you think they are japs who are going to blow up the subway system?"

That sounds like a joke, but it was no joking matter at the time. As a result of this climate of fear and mistrust, the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt ruthlessly rounded up and removed Japanese-Americans from their homes in California and interned them in concentration camps away from the coast in order to bolster defense of the country in case of a Japanese invasion. But these people were not foreign enemies. They were American citizens who were denied their basic civil rights as well as their property because of the nation's perceived need and fear.

We today must remember that in the past a great many normally decent and upright Americans have repeatedly mistreated other people: Native Americans, African-Americans, and Japanese-Americans. And invariably those actions were justified under the rubric of national security or economic need or both. Moreover, this did not happen in some bygone era among unenlightened people. The present generation - the so-called greatest generation - let it happen to their fellow citizens. So before anyone today assumes a high moral tone about what happened a century ago, let that person take a long view of American history and remember that fear and mistrust at any time can and probably will lead to despicable crimes that disgrace the nation and blacken its history.