Unworthy Republic

A masterful and unsettling history of the forced migration of 80,000 Native Americans across the Mississippi River in the 1830s.

On May 28, 1830, Congress authorized the expulsion of indigenous peoples from the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Over the next decade, Native Americans saw their homelands and possessions stolen through fraud, intimidation, and murder. Thousands lost their lives. In this powerful, gripping book, Claudio Saunt upends the common view that "Indian Removal" was an inevitable chapter in US expansion across the continent. Instead, Saunt argues that it was a contested political act—resisted by both indigenous peoples and US citizens—that passed in Congress by a razor-thin margin.

In telling the full story of this systematic, state-sponsored theft, Saunt reveals how expulsion became national policy, abetted by southern slave owners and financed by Wall Street. Moving beyond the familiar story of...