http://ngeorgia.com/history/nghisttt.html
North Carolina in the Antebellum Period
In the mid-1830s, The Rip Van Winkle State finally awoke. The new age marked the beginning of remarkable progress and reform. N.C. was moving towards a state where citizens could participate in economic progress and its political democracy. There was an alternative to this however; not everyone was able to experience the advances made. In particular, Native Americans, free blacks, and slaves. For most, the 1830s were an aged of bright promise. The rise of a new political party set the stages for changes to occur in the future.
After
the war of 1812, the Federalist Party collapsed, leaving the Republicans to take
control of the political system. After the presidential election of 1824, things
changed however.
There were five running candidates for president in 1824: William H. Crawford of Georgia, John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, Henry Clay of Kentucky, and Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. John Quincy Adams won over Andrew Jackson. Later in 1828, against John Adams, Andrew Jackson won the presidential election. Jackson focused on the eastern counties. Jackson also faced enemies because of his policy of the Indian. removal.
http://ngeorgia.com/history/nghisttt.html
The Trail of Tears
The Cherokee, Creek, and other southern tribes refused to be removed,
when President Monroe gave his last annual message in 1824, where he recommended
that all Native Americans east of the Mississippi be removed to the west.
They wished to remain on the lands that had belonged to their ancestors.
Cherokee Chief James Ross turned to federal courts to defend the Native
Americans from Georgia’s seizure of their land. In two court decisions in 1831 and 1832, Chief Justice John
Marshall ruled that the Cherokee could not be removed from their land.
However, President Andrew Jackson ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Jackson forced Native Americans living in the eastern United States to be
move west of the Mississippi River, using the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
Thus began the Cherokee Trail of Tears.
The Choctaw of Alabama and Mississippi were the first tribe to be removed in the winter of 1831-1832. When the time came for the Cherokee’s to leave, they refused. Federal troops had to be sent to round them up and send them on the Trail of Tears. The Trail of Tears was a route that the Indians followed on their way to the west. About 20,000 Cherokee were marched, under military escort, to present day Oklahoma. Nearly one fourth of them died from disease and exhaustion along the way. Approximately 1,100 NC Cherokee escaped to the mountains o western NC. About 700 of them lied in the area around Quallatown near present day Cherokee. The escapees, and others known as the Qualla Indians make up the Eastern Band of Cherokee, which still exists today.
http://ngeorgia.com/history/trailoftearsmap.html
Opposition
to Jackson
“Old Hickory,” and “King
Andrew” are just a few of the nicknames given to Andrew Jackson by his
opponents. The Whig Party was
created in 1834 to oppose Jackson. The
Whigs got their name from a group of British politicians who had challenged the
king’s power in the eighteenth’s century. Many of the Whigs were Federalists
at one time. In North Carolina, the
Whigs’ greatest strength lay in the western part of the state and in other
commercial areas. The Whig Party
in North Carolina supported Henry Clay’s program of internal improvements, a
national bank, and a tariff on foreign goods to protect American manufactures.
Between 1835 and 1852 the Whig-Democratic rivalry was extremely close and
neither could gain firm control of the state government.
Most of the time only a few votes separated the two parties in the
General Assembly. The Whigs,
however, held governorship until 1850 and they were determined to deal with the
states problems, starting with constitutional reform.
http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/jackson/5.html