Episode Details

In this episode, we explore how expansion triggered the civil war. Imagine a country where the highest court issues this landmark ruling protecting human rights. And the president of the United States publicly responds by basically saying, well, let them enforce it. Yeah. And then literally deploys the military to do the exact opposite. Exactly. I mean, it sounds like the behavior of a modern authoritarian state, you know, operating totally outside the rule of law. It really does. But that was actually the United States government in the 1830s. So welcome to this deep dive. Today, we have a really specific mission for you. We're unpacking a massive. densely packed Wikipedia timeline of U .S. history. Right, spanning from 1820 all the way to 1859. And, you know, at first glance, a 40 -year timeline like this might just look like a dry list of dates, dead presidents, maybe some forgotten treaties. Absolutely. It's easy to just glaze over it. marginalized group faces unconstitutional pressure, they take their case to the highest court, and the court protects them. Yeah. And initially, That is exactly what happened. In the 1832 Supreme Court case Worcester, we state of Georgia, the court actually ruled in favor of the Cherokees. They did. They stated explicitly that states did not have the right to impose regulations on Native American land. The highest court in the land validated the rights of the indigenous populations. And President Jackson's response was to completely ignore the judicial branch, which is just wild to think about. He simply refused to enforce the Supreme Court's ruling. The executive branch the French commanded the military and the court did not. So the removal policies just continued uninterrupted by the law. I wanna pause on the glaring irony of this exact moment. Okay. Because in 1835, you have the French writer Alexis de