Buuuuuhg yes an no, and it gets hard to answer without seeming like a jackass who loves the smell of their own farts. Yes because every academic wants to be on TV and hates anyone who is, even their own mother. No because, and this comes across as snarky, but for the most part people take what he says as read and don't read around the issue. There is also the issue, which is another cause of debate in the field, of him glossing over events for the sake of a narrative. This later point doesn't apply as much to this forum but for the general public. From an academic view he is 'some guy' why should I trust what he says?
Edit; As he says he is a fan and an entertainer so what he says is suspect.
"Unnnngggggghhhh why doesn't the general public enjoy reading my peer reviewed journals as entertainment?"
Look, you will never, EVER, be able to square the circle that is the later point. It's literally impossible to not gloss over events unless you spend your life dedicated to the study of 12th century diets and their effects on genocidal nomadic leaders.
There is glossing over and glossing over. His episodes on the Roman Empire might as well read; There was a republic, the Ceaser, then Empire, that's all nothing else happened. You can gloss over, or give a passing mention to a topic that is central but important but to omit events, or change them to suit your narrative is a pain.
Oh its a given that journals are as much fun as eating wasps but they serve a perpous. Its not even that there are four podcasts I listed that are hands down better than Carlin and still entertaining.
Edit; Also as I said it is a pain when people quote Carlin verbatim not realising that it is wrong.
Oh its a given that journals are as much fun as eating wasps but they serve a purpose.
But setting aside that bizarre typo, I actually like reading journals. The only reason I have a library card is to access their catalog (I'm given books faster than I read them, which is why I don't use it for getting books). The direct, evidence based writing is very easy for me to understand. Sure, it's not as nice to read as something like Meecham's American Lion, or Wiener's Legacy of Ashes, but it's also much shorter, which makes up for a lot for me.
Amp: "Hey let's give a very nuanced and detailed history over this time period. Don't forget about x,y,z"
Dan Carlin: "Wow, Y is a really compelling story, why don't I tell it over 20 hours."
Amp: "HEY FUCK YOU FOR NOT TALKING ABOUT X AND Z, WHAT TYPE OF HISTORIAN ARE YOU???"
The problem is you can't have Y without talking about X and Z, and there are ways of covering that stuff if you care about history and not being entertaining. If we follow that logic then Sharp is a historical text. I mean I'm only making a compelling story what does it matter if its not 100% true.
To be honest though its not really worth splitting hairs over. As I said he's a good entertainer, and its awesome that he is getting people into history. But he is not a historian and as such is viewed as a suspect source. He's ok as an introduction but nothing more.
Oh its a given that journals are as much fun as eating wasps but they serve a purpose.
But setting aside that bizarre typo, I actually like reading journals. The only reason I have a library card is to access their catalog (I'm given books faster than I read them, which is why I don't use it for getting books). The direct, evidence based writing is very easy for me to understand. Sure, it's not as nice to read as something like Meecham's American Lion, or Wiener's Legacy of Ashes, but it's also much shorter, which makes up for a lot for me.
Lucky bugger, I had court rolls. By the end of the week I wanted to peel my face.
To be honest though its not really worth splitting hairs over. As I said he's a good entertainer, and its awesome that he is getting people into history. But he is not a historian and as such is viewed as a suspect source. He's ok as an introduction but nothing more.
Your definition of introduction and 90% of the public's definition is vastly different.
To be honest though its not really worth splitting hairs over. As I said he's a good entertainer, and its awesome that he is getting people into history. But he is not a historian and as such is viewed as a suspect source. He's ok as an introduction but nothing more.
Your definition of introduction and 90% of the public's definition is vastly different.
The same could be said for how most of the people their view using computers vs people on this forum.
No but people assume far more knowledge from the average person. Its not minor things either, there are a lot of podcasts out there that do what he does without missing stuff. Also this isn't about history any more :P
I think the difference is that in history the masses tend to be on Mt Stupid, whereas they're more aware that they don't know anything about computers. But I don't think it's feasible to educate them to the point beyond Mt Stupid, it's more that we need to raise ignorance awareness, which is a funny phrase but I'm sticking to it.
Going on with the theme of history what should be remembered is the English Armada of 1589, which is not taught in English schools for quite a good reason. They love teaching the Spanish Armada and how we beat the Spanish, well it was the wind more than anything but we could that one as a win. No the English Armada had no such luck being able to blame external problems. It failed due to monumental cock ups and egos as Drake and Norreys sought to out do each other with raiding, giving the Spanish the chance to reorganise and put a halt to the raiding. Along with a poor choice in ally with Portugal the whole thing was doomed from the start. Its a great example of both sides being so rubbish that neither could capitalise on the others mistakes.
They were trying to capitalise on the losses Spain took when they launched their armada. The hope was to raid several towns along the coast then move onto Lisbon (I think need to double check that) where there would be a popular uprising in favour of the English. I should add there was some bad weather at the end but nothing compared to the Spanish problems.
unless you spend your life dedicated to the study of 12th century diets and their effects on genocidal nomadic leaders.
You ever had kumis? Let me tell you something, you'd murder the fuck out of a bunch of people if the only booze you could get was fermented milk
Same reason I think the Viking raids happened. Scandinavia in the early middle ages was wicked cold, and didn't have much food. You try living on salt fish and boiled oats and then tell me how awesome life is.
Yeah the romantic ideas of the Vikings, Saxons and Normans goes straight out the window when you realise their diet is herring. In that vain check out Lost Kingdom, its on the BBC at the moment its about the Danes invasion of the British Isles and Wessex holding out against them. Pretty good really.
Yeah the romantic ideas of the Vikings, Saxons and Normans goes straight out the window when you realise their diet is herring. In that vain check out Lost Kingdom, its on the BBC at the moment its about the Danes invasion of the British Isles and Wessex holding out against them. Pretty good really.
Herring? Shit, I'd be pillaging and whanging things with a filthy great axe within a bloody week.
Yeah, from what I can gather it was a pretty shitty diet. That being said diet isn't my area of study, but I know a man who knows a thing if you want me to ask about?
Also problem with great axes they never are as cool as you think, the blade isn't big enough.
Edit; Also this is a really interesting article that talks about the break down of melee combat in the 'pre-modern' battles. Its mostly discussing Professor Philip Sabin's book The Face of Roman Battle but the author throws in some stuff about bayonet charges and the like. Pretty interesting read with a good amount of referencing. http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com.ee/2015/10/pre-modern-battlefields-were-absolutely.html
Now if you want to whang something you should go for a mace, you name it a mace will fuck it up good and proper. Grebo peasant with a long bow, mace. Man at arms, mace. Milanese plate, mace. Bear, mace. The mace is not given its proper due really, well that or the war pick.
Edit; As a fun anecdote we had someone bring a mace to our renactment practice session. She was a lovely lady who said she had passed her training at her last group so we took that as read. After half an hour it was apparent that this was not the case. She had managed to give two concussions, broke some ribs, a fair number of fingers and a bloody lip. Needless to say she was not allowed to use it again and had to re-qualify from the bottom.
Cross posting from Facebook because I feel this is one of the better pieces I've written.
Another round of gun control policies mean another round of folks influenced by the Dunning-Kruger effect or, to use terminology coined by Zack Weinersmith, sitting at the peak of Mt Stupid with regards to the Constitutional Convention and both the intentions and the history of the Second Amendment.
You see, when groups like the NRA invoke the Second Amendment as a defense of individual firearm ownership, they are legally correct, however rhetorically misleading. It generates visions of Jefferson and Adams drafting the Bill of Rights to give every citizen in America a weapon. The reality is that, legally speaking, no such right existed until 2008. Until the Supreme Court ruled on the famous DC v Heller case, the 2nd Amendment was very ambiguous, legally speaking. Great arguments between legal scholars would erupt over if individuals were granted the right or only States, and both arguments had merit.
Furthermore, the Founding Fathers didn't universally agree on any part of the Constitution (Washington vowed to send the national army into Rhode Island if they continued to refuse ratification of the Constitution and entry into the Union). Given the totalitarian and sometimes tyrannical acts of John Adams, I would not doubt for a moment if he had tried to confiscate all privately owned (and perhaps State owned) firearms. In the War of 1812, under Federalist James Madison, it was common for the Federal War Department to try to take over the States' militia forces. Jackson was ordered to turn over his troops before they had even seen battle. If the Federalists did not trust States with guns, would they have individuals?
The champions of the States were the Anti-Federalists. These Statesmen feared Federal overreach. Some opposed the dissolution of the Articles of Confederation, and some even argued that no Union should exist at all. I recall reading about a group in South Carolina who gave their state flag a viking funeral upon adoption of the Constitution, believing it to be the end of their State's sovereignty. However (spoiler alert) the Anti-Federalists ultimately made concessions and ratified the Constitution with many clauses they opposed, because the Federalist forces promised a Bill of Rights to follow it. This is why the right to bear arms isn't in the Constitution itself -- it was a compromise between two sets of "Founding Fathers" who did not agree.
The Bill of Rights was drafted with intentions to protect not only citizens' liberties from Federal tyranny, but also States. Most Amendments were written with individuals in mind -- Amendments III, IV, V, VI, VII, VII, and VIII clearly state that they are to protect individual citizens from unjust seizure, imprisonment, quartering of Federal soldiers, and other basic rights. Amendment IX seems to protect both the citizens and the States. But the final three Amendments -- I, II, and X -- are clearly written to protect States, not individuals.
I don't mean to say that was a good thing. The First Amendment, now the cornerstone of civil freedom of speech, only states that Congress can make no law to abridge such a freedom. The States have had a long history of abridging exactly such freedoms. For most of the 19th Century, Massachusetts law dictated that individuals must have a religion and a church (actual attendance of said church was never verified by the State government, so it was fairly harmless), and many States had rules barring non-Protestants from holding public office until the early 20th Century. This exclusion of individuals rights was also present in the Second Amendment. Many point Madison's writings in the Federalist papers to find that intention, but one doesn't even need to do such research. The amendment clearly states that firearms are granted to "a well regulated militia" and are "necessary to the security of a free state". Of course, again, DC v Heller expanded this right to individuals, but these clauses do make it clear what the intentions of those who had originally ratified it. Anti-Federalists wanted to assure the States that they had the ability to stand up against the Federal Government. But the Anti-Federalists were often totalitarian and would not have necessarily opposed restrictions on firearms at the State level.
This is not to say that citizens under current law do not have the right to bear arms, or even that they should or should not have the right to bear arms. I don't mean to use the Founding Fathers' status in popular opinion as infallible to push an agenda. Interpretations of the Constitution limited to those as intended was what brought about Dred Scott. This is only to say that every time you invoke the Constitutional Convention and the Founding Fathers in your support for individual ownership of firearms, Madison, Adams, and even Jefferson roll over in their graves.
MLK Day trivia: J Edgar Hoover ordered as many bugs on Dr King as the FBI could find a place for, including a number of taps in his bedroom, which many instances of King's infamous affairs.
That's right, in some FBI vault somewhere, there's a Martin Luther King sex tape.
So B.o.B. recently made headlines for believing the Earth is flat, which reminded me of this tidbit, probably my best piece of Jackson trivia -- and you all know what a competition that is.
Contrary to what Cracked.com would like you to think, there's no direct documentation that John Quincy Adams believed there were mole people inside the hollow earth, but there is reason to believe he did and it is somehow even more hilarious.
So, it begins with John Cleves Symmes, Jr, who was a hollow Earth believer. He and his followers were able to urge Congress to fund an expedition to the antarctic to conduct trade with the inhabitants of the inside of earth. Opponents of the proposal stated that colonizing a land so remote would be a poor choice of resources, and would be an ultimately costly venture (they notably did not argue that the earth is solid). JQA never officially weighed in on the issue -- besides one remark in his journal that he supported an exploration of "the southern sea". No mention of the presence or lack there of of mole people.
We may never know JQA's beliefs, because the proposal died in Congress. However, in the following administration, the proposal found quite a bit of success, and nearly made it into law before the recently elected President, Andrew Jackson, "put an end to it" (I'm not sure exactly what that means) because he knew the earth is flat. The efforts were not futile, however. Symmes' inspired one Mr Jeremiah Reynolds, notable for writing a short story called "Mocha Dick." I'll let you figure out who read that. Reynolds fought admirably for the expedition, gathering funding for an exploration of the same general area, but not based in the hollow earth theory. Jackson approved of finding more brown people to kill, and funded the Wilkes Expedition, which was significant in ways I don't completely understand.
I picked up a book that is a collection of primary documents from the Constitutional Convention, op eds written by its members, and private correspondence between significant founding fathers. Great read. As it turns out, the first draft of the Constitution was written by a man named Charles Pickney. Pickney laid out the plan to have three branches of government, roughly what powers the President has, and bicameral legislatures (and the 3/5s compromise, but let's not dwell on that). What is most interesting to me about Pickney's plan is that the citizens had no influence over the Federal Government. Members of the House of Delegates were elected by State Legislatures. The Senate was then elected by the House of Delegates, and the President elected by the Senate. That's how removed from the people many of the framers of the Constitution wanted the Federal government to be.
Andrew Jackson wanted what was best for the Indians. It is and always will be debated as to whether the outcome was what was best for the Indians (as plenty of people in academia have been debating for decades), but the motives and logic are clear. The whole situation was a Kobayashi Maru. Let me explain.
For the two hundred years before Andrew Jackson took office, the dominant Indian policy was this thing called "acculturation". It was a belief that white people and Indians would coexist with Indians slowly assimilating into white culture. This policy was humane on paper, but impractical at its premise. The assumption was that Indians were savages who would join the superior white culture because it was so much better. In reality, Indians enjoyed their way of life and had been doing so for centuries. They didn't want to assimilate. This refusal to assimilate combined with the white man's expansionism is what caused countless 17th century conflicts. The French learned that this was foolish and dealt with Indians more like any other foreign power, leading most tribes to side with them in the French and Indian War, a war that turned out well for neither the French nor the Indians.
With the French mostly removed from the game during the Seven Years War, English acculturation became dominant. By the early 19th century, acculturation was praised by everyone who didn't actually interact with Indians. Jefferson was a strong believer in acculturation in the 1780s, but once he entered the Presidency he realized how much it didn't align with Indian interests and started saying things like "if we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi." Jackson didn't share this disdain for tribes who didn't join white culture.
“What the [Indians] become when surrounded by a dense population and by mixing with the whites may be seen in the miserable remnants of a few Eastern tribes, deprived of political and civil rights, forbidden to make contracts, and subjected to guardians, dragging out a wretched existence, without excitement, without hope, and almost without thought” – Andrew Jackson, third annual message to Congress
Jackson had personally fought with Cherokee and Choctaw forces against a great threat to the Union, Tecumseh. Jackson didn't want these tribes following the same destiny as the Eastern tribes he mentions above. Washington and Jefferson before him had tried to police white settlers and prevent them from settling on Indian land. It was a Sisyphean task that cost more lives than it saved. Not helped by the fact that Indian governments (in that case the Creeks) had trouble controlling their citizens as well. Indians would frequently sell their tribe's land to individual white men, which had no legal grounds in either the Indian nation or in America. Things like this are why raids on settlements (Indian and white alike) were so common on the frontier, and they always lead to race war.
Jackson saw that he had to pioneer a new policy. He didn't know how well it would work. He wasn't naive. He knew that a migration so massive would have many casualties, especially given Congressional resistance to funding it, but he saw the 10,000 lives lost to the Trail as the cost that had to be paid to protect the remaining 50,000 lives that reached the reservations safely. This is not to say that any of what I've just posted is good. I have read a lot on the details and brutalities of the Trail. I am aware of the horrific conditions that accompanied the staggering casualties. I dare you to read Alexis De Tocqueville's account without breaking down. But the most depressing part, to me at least, is that that was the best thing that could be done at that time.
I don't mean this as a defense for Jackson on the twenty, if you think that's where this is coming from. Slave owners shouldn't be on money (even and especially if they're Washington or Jefferson). Tubman embodies all the outlaw anti-establishment qualities I love about Jackson with even more astounding record of what she personally did and without any of the problematic characteristics that accompany Jackson. But, all the discussion around this has highlighted a misunderstanding of Old Hickory in the populous.
Comments
Edit; As he says he is a fan and an entertainer so what he says is suspect.
Look, you will never, EVER, be able to square the circle that is the later point. It's literally impossible to not gloss over events unless you spend your life dedicated to the study of 12th century diets and their effects on genocidal nomadic leaders.
Oh its a given that journals are as much fun as eating wasps but they serve a perpous. Its not even that there are four podcasts I listed that are hands down better than Carlin and still entertaining.
Edit; Also as I said it is a pain when people quote Carlin verbatim not realising that it is wrong.
Dan Carlin: "Wow, Y is a really compelling story, why don't I tell it over 20 hours."
Amp: "HEY FUCK YOU FOR NOT TALKING ABOUT X AND Z, WHAT TYPE OF HISTORIAN ARE YOU???"
To be honest though its not really worth splitting hairs over. As I said he's a good entertainer, and its awesome that he is getting people into history. But he is not a historian and as such is viewed as a suspect source. He's ok as an introduction but nothing more. Lucky bugger, I had court rolls. By the end of the week I wanted to peel my face.
Anyway, back on topic.
Going on with the theme of history what should be remembered is the English Armada of 1589, which is not taught in English schools for quite a good reason. They love teaching the Spanish Armada and how we beat the Spanish, well it was the wind more than anything but we could that one as a win. No the English Armada had no such luck being able to blame external problems. It failed due to monumental cock ups and egos as Drake and Norreys sought to out do each other with raiding, giving the Spanish the chance to reorganise and put a halt to the raiding. Along with a poor choice in ally with Portugal the whole thing was doomed from the start. Its a great example of both sides being so rubbish that neither could capitalise on the others mistakes.
Same reason I think the Viking raids happened. Scandinavia in the early middle ages was wicked cold, and didn't have much food. You try living on salt fish and boiled oats and then tell me how awesome life is.
Also problem with great axes they never are as cool as you think, the blade isn't big enough.
Edit; Also this is a really interesting article that talks about the break down of melee combat in the 'pre-modern' battles. Its mostly discussing Professor Philip Sabin's book The Face of Roman Battle but the author throws in some stuff about bayonet charges and the like. Pretty interesting read with a good amount of referencing. http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com.ee/2015/10/pre-modern-battlefields-were-absolutely.html
Still, either way I guess. Nobody wants to be hit with the poo axe.
Edit; As a fun anecdote we had someone bring a mace to our renactment practice session. She was a lovely lady who said she had passed her training at her last group so we took that as read. After half an hour it was apparent that this was not the case. She had managed to give two concussions, broke some ribs, a fair number of fingers and a bloody lip. Needless to say she was not allowed to use it again and had to re-qualify from the bottom.
He's killing it like Conrad von Hötzendorf
Another round of gun control policies mean another round of folks influenced by the Dunning-Kruger effect or, to use terminology coined by Zack Weinersmith, sitting at the peak of Mt Stupid with regards to the Constitutional Convention and both the intentions and the history of the Second Amendment.
You see, when groups like the NRA invoke the Second Amendment as a defense of individual firearm ownership, they are legally correct, however rhetorically misleading. It generates visions of Jefferson and Adams drafting the Bill of Rights to give every citizen in America a weapon. The reality is that, legally speaking, no such right existed until 2008. Until the Supreme Court ruled on the famous DC v Heller case, the 2nd Amendment was very ambiguous, legally speaking. Great arguments between legal scholars would erupt over if individuals were granted the right or only States, and both arguments had merit.
Furthermore, the Founding Fathers didn't universally agree on any part of the Constitution (Washington vowed to send the national army into Rhode Island if they continued to refuse ratification of the Constitution and entry into the Union). Given the totalitarian and sometimes tyrannical acts of John Adams, I would not doubt for a moment if he had tried to confiscate all privately owned (and perhaps State owned) firearms. In the War of 1812, under Federalist James Madison, it was common for the Federal War Department to try to take over the States' militia forces. Jackson was ordered to turn over his troops before they had even seen battle. If the Federalists did not trust States with guns, would they have individuals?
The champions of the States were the Anti-Federalists. These Statesmen feared Federal overreach. Some opposed the dissolution of the Articles of Confederation, and some even argued that no Union should exist at all. I recall reading about a group in South Carolina who gave their state flag a viking funeral upon adoption of the Constitution, believing it to be the end of their State's sovereignty. However (spoiler alert) the Anti-Federalists ultimately made concessions and ratified the Constitution with many clauses they opposed, because the Federalist forces promised a Bill of Rights to follow it. This is why the right to bear arms isn't in the Constitution itself -- it was a compromise between two sets of "Founding Fathers" who did not agree.
The Bill of Rights was drafted with intentions to protect not only citizens' liberties from Federal tyranny, but also States. Most Amendments were written with individuals in mind -- Amendments III, IV, V, VI, VII, VII, and VIII clearly state that they are to protect individual citizens from unjust seizure, imprisonment, quartering of Federal soldiers, and other basic rights. Amendment IX seems to protect both the citizens and the States. But the final three Amendments -- I, II, and X -- are clearly written to protect States, not individuals.
I don't mean to say that was a good thing. The First Amendment, now the cornerstone of civil freedom of speech, only states that Congress can make no law to abridge such a freedom. The States have had a long history of abridging exactly such freedoms. For most of the 19th Century, Massachusetts law dictated that individuals must have a religion and a church (actual attendance of said church was never verified by the State government, so it was fairly harmless), and many States had rules barring non-Protestants from holding public office until the early 20th Century. This exclusion of individuals rights was also present in the Second Amendment. Many point Madison's writings in the Federalist papers to find that intention, but one doesn't even need to do such research. The amendment clearly states that firearms are granted to "a well regulated militia" and are "necessary to the security of a free state". Of course, again, DC v Heller expanded this right to individuals, but these clauses do make it clear what the intentions of those who had originally ratified it. Anti-Federalists wanted to assure the States that they had the ability to stand up against the Federal Government. But the Anti-Federalists were often totalitarian and would not have necessarily opposed restrictions on firearms at the State level.
This is not to say that citizens under current law do not have the right to bear arms, or even that they should or should not have the right to bear arms. I don't mean to use the Founding Fathers' status in popular opinion as infallible to push an agenda. Interpretations of the Constitution limited to those as intended was what brought about Dred Scott. This is only to say that every time you invoke the Constitutional Convention and the Founding Fathers in your support for individual ownership of firearms, Madison, Adams, and even Jefferson roll over in their graves.
That's right, in some FBI vault somewhere, there's a Martin Luther King sex tape.
Contrary to what Cracked.com would like you to think, there's no direct documentation that John Quincy Adams believed there were mole people inside the hollow earth, but there is reason to believe he did and it is somehow even more hilarious.
So, it begins with John Cleves Symmes, Jr, who was a hollow Earth believer. He and his followers were able to urge Congress to fund an expedition to the antarctic to conduct trade with the inhabitants of the inside of earth. Opponents of the proposal stated that colonizing a land so remote would be a poor choice of resources, and would be an ultimately costly venture (they notably did not argue that the earth is solid). JQA never officially weighed in on the issue -- besides one remark in his journal that he supported an exploration of "the southern sea". No mention of the presence or lack there of of mole people.
We may never know JQA's beliefs, because the proposal died in Congress. However, in the following administration, the proposal found quite a bit of success, and nearly made it into law before the recently elected President, Andrew Jackson, "put an end to it" (I'm not sure exactly what that means) because he knew the earth is flat.
The efforts were not futile, however. Symmes' inspired one Mr Jeremiah Reynolds, notable for writing a short story called "Mocha Dick." I'll let you figure out who read that. Reynolds fought admirably for the expedition, gathering funding for an exploration of the same general area, but not based in the hollow earth theory. Jackson approved of finding more brown people to kill, and funded the Wilkes Expedition, which was significant in ways I don't completely understand.
One of the best questions I saw in last weekends game of fibbage was "The fictional whale Moby Dick was based on a real whale from the 1800s named "
I and everyone playing thought Mocha Dick was a funny answer put by someone else playing to get thumbs up.
For the two hundred years before Andrew Jackson took office, the dominant Indian policy was this thing called "acculturation". It was a belief that white people and Indians would coexist with Indians slowly assimilating into white culture. This policy was humane on paper, but impractical at its premise. The assumption was that Indians were savages who would join the superior white culture because it was so much better. In reality, Indians enjoyed their way of life and had been doing so for centuries. They didn't want to assimilate. This refusal to assimilate combined with the white man's expansionism is what caused countless 17th century conflicts. The French learned that this was foolish and dealt with Indians more like any other foreign power, leading most tribes to side with them in the French and Indian War, a war that turned out well for neither the French nor the Indians.
With the French mostly removed from the game during the Seven Years War, English acculturation became dominant. By the early 19th century, acculturation was praised by everyone who didn't actually interact with Indians. Jefferson was a strong believer in acculturation in the 1780s, but once he entered the Presidency he realized how much it didn't align with Indian interests and started saying things like "if we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi." Jackson didn't share this disdain for tribes who didn't join white culture.
“What the [Indians] become when surrounded by a dense population and by mixing with the whites may be seen in the miserable remnants of a few Eastern tribes, deprived of political and civil rights, forbidden to make contracts, and subjected to guardians, dragging out a wretched existence, without excitement, without hope, and almost without thought” – Andrew Jackson, third annual message to Congress
Jackson had personally fought with Cherokee and Choctaw forces against a great threat to the Union, Tecumseh. Jackson didn't want these tribes following the same destiny as the Eastern tribes he mentions above. Washington and Jefferson before him had tried to police white settlers and prevent them from settling on Indian land. It was a Sisyphean task that cost more lives than it saved. Not helped by the fact that Indian governments (in that case the Creeks) had trouble controlling their citizens as well. Indians would frequently sell their tribe's land to individual white men, which had no legal grounds in either the Indian nation or in America. Things like this are why raids on settlements (Indian and white alike) were so common on the frontier, and they always lead to race war.
Jackson saw that he had to pioneer a new policy. He didn't know how well it would work. He wasn't naive. He knew that a migration so massive would have many casualties, especially given Congressional resistance to funding it, but he saw the 10,000 lives lost to the Trail as the cost that had to be paid to protect the remaining 50,000 lives that reached the reservations safely. This is not to say that any of what I've just posted is good. I have read a lot on the details and brutalities of the Trail. I am aware of the horrific conditions that accompanied the staggering casualties. I dare you to read Alexis De Tocqueville's account without breaking down. But the most depressing part, to me at least, is that that was the best thing that could be done at that time.
I don't mean this as a defense for Jackson on the twenty, if you think that's where this is coming from. Slave owners shouldn't be on money (even and especially if they're Washington or Jefferson). Tubman embodies all the outlaw anti-establishment qualities I love about Jackson with even more astounding record of what she personally did and without any of the problematic characteristics that accompany Jackson. But, all the discussion around this has highlighted a misunderstanding of Old Hickory in the populous.