Editor’s note: This is the 39th in a series of essays on the history and meaning of the American political tradition. The term “Trail of Tears” translates an expression used by the Cherokees to describe their forced exodus from their homeland in northern Georgia and their doleful journey to a place west of the Mississippi River, in what is now the state of Oklahoma. Although there were other native peoples besides the Cherokees who were made to suffer the same ordeal, among them the Chickasaws, Choctaws, Cr … (read more)
