John Ross

His father was a Scots trader and his mother was the daughter of another one, which left John Ross seven-eighths Scottish by descent and, under Cherokee matrilineal law, a member of the Bird Clan. He was born at Turkeytown on the Coosa River in 1790. His father insisted on a classical education in English, first under the missionary Gideon Blackburn and then at a Tennessee academy, and Ross grew up speaking Cherokee poorly. At 20 he became a US Indian agent. In 1814 he served as adjutant of a Cherokee regiment under Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend. Then he built a ferry, a warehouse and a tobacco plantation worked by some 20 enslaved people, and the chiefs sent him to Washington because he was the one who could write.

He governed. Ross helped draft the Cherokee constitution of 1827, won election as principal chief in October 1828, and held the office until he died 38 years later. He retained William Wirt and beat Georgia at the Supreme Court, which held in Worcester v. Georgia in 1832 that state law had no force in Cherokee country. He petitioned Congress and hand-carried a protest bearing nearly 16,000 names. After removal he reunited the western and eastern Cherokee under the Act of Union, and in the Civil War moved the nation from neutrality to the Confederacy and then to the Union.

Ross never signed the treaty that took the land. On December 29, 1835, 20 men led by Major Ridge signed the Treaty of New Echota, two months after the Cherokee General Council rejected such a treaty, and the Senate ratified it in May 1836 by a single vote. Ridge's people argued then, and historians argue still, that Ross made it possible: by refusing every offer and playing for a friendlier president, he left Washington free to treat with a minority. Georgia's agents gave his house at Head of Coosa to a stranger and evicted his family. Winfield Scott's 7,000 soldiers drove the nation into camps in 1838. Ross, accepting defeat, persuaded Scott to let the Cherokee conduct the rest of the removal, and organized the 12 wagon trains. His wife Quatie died of pneumonia near Little Rock on February 1, 1839.

On June 22, 1839, in Indian Territory, men enforcing the Cherokee law that made selling common land a capital crime killed Major Ridge, John Ridge and Elias Boudinot. Nobody was tried, and the treaty faction said for the rest of Ross's life that he had known in advance. His son Allen denied it years later. Ross died in Washington on August 1, 1866, still negotiating a postwar treaty, and the Cherokee Nation brought his body from Delaware to Park Hill. His landing on the Tennessee River is now Chattanooga. Rossville, Georgia, keeps his name and his house. The argument over him did not stop either: a Moses to some, to others a rich man who held the line too long.

John Ross's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Ross's Landing building
  Warehouse and ferry on the Tennessee River — settlers renamed the place Chattanooga 1816
• Petition to Congress of April 15, 1824 other
  No Indian nation had carried its grievances to Congress directly before 1824
• Cherokee Constitution of 1827 law
  Drafted by a committee of 24 — three branches, a principal chief and a General Council 1827
• Protest petition against the Treaty of New Echota other
  Nearly 16,000 names, delivered by Ross in person. Congress did not act on it. 1838
• Act of Union law
  Signed July 12, 1839 — joined the Old Settlers and the eastern emigrants into one Cherokee Nation 1839

• March 27, 1814 aged 23 Fights at Horseshoe Bend as adjutant of a Cherokee regiment His commanding general was Andrew Jackson.
• April 15, 1824 aged 33 Petitions Congress directly on behalf of the Cherokee Nation No Indian nation had done it before.
• October 17, 1828 aged 38 Elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation He was reelected for the rest of his life, 38 years in all.
• March 3, 1832 aged 41 Wins Worcester v. Georgia at the Supreme Court Marshall held that Georgia's acts were repugnant to the Constitution, laws and treaties of the United States. Georgia carried on regardless.
• December 29, 1835 aged 45 Twenty men sign the Treaty of New Echota without him The Senate ratified it in May 1836 by a single vote and Jackson signed it into law.
• February 1, 1839 aged 48 His wife Quatie dies of pneumonia on the Arkansas River near Little Rock She was aboard a steamboat her husband had bought to carry the sick and the leaders' families.
• June 22, 1839 aged 48 Treaty signers Major Ridge, John Ridge and Elias Boudinot are killed No one was ever charged. Stand Watie survived an attack the same day.
• August 21, 1861 aged 70 Abandons neutrality and announces an alliance with the Confederacy Federal troops had left Indian Territory and Stand Watie was already raising a Confederate regiment.
• August 1, 1866 aged 75 Dies in Washington in the middle of the last negotiation He had persuaded President Johnson to drop the harshest version of the treaty.

• Andrew Jackson 1767–1845
  Seventh President whose populist policies and Indian Removal Act left a deeply contested legacy. served under, then fought
• John Marshall 1755–1835
  Chief justice who established judicial review and strengthened the Supreme Court and federal government. won before
• Martin Van Buren 1782–1862
  Eighth president who helped build the Democratic Party machine and governed through the Panic of 1837. opposed
• Winfield Scott 1786–1866
  Commanding general whose long career, Mexico City campaign, and Anaconda Plan shaped nineteenth-century U.S. military strategy. negotiated with
• Sequoyah 1770–1843
  Cherokee scholar who created the Cherokee syllabary, enabling mass literacy and strengthening Cherokee political and cultural life. co-signed the Act of Union
• Davy Crockett 1786–1836
  Frontiersman, soldier, and politician who became a folk hero of the American frontier. opposed removal alongside