Some presidents leave a legacy. Andrew Jackson left a scar. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 wasn’t just a policy — it was a legalized eviction notice, written in ink and signed in blood.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: this was ethnic cleansing in slow motion. Jackson, a man who saw Native Americans as obstacles to progress rather than people, pushed through legislation that gave him the power to relocate entire tribes from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast to lands west of the Mississippi River. You may know this little jaunt as the Trail of Tears, though “death march” would be more honest.

Tens of thousands of Native Americans from the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole nations were displaced. Thousands died along the way from starvation, disease, and exposure (Ehle, 1988). The U.S. government, under Jackson’s watchful scowl, broke treaties, ignored Supreme Court rulings — yes, really — and called it Manifest Destiny.

When the Supreme Court actually ruled in favor of the Cherokee in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Jackson reportedly said, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” That’s not statesmanship — that’s a middle finger to the Constitution wrapped in a General’s sash.

What makes this one of the worst presidential screwups isn’t just the cruelty — though there’s plenty of that. It’s the precedent it set: that if you wrap oppression in policy, people will call it leadership. Jackson didn’t just remove Native Americans — he erased the idea that the U.S. government had any obligation to respect their sovereignty.

And the effects didn’t vanish with the 19th century. The forced relocations shattered communities, decimated cultures, and entrenched systemic injustices that Native peoples still feel today (Wallace, 1993). You want generational trauma? This is where it gets its own zip code.

Some folks like to call Jackson a populist. Maybe. But if your definition of “populism” includes forced migration, broken treaties, and ignoring the Supreme Court, you may need to revisit your civics textbook — or burn it.

Yes, he’s still on the $20 bill. Which means every time you pay for coffee, you get a reminder that America once rewarded cruelty with currency.

So while some presidential blunders are about bad economics or botched wars, Jackson’s Indian Removal Act was something worse: a moral failure disguised as policy. And that earns it the third slot in our month-long march of presidential misfires.