On December 6, 1830, in his annual message to the nation—now commonly referred to as the president’s State of the Union address—Jackson praised Congress for putting into law an Indian removal policy that he had recommended for over a decade. In addition, in this speech he attempted to provide Congress and the public with justifications for why Native Americans in the East needed to be removed beyond the reach of American settlement.

The Indian Removal Act, which Congress had passed in the spring of 1830, gave the president the authority to negotiate “removal” treaties with all of the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River. Under these agreements, each tribe would surrender its homeland in the East and relocate within a stated period of time to a territory west of that great waterway. Jackson’s annual message of 1830 was a symbolic beginning of the end of a long history of Indian residency in the eastern United States. After the speech, Jackson’s administration worked expeditiously to conclude removal treaties with the tribes in the Southeast.