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State Preventive Medicine: Public Health, Indian Removal, and the Growth of State Capacity, 1800–1840

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2020

Ruth Bloch Rubin*
Affiliation:
Political Science Department, University of Chicago

Abstract

Despite growing awareness of the American state's active role in the early nineteenth century, scholars have tended to ignore the early republic's public health apparatus. The few studies that do chronicle antebellum health initiatives confine themselves to programs intended to directly reward citizens—and particularly those who contributed politically or economically to the nation's founding and expansion. As this detailed study of the Indian Vaccination Act of 1832 makes clear, however, antebellum policymakers saw value in providing medical care to those outside their settler citizenry. Blending liberal, republican, and ascriptive ideas, the vaccination program joined two competing political logics: one emphasizing the humanity of indigenous people and the importance of providing for their welfare, and the other prioritizing the state's interest in an efficient “removal” process. Evidencing far more autonomy and administrative capacity than the average nineteenth-century bureaucracy, the War Department played a pivotal role in petitioning Congress for, and ultimately administering, the vaccination program. Unwilling to cede regulatory power over indigenous health to more proximate local governments or private parties, the War Department preferred its own military manpower—a decision that would profoundly shape the design and reception of subsequent Native health programs.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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Footnotes

Special thanks to Richard Bensel, Dan Carpenter, Tony Chen, Greg Elinson, Eric Schickler, Kathy Swartz, and participants in the American Politics Workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for their constructive and generous feedback. I also gratefully acknowledge the editors and anonymous reviewers at Studies in American Political Development for their valuable suggestions. This research was generously funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research program.

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46. “David Howell to Jonathan Arnold, February 21, 1784,” in Letters of Delegates to Congress: 1774–1789, vol. 21, ed. Paul H. Smith et al. (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1995), 381–84.

47. “Ordinance for the Regulation of Indian Affairs, August 7, 1786,” in Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 31 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1904–1937), 490–93.

48. Seven states’ colonial charters laid claim to tracts of western wilderness: Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. This created an early sectional cleavage between “landed” and “landless” states that the Articles of Confederation would struggle to resolve. See Jensen, Patriots, Settlers, and the Origins of American Social Policy, 126–27; Klarman, The Framers' Coup, 14, 26, 44–45.

49. Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 52.

50. As Rockwell recounts, this method of land acquisition structured the treaty agreements of Fort Stanwix (1784), Fort McIntosh (1785), and Fort Finney (1786). See Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 54.

51. Saler, The Settlers’ Empire, 14.

52. “Committee Report on the Southern Department, August 3, 1787,” in Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 33 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1904–1937), 456–59.

53. Saler, The Settlers’ Empire, 7.

54. “James Manning to Jabez Brown,” in Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789, ed. Paul H. Smith et al. (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1995), 344; “Henry Knox to George Washington, June 15, 1789,” in American State Papers: Indian Affairs (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1995), 13.

55. “Report of the Secretary at War: Indian Affairs,” in Territorial Papers of the United States, ed. Clarence E. Carter (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1934), 103–105.

56. “A Report on Indian Affairs, October 15, 1783,” in Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 25 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1904–1937), 680–84.

57. The treaty-making process required a substantial legislative appropriation to cover administrative expenses, payments for territory in the form of cash and goods and services, and diplomatic gifts. In 1776, for example, the Continental Congress allocated $10,000 to purchase gifts for a single treaty council; lawmakers appropriated another $10,000 for a different council two years later. See Prucha, Francis Paul, American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 3031Google Scholar.

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59. In a letter to William Henry Harrison (governor of Indiana Territory), Thomas Jefferson proposed an alternative strategy to gain control of native lands by dint of goods rather than cash. “We shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals run into debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off with a cession of lands.” “Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, February 27, 1803,” in Documents of United States Indian Policy, ed. Francis Paul Prucha (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), 22–23.

60. For example, after negotiating the treaty of Portage de Sioux in July 1815, military officials “persuaded [the Omaha] to submit to vaccination [against the smallpox]” as a diplomatic gesture of goodwill. Alice C. Fletcher and Francis A. LaFleshe, The Twenty-Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1905–1906 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1911), 622.

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68. “Representative James M. Wayne, Removal of the Indians, May 24, 1830,” in Register of Debates in Congress, vol. 6 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1824–1837), 1130–31.

69. Sarah M. Broadhead to Cousin in Reynoldsville, September 3, 1813, folder M-4170.1, box 2, Native American Collection, University of Michigan William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan [hereinafter WCL].

70. Starr, Paul, The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 4849Google Scholar. See also Benjamin Franklin, “Afterward to Every Man His Own Doctor” and “Poor Richard,” in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin Vol. II, ed. Leonard W. Labaree (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961), 155–58, 162–72.

71. As quoted in Viola, Thomas L. McKenney, 144.

72. As quoted in Jones, David S., Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian Mortality Since 1600 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 7879Google Scholar.

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74. Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 12.

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77. In 1802, for example, army surgeons at several forts in Ohio Territory vaccinated neighboring Native communities against smallpox, out of concern that an epidemic would endanger soldiers stationed at the military outposts. A year later, in June 1803, President Thomas Jefferson instructed the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to “carry with you some matter of the kinepox. Inform those of them with whom you may be of its efficacy as a preservative from the smallpox; and instruct and encourage them (i.e., the Indians) in the use of it.” But, it was not to be. As Lewis reported several months later, “I have reason to believe from several experiments made with what [vaccine matter] I have, that it has lost its virtue.” See Jones, Rationalizing Epidemics, 112; Stearn, E. Wagner and Stearn, Allen E., The Effect of Smallpox on the Amerindian (Boston: Bruce Humphries, 1945), 57Google Scholar.

78. Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 78–80.

79. As quoted in “Elbert Herring to Office of Indian Affairs, December 1, 1832,” in Message from the President of United States to the Two Houses of Congress (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1832), 175.

80. Ibid., 176. The accounts of Indian agents and army officials are corroborated by the journals and letters of Lewis and Clark. After traveling through the Missouri Valley in 1805, Clark reported that “the Smallpox destroyed the greater part of the [Mandan] nation and reduced them to one large Village and Some Small ones.” Three decades later, another smallpox epidemic would destroy what remained of the Mandan Nation. See Clark, William, The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, ed. Moulton, Gary E. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 402405Google Scholar.

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83. “Jedidiah Morse to John C. Calhoun, June 6, 1822,” in A Report to the Secretary of War of the United States, on Indian Affairs, ed. Jedidiah Morse (New Haven, CT: S. Converse, 1822), 9–10.

84. At the time he was appointed to lead the expedition, Morse was a noted geographer, minister, and defender of Native American cultural practices. Letters from abolitionists and missionaries echoed the sentiments expressed in War Department accounts. Corresponding with his cousin, Thomas Dean noted with particular sadness the death of indigenous children from whooping cough and dysentery, as well as smallpox. Thomas Dean to Philaner Hunt, August 12, 1824, folder M-4320.1, box 2, Native American Collection, WCL.

85. “President Jefferson on Indian Trading Houses: A Special Message to Congress, January 18, 1803,” in Documents of United States Indian Policy, ed. Francis Paul Prucha (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 21–22.

86. Jedidiah Morse, A Report to the Secretary of War of the United States, on Indian Affairs (New Haven, CT: S. Converse, 1822), 91–92.

87. “John C. Calhoun to Henry Clay, December 5, 1818,” in The Papers of John C. Calhoun, ed. W. Edwin Hemphill (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1959), 3:345. See also Viola, Thomas L. McKenney, 92–93.

88. C. Edward Skeen, “Calhoun, Crawford, and the Politics of Retrenchment,” The South Carolina Historical Magazine 73 (1972): 147. See also Barsness, Richard W., “John C. Calhoun and the Military Establishment, 1817–1825,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 50 (1966): 4553Google Scholar.

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90. As quoted in Skeen, “Calhoun, Crawford, and the Politics of Retrenchment,” 144; Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 78.

91. Calhoun's first superintendent, Thomas McKenney, used that title during his time at the Office of Indian Affairs. He would also refer to agency as the Indian Office or Bureau of Indian Affairs. McKenney's replacements often preferred the title of “Commissioner.” Viola, Thomas L. McKenney, 93–95.

92. Thomas L. McKenney to James Barbour, January 4, 1828, “Letter from the Secretary of War Transmitting Information of the Inadequacy of the Fund for Defraying the Expenses Attending the Emigration of the Creek Indians,” H.R. Doc. No. 44 (January 7, 1828), 5–6.

93. As quoted in Viola, Thomas L. McKenney, 118.

94. As quoted in Rolater, Fred S., “The American Indian and the Origin of the Second American Party System,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 76 (1993): 180203Google Scholar. See also Satz, Ronald, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975), 20–30, 3956Google Scholar.

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96. Balogh, Government Out of Sight, 210; Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 158.

97. “F. W. Armstrong to John H. Eaton, June 29, 1831,” in Correspondence on the Subject of the Emigration of the Indians, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1835), 496.

98. “F. W. Armstrong to George Gibson, December 2, 1832,” in Correspondence on the Subject of the Emigration of the Indians, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1834), 401.

99. “Lewis Cass to Samuel S. Hamilton, December 20, 1830,” in Correspondence on the Subject of the Emigration of the Indians, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1835), 201.

100. John Dougherty to William Clark, August 6, 1831, William Clark Papers, reel MS-95, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka, KS.

101. The consideration and passage of the Indian Vaccination Act (1832) predates the publication of the Congressional Record (1873). Consequently, we must do without a verbatim account of congressional debate and instead piece together a legislative history using the curated summaries of “leading debates and incidents” assembled in the Register of Debates, a commercial publication “intended to supply a deficiency” in the House and Senate Journals, which recorded motions, the outcome of floor votes, and brief descriptions of floor proceedings. Fortunately, we can supplement these records with other archival materials: the personal papers of members of the House and Senate Committees on Indian Affairs, messages from the president to Congress, records of the Office of Indian Affairs and War Department, and contemporaneous journalistic accounts. Of greater concern, little in the archival record reflects the views of Native people themselves. Indeed, while accounts of contagion in Native communities abound, the majority of those that have been preserved were written by white missionaries, Indian agents, governors of Indian territory, and other state actors. With the exception of petitions submitted to Congress and Indian agents, few accounts by Native people were recorded and far fewer preserved by archivists. Consequently, we can make only tentative inferences about Native attitudes toward vaccination or their experiences during the program's implementation phase.

102. Party identity is difficult to track during this period. Following the War of 1812, the first party system dissolved, and it was not until the election of President Andrew Jackson in 1828 that a stable two-party system would begin to reemerge. In the intervening years, partisan identities fluctuated. As a result, scholars of the period have had difficulty pinpointing lawmakers’ party affiliation across multiple congresses. In keeping with the literature, I defer to members’ own self-described party identity at any given time. Members alternately described themselves as Jacksonians, Anti-Jacksonians, Democratic-Republicans, and Whigs. Adding to the confusion, it is not unusual to find members calling themselves Jacksonians in one Congress, and Anti-Jacksonians in the next. As John Aldrich writes, confusion reigned until 1840, when “both parties had come close to being fully organized national, mass-based parties.” It is likely for this reason that party identification provides limited analytical traction in explaining legislators’ position on Indian vaccination. Aldrich, John H., Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103. Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 45–48.

104. Sigourney, Lydia H., Traits of the Aborigines of Boston (Cambridge, MA: Hillard and Metcalf, 1822), 284Google Scholar. Abolitionists, both white and black, were also strong proponents of vaccination for African Americans. In antebellum pamphlets and periodicals they lauded “vaccination in order to encourage behaviors consistent with citizenship, including intellectual advancement and civic responsibility.” See DeLancey, “Vaccinating Freedom,” 297.

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107. Child, Lydia Maria, The Christian Indian: Or, Times of the First Settlers (New York: Collins and Hannay, 1825), 6Google Scholar.

108. Frymer, Building an American Empire, 123–25. See also Hershberger, Mary, “Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle against Indian Removal in the 1830s,” The Journal of American History 86 (1999): 1540CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109. As quoted in Hershberger, “Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition,” 24.

110. “Vaccination of the Indians, April 4, 1832,” 2384.

111. “H.R. 526,” April 3, 1832, House Bills and Resolutions, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., 2.

112. “Representative John Bell, Vaccination of the Indians, April 4, 1832,” 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., in Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, vol. 25 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1832), 567.

113. “Removal of the Indians, May 15, 1830,” in Register of Debates in Congress, 21st Congress, 1st Sess., 994–98.

114. “Removal of the Indians, May 24, 1830,” in Register of Debates in Congress, 21st Congress, 1st Sess., 1133–136. See also Bell, John, Speech of John Bell of Tennessee, on Slavery in the United States and the Causes of the Present Dissensions Between the North and the South (Washington, DC: Gideon, 1850), 13Google Scholar.

115. As quoted in Parks, Norman L., “The Career of John Bell as Congressman from Tennessee, 1827–1841,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 1 (1942): 229–49Google Scholar.

116. “Vaccination of the Indians, April 4, 1832,” 2384. Bell also read from a report submitted by the War Department in March 1832 describing the “frightful distemper” of “the monstrous disease.” The account noted that indigenous communities “were dying so fast, and taken down in such large numbers that they had ceased to bury the dead,” and described “their misery [as] so great and so general.” It was the War Department's official recommendation to “have them vaccinated, in order to prevent the desolating ravages of this dreadful disorder.” Lewis Cass, “Small Pox among the Indians, March 30, 1832,” in A Letter from the Secretary of War, H.R. Doc. No. 190, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., 1–2.

117. “Vaccination of the Indians, April 4, 1832,” 2386.

118. Ibid., 2384–85.

119. Ibid., 2384.

120. “H.R. 526: Vaccination of the Indians, April 10, 1832,” 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., in Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, vol. 25 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1832), 578.

121. Hugh Lawson White, “Cherokee Memorial, February 4, 1835,” in A Memoir of Hugh Lawson White: Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, Member of the Senate of the United States, ed. Nancy N. Scott (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1856), 167.

122. As quoted in Viola, Thomas L. McKenney, 222.

123. “Indian Vaccination, April 17, 1832,” Gales and Seaton's Register, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., 792.

124. Ibid.

125. “Indian Vaccination, April 18, 1832,” Gales and Seaton's Register, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., 795.

126. “Indian Vaccination, April 17, 1832,” 792.

127. Ibid.

128. “Indian Vaccination, April 24, 1832,” 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., in Journal of the Senate, vol. 21 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1832), 253.

129. Ibid. For more on Benton's strategy for American expansion, see Jensen, Patriots, Settlers, and the Origins of American Social Policy, 181; Frymer, Building an American Empire, 130–37; Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 127–31; Van Atta, Securing the West, 87.

130. Rockwell, Indian Affairs and the Administrative State, 26.

131. Indeed, throughout the Revolution, southern officials warned their constituents that northern loyalists might send runaway slaves infected with smallpox home to cripple Patriot households. See Fenn, Elizabeth A., Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 130–33Google Scholar; Ranlet, Philip, “The British Slaves and Smallpox in Revolutionary Virginia,” The Journal of Negro History 64 (1999): 217–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

132. As quoted in Tortora, Carolina in Crisis, 81.

133. Fenn, Pox Americana, 126–34; Tortura, Carolina in Crisis, 85–86.

134. Kenny, Stephen C., “A Dictate of Both Interest and Mercy? Slave Hospitals in the Antebellum South,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 65 (2010): 147CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

135. Viola, Thomas L. McKenney, 212.

136. Kerber, “The Abolitionist Perception of the Indian,” 276.

137. Van Atta, Securing the West, 115.

138. Gailmard, Sean and Jenkins, Jeffrey A., “Distributive Politics and Congressional Voting: Public Lands Reform in the Jacksonian Era,” Public Choice 175 (2018): 259–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

139. Frymer, Building an American Empire, 140–51. This was a concern that southern lawmakers had long harbored. As Michael Klarman recounts, southern delegates to the Continental Congress “warned that the interest of the northern carrying states was ‘strikingly different from that of the [southern] productive states,’ and he predicted that ‘this government will operate as a faction of seven states to oppress the rest of the union.’” Klarman, The Framers' Coup, 390–91.

140. Andrew Jackson to Lewis Cass, December 17, 1832, Andrew Jackson Papers, Series 1, Vol. 82, Library of Congress Manuscript Division Digital Archive [hereinafter LOCMD], http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/maj.01082_0244_0245, accessed August 1, 2017; Andrew Jackson to U.S. Congress, January 16, 1833, Andrew Jackson Papers, Series 8, Vol. 178, LOCMD, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/maj.08178_0034_0041, accessed August 1, 2017; Andrew Jackson, December 10, 1833, “Proclamation Concerning the Ordinance of South Carolina on the Subject of the Tariff,” Elliot's Debates, vol. 4 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1836), 582–92.

141. “H.R. 526,” April 3, 1832, House Bills and Resolutions, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., 2.

142. Lewis Cass to Indian Agents in Illinois and Michigan, “Vaccination Circular,” May 10, 1832, Letter from the Secretary of War on Vaccination of Indians, H.R. Doc. No. 82, 22nd Congress, 2nd. Sess. 5–6.

143. McLaughlin, Andrew C., American Statesman: Lewis Cass (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1896), 138Google Scholar.

144. Klunder, Willard Carl, Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996), 69Google Scholar.

145. Lewis Cass, “Review of Published Works on Indians,” folder 28, box 6, Lewis Cass Papers, WCL.

146. Lewis Cass, “Concerning a System for the Regulation of Indian Affairs,” November 29, 1816, folder 27, box 6, Lewis Cass Papers, WCL.

147. McLaughlin, American Statesman, 138.

148. “George Gaines to George Gibson, June 3, 1832,” in Correspondence on the Subject of the Emigration of Indians, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1834), 686. See also “Henry C. Brish to William Clark, June 6, 1832,” in Correspondence on the Subject of the Emigration of Indians, vol. 5 (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1835), 118; “Henry C. Brish to William Clark, July 16, 1832,” in Correspondence on the Subject of the Emigration of Indians, vol. 5 (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1835), 118–19.

149. “John Robb to William P. Duval, August 21, 1832,” in Correspondence on the Subject of the Emigration of Indians, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1835), 904–905.

150. As quoted in Viola, Thomas L. McKenney, 217–18.

151. Lewis Cass, “Review of Published Works on Indians,” folder 28, box 6, Lewis Cass Papers, WCL.

152. Cass, “Concerning a System for the Regulation of Indian Affairs,” November 29, 1816, folder 27, box 6, Lewis Cass Papers, WCL.

153. Ibid.

154. Isaac McCoy to Lewis Cass, March 23, 1832, A Letter from the Secretary of War, H.R. Doc. No. 190, 22nd Congress, 1st Sess., 3.

155. Lewis Cass to Indian Agents in Illinois and Michigan, May 10, 1832, Letter from the Secretary of War, H.R. Doc. No. 82, 22nd Congress, 2nd Sess., 5.

156. “John Robb to William P. Duval, August 21, 1832,” 905. “Lewis Cass to James B. Gardiner, June 21, 1832,” in Correspondence on the Subject of the Emigration of Indians, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1835), 847.

157. Lewis Cass to William Marshall, May 15, 1832, Letter from the Secretary of War on Vaccination, H.R. Doc. No. 82, 22nd Congress, 2nd Sess., 6.

158. Vaccination was deemed successful when the incision healed with a pockmark scar. In the early 1700s the preferred method of “variolation” or inoculation involved rubbing the dried pustules of mild cases of smallpox into the skin of healthy subjects to provide a lifetime immunity to the disease. The practice carried far more risk than the use of cowpox. See Fenn, Pox Americana.

159. Gillett, Mary C., The Army Medical Department, 1818–1865 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1987), 15Google Scholar.

160. Ibid.

161. Elbert Herring to Lewis Cass, January 31, 1833, Letter from the Secretary of War, H.R. Doc. No. 82, 22nd Congress, 2nd Sess., 1–2.

162. “Elbert Herring to F.W. Armstrong, April 12, 1833,” in Correspondence on the Subject of the Emigration of Indians, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1834–1835), 659.

163. Elbert Herring to Lewis Cass, January 31, 1833, 2–3. See also Letters Received by the Office of Indian Affairs, 1824–1881, roll 170, microcopy no. 234, National Archives and Records Service, Washington, DC.

164. Ibid.

165. Lewis Cass to John Dougherty, 1833, Letters Sent by the Office of Indian Affairs, 1824–1881, roll 8, microcopy no. 465, National Archives and Records Service, Washington, DC.

166. Some have argued that Cass failed to vaccinate tribes in the northern Missouri River valley because they had either refused to agree to treaty terms favorable to the United States or were of limited importance to native trade. See Pearson, “Lewis Cass and the Politics of Disease.”

167. “Lewis Cass to William P. Duval, March 1833,” in Correspondence on the Subject of the Emigration of Indians, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Duff Green, 1834–1835), 512. In fact, the Secretary proved prescient in his assessment, but at great cost to the northern tribes of the Missouri River valley. After a devastating smallpox epidemic fully eradicated the unvaccinated tribes in 1837, federal lawmakers set aside $5,000 to ensure the vaccination of all native communities scheduled for removal.

168. Katznelson, “Flexible Capacity,” 101.

169. Based on War Department estimates of the indigenous population east of the Missouri River in the 1830s, vaccinations were administered to roughly a quarter of the population ultimately removed to reservations. See Cass, Lewis, “Removal of the Indians,” North American Review 30 (1830): 6264Google Scholar.

170. DeJong, “If You Knew the Conditions”, 2–5.

171. Frymer, Building an American Empire, 12.

172. Smith, “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz,” 550.

173. Frymer, Building an American Empire, 15.

174. DeJong, “If You Knew the Conditions”, 10–11.

175. Campbell, Andrea, How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Political Activism and the American Welfare State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.