The Dark History of Indigenous Dispossession that Followed the First Impeachment Acquittal

Faculty Publications

Former President Trump’s impeachment trial has brought attention to the nation’s first impeachment: of Senator William Blount of Tennessee. Because the Senate tried Blount even after he left office, many in the lead-up to the trial cited the case as evidence that former officials are still constitutionally subject to impeachment proceedings. But Blount’s impeachment also offers another, perhaps darker precedent presented by Trump’s acquittal: the long-term dangers posed when officials’ law-breaking goes unpunished.

Blount was a cagey, ambitious, and often venal self-promoter. Like many prominent politicians of the time, he grew rich in speculating in lands seized from Indigenous peoples. The Muskvgee Creek people called Blount “Fushe Micco”—the Dirt King.  

In 1790, Blount persuaded President Washington to appoint him governor of the Southwest Territory, what would later become Tennessee. Blount rejoiced: his new appointment, he thought,would increase the value of his extensive landholdings there.While Governor, Blount pressured the Cherokee Nation into ceding much of eastern Tennessee to the federal government.“We objected to giving up so much land,” Cherokee leader Nenetooyah stated, “but, for the sake of peace and quietness, we did it.” His bosses in the Washington Administration disapproved of Blount’s aggressiveness, and ended up paying the Cherokees more money to quiet their complaints.

In 1796, Southwest Territory became the new state of Tennessee, and Blount transitioned from territorial governor to one new state’s first U.S. Senators. Yet Blount still rankled over his supposed mistreatment by his former bosses in the Washington Administration. Blount reportedly wept when he recalled being “treated very ill by the President.”

To restore his lost prestige, Blount concocted a vague and grandiose plan to restore his lost prestige. Along with British and Native allies, he would attack Spanish-held Florida and Louisiana. He had “high expectations of emolument and command,” he told a confidant.  Blount’s half-brother Willie—later a governor of Tennessee—described the conspiracy as an early attempt to secure the “removal of those four tribes” whose homelands comprised the U.S. Southeast.  

As for the inconvenient fact that Native nations distrusted Blount, the Senator wrote a letter that sought to blame all his past bad acts on former President Washington. The discovery of this ill-advised letter undid him, as Blount’s perfidy horrified the capital. The House of Representatives quickly impeached him, for, violating the nation’s laws protecting Native nations, including the treaty that Blount had earlier negotiated. The Senate expelled Blount, but tried his impeachment nonetheless. It ultimately acquitted him, concluding that Senators were not subject to impeachment.

Yet impeachment did not mark the end of Blount’s career. “Mr. Blounts conduct has in no wise diminished [Tennesseans’] respect and attachment for him, but rather otherwise,” one observer reported. In many ways, Blount’s impeachment enhanced his reputation, since many believed the former Senator had been “persecuted by the tools of Administration.” Blount quickly rose to become the Speaker of the Tennessee Senate, the second-highest office in the state.

Blount remained popular in Tennessee because the federal government was so unpopular. The Adams Administration infuriated many white Tennesseans when it sent soldiers to evict the 2,500-3,000 white squatters who were illegally living on Cherokee land. Violence ensued, as the squatters killed several horses and wounded a soldier. Blount denounced the federal government’s actions as “violent oppression.”

Ultimately, the Adams Administration backed down. Instead of clashing with Tennessee, it browbeat the Cherokee Nation into ceding more land. But Blount, still angry, sued one of the federalofficials who had negotiated the trial for defamation. When a state judge threw out the lawsuit, Blount not only had the judge impeached but also presided over and prosecuted the ensuing trial. The judge escaped removal by a single vote.

Blount died soon after, his cockamamie plot having never amounted to much. But his political career foreshadowed what was to come. Many white Tennesseans increasingly embraced a constitutional vision that accepted federal power only when it further their interests in seizing Native land. Because Blount escaped any real consequences for defying federal law, he showed other politicians that they could serve their own politicaland speculative ambitions by appealing to these demands.

Most striking, perhaps, was the man who replaced Blount in the Senate after his removal: a young Nashville attorney and Blount protégé named Andrew Jackson. Like Blount, Jackson showed little tolerance for the niceties of federal law, especially those protecting Native peoples.  Years later, Jackson used the pretext of Native attacks to recapitulate Blount’s scheme and successfully invade, and seize, Spanish Florida. Many condemned Jackson’s dubious and unauthorized actions, but they won the general widespread popular support. A decade later on, now-President Jackson oversaw the fulfillment of another of Blount’s apparent aspirations, similarly defying prior treaties and laws to violently dispossess Native peoples. The ensuing mass deportation, in which thousands of Cherokees and other Indigenous peoples died, was both an echo and a culmination of the fights that had begun decades earlier, when the federal government had failed to punish one of its own officials for flagrantly violating federal law.