ABSTRACT
On June 20, 1836, Secretary of War Lewis Cass officially appointed Gen. John E. Wool, at the time Inspector General of the United States, to the command of the Army of East Tennessee and the Cherokee Nation. Historians have generally given Wool high marks for his role in the Cherokee country, even suggesting that he had a humanitarian streak in administering his duties. In 1836, President Andrew Jackson, the top echelons of the War Department, feared that the Cherokees might commence a full–scale uprising resulting in a major guerrilla war and threatening American citizens in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. While becoming more cautious of states' rights concerns and politics, Wool, in the first six months of 1837, continued to carry out his mission by providing rations and clothing to impoverished Indians and protecting Cherokee lives and property, and investigating incidents of violence against the Indians.
