Based on the quote “I fought through the War Between the States and have seen many men shot, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew” (a Georgia soldier during the Trail of Tears), how did soldiers feel about forcing Native Americans to move to Indian Territory?

What this question is asking you to infer

You are not being asked to list events of the Trail of Tears. You are being asked to infer soldiers’ emotions and judgments from the wording of a firsthand quote.

Close-reading the key phrase “the cruelest work I ever knew”

• Calling it “work” suggests it was part of his assigned duty, something he was made to do.
• Calling it “cruelest” is a moral judgment, not a neutral description. He is saying it was wrong and harsh.

Why the comparison to war matters

The soldier says he fought in the Civil War (“the War Between the States”) and witnessed men being shot. By claiming the removal was worse than those experiences, he signals that:

• The suffering he saw during removal (families driven out, death on the journey, disease, exposure) struck him as especially unjust.
• The act of forcing civilians to leave their homes felt brutal in a different way than battlefield fighting.

Reasonable conclusion about soldiers’ feelings

From this quote, you can conclude that some soldiers felt conflicted and pained, viewing the forced removal as inhumane and something they regretted. Even if they followed orders, they did not necessarily feel proud of it.

One strong sentence you could write as an answer

“Some soldiers felt the removal was an extremely cruel, heartbreaking duty, and they saw it as worse than the violence they experienced in war.”