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“ You now know, that all the lands secured to you by the treaty of Fort Stanwix, excepting such parts as you may since have fairly sold, are yours, and that only your own acts can convey them away. Speak, therefore, your wishes on the subject of tilling the ground. The United States will be happy to afford you every assistance in the only business which will add to your numbers and happiness.

“ The United States will be true and faithful to their engagements."

Reference was made to the language as well as the acts of the authorities and representatives of the states upon which it was asserted these treaties were not obligatory, to show that they had themselves considered them binding.

The bill passed by the senate, was taken up in the house, and committed to the committee of the whole, on the 26th of April, 1830. The debate commenced on the 13th of May, and closed on the 26th. Speeches in favor of the bill were made by Mr. Bell, of Tennessee, chairman of the committee on Indian affairs, and Messrs. Lumpkin, Foster, Wilde, Lamar, and Wayne, all of Georgia ; against it, by Messrs. Storrs, of New York, Ellsworth and Huntington, of Connecticut, Evans, of Maine, Johns, of Delaware, Bates and Everett, of Massachusetts, and Test, of Indiana. In the house, as well as in the senate, the speeches were mainly argumentative; some of them, however, containing fine specimens of eloquence.

The vote on the passage of the bill, was 103 in favor of, and 97 against it. It had received some amendments in the house, which were concurred in by the senate.

The act appropriated $500,000 for carrying its provisions into effect. It provided for an exchange of lands; those to which they should remove, to be guarantied to the Indians; but if the Indians should become extinct, or should abandon the lands, they were to revert to the United States. The Indians were to be paid for the improvements on the lands they occupied; to be assisted in their removal; and to be supported for a year thereafter.

A treaty with the Choctaw Indians was concluded on the 27th of September, 1830, by the secretary of war and Gen. Coffee. The Indians ceded their lands, and agreed to remove beyond the Mississippi, within three years. Those who chose to remain, as citizens of Georgia, were to have reservations of land for their use, and after residing upon them for five years, were to possess them in fee. The country was to be surveyed as soon as the government pleased, but no sale made previous to their removal; and intruders were to be kept out. The government was also to use its good offices with the state of Mississippi to suspend the operation of her laws, and with Alabama not to extend her laws into the na

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tion. They were to be governed in their western residence by laws of their own, which, however, were not to be inconsistent with those of the United States.

The Cherokees adhered to their determination not to emigrate, and on the 1st of June, 1830, they found themselves under the operation of the laws of Georgia. On the 11th of September, the Cherokee Phoenix, (the Indian paper,) contained the proceedings of a meeting of Cherokees, to which was appended a very pathetic appeal to the citizens of the United States, complaining of the infringements upon their rights by the state of Georgia, and of the withdrawal of the protection of the government, on the part of the executive. However variant may have been the opinions of the people in regard to the rights of the Indians, there could scarcely have been a difference of feeling on the perusal of their appeal, a few paragraphs of which we copy :

“ People of America, where shall we look ? Republicans, we appeal to you. Christians, we appeal to you. We need the exertion of your strong arm. We need the utterance of your commanding voice. We need the aid of your prevailing prayers. In times past, your compassions yearned over our moral desolations, and the nisery which was spreading amongst us, through the failure of game, our ancient resource. The cry of our wretchedness reached your hearts; you supplied us with the implements of husbandry and domestic industry, which enabled us to provide food and clothing for ourselves. You sent us instruction in letters and the true religion, which has chased away much of our mental and moral darkness.

"Your wise president Jefferson took much pains to instruct us in the science of civilized government, and recommended the government of the United States and of the several states, as models for our imitation. He urged us to industry and the acquisition of property. His letter was read in our towns; and we received it as the counsel of a friend. We commenced farming. We commenced improving our government; and, by gradual advances, we have attained our present station. But our venerable father Jefferson never intimated that, whenever we should arrive at a certain point in the science of government, and the knowledge of the civilized arts, then our rights should be forfeited; our treaties become obsolete; the protection guarantied by them withdrawn; our property confiscated to lawless banditti, and our necks placed under the foot of Georgia.

“It has been frequently asserted, that we are willing, and even desirous to go on to the west. We assure our friends that it is not so. We love our homes; we love our families; we love to dwell by our fathers' graves. We love to think that this land is our great Creator's gift to them; that he has permitted us to enjoy it after them; and that our offspring are preparing to succeed us in the inheritance. This land is our last refuge; and it is our own. Our title to it has no defect but the inferiority of our physical force; and this defect is amply supplied by our compacts with the powerful and magnanimous government of the United States.... Much has been done against us. Promises, threats, and

* stratagems, have been employed. But we are still unshaken in our attachment to the land of our birth; and we do solemnly protest against the exercise of oppressive measures to effect our removal."

They had been ordered by the commanding officer of the United States troops to desist from digging for gold. In a letter of reply, they said: “The Cherokees respect the government and its officer; but so firmly convinced are they of their rights and their privileges, that they are still disposed to continue their mining operations, and are perfectly resigned to such fate as the consequence of their honest labor upon

their own lands may consign them to, under the laws of the United States."

In October, Gov. Gilmer, of Georgia, in a letter to the president, requested him to withdraw from the Indian territory the United States' troops that had been sent there to enforce the non-intercourse law within the limits of the state, as it was “considered inconsistent with the rights of jurisdiction now exercised by its authorities.” Before the letter reached the president, in view of the approach of winter, the troops had been ordered to retire into winter quarters; of which the governor was officially informed

Having failed in their appeals to the government for protection, the Cherokees took measures to have their case submitted to the supreme court of the United States. In June, 1830, Mr. Wirt addressed a letter to Gov. Gilmer, informing him that he had been professionally consulted by the Cherokees as to their rights under their treaties with the United States, and suggested that a decision might be expedited, by making a case, by consent, before the supreme court.

This the governor declined. In his reply, he ascribed the unwillingness of the remaining Cherokees to join those of the tribe who had removed, to an improper interference on the part of their friends, by whom they had been persuaded that the right of self-government could be secured to them by the supreme court.

He said : “So long as the Cherokees retained their primitive habits, no disposition was shown by the states under the protection of whose government they resided, to make them subject to their laws. Such policy would have been cruel ; because it would have interfered with their habits of life, and the enjoyments peculiar to Indian people.” He ascribed the change in their condition to the power of the whites among them; and it was this state of things that had

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rendered it obligatory upon Georgia to vindicate her sovereignty by abolishing the Cherokee government. “No one,” said he, “knows better than yourself, that the governor would grossly violate bis duty, and exceed his authority, by complying with such a suggestion, (that of making up an “agreed case" before the court,) and that both the letter and the spirit of the powers conferred by the constitution upon the supreme court, forbid its adjudging such a case."

George Tassels, an Indian, having committed a homicide in resisting the execution of the laws of Georgia, was tried, convicted of murder, and sentenced to be hanged. Before the day fixed for the execution of the sentence, the state of Georgia, pursuant to a writ of error obtained from the supreme court of the United States dated the 12th of December, was cited to appear in January, and show cause why judgment against Tassels should not be corrected. The governor communicated the fact to the house of representatives, and the subject was referred to a committee, who reported resolutions, declaring the interference of the chief-justice in the administration of the criminal laws of Georgia to be a flagrant violation of her rights; enjoining all state officers to disregard all such mandates of the court; requiring the governor, by all force and means at his command, to resist and repel all invasions upon the administration of the laws; refusing to become a party to the case; and authorizing the governor to order the sheriff to secure the execution of Tassels, which was accordingly done.

In March following, (1831,) a motion was made in the supreme court in the name of the Cherokee nation, praying for a process of subpoena against the state of Georgia, and for an injunction to restrain the state from executing her laws within the Cherokee territory, on the ground that the execution of such laws in the Indian territory was repugnant to the constitution, laws and treaties of the United States. The question was most ably argued by John Sergeant and William Wirt, in favor of the motion. The opinion of the court was adverse to the application; the court disclaiming jurisdiction in the case, on the ground that the Cherokee nation was not a foreign nation in the sense of the constitution.

The court admitted the character of the Cherokees to be that of a state, a distinct political society, capable of managing its own affairs, and governing itself, of maintaining the relations of peace and war; of being responsible for any violation of their engagements; or for any aggressions committed on citizens of the United States. They had been uniformly so recognized by our treaties with them and by our laws. The counsel had shown that they were not a state of the union, and had insisted that they were individually aliens, not owing allegiance to the United States; and that an aggregate of aliens must be a foreign state.

But the court, though it conceded to the Indian tribes the attributes of a foreign nation, decided that they were not so recognized by the constitution; but were to be considered as domestic, dependent nations, in a state of pupilage to the general government, and holding their territory by right of occupancy. [A decision of the court as to the rights. of the Indians was subsequently given in a case of acknowledged jurisdiction, which will be found in a succeeding chapter.]

CHAPTER XLII.

WEST INDIA TRADE.-MR. M'LANE'S ARRANGEMENT.—JOHN RANDOLPH S

MISSION TO RUSSIA.

THE history, in a preceding chapter, of our protracted difficulties with Great Britain in regulating the colonial trade, was brought down to the year 1826, and left us in possession of the trade with her West India colonies through the Danish, Swedish, and other neutral islands. [See West India Trade.] It has been observed, that the loss of the direct trade with the British islands, to the great injury of the people of the United States, was charged upon the preceding administration; that they had neglected to accept, as a privilege, advantages which they had persisted in claiming as a right; and that they might have obtained them by legislation, had they not relied too much on negotiation. It was to be expected, therefore, that the new administration would spare no effort to retrieve what had been lost by their predecessors. In this the public expectation was not disappointed.

Mr. M'Lane, the new minister to England, received special instructions in relation to the conduct of the negotiation on this "vexed question" of British colonial trade. He was directed to represent, that the American people, in effecting a change of administration, had testified their disapproval of the acts of the late administration, and that the claims set up by them which had caused the interruption of the trade in question, would not be urged: that is to say, that what had been injudiciously asked as a right, we were willing to receive as a boon; and that the present administration should not be held responsible for the errors of their predecessors.

In the summer of 1830, an arrangement was effected, similar to that proposed by the act of parliament of July, 1825. Congress, at the last

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