of one of the members of this Union against her consent, much less could it allow a foreign and independent government to establish itself there.  Georgia became a member of the Confederacy which eventuated in our Federal Union as a sovereign State, always asserting her claim to certain limits, which, having been originally defined in her colonial charter and subsequently recognized in the treaty of peace, she has ever since continued to enjoy, except as they have been circumscribed by her own voluntary transfer of a portion of her territory to the United States in the articles of cession of 1802.  Alabama was admitted into the Union on the same footing with the original States, with boundaries which were prescribed by Congress.  There is no constitutional, conventional, or legal provision which allows them less power over the Indians within their borders than is possessed by Maine or New York.  Would the people of Maine permit the Penobscot tribe to erect an independent government within their State?  And unless they did would it not be the duty of the General Government to support them in resisting such a measure?  Would the people of New York permit each remnant of the Six Nations within her borders to declare itself an independent people under the protection of the United States?  Could the Indians establish a separate republic on each of their reservations in Ohio?  And if they were so disposed would it be the duty of this Government to protect them in the attempt?  If the principle involved in the obvious answer to these questions be abandoned, it will follow that the objects of this Government are reversed, and that it has become a part of its duty to aid in destroying the States which it was established to protect.

Actuated by this view of the subject, I informed the Indians inhabiting parts of Georgia and Alabama that their attempt to establish an independent government would not be countenanced by the Executive of the United States, and advised them to emigrate beyond the Mississippi or submit to the laws of those States.

Our conduct toward these people is deeply interesting to our national character.  Their present condition, contrasted with what they once were, makes a most powerful appeal to our sympathies.  Our ancestors found them the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions.  By persuasion and force they have been made to retire from river to river and from mountain to mountain, until some of the tribes have become extinct and others have left but remnants to preserve for awhile their once terrible names.  Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization, which by destroying the resources of the savage doom him to weakness and decay, the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware is fast overtaking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek.  That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the States does not admit of a doubt.  Humanity and national honor demand that every effort