ANDREW JACKSON.

By the President: 
  JOHN FORSYTH,
    Secretary of State.

EXECUTIVE ORDER.

HERMITAGE, August 7, 1836.

C.A.  HARRIS, Esq.,

Acting Secretary of War.

SIR:  I reached home on the evening of the 4th, and was soon surrounded with the papers and letters which had been sent here in anticipation of my arrival.  Amongst other important matters which immediately engaged my attention was the requisition of General Gaines on Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana.  Believing that the reasons given for this requisition were not consistent with the neutrality which it is our duty to observe in respect to the contest in Texas, and that it would embarrass the apportionment which had been made of the 10,000 volunteers authorized by the recent act of Congress, I informed Governor Cannon by letter on the 5th instant that it could not receive my sanction.  The volunteers authorized by Congress were thought competent, with the aid of the regular force, to terminate the Indian war in the South and protect our western frontier, and they were apportioned in a manner the best calculated to secure these objects.  Agreeably to this apportionment, the volunteers raised in Arkansas and Missouri, and ordered to be held in readiness for the defense of the western frontier, should have been called on before any other requisition was made upon Tennessee, who has already more than her proportion in the field.  Should an emergency hereafter arise making it necessary to have a greater force on that frontier than was anticipated when the apportionment was made, it will be easy to order the east Tennessee brigade there.  All the volunteers under the act are engaged for one year’s service, unless sooner discharged.  Taking this view of the subject, I regret that as soon as the War Department had information of the requisition made by General Gaines it had not at once notified the governors of the States that the apportionment of the volunteers at first communicated to them would not be departed from, and that of course those in the States nearest to the scene of threatened hostility would be first called on.

I had written thus far when your letter of the 26th of July last, accompanied by one from General Wool of the 15th of July and one from General Towsen of the 25th of July last, was handed to me.  The letter from General Wool was unexpected.  His guide was the requisition on the State, and I can not well imagine how he could suppose that the Department would authorize a greater number of troops to be mustered and paid than he was specially directed to receive.  He was apprised fully of the apportionment which had been made of the 10,000 volunteers, and of the considerations which induced us to require 1,000 from Florida, 2,000 from Georgia, 2,000 from Alabama, and 2,500 from Tennessee.  This force was designated in this manner because it