The Cherokees east of the Mississippi occupy a portion of the territories of four States, to wit, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama.  The treaty provides that the communities inhabiting those divisions shall each be considered as acting for themselves independently of the others.  We have frequently in our intercourse with the Indians treated with different portions of the same tribe as separate communities.  Nor is there any injustice in this as long as they are separated into divisions without any very strong bond of union, and frequently with different interests and views.  By requiring the assent of a majority to any act which will bind them we insure the preservation of a principle which will afford adequate security to their rights.

ANDREW JACKSON.

VETO MESSAGE.[8]

[Footnote 8:  Pocket veto.]

DECEMBER 4, 1833.

To the Senate of the United States: 

At the close of the last session of Congress I received from that body a bill entitled “An act to appropriate for a limited time the proceeds of the sales of the public lands of the United States and for granting lands to certain States.”  The brief period then remaining before the rising of Congress and the extreme pressure of official duties unavoidable on such occasions did not leave me sufficient time for that full consideration of the subject which was due to its great importance.  Subsequent consideration and reflection have, however, confirmed the objections to the bill which presented themselves to my mind upon its first perusal, and have satisfied me that it ought not to become a law.  I felt myself, therefore, constrained to withhold from it my approval, and now return it to the Senate, in which it originated, with the reasons on which my dissent is founded.

I am fully sensible of the importance, as it respects both the harmony and union of the States, of making, as soon as circumstances will allow of it, a proper and final disposition of the whole subject of the public lands, and any measure for that object providing for the reimbursement to the United States of those expenses with which they are justly chargeable that may be consistent with my views of the Constitution, sound policy, and the rights of the respective States will readily receive my cooperation.  This bill, however, is not of that character.  The arrangement it contemplates is not permanent, but limited to five years only, and in its terms appears to anticipate alterations within that time, at the discretion of Congress; and it furnishes no adequate security against those continued agitations of the subject which it should be the principal object of any measure for the disposition of the public lands to avert.

Neither the merits of the bill under consideration nor the validity of the objections which I have felt it to be my duty to make to its passage can be correctly appreciated without a full understanding of the manner in which the public lands upon which it is intended to operate were acquired and the conditions upon which they are now held by the United States.  I will therefore precede the statement of those objections by a brief but distinct exposition of these points.