“SIR:  I have ordered General Gaines to forbear all further communication with this Government.  Should he presume to infringe this order, I will send your major-general by brevet home to you in irons.  GEORGE M. TROUP, Governor of Georgia.”

The surveyors previously appointed by the Legislature were directed to be on the ground, in defiance of United States authority, on the first day of September succeeding, and at sunrise to commence the work of surveying the lands.  A collision was anticipated as certain between the troops of the United States and the authorities of Georgia.  But there was a difficulty in the way not previously contemplated.  Colonels John S. McIntosh, David Emanuel Twiggs, and Duncan Clinch, each commanded regiments in the South.  Twiggs and McIntosh were native Georgians.  Clinch was a North Carolinian, but was a resident of Florida.  Zachary Taylor was the lieutenant-colonel of Clinch’s regiment.  He was a Virginian by birth, but resided in Mississippi.  All were Southern men in feeling, as well as by birth, and all Jeffersonian Republicans, politically.  McIntosh and Twiggs were fanatical in their devotion to the State of their birth.  The ancestors of both were among the first settlers, and both were identified with her history.  The three wrote a joint letter to the President, tendering their commissions, if ordered to take arms against Georgia.  This letter was placed in the hands of one who was influential with Mr. Adams, to be delivered immediately after the order should be issued to General Gaines to prevent by force of arms the survey ordered by Governor Troup.  Troup had classified the militia, and signified his intention to carry out, if necessary, the first-negotiated treaty, by force of arms, as the law of the land.

It was, unquestionably, the prudence of this friend which prevented a collision.  He communicated with Mr. Adams confidentially, and implored him not to issue the order.  He assured him that a collision was inevitable if he did, and caused him to pause and consult his advisers, who declared their conviction that the first treaty was the law of the land, and that Georgia held vested rights under it.  In obedience to this advice, Mr. Adams made no further effort to prevent the action of Georgia, and the lands were surveyed and disposed of by the State, under and according to the terms of the first treaty, and she retains a large strip of territory that would have been lost to her under the last treaty.  My information of these facts was derived from Twiggs, Clinch, and Henry Clay.  Who the friend was to whom the letter was intrusted, I never knew.  I mentioned to Mr. Clay the facts, and he stated that they were true, but no knowledge of them ever came to him until the expiration of Mr. Adams’ Administration.  General Taylor stated to me that long after these events had transpired, and after the resignation of Colonel Clinch, General Twiggs had made the communication to him.  As nearly as I can remember, Twiggs made the statement to me in the language I have used here.  On returning from the ratification meeting, at Canton, of the nomination of Mr. Clay for the Presidency, in 1844, before we reached Baltimore, I was in a carriage with General Clinch and Senator Barrow, of Louisiana, and stated these facts, and Clinch verified them.