to a letter received by him from John Gunter, a Cherokee, took occasion to express his sympathy with the Cherokee people for the wrongs and sufferings experienced by them. He regretted them not only because of their injustice, but because they inflicted a deep wound on the character of the American Republic. He supposed that the principles which had uniformly governed our relations with the Indian nations had been too long and too firmly established to be disturbed. They had been proclaimed in the negotiation with Great Britain by the commissioners who concluded the treaty of peace, of whom he was one, and any violation of them by the United States he felt with sensibility. By those principles the Cherokee Nation had a right to establish its own form of government, to alter and amend it at pleasure, to live under its own laws, to be exempt from the United States laws or the laws of any individual State, and to claim the protection of the United States. He considered that the Chief Magistrate and his subordinates had acted in direct hostility to those principles and had thereby encouraged Georgia to usurp powers of legislation over the Cherokee Nation which she did not of right possess.
Policy of the President Criticised—Speech of Col. David Crockett
Among many men of note who denounced in most vigorous terms the policy of the Administration toward the Cherokees were Daniel Webster and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts; Theodore Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey; Peleg Sprague, of Maine; Henry R. Storrs, of New York; Henry A. Wise, of Virginia; and David Crockett, of Tennessee. The latter, in a speech in the House of Representatives, denounced the treatment to which the Indians had been subjected at the hands of the Government as unjust, dishonest, cruel, and short-sighted in the extreme. He alluded to the fact that he represented a district which bordered on the domain of the southern tribes, and that his constituents were perhaps as immediately interested in the removal of the Indians as those of any other member of the House. His voice would perhaps not be seconded by that of a single fellow member living within 500 miles of his home. He had been threatened that if he did not support the policy of forcible removal his public career would be summarily cut off. But while he was perhaps as desirous of pleasing his constituents and of coinciding with the wishes of his colleagues as any man in Congress, he could not permit himself to do so at the expense of his honor and conscience in the support of such a measure. He believed the American people could be relied on to approve their Representatives for daring, in the face of all opposition, to perform their conscientious duty, but if not, the approval of his own conscience was dearer to him than all else.
Governor Lumpkin, immediately upon his appointment as commissioner, had repaired to the Cherokee country, but Governor Carroll, owing to some pending negotiations with the Choctaws and subsequently to ill health, was unable to assume the duties assigned him. He was succeeded433 by John Kennedy. To this commission a third member was added in the summer of 1837434 in the person of Colonel Guild, who was found to be ineligible, however, by reason of being a member of the Tennessee legislature. His place was supplied by the appointment435 of James W. Gwin, of North Carolina.
On the 22d of December James Liddell was also appointed, vice Governor Lumpkin resigned.436
Superintendent Currey having died, General Nathan Smith was appointed437 to succeed him as superintendent of emigration.
Census of Cherokee Nation.—It appears from a statement about this time,438 made by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, that from a census of the Cherokees, taken in the year 1835, the number residing in the States of Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee was 16,542, exclusive of slaves and of whites intermarried with Cherokees.439
In May, 1837,440 General Wool was relieved from command at his own request, and his successor, Col. William Lindsay, was instructed to arrest John Ross and turn him over to the civil authorities in case he did anything further calculated to excite a spirit of hostility among the Cherokees on the subject of removal. This threat, however, seemed to have little effect, for we find Mr. Ross presiding over a general council, convened at his instigation, on the 31st of July, to attend which the Government hastily dispatched Mr. John Mason, Jr., with instructions to traverse and correct any misstatements of the position of the United States authorities that might be set forth by Ross and his followers. An extract from Mr. Mason's report has already been given.
Cherokee memorial in Congress.—Again, in the spring of 1838 Ross laid before Congress a protest and memorial for the redress of grievances, which, in the Senate, was laid upon the table441 by a vote of 36 to 10, and a memorial from citizens of New York involving an inquiry into the validity of the treaty of 1835 shared a similar fate in the House of Representatives two days later by a vote of 102 to 75.
Speech of Henry A. Wise.—The discussion of these memorials in Congress took a wide range and excited the warmest interest, not only in that body, but throughout the country. The speeches were characterized by a depth and bitterness of feeling such as had never been exceeded even on the slavery question. Hon. Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, who was then a member of the House of Representatives from that State, was especially earnest in his denunciation of the treaty of 1835 and of the administration that had concluded it. He looked upon it as null and void. In order to make treaties binding the assent of both parties must be obtained, and he would assert without fear of contradiction that there was not one man in that House or out of it who had read the proceedings in the case who would say that there had ever been any assent given to that treaty by the Cherokee Nation. If this were the proper time he could go further and show that Georgia had done her part, too, in this oppression. He could show this by proving the policy of that State in relation to the Indians and the institutions of the General Government. That was the only State in the Union that had ever actually nullified, and she now tells you that if the United States should undertake to naturalize any portion of the Indian tribes within her limits as citizens of the United States she would do so again. He had not disparaged the surrounding people of Georgia, far from it—"but" (said he) "there are proofs around us in this city of the high advancement in civilization which characterizes the Cherokees." He would tell the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Halsey) that a statesman of his own State, who occupied a high and honorable post in this Government, would not gain greatly by a comparison, either in civilization or morals, with a Cherokee chief whom he could name. He would fearlessly institute such a comparison between John Ross and John Forsyth.442
Speech of Daniel Webster.—Mr. Webster, of Massachusetts, also took occasion443 to remark in the Senate that "there is a strong and growing feeling in the country that great wrong has been done to the Cherokees by the treaty of New Echota."
President Van Buren proffers a compromise.—Public feeling became so deeply stirred on the subject that, in the interests of a compromise, President Van Buren, in May, 1838, formulated a proposition to allow the Cherokees two years further time in which to remove, subject to the approval of Congress and the executives of the States interested.
Georgia hostile to the compromise.—To the communication addressed to Governor Gilmer, of Georgia, on the subject, he responded:
* * * I can give it no sanction whatever. The proposal could not be carried into effect but in violation of the rights of this State. * * * It is necessary that I should know whether the President intends