ovidence;
and, in the wonderfully capacious compassion of his nature, he desired,
in the accomplishment of this fate, that no act of national injustice
to them should stain the nation's escutcheon, and determined to
signalize this desire in every act of his when giving form and shape to
national policy. He had generously lent a listening ear to the protests
of the chiefs, seconded by that of their agent, and sincerely believed
the treaty had been effected by fraud, and was wrong and oppressive,
and, therefore, he opposed its execution, and was the main instrument
in forming a new one. The draft of this was from his own pen, and he
was solicitous that it should supersede the old one, as an expression
of the Indians' desire.

Mr. Adams was, equally with Mr. Clay, opposed to the treaty as
ratified, though, as was his constitutional duty, he had sent the
instrument for the action of the Senate. In heart he was opposed to any
treaty which would remove the aborigines from this territory at this
time, and, in consequence of the action of Georgia, it was anticipated
that, at no very distant day, the entire Indian population east of the
Mississippi River, in the South, would be removed, unless some policy
of the Government should be adopted which would prevent it; and those
of the North, who felt desirous of crippling the territorial progress
of the South, and, of consequence, her augmentation of population,
supposed the most effectual means of accomplishing this would be to
educate and Christianize the Indian. To do this, they insisted he must
remain upon the territory he now occupied. This would bring him into
immediate contact with the civilized white, where he could be most
readily approached by missionaries and schoolmasters, and be instructed
by the force of example. At the same time, he was to remain under the
sole protection of the United States Government, without any of the
privileges of civil government to be exercised as a citizen of the
United States or the State upon whose soil he was located. This was
ennobled as the sentiment of Christian benevolence, while its real
intention was to withhold the land from the occupancy of the people of
Georgia, and in so much retard the growth and increase of the white
population of the State. To carry out this scheme, missionary
establishments sprang up among the Indians in every part of the South,
but especially within the limits of the State of Georgia, filled with
Northern f