a
connection with a view to avail themselves of that force to promote
their own projects of accumulation and aggrandizement. It is to the
interference of some of these adventurers, in misrepresenting the claims
and titles of the Indians to land and in practicing on their savage
propensities, that the Seminole war is principally to be traced. Men who
thus connect themselves with savage communities and stimulate them to
war, which is always attended on their part with acts of barbarity the
most shocking, deserve to be viewed in a worse light than the savages.
They would certainly have no claim to an immunity from the punishment
which, according to the rules of warfare practiced by the savages, might
justly be inflicted on the savages themselves.

If the embarrassments of Spain prevented her from making an indemnity
to our citizens for so long a time from her treasury for their losses
by spoliation and otherwise, it was always in her power to have provided
it by the cession of this territory. Of this her Government has been
repeatedly apprised, and the cession was the more to have been
anticipated as Spain must have known that in ceding it she would in
effect cede what had become of little value to her, and would likewise
relieve herself from the important obligation secured by the treaty of
1795 and all other compromitments respecting it. If the United States,
from consideration of these embarrassments, declined pressing their
claims in a spirit of hostility, the motive ought at least to have been
duly appreciated by the Government of Spain. It is well known to her
Government that other powers have made to the United States an indemnity
for like losses sustained by their citizens at the same epoch.

There is nevertheless a limit beyond which this spirit of amity and
forbearance can in no instance be justified. If it was proper to rely on
amicable negotiation for an indemnity for losses, it would not have been
so to have permitted the inability of Spain to fulfill her engagements
and to sustain her authority in the Floridas to be perverted by foreign
adventurers and savages to purposes so destructive to the lives of our
fellow-citizens and the highest interests of the United States. The
right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and
alike necessary to nations and to individuals, and whether the attack be
made by Spain herself or by those who abuse her power, its obligation is
not the less strong. Th