eracy which eventuated in our Federal Union
as a sovereign State, always asserting her claim to certain limits,
which, having been originally defined in her colonial charter and
subsequently recognized in the treaty of peace, she has ever since
continued to enjoy, except as they have been circumscribed by her own
voluntary transfer of a portion of her territory to the United States in
the articles of cession of 1802. Alabama was admitted into the Union on
the same footing with the original States, with boundaries which were
prescribed by Congress. There is no constitutional, conventional, or
legal provision which allows them less power over the Indians within
their borders than is possessed by Maine or New York. Would the people
of Maine permit the Penobscot tribe to erect an independent government
within their State? And unless they did would it not be the duty of the
General Government to support them in resisting such a measure? Would
the people of New York permit each remnant of the Six Nations within her
borders to declare itself an independent people under the protection of
the United States? Could the Indians establish a separate republic on
each of their reservations in Ohio? And if they were so disposed would
it be the duty of this Government to protect them in the attempt? If the
principle involved in the obvious answer to these questions be
abandoned, it will follow that the objects of this Government are
reversed, and that it has become a part of its duty to aid in destroying
the States which it was established to protect.

Actuated by this view of the subject, I informed the Indians inhabiting
parts of Georgia and Alabama that their attempt to establish an
independent government would not be countenanced by the Executive of the
United States, and advised them to emigrate beyond the Mississippi or
submit to the laws of those States.

Our conduct toward these people is deeply interesting to our national
character. Their present condition, contrasted with what they once were,
makes a most powerful appeal to our sympathies. Our ancestors found them
the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions. By persuasion and
force they have been made to retire from river to river and from
mountain to mountain, until some of the tribes have become extinct and
others have left but remnants to preserve for awhile their once terrible
names. Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization, which
by destroying the r