Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ as a proof that the convention thought such a restriction to be necessary, even among ourselves.

      "The time at which Mr. B. had offered his services to aid this negotiation, had appeared to him to be eminently critical, and big with consequences which he was anxious to avert. It was after this committee had resolved to report against the new treaty, and before they had made the report to the Senate. The decision, whatsoever it might be, and the consequent discussions, criminations, and recriminations, were calculated to bring on a violent struggle in the Senate itself; between the Senate and the Executive; perhaps between the two Houses (for a reference of the subject to both would have taken place); and between one or more States and the federal government. Mr. B. had concurred in the report against the new treaty, because it divested Georgia of vested rights; and, though objectionable in many other respects, he was willing, for the sake of peace, to ratify it, provided the vested rights of Georgia were not invaded. The supplemental article had relieved him upon this point. He thought that Georgia had no further cause of dissatisfaction with the treaty; it was Alabama that was injured by the loss of some millions of acres, which she had acquired under the treaty of 1825, and lost under that of 1826. Her case commanded his regrets and sympathy. She had lost the right of jurisdiction over a considerable extent of territory; and the advantages of settling, cultivating, and taxing the same, were postponed; but, he hoped, not indefinitely. But these were consequential advantages, resulting from an act which the government was not bound to do; and, though the loss of them was an injury, yet this injury could not be considered as a violation of vested rights; but the circumstance certainly increased the strength of her claim to the total extinction of the Indian titles within her limits and, he trusted, would have its due effect upon the Government of the United States.

      "The third and last point on which Mr. B. thought references to his name had made it proper for him to give a statement, related to the circumstance which had induced the Senate to make the amendment which had become the subject of the conference between the two Houses. He had himself come to the knowledge of that circumstance in the last days of April, some weeks after the supplemental article had been ratified. He had deemed it to be his duty to communicate it to the Senate, and do it in a way that would avoid a groundless agitation of the public feeling, or unjust reflections upon any individual, white or red, if, peradventure, his information should turn out to have been untrue. He therefore communicated it to the Senate in secret session; and the effect of the information was immediately manifested in the unanimous determination of the Senate to adopt the amendment which was now under consideration. He deemed the amendment, or one that would effect the same object, to be called for by the circumstances of the case, and the relative state of the parties. It was apparent that a few chiefs were to have an undue proportion of the money – they had realized what he had foretold to the Secretary; and it was certain that the knowledge of this, whenever it should be found out by the nation, would occasion disturbances, and, perhaps, bloodshed. He thought that the United States should prevent these consequences, by preventing the cause of them, and, for this purpose, he would concur in any amendment that would effect a fair distribution of the money, or any distribution that was agreeable to the nation in open counsel."

      Mr. Berrien: "You have arrived at the last scene in the present act of the great political drama of the Creek controversy. In its progress, you have seen two of the sovereign States of the American Confederation – especially, you have seen one of those States, which has always been faithful and forward in the discharge of her duties to this Union, driven to the wall, by the combined force of the administration and its allies consisting of a portion of the Creek nation, and certain Cherokee diplomatists. Hitherto, in the discussions before the Senate on this subject, I have imposed a restraint upon my own feelings under the influence of motives which have now ceased to operate. It was my first duty to obtain an acknowledgment, on this floor, of the rights of Georgia, repressing, for that purpose, even the story of her wrongs. It was my first duty, sir, and I have sacrificed to it every other consideration. As a motive to forbearance it no longer exists. The rights of Georgia have been prostrated.

      "Sir, in the progress of that controversy, which has grown out of the treaty of the Indian Springs, the people of Georgia have been grossly and wantonly calumniated, and the acts of the administration have assisted to give currency to these calumnies. Her chief magistrate has been traduced. The solemn act of her legislature has been set at naught by a rescript of the federal Executive. A military force has been quartered on her borders to coerce her to submission; and without a trial, without the privilege of being heard, without the semblance of evidence, she has been deprived of rights secured to her by the solemn stipulations of treaty.

      "When, in obedience to the will of the legislature of Georgia, her chief magistrate had communicated to the President his determination to survey the ceded territory, his right to do so was admitted. It was declared by the President that the act would be 'wholly' on the responsibility of the government of Georgia, and that 'the Government of the United States would not be in any manner responsible for any consequences which might result from the measure.' When his willingness to encounter this responsibility was announced, it was met by the declaration that the President would 'not permit the survey to be made,' and he was referred to a major-general of the army of the United States, and one thousand regulars.

      "The murder of McIntosh – the defamation of the chief magistrate of Georgia – the menace of military force to coerce her to submission – were followed by the traduction of two of her cherished citizens, employed as the agents of the General Government in negotiating the treaty – gentlemen whose integrity will not shrink from a comparison with that of the proudest and loftiest of their accusers. Then the sympathies of the people of the Union were excited in behalf of 'the children of the forest,' who were represented as indignantly spurning the gold, which was offered to entice them from the graves of their fathers, and resolutely determined never to abandon them. The incidents of the plot being thus prepared, the affair hastens to its consummation. A new treaty is negotiated here —a pure and spotless treaty. The rights of Georgia and of Alabama are sacrificed; the United States obtain a part of the lands, and pay double the amount stipulated by the old treaty; and those poor and noble, and unsophisticated sons of the forest, having succeeded in imposing on the simplicity of this government, next concert, under its eye, and with its knowledge, the means of defrauding their own constituents, the chiefs and warriors of the Creek nation.

      "For their agency in exciting the Creeks to resist the former treaty, and in deluding this government to annul it, three Cherokees – Ridge, Vann, and the father of the former– are to receive forty thousand dollars of the money stipulated to be paid by the United States to the chiefs of the Creek nation; and the government, when informed of the projected fraud, deems itself powerless to avert it. Nay, when apprised by your amendment, that you had also detected it, that government does not hesitate to interpose, by one of its high functionaries, to resist your proceeding, by a singular fatuity, thus giving its countenance and support to the commission of the fraud. Sir, I speak of what has passed before your eyes even in this hall.

      "One fifth of the whole purchase money is to be given to three Cherokees. Ten thousand dollars reward one of the heroes of Fort Mims – a boon which it so well becomes us to bestow. A few chosen favorites divide among themselves upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, leaving a pittance for distribution among the great body of the chiefs and warriors of the nation.

      "But the administration, though it condemns the fraud, thinks that we have no power to prevent its consummation. What, sir, have we no power to see that our own treaty is carried into effect? Have we no interest in doing so? Have we no power? We have stipulated for the payment of two hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars to the chiefs of the Creek nation, to be distributed among the chiefs and warriors of that nation. Is not the distribution part of the contract as well as the payment? We know that a few of those chiefs, in fraudulent violation of the rights secured by that treaty, are about to appropriate this money to themselves. Are we powerless to prevent it? Nay, must we, too, suffer ourselves to be made the conscious instruments of its consummation? We have made a bargain with a savage tribe which you choose to dignify with the name of a treaty concerning СКАЧАТЬ