nation all their lands not hereby ceded," by a juggle betwixt the State of Georgia and Congress, the Cherokees have been virtually dispossessed of their country. From the period of the American independence to 1802, there had been a continual pressure on the Cherokees for their lands, and they had been induced by one means or another to cede to the States more than two hundred millions of acres. How reluctantly may be imagined, by the decided stand made by them in 1819, when they peremptorily protested that they would not sell another foot. That they needed all they had, for that they were becoming more and more agricultural, and progressing in civilization. One would have thought this not only a sufficient but a most satisfactory plea to a great nation by its people; but no, Georgia ceded to Congress territories for the formation of two new states, Alabama and Mississippi, and Georgia in part of payment receives the much desired lands of the Cherokees. Georgia, therefore, assumes the avowed language of despotism, and decrees by its senate, in the very face of the clear recognitions of Indian independence already quoted, that the right of discovery and conquest was the title of the Europeans; that every foot of land in the United States was held by that title; that the right of the Indians was merely temporary; that they were tenants at will, removable at any moment, either by negotiation or force. "It may be contended," says the Report of 1827, "with much plausibility, that there is in these claims more of force than of justice; but they are claims which have been recognized and admitted by the whole civilized world, and it is unquestionably true, that, under such circumstances, force becomes right!"[1]
- ↑ Stuart, ii. 173.
