Your demand that those people of the nation who are in favor of joining the Confederacy be allowed to organize into military companies as Home Guards, for the purpose of defending themselves in case of invasion from the North, is most respectfully declined. I cannot give my consent to any such organization for very obvious reasons: First, it would be a palpable violation of my position as a neutral; second, it would place in our midst organized companies not authorized by our laws but in violation of treaty, and who would soon become efficient instruments in stirring up domestic strife and creating internal difficulties among the Cherokee people. As in this connection you have misapprehended a remark made in conversation at our interview some eight or ten days ago, I hope you will allow me to repeat what I did say. I informed you that I had taken a neutral position, and would maintain it honestly, but that in case of a foreign invasion, old as I am, I would assist in repelling it.... It will develop later how Ross's wishes with respect to the enrollment of Home Guards were successfully and adroitly circumvented, with the connivance of General McCulloch, by men of the Ridge faction in Cherokee politics. From the beginning, McCulloch seemed determined not to take Ross seriously, yet he duly informed Secretary Walker of the turn events were taking. On the twelfth of June, for instance, he wrote[243] to him and gave an account of his recent interview with the Cherokee chief. It was rather a misleading account, however; for it conveyed to Walker the idea that Ross was only waiting for provocation from the North to throw in his lot with the Confederacy. On the twenty-second of June, McCulloch wrote[244] to Walker again and to the same effect as far as his belief that Ross was not sincere in his professions of neutrality was concerned, even though, in the interval between the two letters, he had been carefully corrected by Ross himself and even though he was, at the very time, sending on to Richmond, the correspondence that denied the truth of his own statement. He did, however, add that his belief now was that Ross was awaiting a favorable moment to join forces with the North.