_Alarm of the Cherokees and indignation of Georgia._--The views expressed by the governor and legislature of Georgia upon this subject were the cause of much alarm among the Cherokees, who, through their delegation, appealed[297] to the magnanimity of the American Congress for justice and for the protection of the rights, liberties, and lives of the Cherokee people. On the other hand, the doctrines enunciated in President Monroe's special message, quoted above, again aroused the indignation of the governor of Georgia, who, in a communication[298] to the President, commented with much severity upon the bad faith that for twenty years had characterized the conduct of the executive officers of the United States in their treatment of the matter in dispute. _Message of President John Quincy Adams._--Every day but added acrimonious intensity to the feelings of the officials and people of Georgia. Their determination to at once possess both the Creek and the Cherokee territory within her chartered limits would admit of no delay or compromise. Following the Creek treaty of 1826, her surveyors were promptly and forcibly introduced into the ceded country, in spite of an express provision of the treaty forbidding such action prior to the 1st of January, 1827. So critical was the state of affairs considered to be that President John Quincy Adams invited the attention of Congress to the subject in a special message.[299] Therein the President declared that it ought not to be disguised that the act of the legislature of Georgia, under the construction given to it by the governor of that State, and the surveys made or attempted by his authority beyond the boundary secured by the treaty of 1826 to the Creek Indians, were in direct violation of the supreme law of the land, set forth in a treaty which had received all the sanctions provided by the Constitution; that happily distributed as the sovereign powers of the people of this Union had been between their general and State governments, their history had already too often presented collisions between these divided authorities with regard to the extent of their respective powers. No other case had, however, happened in which the application of military force by the Government of the Union had been suggested for the enforcement of a law the violation of which had within any single State been prescribed by a legislative act of that State. In the present instance it was his duty to say that if the legislative and executive authorities of the State of Georgia should persevere in acts of encroachment upon the territories secured by a solemn treaty to the Indians and the laws of the Union remained unaltered, a superadded obligation, even higher than that of human authority, would compel the Executive of the United States to enforce the laws and fulfill the duties of the nation by all the force committed for that purpose to his charge. CHEROKEE PROGRESS IN CIVILIZATION.