Two weeks later[388] General Coffee, in a communication to the Secretary of War, alludes to the dissatisfaction of Georgia with the line as determined by him, and her claim to an additional tract of territory by remarking that "I have thought it right to give this statement for your own and the eye of the President only, that you may the better appreciate the character of the active agents and partisans of the Georgia claim, for really I cannot see any reasonable or plausible evidence on which she rests her claim." The President, after a careful examination of the testimony and much solicitude upon the subject, decided to approve General Coffee's recommendation. The Cherokee agent was therefore directed[389] to notify all white settlers living north of Coffee's line to remove at once. The governor of Georgia was also notified of the President's decision, and, though strongly and persistently protesting against it, the President firmly refused to revoke his action.[390] The Cherokees were equally dissatisfied with the decision, because the line was not fixed as far south as Buzzard's Roost, in accordance with the agreement of 1821 between themselves and the Creeks.[391] CHEROKEES PLEAD WITH CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT FOR JUSTICE. A delegation of the Cherokees, with John Ross at their head, was quartered in Washington during the greater part of the winter of 1832-'33, bringing to bear in behalf of their nation every possible influence upon both Congress and the Executive. A voluminous correspondence was conducted between them and the War Department upon the subject of their proposed removal. In a communication on the 28th of January, 1833, they ask leave to say that, notwithstanding the various perplexities which the Cherokee people had experienced under the course of policy pursued toward them, they were yet unshaken in their objections to a removal west of the Mississippi River. On the question of their rights and the justice of their cause, their minds were equally unchangeable. They were, however, fully sensible that justice and weakness could not control the array of oppressive power, and that in the calamitous effects of such power, already witnessed, they could not fail to foresee with equal clearness that a removal to the west would be followed in a few years by consequences no less fatal. They therefore suggested for the consideration of the President, whether it would not be practicable for the Government to satisfy the claims of Georgia by granting to those of her citizens who had in the lotteries of that State drawn lots of land within Cherokee limits other lands of the United States lying within the Territories and States of the Union, or in some other way.