At length the term of President Van Buren expired and was succeeded by a Whig administration. Then as now, the official acts of an outgoing political party were considered to be the legitimate subject of criticism and investigation by its political enemies. President Harrison lived but a month after assuming the duties of his office, but Vice-President Tyler as his successor considered that the treatment to which the Cherokees had been subjected during Jackson's and Van Buren's administrations would afford a field for investigation fraught with a rich harvest of results in political capital for the Whig party. _President Tyler promises a new treaty._--Accordingly, therefore, in the fall of 1841, just previous to the departure of the Cherokee delegation from Washington to their homes, the President agreed to take proper measures for the settlement of all their difficulties, expressing a determination to open the whole subject of their complaints and to bring their affairs to a satisfactory conclusion through the medium of a new treaty. In conformity with this determination the Commissioner of Indian Affairs[471] instructed the agent for the Cherokees to procure all the information possible to be obtained upon every subject connected with Cherokee affairs having a tendency to throw any light upon the wrongs and injustice they might have sustained to the end that full amends could so far as possible be made therefor. Before much information was collected under the terms of these instructions a change seems to have taken place in the views of the President, and the order for investigation was revoked. The draft of the new treaty was, however, in the mean time prepared under direction of the Secretary of War. It contained provisions regulating the licensing of traders in the Cherokee country, the jurisdiction over crimes committed by citizens of the United States resident in that country, the allotment of their lands in severalty by the Cherokee authorities, and the establishment of post-offices and post-routes within their limits. It further contemplated the appointment of two commissioners, whenever Congress should make provision therefor, whose duty it should be to examine into and make a report to that body upon the character, validity, and equity of all claims of whatsoever kind presented by Cherokees against the United States, and also to afford the Cherokees pecuniary aid in the purchase of a printing press and type as well as in the erection of a national council-house. This treaty, however, was never consummated.