But this discovery came too late. He could no longer do justice to those fathers and mothers and children who had been slain, nor to those who had been enslaved; who had been taken far into the interior, sold and transferred from hand to hand like brutes. They had passed from Executive control. The crime now stained our national escutcheon, and no effort could wash it out. The very means which he adopted to close the war, operated to prolong it. These Seminoles and Mickasukies informed their brethren of their own condition, of the manner in which they were treated, and the violations of faith on the part of our Government in not giving them a territory for their separate use, as stipulated in the treaty, and constantly represented to them by our officers; that they were without a home and without a country, residing on Cherokee lands, under Cherokee protection, to prevent the Creeks from enslaving their friends, the Exiles. Many officers at the time doubted their desire to induce the emigration of their brethren.[127] They, however, obtained an interview between the Commanding General and two Seminole chiefs at Fort King. The chiefs were attended by some forty warriors, who remained in that vicinity four or five days, receiving food and articles of clothing from the United States; but they suddenly disappeared, and it was believed they originally came with hostile, rather than pacific, intentions. When it was found they had left clandestinely, the troops attempted to follow them, but were unable to find any traces of their flight. While these things were transpiring, the army lay idle in their quarters; neither the Executive, nor the Secretary of War, nor the Commanding General, knowing what to do. The Exiles learned from the Seminoles and Mickasukies, who visited them from the West, that many of their brethren who surrendered under the articles of capitulation, had been reënslaved, in violation of our plighted faith; and they refused to hold further intercourse with the agents of our Government. To them there appeared but one alternative--victory or death; and they greatly preferred the latter to slavery. Taking their families far into the interior, they hastened to renew the war with vigor and energy.