As might be supposed, there was no answer that could be made to this assertion, and hence the new treaty then drawn up, in which the two states agreed to renounce respectively whatever pretensions they might have had to claims one against the other, was ratified by the Senate, and promulgated by President Jefferson December 21, 1801, thus relieving France of all responsibility for damages caused by her cruisers prior to 1800, and throwing the responsibility of liquidating these demands upon the United States government--a responsibility it succeeded in avoiding for a hundred years, as it succeeded in avoiding the demands which the French government could and did make upon it to defend French West India possessions. These were the "entangling foreign alliances" referred to by Washington. Bills granting payment of these claims, which originally amounted to $12,676,000, passed Congress twice, and were vetoed first by President Polk and then by President Pierce. If ever there was a just claim brought before Congress, these French spoliation claims deserve the title, and it is a historical disgrace to the government of the United States that the payment of them was delayed for nearly a hundred years.[74] [74] During Cleveland's administrations a bill was passed allowing claimants to present claims for adjudication to the amount of their face value. If interest was added, they would exceed $100,000,000. The owners of the 898 vessels destroyed, who were called upon to make this sacrifice as a means of relieving the government from a great responsibility, in many cases were reduced to poverty by the duplicity of the government, and even now with this scant justice, there are many that find it very difficult to prove their claim, so long a time has elapsed, and many are dead without legal representation. CHAPTER VII. _INDIANS IN THE REVOLUTION._ The writers of American histories severely condemn the British government for employing Indians in the war of the Revolution as well as in 1812, and give unstinted praise to the Americans for humanity in refusing to make use of the warlike but undisciplined and cruel Indian as an ally in the activities of a military campaign. Either an attempt is made to suppress the whole truth of this matter, or the writers have failed in their duty to thoroughly investigate sources of history easily accessible to the honest historian. The fact is, that in the incipient stage of the Revolutionary war, overtures were made by the political disturbers and leading instigators of trouble to win over to the side of the American party the fiercest, if not the most numerous Indian nation on the North American continent. From Concord, on the fourth of April, 1775, the Provincial Congress thought fit, with cunning prudence, to address the sachem of the Mohawks, with the rest of the Iroquois tribes, in the following words: