Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850Benton, Thomas Hart
History
Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850
Benton, Thomas Hart
United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861
The senator from New Jersey first located this imputed fraud in the
Payne's Landing treaty, negotiated by General Gadsden, in Florida,
in the year 1832; and, after being tendered an issue on the fairness
and generosity of that treaty by the senator from Alabama [Mr.
CLAY], he transferred the charge to the Fort Gibson treaty, made
in Arkansas, in the year 1833, by Messrs. Stokes, Ellsworth and
Schermerhorn. This was a considerable change of locality, but no
change in the accusation itself; the two treaties being but one,
and the last being a literal performance of a stipulation contained
in the first. These are the facts; and, after stating the case, I
will prove it as stated. This is the statement: The Seminole Indians
in Florida being an emigrant band of the Creeks, and finding game
exhausted, subsistence difficult, and white settlements approaching,
concluded to follow the mother tribe, the Creeks, to the west of the
Mississippi, and to reunite with them. This was conditionally agreed
to be done at the Payne's Landing treaty; and in that treaty it was
stipulated that a deputation of Seminole chiefs, under the sanction
of the government of the United States, should proceed to the Creek
country beyond the Mississippi--there to ascertain first whether a
suitable country could be obtained for them there; and, secondly,
whether the Creeks would receive them back as a part of their
confederacy: and if the deputation should be satisfied on these two
points, then the conditional obligation to remove, contained in the
Payne's Landing treaty, to become binding and obligatory upon the
Seminole tribe. The deputation went: the two points were solved
in the affirmative the obligation to remove became absolute on
the part of the Indians; and the government of the United States
commenced preparations for effecting their easy, gradual, and
comfortable removal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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