SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SLAVE STATES.

67

our ostensible political structure, and to be invested with the right to intervene against our Government whenever its guaranties of perpetuity were supposed to be jeoparded by the prevalence of republican principles in adjacent countries. This was an assumption equally startling, novel, and arrogant -one which introduced a new idea into American politics, and a new element into the workings of the Government. This exhibited slavery in the United States in a more terrible aspect than it had hitherto worn.

Slavery had previously exerted a powerful influence in the Missouri controversy. The States which tolerated it, espoused the cause of its advocates in the territory which sought admission into the Union without restrictions upon the practice. Both the moral and political right to practice it had been boldly defended. But no statesman had previously ventured to assert for it the pretense that it was an independent institution in our midst, whose owners were invested with attributes and inherent rights which belong only to the sovereign. It then set up such a claim; and strange indeed to relate, it pertinaciously adhered to it until it extorted from a majority of the people of the United States a reluctant but respectful recognition.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GEORGIA CONTROVERSY-SOUTH CAROLINA NULLIFICATION.

Removal of the Creek Indians - Attempted by Force-Violent Conduct of Gov. Troup-Southern Confederacy Proposed - Opposition to Adams' Administration-Conflict between the Governor and the President-Paper Valor of the Governor-Inauguration of President Jackson-Protest of the Nullifier — Foote's Resolutions-Important Debate - Nullification- Jackson's Proclamation-Special Message-Ignoble Surrender-The Compromise.

A controversy with the State of Georgia now occurred, respecting the removal of certain tribes of Indians from that State, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The principal Chiefs of the Creeks had ceded to the United States their lands in Georgia, and agreed to receive in exchange for them other lands west of the Mississippi, and a certain money compensation—a cession which most of that nation refused to ratify. They were unwilling to leave their improvements. They were the original proprietors. At this time they owned. nine and one half million acres in Georgia, seven and one half millions in Alabama, about sixteen millions in Mississippi, and four millions in Florida. This large territory had been secured to them by the Federal Government, and of which they were the true and rightful owners. The government of Georgia insisted upon a forcible fulfillment of the treaty. The Governor convened the legislature, with a view to the passage of laws providing for the survey and appropriation of the lands. And as Senator King, from New York, had, at a previous session of Congress, introduced into that body a resolution proposing, after the payment of the public debt, to appropriate the proceeds of the sales of the public lands to aid in the emancipa

VIOLENCE OF GOVERNOR TROUP.

69 tion of slaves, and the colonization of free persons outside the United States, and as Mr. Wirt, the attorney general, had about that time, pronounced the law of South Carolina, under which colored mariners, arriving in that port, were imprisoned, unconstitutional, Governor Troup took it upon himself to denounce both Mr. King's resolution, and the attorney general's opinion, as an officious and impertinent intermeddling with domestic concerns; and he admonished the legislature that if they left one such movement by the Federal Executive, or by Congress, unresisted, "all would be lost." "If this matter [slavery] be an evil," said the Governor, "it is

our own; if it

To remove it,

be a sin, we can implore the forgiveness of it. we ask not either their sympathy or assistance. It may be our physical weakness—it is our moral strength. If, like the Greeks and Romans, we cease to be MASTERS, we are slaves. I entreat you most earnestly, now that it is not too late, to step forth, and having exhausted the argument, TO STAND BY YOUR ARMS."

A committee of the Georgia Legislature, sympathizing with all the violent feelings of the Governor, and overlooking most of the business subjects of the message, warmed into furious indignation, and proposed a SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY. "The hour is come," they remarked in their report, "or is rapidly approaching, when the States from Virginia to Georgia, from Missouri to Louisiana, must confederate and say, as one man, to the Union, we will no longer submit our retained rights tc the sniveling insinuations of bad men on the floor of Congress ―our constitutional rights to the dark and strained construction of designing men upon judicial benches; that we detest the doctrine and disclaim the principle of unlimited submission to the General Government." Here, it will be perceived, was started the doctrine since known as NULLIFICATION.

The committee further said of their Northern brethren :"Let them continue to rejoice in their self-righteousness. Let

70

OPPOSITION TO PRESIDENT ADAMS.

them bask in their own elysium, while they depict all south of the Potomac as a hideous reverse. As Athens, as Sparta, as Rome was, we will be. They held slaves, we hold them. Let the North, then, form national roads for themselves. Let them guard with tariffs their own interests. Let them deepen their public debt until a high-minded aristocracy shall rise out of it. We want none of all those blessings. But in the simplicity of patriarchal government, we would still remain master and servant under our own vine and our own fig-tree, and confide for safety upon Him who of old time looked down upon this state of things without wrath." They concluded with resolutions to stand by their arms, and pledging their lives, fortunes, and honor to defend slavery.

It was easily perceived by Mr. Adams that these ill-tempered documents were put forth chiefly for the purpose of exciting opposition in the South to his administration. Since the debate concerning the Panama Congress, Mr. Crawford's friends had been diligent to give all their movements such a direction. Slavery was found to be "a harp of a thousand strings," which was easily struck by any demagogue, and more readily responded to in the Southern States than in any other. And in the wildness of such delusion, Southern men-Southern Republicans even-were made to believe that slavery was menaced or assaulted by nearly every measure of his administration. Even his tender regard for the poor Indians in Georgia, who were reluctant to leave the soil that entombed the bones of their fathers, was thus characterized.

The time stipulated in the treaty for the removal of the Indians, if they were to be removed, had not expired; wherefore the President ordered the projected survey to be suspended, until the right of the people of Georgia to the possession of their lands had matured. Orders to that effect were communicated to General Gaines, who informed Governor Troup that he was authorized to state to the Indians, that the President

DEFIANCE OF THE GOVERNMENT.

71

had ordered the survey to be postponed. The Governor replied that it was too late that the laws of Georgia were already extended over the ceded country, and that it would be his duty to execute them. He insisted on continuing his proceedings, notwithstanding the President's orders. Various difficulties between him and General Gaines ensued, and among other things, he asked for his removal, which of course was not complied with. He continued to defy the Federal Government until the Secretary of War, after much anxious effort to settle the controversy, succeeded in negotiating with the Creeks another, and, to them, a more satisfactory treaty.

But the controversy was not yet settled. Unwilling to submit to the terms of the new treaty, Governor Troup ordered the surveys to progress after the 1st of September, 1826. And as the commissioners previously appointed to survey the boundaries between that State and Alabama had been unable to agree, he directed the Georgia Commissioners alone to describe the line. This contumacious opposition to the authority of the General Government, resulted in a communication of the fact by the President to Congress, and of another, that he had ordered prosecutions of the intruders for the penalties incurred.

But Congress failed to agree upon any distinct course of action in the premises, and left the President to pursue the policy marked out by himself. On learning that he had directed his Secretary of War to employ military force, if necessary, the Governor insolently replied that he was determined to resist any military attack which might be meditated by the Government of the United States, and that measures for such resistance were in progress. "From the first decisive act of hostility," said the Governor to the Secretary of War, "you will be considered and treated as a public enemy, and with the less repugnance because you, to whom we might constitutionally have appealed for our defence against invasion, are yourselves the invaders; and what is more, the unblushing allies of the savages whose cause you have adopted."