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[102] to the ambitious and restless Carolinian's attempt at practical Nullification. “The Tariff,” he wrote in 1834, to an intimate friend in Georgia, “was but a pretext. The next will be the Slavery or Negro question.”

But while Nullification was thus sternly crushed out in South Carolina, it was simultaneously allowed a complete triumph in the adjoining State of Georgia. The circumstances were briefly as follows:

The once powerful and warlike Aboriginal tribes known to us as “Cherokees” and “Creeks,” originally possessed respectively large territories, which are now included within the States of North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. With those tribes, treaties were from time to time made by our Government, whereof each had for its main object the transfer, for a specified consideration, of lands by the Indians to the United States. One of the conditions on which we sought and obtained those lands was thus succinctly expressed in the treaty with the Cherokees negotiated on the bank of the Holston, in 1791, under the Presidency of Washington:

article 7. The United States solemnly guaranty to the Cherokee Nation all their lands not hereby ceded.

The stipulations of this treaty were recognized, and their validity confirmed by the treaty of 1794, negotiated by Henry Knox, Secretary of War, “being authorized thereto by the President of the United States.” A further treaty, negotiated in 1798, under John Adams, recognized and ratified afresh all the obligations incurred, the guaranties given, by former treaties. Such stipulations continued to be made, at least down to 1817, when one was negotiated on our part by Andrew Jackson and others, again renewing and confirming to the Cherokees all former stipulations and guaranties.

Still more: when, in 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was negotiated, whereby the war of 1812 with Great Britain was terminated, the British commissioners long and fairly insisted on including her Aboriginal allies in that war in the provisions and stipulations of the treaty, especially that which exacted a mutual restoration of all territories or places taken by one party from the other during the preceding contest. Our commissioners naturally demurred to this, preferring to insert an article which set forth the humane and benevolent principles whereby (as it alleged) our Government regulates its conduct toward the Indian tribes within our borders.1 And Mr. Clay, one of the negotiators of that treaty, declared, in his speech on the Cherokee Grievances in 1835, that the British commissioners would never have been satisfied with this, if they had understood that those tribes

1 The following is that portion of the Treaty of Ghent relating to the Indians:

Article the Ninth. The United States of America engage to put an end, immediately after the ratification of the present treaty, to hostilities with all the tribes or nations of Indians with whom they may be at war at the time of such ratification; and forthwith to restore to such tribes or nations, respectively, all the possessions, rights, and privileges, which they may have enjoyed or been entitled to in one thousand eight hundred and eleven, previous to such hostilities. Provided always, That such tribes or nations shall agree to desist from all hostilities against the United States of America, their citizens and subjects, upon the ratification of the present treaty being notified to such tribes or nations, and shall so desist accordingly.

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