238 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
which is unjustly withheld from them, or, in resisting the occupation, 
to make war upon and shed the blood of brothers and friends. He fur- 
ther declared that the proposition to permit the Cherokees to reserve a 
portion of their land within that State for their future home could not 
be legitimately entertained by the General Government except with the 
consent of Georgia; that such consent would never be given; and, fur- 
ther that the suggestion of the incorporation of the Indians into the 
body politie of that State as citizens was neither desirable nor practica- 
ble. The conclusion of this remarkable state paper is characterized by 
a broadly implied threat that Georgia’s fealty to the Union would be 
proportioned to the vigor and alertness with which measures were 
adopted and earried into effect by the United States for the extinguish- 
ment of the Cherokee title. 
Response of President Monroe.—These criticisms by the executive of 
Georgia, which were sanctioned and in large measure reiterated by the 
legislature and by the Congressional delegation of that State,! called 
forth? from President Monroe a message to Congress upon the subject 
in defense of the course that had been pursued by the executive authorities 
of the United States. Accompanying this message was a report® from 
John ©. Calhoun, Secretary of War, wherein it is alleged that at the 
date of the compact of 1802 between the United States and Georgia 
the two Indian nations living within the limits of that State (the Creeks 
and the Cherokees) were respectively in possession of 19,578,890 and 
7,152,110 acres of territory. At the date of such compact, treaties existed 
between the United States and those tribes defining the limits of their 
territories. In fulfillment of the stipulation with Georgia, seven treaties 
had been held with them, five of which were with the Creeks and two with 
the Cherokees. The lands thus acquired from the former in Georgia 
amounted to 14,449,480 acres and from the latter to 995,310 acres. In 
acquiring these cessions for the State of Georgia the United States had 
expended $958,945.90, to which should be added the value of the 995,310 
acres given by the Cherokees in exchange for lands west of the Mis- 
sissippi, the estimated value of which, at the minimum price of public 
lands, would amount to $1,244,137.50. The United States had also (in 
addition to $1,250,000 paid to Georgia as apart of the original consider- 
ation) paid to the Yazoo claimants, under the same compact, $4,282,- 
151.12, making in the aggregate $7,735,243.52, which sum did not in- 
clude any portion of the expense of the Creek war, whereby upwards of 
7,000,000 acres were acquired for the State of Georgia.* 
1 Letter of Georgia delegation to Congress, March 10, 1824. Memorial of Georgia 
legislature to Congress, December 18, 1823. 
2? March 30, 1824. 
3March 29, 1824. 
4This Creek war was in large measure, if not wholly, superinduced by the nnlaw- 
ful and unjust aggressions by citizens of that State upon the rights and territory of 
the Creeks. Foreign emissaries, however, it is true, encouraged and inflamed the just 
indignation of the Creeks against the Georgians to the point of armed resistance. 

