Part 7

In this state of things the question is not whether the treaty of the 12th of February last shall or shall not be executed. So far as the United States were or could be bound by it I have been anxiously desirous of carrying it into execution. But, like other treaties, its fulfillment depends upon the will not of one but of both the parties to it. The parties on the face of the treaty are the United States and the Creek Nation, and however desirous one of them may be to give it effect, this wish must prove abortive while the other party refuses to perform its stipulations and disavows its obligations. By the refusal of the Creek Nation to perform their part of the treaty the United States are absolved from all its engagements on their part, and the alternative left them is either to resort to measures of war to secure by force the advantages stipulated to them in the treaty or to attempt the adjustment of the interest by a new compact. In the preference dictated by the nature of our institutions and by the sentiments of justice and humanity which the occasion requires for measures of peace the treaty herewith transmitted has been concluded, and is submitted to the decision of the Senate. After exhausting every effort in our power to obtain the acquiescence of the Creek Nation to the treaty of the 12th of February, I entertained for some time the hope that their assent might at least have been given to a new treaty, by which all their lands within the State of Georgia should have been ceded. This has also proved impracticable, and although the excepted portion is of comparatively small amount and importance, I have assented to its exception so far as to place it before the Senate only from a conviction that between it and a resort to the forcible expulsion of the Creeks from their habitations and lands within the State of Georgia there was no middle term.

The deputation with which this treaty has been concluded consists of the principal chiefs of the nation--able not only to negotiate but to carry into effect the stipulations to which they have agreed. There is a deputation also here from the small party which undertook to contract for the whole nation at the treaty of the 12th of February, but the number of which, according to the information collected by General Gaines, does not exceed 400. They represent themselves, indeed, to be far more numerous, but whatever their number may be their interests have been provided for in the treaty now submitted. Their subscriptions to it would also have been received but for unreasonable pretensions raised by them after all the arrangements of the treaty had been agreed upon and it was actually signed. Whatever their merits may have been in the facility with which they ceded all the lands of their nation within the State of Georgia, their utter inability to perform the engagements which they so readily contracted and the exorbitancy of their demands when compared with the inefficiency of their own means of performance leave them with no claims upon the United States other than of impartial and rigorous justice.

In referring to the impressions under which I ratified the treaty of the 12th of February last, I do not deem it necessary to decide upon the propriety of the manner in which it was negotiated. Deeply regretting the recriminations and recriminations to which these events have given rise, I believe the public interest will best be consulted by discarding them altogether from the discussion of the subject. The great body of the Creek Nation inflexibly refuse to acknowledge or to execute that treaty. Upon this ground it will be set aside, should the Senate advise and consent to the ratification of that now communicated, without looking back to the means by which the other was effected. And in the adjustment of the terms of the present treaty I have been peculiarly anxious to dispense a measure of great liberality to both parties of the Creek Nation, rather than to extort from them a bargain of which the advantages on our part could only be purchased by hardship on theirs.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, February 1, 1826

To the Senate of the United States:

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 50th ultimo, I communicate herewith, in confidence, a report from the Secretary of State, with the documents, containing the information desired by the resolution.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, February 7, 1826.

To the Senate of the United States:

In compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 15th of December last, I communicate herewith reports from the Secretaries of the Treasury and War and from the Commissioner of the General Land Office, with documents, relating to the lead mines and salt springs, containing the information desired by the resolution.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, February 14, 1826

To the House of Representatives of the United States:

In compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 12th ultimo, I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of the Navy, with the statements relating to naval courts of inquiry and courts-martial since the 1st January, 1824, requested by the resolution.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, February 15, 1826

To the House of Representatives of the United States:

I transmit to the House of Representatives a report from the late Secretary of War to the late President of the United States, with documents, containing information requested by a resolution of the House of April 10, 1824, relating to the purchases of real estate in behalf of the United States within the territorial limits of any State since the 4th July, 1776.

These papers were prepared during the last session of Congress, but by some accident were not then communicated to the House.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, February 16, 1826

To the Senate of the United States:

In answer to the two resolutions of the Senate of the 15th instant, marked executive, and which I have received, I state respectfully that all the communications from me to the Senate relating to the congress at Panama have been made, like all other communications upon executive business, in confidence and most of them in compliance with a resolution of the Senate requesting them confidentially. Believing that the established usage of free confidential communication between the Executive and the Senate ought for the public interest to be preserved unimpaired, I deem it my indispensable duty to leave to the Senate itself the decision of a question involving a departure hitherto, so far as I am informed, without example from that usage, and upon the motives for which, not being informed of them, I do not feel myself competent to decide.

John Quincy Adams.

Washington, February 17, 1826

To the House of Representatives of the United States:

I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of the Navy, with a further document, prepared in compliance with a resolution of the House of the 10th of April, 1824, and containing information relating to purchasers of real estate in behalf of the United States within the territorial limits of any State since the 4th of July, 1776.