ndrew Jackson) was under deep obligations of gratitude.

"In what language of composure or of decency can I say to you that
there is in this bitter and venomous charge not one single word of
truth; that it is from beginning to end grossly, glaringly, wilfully
false?--false even in the name of the man from whom he pretends to
have derived his information. There never was a minister of the
United States in Spain by the name of Erwin. The name of the man who
went to him on this honorable errand, soon after his election in
1829, was George W. Erving, of whom and of whose revelations I shall
also have something to say. I do not charge this distortion of the
name as wilfully made; but it shows how carelessly and loosely all
his relations and intercourse with him hung upon his memory, and how
little he cared for the man.

"The blunder of the name, however, is in itself a matter of little
moment. Mr. George W. Erving never did make to Mr. Jackson any such
communication as he pretends to have found true, and to have filled
him with astonishment. Mr. Erving never did pretend, nor will he
dare to affirm, that he had laid the foundation of a treaty with
Spain for the cession of the Floridas, and the settlement of the
boundary of Louisiana, fixing the western limit at the Rio Grande.
The charge, therefore, that our government did really give up that
important territory, when it was at its option to retain it, is
purely and unqualifiedly untrue; and I now charge that it was known
by Mr. Brown to be so when he published General Jackson's letter;
for, in the postscript to Jackson's letter, he says 'the papers
furnished by Mr. Erwin, to which he had referred in it, could be
placed in Mr. Brown's possession, if desired.'

"They were accordingly placed in Mr. Brown's possession, who, when
he published Jackson's letter to the _Globe_, alluding to this
passage asserting that Erving had laid the foundation of a treaty
with Spain, fixing the western limit at the Rio Grande, otherwise
called the Rio del Norte, subjoined the following note: 'That this
boundary could have been obtained was doubtless the belief of our
minister; _but the offer of the Spanish government was probably to
the Colorado--certainly a line far west of the Sabine_.'

"This is the note of Aaron Vail Brown, and my fellow-citizens will