he
security and happiness of the tribes within our limits if they could be
prevailed on to retire west and north of our States and Territories on
lands to be procured for them by the United States, in exchange for
those on which they now reside. Surrounded as they are, and pressed
as they will be, on every side by the white population, it will be
difficult if not impossible for them, with their kind of government, to
sustain order among them. Their interior will be exposed to frequent
disturbances, to remedy which the interposition of the United States
will be indispensable, and thus their government will gradually lose its
authority until it is annihilated. In this process the moral character
of the tribes will also be lost, since the change will be too rapid to
admit their improvement in civilization to enable them to institute and
sustain a government founded on our principles, if such a change were
compatible either with the compact with Georgia or with our general
system, or to become members of a State, should any State be willing
to adopt them in such numbers, regarding the good order, peace, and
tranquillity of such State. But all these evils may be avoided if these
tribes will consent to remove beyond the limits of our present States
and Territories. Lands equally good, and perhaps more fertile, may be
procured for them in those quarters. The relations between the United
States and such Indians would still be the same.

Considerations of humanity and benevolence, which have now great weight,
would operate in that event with an augmented force, since we should
feel sensibly the obligation imposed on us by the accommodation which
they thereby afforded us. Placed at ease, as the United States would
then be, the improvement of those tribes in civilization and in all
the arts and usages of civilized life would become the part of a general
system which might be adopted on great consideration, and in which every
portion of our Union would then take an equal interest. These views have
steadily been pursued by the Executive, and the moneys which have
been placed at its disposal have been so applied in the manner best
calculated, according to its judgment, to produce this desirable result,
as will appear by the documents which accompany the report of the
Secretary of War.

I submit this subject to the consideration of Congress under a high
sense of its importance and of the propriety of an early decision on it.
This co