House of Representatives, and by them
to me, is the first direct testimony ever made known to me charging
General Wilkinson with the corrupt receipt of money, and the House of
Representatives may be assured that the duties which this information
devolves on me shall be exercised with rigorous impartiality. Should any
want of power in the court to compel the rendering of testimony obstruct
that full and impartial inquiry which alone can establish guilt or
innocence and satisfy justice, the legislative authority only will be
competent to the remedy.

TH. JEFFERSON.

JANUARY 30, 1808.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

The Choctaws, being indebted to their merchants beyond what could be
discharged by the ordinary proceeds of their buntings, and pressed for
payment, proposed to the United States to cede lands to the amount of
their debts, and designated them in two different portions of their
country. These designations, not at all suiting us, were declined. Still
urged by their creditors, as well as by their own desire to be liberated
from debt, they at length proposed to make a cession which should be to
our convenience. By a treaty signed at Pooshapuckanuck on the 16th of
November, 1805, they accordingly ceded all their lands south of a line
to be run from their and our boundary at the Omochita eastwardly to
their boundary with the Creeks, on the ridge between the Tombigbee and
Alabama, as is more particularly described in the treaty, containing
about 5,000,000 acres, as is supposed, and uniting our possessions there
from Adams to Washington County.

The location contemplated in the instructions to the commissioners was
on the Mississippi. That in the treaty being entirely different, I was
at that time disinclined to its ratification, and I have suffered it to
lie unacted on. But progressive difficulties in our foreign relations
have brought into view considerations other than those which then
prevailed. It is now, perhaps, as interesting to obtain footing for a
strong settlement of militia along our southern frontier eastward of the
Mississippi as on the west of that river, and more so than higher up the
river itself. The consolidation of the Mississippi Territory and the
establishment of a barrier of separation between the Indians and our
Southern neighbors are also important objects; and the Choctaws and
their creditors being still anxious that the sale should be made, I
sub