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picion of the attachment it implies, and only warn him of the inefficiency of their wavering support, while he observes their settled opposition, borne along the ample tide of hope and experiment, against the man with whom he has deliberately enosen to identify himself.

security of every Indian treaty? Not fidelity or honor, but fear! In all ages it has reigned predominant in the rude and the cultivated mind. What was it that ensured a performance of the truce and capitulation of the northern Goth, when he hung, with his collected legions, upon the barriers of the Roman republic? Nothing but a terror of the veteran army of Aurelian, which, in the event of his proving faithless, threat

The great crime imputed to Jackson is the punishment of the wretches who excited, aided, and abetted, in the butchery of heipless babes, and the shameless, wanton, and inhuman dishonorened him with instant destruction. And depend of suppliant women. And upon this point, what upon it, such is the construction of human, as is the argument advanced? Our attention has well as animal nature, that where you operate been invited to the period at which we assume to judiciously upon this sensation, the effect will be *interpolate the Indian publie law with revolt-broad and palpable. To this, however, it is reing cruelties!" The Indian public law! and pray joined, the Indian prisoner is disgraced, and it is when is this? When we are strong, the lords of a mercy to take his life. But if any thing, it adds the soil, and the degraded aborigines are weak, a double justification. In his just execution for emaciated, and sunk into a disgraceful servitude unprovoked murders, you satisfy the law and fill to our will! I challenge the epoch of our history, up the extent of whatever compassion can be when the clemency exercised to this unfortunate shown to the unhappy victim. And as to the cast of beings was milder, or more universal, than whitemen who were condemned and executed, at the present day. The charge, too, of having they had become outlaws to the forms of justice, diveste i them of their land, coveting our neighbor's dissociated themselves from the claims of the orgoods, is echoed to the transatlantic reproach. I dinary rules of trial, and it was not worth the inis forgotten, that in the immense waste betweenquiry whether they were combatants, provided our remotest border and the Pacific tide, there is their information, intelligence, skill, and cuming, room for ten times ten their number; or, that al-had been employed to combine the arts of assastnost within the sphere of a single nation of Indi-sination and rapine. ans, there is space enough, according to the ordi- The fundamental basis of all military operations, nary arrangements of civilization, to receive every is retaliation-whether excited in the fresh comtribe belonging to the northern section of the con- bat upon the field, or meditated in a pass, or an tinent. Bwe have violated "the Indian public ambuscade, or upon prisoners under the sanctity law by revolting cruelties." For myself, consult of your flag. It must depend upon your enemy ing their habits, customs, and manners, I am un- how far you carry the retaliation. if his exer. advised of any other definition their sachems have tions have been directed against the helpless and given to this, than that which is engraven b. the the innocent, and who were not lawful objects of scalping knife and indented by the tomahawk. in warfare, and to spill whose blood it became as the very precept and sprit of the boasted Indian much a crime as if it fell from the heart of a bro public law might be pleaded an extenuation of the ther, the act at once constitutes him a murderer Severest punishments. It has neither a Bible nor and an outlaw, and subjects him (whether as 'an Alcoran on which to rest--it is literally in-principal or accessary) to the immediate sentence scribed in blood, and built upon human heca tombs! Go to the river Raisin ransack the northwestern campaigns from their earliest date, and the practice of its principles will be found to have continued immutably the same-the armed, the unarmed, and the prisoner, to have shared alike, either death, or the more refined horrors of the stake! Travel round to the South-pause at Fort Mims-listen to the mournful recital of its catas trophe, and the burning blood of the mother and the child will whisper agonies, of which your wildest fancy can form no conception! Tell me not, then, that we have "interpolated the Indian public law with revolting cruelties"-but at once allow the mind to yield itself to the conclusion, necessity has reduced us to a policy carrying with it a retributive force and equity in its decisions and effects.

While we hear, in one breath, the complaint of our having despoiled the fine texture of the Indian code; in the next, it is guardedly insinuated, that the most respectable writers declare retalia tion only justifiable as calculated to produce tef fect," Here is a fair and undisguised confession, that, when thus qualified, it is justifiable. But it is asserted to have no influence upon the Indian! I appeal to experience! Answer me. Is not all history against the denial? What has been the

of the general, or a subaltern, maintaining the separate command. For all other powers are con cluded, under such circumstances, and there lies but one question-has the wretch subjected himself to the judgement pronounced on an illegal species of warfare? It is not material, that he is a savage-ignorance or education cannot shield the culprit-nor can the Christian cast his mantle over his iniquities! And for the civilized des perado, there is no greater palliation! if there is any difference, his is a more aggravated, heinous, and unpardonable offence! A fictitious risk of benevolence and philanthrophy, which transiently bides the craft and dissimulation of the arch bypocrite, while he plots and foments the discords of rebellion, or the equally terrible designs of andiscriminate theft and slaughter, may contribute sophistry for the tongue of the mercenary advo cate or the corrupt judge, but cannot, even to the most fertile apologist, afford a substantial argument for acquittal and justification! Against his execution remonstrance would fall poweriess and contemptible at the fiat of justice.

What, for example, is the tenure by which man holds his life? Tuat of a natural and absolute right derived from the supreme ruler of the universe. And how is it forfeited? By violating the moral and natural obligations of society, or in other words, those peculiar duties and privileges to which every individual has an irrevocable and inalienable be the debate on this subject in the House of Represen-relation. Therefore, in the management of a declaim, according to the laws of dependence and

The idea and words were used by a M. H. R. in the debate, who was friendly to Mr. Nelson's resolutions.

tatives,

VOL. VII.]

THE NATIONAL REGISTER.

fence to which you have been driven by foul, and unoffending, innocent inmates!-Should they corrupt, and unnatural machinations, what can be have been suffered, again, to mature the festering more just than to retaliate upon the heads of the fires of their bloody and rancorous ambition? No! principals, who have disowned, as it were, their The voice of reason cries, No! No! the long cataallegiance to humanity and law, and irremediably || logue of their crimes has, already, pronounced lost their innate pretensions to liberty and life, the their doom. Consult the security of the infant, the enormities to which their demoniac contrivances wife and the husband, and, in mercy to the living, perpetuate its awful monitory. Placing, therefore, have given existence, and to which language can apply no adequate epithet? The mere tools of the execution of Arbuthnott and Arinbrister, who their dark purposes, vegetating in an unlettered merged their character in that of the Indian, upon stupidity, and only acquiring heat and motion, from the basis of natural law, calculating the mischiefs the steam and stews of their more polished, prac- they had caused, the insuperable necessity of tised, and wily barbarity, might, in a disposition | putting a period to their desolating influence; of pity and forgiveness, be sheltered, with a par-considering, also, the impracticability of achie don, where the warrant of death could reach theving this in any other way, which could be devipowerful projectors of such wicked and hatefulsed, as final and effective, and, lastly, contempladeeds. While they remained no security could be hoped for-the future would be a faithful mir For of the past. You might smite the branches of the great tree one by one to the earth, but if you left its strong, massive, and incorrigible body standing unhurt and glorying in your credulity, it would soon put forth new and wider shoots, and scatter again, on all sides, its deadly fruit. The only alternative was the destruction of those who infused vigor and energy into the direful policies of a savage war.

ting, together with the justice and present tendency of the measure, its future example and consequences, experience and reason coalesce in proclaiming their approbation of the conduct of General Jackson.

As to the imputation the unfeeling may attempt to cast upon the motives of the general, I class it with its authors as too contemptible, mean, and u worthy, to demand a serious refutation. The book of his life is before you, and, I am persuaded, it would be a direct and malignant insult to your Let the aged In fine, what is the principle laid down by one gratitude and understanding for any man to preof the ablest legal commentators, and in which all tend to suppose it was necessary. others concur, in regard to war? "That if the cause and the infirm-let the females of Orleans bo and end of the war be justifiable, all the means asked whether, when the British Lion, fresh from that appear necessary to the end are justifiable the sack of Washington, waved before their city, also. This is the principle, he continues, which the intentions of the general were doubted on the defends those extremities to which the violence memorable plains of Chalmotte?-No! I am wrong of war usually proceeds: for since war is a contest-for they would not stoop to listen to so base an by force, it has naturally no boundary but that in interrogatory. Conscious of the ret sonsibility he which force terminates, the destruction of the life assumed, and how careless he was of the result to against which the force is directed" Consequent himself, on their bended knees they thank their the enemy, and of ly, as no gratuitous barbarity can be attributed to God, he was made the happy, honorible, and glorious, instrument of subdui. any act in war, which eventually becomes conduAnd upon such cive, or is absolutely necessary, to its termination, shielding from his bbidinous and avaricious lusts their persons and their fortunes it is perfectly consistent with the rules, obliga. tions, and principles of law, whether marual, durable and virtuous monuments of his faine, are civil, natural, or revealed. Viewing the subject, written in legible and universally acknowledged then, placed upon such immoveable ground, it is characters, the intentions of his heart, over which useless and worse than vain, to array this code the saint might meditate without a binsh, the phior that system, with its forms and technicalities,losopher pause, while he gathered the rich treain order to impugn or arrest the retaliation, for it is strictly an act of war, and competent to none to decide and execute, but the commanding officer himself He will take care to make the only question proper to be determined, whether the Inandate of natural law, the substratum of all other laws, will be obeyed. Superadded to every other reason adduced, if the character of the Department of State, enemy is such as to lay him open to the intrigues of impostors and incendiaries, who would reproWashington, 26th Nov. 1818. § duce by their arts after a short interval of peace, Sir,-Your despatches, to No. 92. inclusive, and when the conqueror's arms were withdrawn, with their enclosures, have been received at this the same state of anarchy, discord, and massacre, Department. Among these enclosures, are the the dernier mode of prosecuting the war to a successful issue, would be dictated by self-preserva. several notes addressed to you by Pizarro in re tion, and involve in it the ruin and downfal of thelation to the transactions during the campaign of instigators Generosity cannot appease them, moderation will teach them no lesson, and the concord, safety and happiness of society, loudly demand their death. For with their dissolution would perish the real causes of war, and time and tranquility would, if it were possible, open the door to oblivion For one moment supp se these male fact is to have been passed by, and the black clouds of affliction would have hovered over every cottage of your line, and its poor, harmless,

sures of their instruction, and with whom the hero should unite in their imitation and applause.

MR. ADAMS' LETTER.

PLINY.

The Secretary of State of the United States, to the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to Spain, at Madrid, (No. 7.)

General Jackson against the Seminole Indians and the banditti of Negroes combined with them, and particularly to his proceedings in Florida, without the boundaries of the United States.

In the fourth and last of those notes of Mr. Pizarro, he has given formal notice that the king, his master, has issued orders for the suspension of the negotiation between the United States aind Spain, until satisfaction shall have been made by the American government to him for these pro

quence of their falling into the hands of general Jackson.

ceedings of general Jackson, which he considers as acts of unequivocal hostility against him, and as outrages upon his honor and dignity; the only ac- In the month of August, 1814, while a war exceptable atonement for which, is stated to consist|isted between the United States and Great Britain, in a disavowal of the acts of the American general, thus complained of the infliction upon him || of a suitable punishment for his supposed misconduct, and the restitution of the posts and territo-|| ries taken by him from the Spanish authorities, with indemnity for all the property taken, and all damages and injuries public or private, sustained in consequence of it.

to which Spain had formally declared herself neutral, a British force, not in the fresh pursuit of a defeated and flying enemy-not overstepping an imaginary and equivocal boundary between their own territories and those belonging, in some sort, as much to their enemy as to Spain, but approaching by sea, and by a broad and open invasion of the Spanish province, at a thousand miles, or an ocean's distance from any British territory, landed in Florida, took possession of Pensacola and the fort of Barrancas, and invited, by public procla mations, all the runaway Negroes-all the savage Indians-all the pirates, and all the traitors to their country, whom they knew or imagined to exist within reach of their summons, to join their standard, and wage an extirminating war against the portion of the United States immediately bordering upon this neutral, and thus violated territory of Spain. The land commander of this British force, was a certain colonel Nicholls, who, driven from Pensacola by the approach of general

Within a very few days after this notification, Mr. Pizarro must have received, with copies of the correspondence between Mr. Onis and this Department, the determination which had been taken by the President, to restore the place of Pensacola, with the fort of Barrancas, to any person properly authorized, on the part of Spain, to receive them, and the fort of St Marks to any Spanish force adequate to its protection against the Indians, by whom its forcible occupation had been threatened, for purposes of hostility against the United States. The officer commanding at the post, has been directed to consider 250 men as such adequate force; and, in case of their ap-Jackson, actually left, to be blown up, the Spanish pearance, with proper authority, to deliver it up to their commander accordingly.

fort of Barrancas, when he found it could not af ford him protection, and, evacuating that part of self on the Appalachicola river, and there erected the province, landed at another, established himtribe of black, white, and red combatants, against a fort, from which to sally forth with his motley the defenceless borders of the United States, in that vicinity. A part of this force consisted of a lonies, in which George Woodbine was a Captain, corps of colonial marines, levied in the British co

Lieutenant.

From the last mentioned correspondence, the Spanish government must likewise have been satisfied that the occupation of these places in Spa nish Florida, by the commander of the American forces, was not by virtue of any order received by him from this government to that effect, nor with any view of wresting the province from the possession of Spain; nor in any spirit of hostility to the Spanish government; that it arose from inci--2.] and Robert Chrystie Armbrister was a dents which occurred in the prosecution of the war against the Indians-from the imminent danger in which the fort of St. Marks was of being seized by the Indians themselves, and from the manifestations of hostility to the United States, by the commandant of St. Marks and the Governor of Pensacola, the proofs of which were made known to general Jackson, and impelled him, from the necessities of self-defence, to the steps of which the Spanish government complains.

It might be sufficient to leave the vindication of these measures upon those grounds, and to furnish, in the enclosed copies of general Jackson's letters, and the vouchers by which they are support ed, the evidence of that hostile spirit on the part of the Spanish commanders, but for the terms in which Mr. Pizarro speaks of the execution of two British subjects, taken, one at the fort of St. Marks, and the other at Suwany, and the intimation that these transactions may lead to a change in the relations between the two nations, which is doubtless intended to be understood as a menace of war.

LIX.] As between the United States and Great

LX. Britain, we should be willing to bury this transaction in the same grave of oblivion with other transactions of that war, had the hostilities of colonel Nicholls terminated with the war. But he did not consider the peace which ensued between the United States and Great Britain, as having put an end either to his military occupations or to his negotiations with the Indians, against the United States. Several months after the ratificatiou of the treaty of Ghent, he retained his post and his party-colored forces, in military array.

United States had stipulated to put an end, immeII-2] By the 9th article of that treaty, the diately after its ratification, to hostilities with all the tribes or nations of Indians with whom they might be at war at the time of the ratification, and to restore to them all the possessions which they had enjoyed in the year 1811. This article had the United States had already made peace, by a no application to the Creek nation, with whom treaty concluded on the 9th day of August, 1814, more than four months before the treaty of Ghent It may be, therefore, proper to remind the go- was signed Yet, colonel Nicholls not only affectvernment of His Catholic Majesty of the incidents ed to consider it as applying to the Seminoles of in which this Seminole war originated, as well as Florida, and the outlawed Red Sticks, whom he of the circumstances connected with it, in the re- had induced to join him there, but actually perlations between Spain and her ally, whom she sup- suaded them that they were entitled, by virtue of poses to have been injured by the proceedings of the treaty of Ghent, to all the lands which had begeneral Jackson, and to give to the Spanish cabi- longed to the Creek nation, within the United net some precise information of the nature of the States, in the year 1811, and that the government business, peculiarly interesting to Spain, in which II. i. II] of Great Britain would support them in these subjects of her allies, in whose favor she that pretension. He asserted also this doctrine in takes this interest, were engaged, when their pro- a correspondence with colonel Hawkins, then the jects of every kind were terminated, in conse-agent of the United States with the Creeks, and

VOL. VII.]

THE NATIONAL REGISTER.

gave him notice, in their name, with a mockery | general Jackson wrote a letter to the governor of of solemnity, that they had concluded a treaty of Pensacola, calling upon him to put down this That letter together with alliance, offensive and defensive, and a treaty of common nuisance to the peaceable inhabitants of IX.] Navigation and Commerce with Great Bri- XV.] both countries. tain, of which more was to be heard after it should the answer of the governor of Pensacola, have be ratified in England. Colonel Nicholls then already been communicated to the Spanish minisevacuated his fort, which, in some of the enclosed ter here, and by him, doubtless, to his government. papers, is called the fort at Prospect Bluff, but Copies of them are, nevertheless, now again enwhich he had denominated the British post on the XXIII.] closed; particularly as the letter from the Appalachicola; took with him the white portion governor, explicitly admits-that this fort, conof his force, and embarked for England, with se- structed by Nicholls, in violation both of the ter veral of the wretched savages whom he was thus ritory and neutrality of Spain, was still no less deluding to their fate-among whom was the obnoxious to his government than to the United Prophet Francis, or Hillis Hadjo-and left the States; but, that he had neither sufficient force, nor authority, without orders from the governor fort, amply supplied with military stores and ammunition, to the Negro department of his allies. general of the Havanna, to destroy it. It was afIV. V.] It afterwards was known by the name of terwards, on the 27th July, 1816, destroyed by a cannon shot from a gun vessel of the United Negro Fort. Colonel Hawkins immediately communicated to this government the correspondence states, which, in its passage up the river, was between him and Nicholis, here referred to, (co-fired upon from it. 'It was blown up, with an pies of which, marked No. 1 to 5, are herewith English flag still flying as its standard, and immeenclosed,) upon which Mr. Monroe, then Secre- diately after the barbarous murder of a boat's X.] tary of State, addressed a letter, (copy mark- crew, belonging to the navy of the United States, ed G,) to Mr. Baker, the British Charge d'Af-by the banditti left in it by Nicholls faires, at Washington, complaining of Nicholls's conduct, and showing that his pretence that the 9th article of the treaty of Ghent, could have any application to his Indians, was utterly destitute of XI.] foundation. Copies of the same correspondence were transmitted to the Minister of the United States, then in England, with instructions to remonstrate with the British government against these proceedings of Nicholls, and to show how incompatible they were with the peace which had been concluded between the two nations. XII. a. b.] These remonstrances were accordingly made, first in personal interview with earl BaXIII. a. b.] thurst and lord Castlereagh, and afterwards in written notes, addressed successively to them, (copies of which, together with extracts from the despatches of the American Minister to the Secretary of State, reporting what passed at those interviews, are enclosed.) Lord Bathurst, in the most unequivocal manner, confirmed the facts, and disavowed the misconduct of Nicholls; declared his disapprobation of the pretended treaty of Alliance, offensive and defensive, which he had made; assured the American Minister that the British government had refused to ratify that treaty, and would send back the Indians whom Nicholls had brought with him, with advice to make their peace on such terms as they could obtain. Lord Castlereagh confirmed the assurance that the treaty would not be ratified; and if, at the same time that these assurances were given, certain distinctions of public notoriety, were shown to the Prophet Hillis Hadjo, and he was actually honored with a commission, as a British officer, it is to be presumed that these favors were granted him as rewards of past services, and not as encouragement to expect any support from Great Britain, in a continuance of savage hostilities against the United States, all intention of giving any such support having been repeatedly and earnestly disavowed.

In the year 1817,* Alexander Arbuthnott, of the Island of New Providence, a British subject, first appeared, as an Indian trader in Spanish Florida; and as the successor of colonel Nicholls, in the employment of instigating the Seminole and out. lawed Red Stick Indians to hostilities against the United States, by reviving the pretence that they were entitled to all the lands which had been ceded to the Creek Nation by the United States, in August, 1814. As a mere Indian trader, the intrusion of this man, into a Spanish province, was contrary to the policy observed by all the European Powers in this hemisphere, and by none more rigorously than by Spain, of excluding all foreigners from intercourse with the Indians, within their territories. It must be known to the Spanish government, whether Arbuthnott had a Spanish license for trading with the Indians in Spanish Florida or not;t but they also know that Spain was bound by treaty, to restrain by force all hostilities on the part of those Indians, against the citizens of the United States, and it is for them to explain how, consistently with those engage ments, Spain could, contrary to all the maxims of her ordinary policy, grant such a license to a foreign incendiary, whose principal, if not his only object, appears to have been, to stimulate those hostilities which Spain had expressly stipulated by force to restrain. In his infernal instigations he XLIX.] was but too successful. No sooner did he make his appearance among the Indians, accompanied by the prophet Hillis Hadjo, returned from L.] his expedition to England, than the peaceful inhabitants on the borders of the United States, were visited with all the horrors of savage war; the robbery of their property, and the barbarous and indiscriminate murder of woman, infancy, and age.

After the repeated expostulations, warnings and offers of peace, through the summer and autumn of 1817, on the part of the United States, had been LI. a.] answered only by renewed outrages, and LXI] after a detachment of forty men, under lieu.

It should have been said, in October, 1816.

+ By a letter from the Spanish governor of St. Augustine, Jose Coppinger, (No. 67, of the documents which we shall In writing to "Boleck, chief of the Seminole tribe of Inhereafter publish,) it appears that he had no such license. dians," governor Coppinger describes Arbuthnott and his coadjutors, as persons with bad intentions."

[graphic]

tion.

strength and movement of the American army that the date of the departure of express had been noted by the Spanish Commissary, and ammunition, munitions of war, and all necessary supplies furnished to the Indians.

tenant Scott, accompanied by seven women, had been waylaid and murdered by the Indians, orders were given to general J. ekson, and an adequate force was placed at bis disposal, to terminate the war It was ascertained that the Spanish force in Florida was inadequate for the protection even of the Spanish territory itself, against this mingled not less marked by a disposition of enmity to the The conduct of the governor of Pensacola was horde of lawless Indians and Negroes; and, al- United States, and by an utter disregard to the though their devastations were committed within obligations of the treaty, by which he was bound the limits of the United States, they immediately to restrain, by force, the Indians from hostilities sought refuge within the Florida line, and there against them. When called upon to vindicate the on were to be overtaken The necessity of territorial rights and authority of Spain, by the crossing the line was indispensable; for it was from beyond the line that the Indians made their declared it to be not less annoying and pernicious destruction of the Negro fort, his predecessor had murderous incursions within that of the United Stats. It was there that they had their abode, United States, but bad pleaded his inability to to the Spanish subjects in Florida, than to the and the territory belonged in fact to them, al subdue it. He himself, had expressed his apprethough within the borders of the Spanish jurisdic-hensions that fort St. Marks would be forcibly There it was that the American comman taken by the savages, from its Spanish garrison; der met the principal resistance from them; there yet, at the same time, he bad refused the passage XL] it was, that were found the still bleeding up the Escambia river, unless upon the payment scalps of our citizens, freshly butchered by them; of excessive duties, to provisions destined as supthere it was that he released the only woman, who plies for the American army, which, by the detenhad been suffered to survive the massacre of the tion of them, was subjected to the most distressparty under lieutenant Scott. But it was not anticipated by this government that the commanding egress at Pensacola, to the avowed savage eneing privations. He had permitted free ingress and officers of Spain, in Florida, whose especial duty mies of the United States. Supplies of ammuni it was, in conformity to the solemn engagements tion, munitions of war, and provisions had been contracted by their nation, to restrain, by force, received by them from thence. They had been those Indians from estilities against the United received and sheltered there, from the pursuit of States, would be found encouraging aiding, and the American forces, and suffered again to sally abetting them, and furnishing them with supplies, thence, to enter upon the American territory and for carrying on such hostilities. The officer in commit new murders. Finally, on the approach command, immediately before general Jackson, of general Jackson to Pensacola, the governor was, therefore, specially instructed to respect, as XXXII.] sent him a letter, denouncing his entry far as possible, the Spanish authority, wherever it upon the territory of Florida, as a violent outrage was maintained, and copies of those orders were also furnished to general Jackson, upon his taking depart and withdraw from the same, and threatupon the rights of Spain, commanding him to the command. In the course of his pursuit, as heening, in case of his non-compliance, to employ approached St Marks, he was informed, direct force to expel him. from the Governor of Pensacola, that a party_of the hostile Indians had threatened to seize that Jackson, indispensably necessary to take from the It became, therefore, in the opinion of general fort, and that he apprehended the Spanish garri-LIV.] governor of Pensacola the means of carryson there was not in strength sufficient to defending his threat into execution. Before the forces it against them This information was confirmed under his command, the savage enemies of his from other sources, and by the evidence produced country had disappeared. But he knew that the upon the trial of Armbrister, it proved to have been exactly true moment those forces should be disbanded, if shelBy all the laws of neutrality and of war, as well as of prudence and of humani-munitions and supplies by Spanish officers, and if tered by Spanish fortresses, if furnished with amty, he was warranted in anticipating his enemy, by the amicable, and that being refused, by the forcible, occupation of the Fort. There will need no citations from printed treatises on international law, to prove the correctness of this principie. It is engraved in adamant on the common sense of mankind; no writer upon the laws of nations ever pretended to contradict it; none of any reputation or authority ever omitted to assert it.

encouragement, as he had every reason to expect aided and supported by the instigation of Spanish they would be, they would reappear, and fired, in addition to their ordinary ferociousness, with revenge for the chastisement they had so recently received, would again rush with the war hatchet States, and mark every foot-step with the blood and scalping knife, into the borders of the United of their defenceless citizens. So far as all the na

XXXIV.] At fort St Marks, Alexander Arbuth-tive resources of the savage extended, the war nott, the British Indian trader from beyond the seas, the firebrand, by whose torch this Negro Indian war against our borders had been rekindled, was found an inmate of the commandant's family; and it was also found that, by the commandant himself, councils of war had been permitted to be held within it, by the savage chiefs and warriors; that the Spanish store-houses had been appropri ated to their use; that it was an open market for cattle, known to have been robbed by them from citizens of the United tates, and which had been contracted for and purchased by the officers the garrison, That information had been afforded from this fort by Arbuthnott, to the enemy, of the

was at an end, and general Jackson was about to brave volunteers who had followed his standard, restore to their families and their homes, the and who had constituted the principal part of his force. This could be done with safety, leaving the regular portion of his troops to garrison his line of forts, and two small detachments of volunteer cavalry, to scour the country round Pensacoia, and sweep off the larking remnant of savages, who had been scattered and dispersed before him. This was sufficient to keep in check the remuant of the banditti, against whom he had marched, so long as they should be destitute of other aid and support. It was, in his judgment, not sufficient,

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