New-York Tribune. August 17, 1841
THE INDIANS.—We are often disgusted by articles in our journals moralizing over the stern necessity which is driving the Indians westward and sweeping them from the face of the Earth! 'Necessity—the tyrant's plea'—or say rather, the villain's. There is no such necessity, any more than there is necessity for Piracy, Murder or the Slave-Trade. We have wronged and robbed them because they were weak and we strong—because they had lands and we coveted them; nothing more. The history of the last ten years has been especially black with outrage and crime; and the cruel, perfidious exile of the Cherokees stands prominent among the National crimes which arrayed the moral sense of the country against the last Administration and ultimately ensured its downfall. Can the pretended admirers of THOMAS JEFFERSON read the following extract from his writings without shame and remorse:
“I considered our right of preemption of the Indian lands not as amounting to any dominion, or jurisdiction, or paramountship whatever, but merely in the nature of a remainder, after the extinguishment of a present right, which gave us no present right whatever, but of preventing other nations from taking possession, and so defeating our expectancy; that the Indians had the full, undivided, and independent sovereignty, as long as they chose to keep it, and that this might be forever; that as fast as we extend our rights by purchase from them, so fast we extend the limits of our society, and as soon as a new portion became encircled within our line, it became a fixed limit of our society.”
