US House of Representatives. Georgia Controversy : Report of the Select Committee of the House of Representatives, to which were referred The Messages of the President U. S. Of the 5th and 8th February, and 2d March, 1827, with Accompanying Documents: And a Report and Resolutions of the Legislature of Georgia. March 3, 1827. Washington: Printed by Gales & Seaton, 1827. First Edition. [11681]
Full sheep with blind borders, brown leather title label to spine, old ink stain on spine that affects no text, scuffed, some edgewear, joints with some surface crazing but no cracks, 9 x 6 inches. Old college library bookplates/stamps, old paper label at base of spine, never had a card pocket. xi, 846 generally clean pages, light foxing, darker foxing on the end papers. Good. Hardcover.
19th Congress, 2d Session. Report No. 98. House of Representatives.
This entire volume of 846 pages is taken up with the troubles with the Creek Indians in Georgia. It includes first-hand eyewitness accounts of the Treaty of Indian Springs and the subsequent murder of the Creek signatories, the rebellion among the Creeks against the Treaty, and actions of both Georgia and the Federal Government to quell the rebellion and to enforce competing treaties.
It covers the period from 1823 to 1827 and contains reports by missionaries, letters to and from the Secretary of War, acts of both houses of Congress, proceedings of both houses of the government of Georgia, military letters between officers, statements and letters from the Chiefs of the Creek Nation, proclamations, eye-witness testimonies, affidavits of witnesses, &c. It reveals the beginnings of what eventually led to the complete removal of southern Indian tribes to Oklahoma.
The Treaty of Indian Springs, signed February 12, 1825, by the Creek leader William McIntosh and others created controversy and anger amongst the Creek Indians, whose Creek National Council had forbidden any treaties that included land cessions. The Creek representatives ceded all of the Creek land in Georgia and a large portion of Alabama in exchange for land in present-day Oklahoma and $200,000. The treaty was considered fraudulent by the majority of the Creeks, and McIntosh and other Creek signers were ordered to be executed. This order was carried out by a band of warriors and the Creek chief Menawa, who burned down McIntosh's plantation on the Chattahoochee River and killed McIntosh and two other signers of the treaty on April 30, 1825.
The main actor for the US Government in regards to this treaty was James Meriwether (1789-1854), who had fought in the Creek War in 1813. He was appointed by President James Monroe as a commissioner to negotiate with the Creek in 1823. Meriwether, along with Duncan Campbell, were the American signatories to the Treaty of Indian Springs.
In 1826 the US Government nullified the treaty and replaced it with the Treaty of Washington, but George Michael Troup, the governor of Georgia, refused to honor the new treaty, and began to evict the Lower Creek from their lands by force and replacing them with white settlers. This led to a confrontation with President John Quincy Adams, who threatened federal intervention. Adams failed to follow through on his threats, and Troup continued to ignore the new treaty, while following the edicts of the Treaty of Indian Springs. This eventually led to the complete forced removal of the Creeks to the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.
