10. John Ross, et al, to the Senate and House of Representatives, 27 February 1829
. . . The Legislature of Georgia, during its late session, passed an act to add a large portion of our Territory to that State, and to extend her jurisdiction over the same . . . This act involves a question of great magnitude and of serious import, and which calls for the deliberation and decision of Congress. It is a question upon which the salvation and happiness or the misery and destruction of a nation depends, therefore it should not be trifled with. The anxious solicitude of Georgia to obtain our lands through the United States by treaty was known to us, and after having accommodated her desires (with that of other States bordering on our territory) by repeated cession of lands, until no more can be reasonably spared, it was conceived, much less believed, that a State, proud of Liberty, and tenacious of the rights of man, would condescend to have placed herself before the world, in the imposing attitude of a usurper of the most sacred rights and privileges of a weak, defenceless, and innocent nation of people, who are in perfect peace with the United States, and to whom the faith of United States is solemnly pledged to protect and defend them against the encroachments of their citizens . . .
. . . The right of regulating our own internal affairs is a right which we have inherited from the Author of our existence, which we have always exercised, and have never surrendered. Our nation had no voice in the formation of the Federal compact between the States; and if the united States have involved themselves by an agreement with Georgia relative to the purchase of our lands, and have failed to comply with it in the strictest letter of their compact, it is a matter to be adjusted between themselves; and on no principle of justice can an innocent people who were in no way a party to that compact, be held responsible fore its fulfillment; consequently they should not be oppressed, in direct violation of the solemn obligations pledged by treaties for their protection . . .
. . . We cannot but believe, that, if the same zeal and exertion were to be used by the General Government and the State of Georgia, to effect a mutual compromise in the adjustment of their compact, as has been, and is now, using to effect our removal, it could be done to the satisfaction of the people of Georgia, and without any sacrifice to the United States. We should be wanting in liberal and charitable feelings were we to doubt the virtue and magnanimity of the People of Georgia, and we do believe that there are men in that State whose moral and religious worth stands forth inferior to none within the United States. Why, then, should the power that framed the Constitution of Georgia and made the compact with the United States be not exercised for the honor of the country, and the peace, happiness, and preservation of a people, who were the original proprietors of a large portion of the country now in the possession of that State? And whose title to the soil they now occupy, is lost in the ages of antiquity, whose interests are becoming identified with those of the United States, and at whose call they are ever ready to obey in the hour of danger . . .
John Ross Edwin Gunter
R. Taylor William S. Coodey
10. John Ross, et al, to the Senate and House of Representatives, 27 Feb 1829, in Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Papers of Chief John Ross vol. 1 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 154-57.