6. Andrew Jackson to Brig.Gen. John Coffee, 7 April 1832
D'r Genl,
In my last I informed you that we had just concluded a treaty with the creek Indians, who had ceded all their lands east of the Mississippi river to the United States with certain reservations to chiefs and heads of families. This treaty has been ratified by the senate by a unanimous vote. Clay and Calhoun in the first instance trying to raise opposition to it, but finding their whole strength nine, they abandoned their opposition. This I name to you to show the malignity of these men, and to what they stoop in their opposition. They would if they could, overturn heaven and earth, to prostrate me, but providence athwarts all their wicked designs, and will turn it to the benefit of our happy country.
The object of the government now is, to have all their reservations surveyed and laid off as early as we can. They will sell and move to the west, so soon as this is done, and the commissioner of the General Land office is preparing his instructions to forward to to you with the necessary funds, so soon as the appropriation is made for this purpose and the object of this letter is to advise you thereof that you may be prepared with the necessary surveyors to compleat the surveys of the reservations as early as possible. When the reserves are surveyed it will require but a short time to compleat the ballance and have it into markett, for the reserves are to be bounded by sectional lines, and the improvements as nearly in the center, as possible.
I hope you will be able to do something with the Chickasaws before you are called away on this business. The Cherokee delegation are still here, and it is now believed before they leave here will propose to treat with us for their intire removal. The decision of the supreme court has fell still born, and they find it cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate, and I believe Ridge has expressed despair, and that it is better for them to treat and move. In this he is right, for if orders were issued tomorrow one regiment of militia could not be got to march to save them from destruction and this the opposition know, and if a collision was to take place between them and the Georgians, the arm of the government is not sufficiently strong to preserve them from destruction . . .
6. Andrew Jackson to Brig. Gen. John Coffee, 7 April 1832, in John S. Bassett, ed., Correspondence of Andrew Jackson vol. 4 (Washington: Carnegie Institute, 1929), 429-30.