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Memoranda regarding the Cherokee Treaty of 1835
                                                The entire Cherokee subject appears to me to resolve itself into these two simple questions. The Cherokee subject reduced to two questions. What have we promised the Cherokee? 

   In order to get at our actual promises to the Cherokees we must first look into the principles upon which we profess to deal with red men generally, and then ascertain how far our written covenants with the Cherokees realize those principles. If in the latter there is any obscurity, it ought to be cleared by the former. 

How have we kept our promises?

                                                        How to answer the two questions to which the Cherokee subject is reduced.

To proceed then upon this system.

                 In our early transactions with the Indians, the principles are only to be inferred from the reports we have of oral assurances to them, compared with the tenor of the treaties which followed. 

                                                                  Professed principles which guide our dealing with Indians -- how ascertained.

                More recently the principles have taken a shape less inexact. "They were proclaimed" says a letter printed in Senate Document 120, Second Session Twenty Fifth Congress, page 678, "in the negociation with Great Britain at Ghent by the American Commissioners who concluded the treaty of peace". -- I am only as yet in possession of such points of the statement here alluded to, as are contained in the letter already quoted, which came from one of the very commissioners in question. He there says