In this state of things the question is not whether the treaty of the
12th of February last shall or shall not be executed. So far as the
United States were or could be bound by it I have been anxiously
desirous of carrying it into execution. But, like other treaties, its
fulfillment depends upon the will not of one but of both the parties to
it. The parties on the face of the treaty are the United States and the
Creek Nation, and however desirous one of them may be to give it effect,
this wish must prove abortive while the other party refuses to perform
its stipulations and disavows its obligations. By the refusal of the
Creek Nation to perform their part of the treaty the United States are
absolved from all its engagements on their part, and the alternative
left them is either to resort to measures of war to secure by force the
advantages stipulated to them in the treaty or to attempt the adjustment
of the interest by a new compact. In the preference dictated by the
nature of our institutions and by the sentiments of justice and humanity
which the occasion requires for measures of peace the treaty herewith
transmitted has been concluded, and is submitted to the decision of the
Senate.
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