Copies of these instructions and
orders are herewith transmitted to Congress.
In abstaining at this stage of the proceedings from the application of
any military force I have been governed by considerations which will, I
trust, meet the concurrence of the Legislature. Among them one of
paramount importance has been that these surveys have been attempted,
and partly effected, under color of legal authority from the State of
Georgia; that the surveyors are, therefore, not to be viewed in the
light of individual and solitary transgressors, but as the agents of a
sovereign State, acting in obedience to authority which they believed to
be binding upon them. Intimations had been given that should they meet
with interruption they would at all hazards be sustained by the military
force of the State, in which event, if the military force of the Union
should have been employed to enforce its violated law, a conflict _must_
have ensued, which would itself have inflicted a wound upon the Union
and have presented the aspect of one of these confederated States at war
with the rest.
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