Anxious, above all, to avert this state of things, yet at
the same time impressed with the deepest conviction of my own duty to
take care that the laws shall be executed and the faith of the nation
preserved, I have used of the means intrusted to the Executive for that
purpose only those which without resorting to military force may
vindicate the sanctity of the law by the ordinary agency of the judicial
tribunals.
It ought not, however, to be disguised that the act of the legislature
of Georgia, under the construction given to it by the governor of that
State, and the surveys made or attempted by his authority beyond the
boundary secured by the treaty of Washington of April last to the Creek
Indians, are in direct violation of the supreme law of this land, set
forth in a treaty which has received all the sanctions provided by the
Constitution which we have been sworn to support and maintain.
Happily distributed as the sovereign powers of the people of this Union
have been between their General and State Governments, their history has
already too often presented collisions between these divided authorities
with regard to the extent of their respective powers.
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