rest.  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.  No instance, however, has hitherto occurred in which this collision has been urged into a conflict of actual force.  No other case is known to have happened in which the application of military force by the Government of the Union has been prescribed for the enforcement of a law the violation of which has within any single State been prescribed by a legislative act of the State.  In the present instance it is my duty to say that if the legislative and executive authorities of the State of Georgia should persevere in acts of encroachment upon the territories secured by a solemn treaty to the Indians, and the laws of the Union remain unaltered, a superadded obligation even higher than that of human authority will compel the Executive of the United States to enforce the laws and fulfill the duties of the nation by all the force committed for that purpose to his charge.  That the arm of military force will be resorted to only in the event of the failure of all other expedients provided by the laws, a pledge has been given by the forbearance to employ it at this time.  It is submitted to the wisdom of Congress to determine whether any further act of legislation may be necessary or expedient to meet the emergency which these transactions may produce.

John Quincy Adams.

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Washington,
February 8, 1827

To the Senate of the United States: