[104] This statement is taken entirely from the Letters of John Ross, chief of the Cherokees, to the Secretary of War. In these letters, he relates the whole transaction with great force and apparent candor, and, in the name of the Cherokee Nation, boldly arraigns the War Department for this treachery, practiced by a Christian nation towards a people called heathens. These letters may be found at length in Ex. Doc. 327, 2d Sess. XXVth Cong., vol. 8.
[105] Vide letter of General Taylor to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Ex. Doc. 225, 3d Sess. XXVth Congress.
[106] Mr. Sprague says there were three hundred Indian and negro warriors engaged in this battle, and that their loss was ten Indians and one negro killed, and eleven wounded; showing a great disparity between their loss and General Taylor’s.
[107] In 1848, General Taylor was the Whig candidate for President of the United States; and so little was the history of this war known to our statesmen or politicians, that it is believed no newspaper, or stump orator, or advocate of his election, ever related or referred to this most gallant act of his life. He had himself, during the war, exhibited no particular sympathy in the work of catching and enslaving negroes; on the contrary, he had expressed his detestation of that policy. Of course the slave power, not willing to make open war upon him, had permitted his name to rest without connecting it with the performance of any brilliant or humane acts. The casuist may say, that he ought not to have served in such a war, and that no gallantry displayed in such a cause ought to reflect credit upon any man. But General Taylor, like other men, should be judged by the times, the customs, the morality of the age in which he lived.
[108] Vide Ex. Doc., 2d Sess. XXVth Congress, No. 225.
[109] Vide General Jessup’s letter to General Arbuckle, 8 Vol. Ex. Doc., 2d Sess. XXVth Congress.
[110] Vide General Jessup’s letter to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Ex. Doc. 225, above referred to.
[111] This is the view which General Jessup gives of the transaction, Ex. Doc., 8th Vol., 3d Sess. XXVth Congress
[112] Vide Report of General Jessup to the Secretary of War, Ex. Doc., 3d Sess. XXVth Congress.
[113] These facts may all be found in the 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, 11th & 12th vols. of Ex. Doc., 2d Sess. XXVth Congress; the letters of Ross and correspondence of General Jessup, and official reports, occupying several hundred pages.