352 of any hostile practices within our territory. An honorable warfare we will reciprocate, But the predatory aggressions of unauthorized banditti, have always received, as they justly merit, the severest chastisements that an indignant community can inflict. Unhappily our frontier is sufferng greater evils than result from these occasional and desultory incursions. ·Several native tribes of Indians, deriring confidence from our forbearance, have waged, and are waging, a petty, but in some instances, a disastrous and cruel warfare upon our neglected border settlements. 'I'he importance of chastising these savage offenders; and extending protection to our exposed and suffering fellow-citizens, cannot fail to attract your early and most serious notice.- Honor, humanity, and patriotism. conspire to enjoin this duty upon us. It is a cardinal principle in all political associations, that protection is commensurate with alle- giance, and the poorest citizen whose sequestered cabin is reared on our remotest frontier, holds as sacred a claim upon the government for safety and security as does the man who lives in ease and wealth in the heart of our most populous city. I am by no means desirous of aggravating the ordinary and inevitable calamitie.s of war, by inculcating the harsh doctrine of the lex talionis toward the debased and ignorant savages. \Var is in itself an evil, which all good people will strive to avoid; but when it cannot be avoided, it ought to be so met and pursued as will best secure a speedy and lasting peace. If that better mode consists in severity to the enemy, then severity to him, becomes clemency to all. The moderation hitherto extended to the Indians on our borders has been repeatedly retorted upon us, in all the atrocious cruelties that characterize their modes of war. fare. The Indian Warrior in his heartless and sanguinary vengeance recognises no distinct.ion of age or sex or condition. All are indis- criminate victims to his cruelties. The wife and the infant afford as rich a trophy to the scalping knife, as the warrior who falls in the vigor of manhood and the pride of his chivalry. And why js it, that he is thus so insensible to the dictates of justice and humanity? Has not the white man.for centuries furnished him examples of clemency and kindness 1 Have not their women and children been protected, and the old and the infirm been spared? And when taken in battle, have they not experienced the forbeaarances and indulgences which so much assuage the asperities of civilized conflict? -They have; and it is precisely because these indulgencies have been profitable to their heartless policy that they have persevered in their ancient bar- barities. As long as we continue to exhibit our mercy without shew- ing our strength, so long will the Indian continue to bloody the edge of the tomahawk, and move onward in the work of rapacity and slaughter. And how long shall this cruel humanity, this murderous sensibility for the sang-unary savage be practised, in defiance of its tested impolicy? Until other oceans of blood; the blood of our wives and children, shall glut their voracious appetite? I would answer no. If the wild cannibals of the woods will not desist from their massacres; if they will continue to war upon ns. with the ferocity of Tigers and Hyenas. it is time we shoulrl retaliate their warfare, not in the murder of their women and children, but in the prosecution of an exterminating war upon their warriors, which
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