laws, whatever may be their character or form, when administered within her own limits and jurisdiction, would be unauthorized and highly improper. A serupulous sense of these obligations has prevented me thus far from doing anything which can authorize the suspicion that our Government is unmindful of them; and I hope to be equally cautious and circumspect in all my future conduct. It is in reference to these obligations that the requisition of General Gaines, in the present instance must be considered, and unless there is a stronger necessity for it, it should not be sanctioned. Should this necessity not be manifest, when it is well known that the disposition to befriend the Texans is a common feeling with the citizens of the United States, it is obvious that that requisition may furnish a reason to Mexico for supposing that the Government of the United Stales may be induced, by inadequate causes, to overstep the lines of the neutrality which it professes lo maintain. Before I left Washington, General Gaines intimated lo the Department of War that some indications of hostilities from the Indians on our western frontier had been made; and that, if it became necessary, he should make a call for the militia. He had also informed the Department of his ill health, and asked for a furlough lo enable him to visit the White Sulphur springs. I directed the Secretary of War to grant him the furlough, and to inforrri him of the apportionment which had been made of the 10,000 militia under the volunteer act; and, if the emergency should arise which would make it necessary to increase the force under his command, that a thousand volunteers in Arkansas, and another in .Missouri, raised agreeably to this act, would be enrolled and held ready for the service. · This force, aided by the portions of the dragoon regiments that would be stationed in that quarter, and those of the regular army already there, were deemed amply sufficient for the protection of the frontier near the Indians referred to. There are no reasons set forth in the requisition which the general has since made upon you to justify the belief that the force above enumerated will be insufficient, and I cannot, therefore, sanction it at the present time. To sanction that requisition for the reasons which accompany it, would warrant the belief that it was done to aid Texas, and not from a desire to prevent an infringement of our territorial or national rights.
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