Gentlemen, who favor the project [Indian removal], cannot have viewed it as it is. They think of a march of Indian warriors, penetrating with their accustomed vigor, the forest or the cane brake—they think of the youthful Indian hunter, going forth exultingly to the chase. Sir, it is no such thing. This is all past; it is matter of distant tradition, and poetical fancy. They have nothing now left of the Indian, but his social and political inferiority. They are to go in families, the old and the young, wives and children, the feeble, the sick. And how are they to go? Not in luxurious carriages; they are poor. Not in stagecoaches; they go to a region where there are none. Not even in wagons, nor on horseback, for they are to go in the least expensive manner possible. They are to go on foot: nay, they are to be driven by contract. The price has been reduced, and is still further to be reduced, and it is to be reduced, by sending them by contract. It is to be screwed down to the least farthing, to eight dollars per head. — A community of civilized people, of all ages, sexes and conditions of bodily health, are to be dragged hundreds of miles, over mountains, rivers, and deserts, where there are no roads, no bridges, no habitations, and this is to be done for eight dollars a head; and done by contract. The question is to be, what is the least for which you will take so many hundred families, averaging so many infirm old men, so many little children, so many lame, feeble and sick? What will you contract for? The imagination sickens at the thought of what will happen to a company of these emigrants, which may prove less strong, less able to pursue the journey than was anticipated. — Will the contractor stop for the old man to rest, for the sick to get well; for the fainting women and children to revive? He will not; he cannot afford to. And this process is to be extended to every family, in a population of seventy-five thousand souls. This is what we call the removal of the Indians!

It is very easy to talk of this subject, reposing on these luxurious chairs, and protected by these massy walls, and this gorgeous canopy, from the power of the elements. Removal is a soft word, and words are delusive. — But let gentlemen take the matter home to themselves and their neighbors. There are 75,000 Indians to be removed. This is not less than the population of two congressional districts. We are going, then, to take a population of Indians, of families, who live as we do in houses, work as we do in the field or the workshop, at the plough and the loom, who are governed as we are by laws, who send their children to school, and who attend themselves on the ministry of the Christian faith, to march them from their homes, and put them down in a remote unexplored desert. We are going to do it— this Congress is going to do it—this is a bill to do it. Now let any gentleman think how he would stand, were he to go home and tell his constituents, that they were to be removed, whole counties of them—they must fly before the wrath of insupportable laws—they must go to the distant desert, beyond Arkansas—go for eight dollars a head, by contract—that this was the policy of the Government—that the bill had passed—the money was voted—you had voted for it—and go they must.