From Thomas Jefferson to John Milledge, 22 November 1803
To John Milledge
Washington Nov. 22. 03.
Dear Sir
Altho’ I am so late in answering your favor of Aug. 5. yet it was not unattended to; and has, in execution, had it’s effect. while we were negociating with the Creeks for the extension of your Oakmulgee boundary, we thought it unadvisable to press any other topic which would be disagreeable to them. as soon as the unfavorable turn which that negociation took, was known, I desired the Secretary at War to take the proper measures for effecting the object of your letter of Aug. 5.
The Cherokees have at length ceded to us the road from Knoxville to the Savanna, under some cautions & restrictions which it is believed they will soon retire from in practice. we have now to press on the Creeks a direct road from this place to New Orleans, passing always below the mountains. it will probably brush the Currahee mountain, pass through Tuckabatchee & Fort Stoddart. we hope to bring N. Orleans to within 1000. miles of this place, and that the post will pass it in 10. days. the acquisition of Louisiana will it is hoped put in our power the means of inducing all the Indians on this side to transplant themselves to the other side the Missisipi, before many years get about.
I thank you for the seeds & stones you have been so kind as to send me. I hope Congress will rise early enough to let me pass the month of March at home to superintend the planting them and some other things which may be growing & preparing enjoiment for me there when I retire from hence. Be so good as to present my respectful compliments to mrs Milledge, & to accept yourself my friendly salutations & assurances of great esteem & consideration.
Th: Jefferson
RC (Neal Auction Company, New Orleans, 2006); at foot of text: “Govr. Milledge.” PrC (DLC).
to take the proper measures: in a letter dated 14 Oct., Dearborn instructed Benjamin Hawkins to assist agents from the state of Georgia in finding and recovering any “prisoners or negroes” held by the Creek Indians (DNA: RG 75, LSIA).
In the spring of 1803, Dearborn declared to Return Jonathan Meigs that the cherokees “must be brought to reason” on the subject of a road running through their lands to connect Tennessee and Georgia. Dearborn advised the agent that “it may be proper to offer an inducement” to a few influential individuals to achieve the desired result. Meigs obtained an agreement for the road in October, but most Cherokee chiefs did not sign. Those who did, along with an allied group of entrepreneurs who were members of the Cherokee nation by marriage, received advantages in the selection of the route, other concessions, and gifts. Dearborn overruled a provision for a small army outpost at the Cherokees’ border with Georgia. He wrote to Milledge and John Sevier on 21 Nov., informing the governors that the president, having no U.S. funds available for surveying and opening the road, suggested that their states take the necessary action (Dearborn to Meigs, 30 May, and to Milledge, Meigs, and Sevier, 21 Nov., in same; William G. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic [Princeton, 1986], 77-8, 88-91).
from this place to new orleans: the president “has it in contemplation to establish a communication between the Seat of Government and New Orleans, in as direct a line as circumstances will admit,” Dearborn informed Hawkins. TJ “therefore requests,” Dearborn continued, that “you will give him all the information in your power relative to the practicability of finding a road from the Southwestern frontier of North Carolina near the Northwestern corner of South Carolina to your residence & from thence to the Mouth of the Alabama” (Dearborn to Hawkins, 22 Nov., in DNA: RG 75, LSIA).
In April 1804, TJ had seeds of the Cherokee rose (Rosa laevigata Michx.) that he had received from Milledge planted in the nursery at Monticello (, 291, 293).