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Temple, April 30, 1824
Sir,
Your letter of the 13th instant has been received. My absence from home has prevented so early attention as it otherwise would have had. In yours you state that you have just been furnished with a printed paper purporting to be the copy of a letter dated the 25th of March 1824 addressed by Major Bradford, Mr. William Russell & myself to the Hon. Mr. Barton, chairman of the Land Committee in the U.S. Senate, in conformity to request contained in his letter to us of the 23rd of the same month. In the same you state that it would seem from the tenor of said letter that it was one of my objects in writing it to promote the schemes of your inveterate and vindictive enemy by finding fault with the course you had persued in carrying into execution the orders of Government in relation to surveying the public lands and claims of individuals in the Territory of Arkansas; to this I must say you have mistaken me. I am the tool of no one. I never volunteered my statement with a view to promote the schemes of anyone's vindictive enemy; nor do I withhold the truth when legally called upon for it by legal authority for fear it may touch the interest of anyone's friends. I am totally unconscious of having been actuated by any other motive when called upon than truth and public justice and I did and do believe that Major Bradford and William Russell were actuated by the same.
I would suppose by the spirit of your letter to me that you considered our joint statement in answer to the request of the chairman of the Honorable Committee as a personal and direct charge against you. If so, you have mistaken my views and I believe of the two Gentlemen with me, however, if in the course of enquiry you, as the head of the Department, are thought to have been remiss and censurable for the malfeasance of your Deputy, that is a thing we cannot help that many of those surveyors have been passed over without regard to the Public good or true faith I have no doubt. You was pleased to send me a long extract from our joint statement to the Chairman of the Committee from which it appears you have propounded to me many questions and requested specific answers to them in writing such as, What particular Townships or Districts have been badly surveyed? By whom surveyed? And under whose contract? For an answer to the two last questions I must refer you to your own records, as I have never been in the habit of keeping a black list of charges against any man or number of men nor do I now recollect their names. In answer to your first, I am of opinion that a large District of Territory extending from or near Hickory point extending perhaps fifty, sixty or more miles to the head of what is commonly called Big Prairie is not only very imperfectly surveyed, but is according to my judgement as poor and as unfit for settlements or cultivation as any other District of the same extent I have ever seen in the Territory. You ask me where the good land is that is not surveyed you ought under the Orders of Government to have surveyed? I cannot say what your orders were, but there is much prime unsurveyed land on the Banks of the Arkansas and St. Francis Rivers.
I am very respectfully
your most obedient servant
Governor James Miller
[To] General William Rector
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transcribed by Steven E. Weible
