Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, circa 16 December 1843–12 February 1844, Thomas Bullock Second Copy
Source Note
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , JS, , and , Memorial, , Hancock Co., IL, to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, [], 21 Dec. 1843; handwriting of ; notation and docket in handwriting of ; seventeen pages; Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA. Transcription from a digital color image obtained from the Massachusetts Historical Society in 2025.
in great numbers ravished them in the most brutal manner. Some fifty or sixty of the Citizens were thrust into prisons and dungeons where, bound in chains, they were fed on human flesh while their families and some fifteen thousand others were at the point of the Bayonet forcibly expelled from the In the mean time to pay the expences of these horrid outrages they confiscated our property and robbed us of all our possessions. Before our final expulsion with a faint and lingering hope we petitioned the Legislature then in Session. Unwilling to believe that the virtue and patriotism of the venerable fathers of the Revolution had fled from the bosoms of their illustrious descendants. Unwilling to believe that Americn Citizens could appeal in vain for a restoration of liberty cruelly wrested from them by cruel tyrants. But in the language of our Noble Ancestors “Our repeated petitions were only answered by repeated injuries.[”] The Legislature instead of hearing the cries of 15,000 suffering bleeding unoffending Citizens sanctioned and sealed the unconstitutional acts of the and his troops by appropriating $200,000 to defray the expences of exterminating us from the . No friendly arm was stretched out to protect us. The last ray of hope for redress in that was now entirely extinguished. We saw no other alternative but to bow down our necks and wear the cruel yoke of oppression and quietly and submissively suffer ourselves to be banished as exiles from our possessions, our property and our sacred homes or otherwise see our wives and children coldly murdered and butchered by tyrants in power.
Fourth Our next permanent Settlement was in the land of our exile the State of , in the Spring of 1839, but even here we are not secure from our relentless persecutor the State of . Not satisfied in having drenched her soil in the blood of innocence and expelling us from her borders. she pursues her unfortunate victims into banishment seizing upon and kidnapping them in their defenceless moments [p. [5]]