"Magnanimity, long-suffering, and humanity" did not hinder Georgia from simply driving the poor Indians from house and home with the sabre. She left the Indian only so much of his possessions as sufficed to keep him from dying of hunger. She thrust his own laws aside. She placed him under her laws, without granting him a single right. And she harrassed him and trampled upon him whenever and however she could. The legal representatives of the "sovereignty" of the state developed a shocking brutality in this course. Patrols marched through the whole territory, arrested every suspected person, and sent him in chains fifty or a hundred miles away to "headquarters" to often set him free at once with curses and threats because the "law" did not authorize his imprisonment. Especial sufferings were heaped upon the missionaries who went in the fulfillment of their duties from one mission station to another, without having obtained the permission required by the state law and taken the prescribed oath to support the constitution and laws of Georgia. It was not enough to fetter their limbs; they were chained by the neck to the pack wagons of the hunters, whose barbarity almost surpassed that of the professional slave-drivers. A Presbyterian missionary named Worcester was made to feel the whole rigor of the law, although he had the severe sickness of his wife to plead as an excuse for not having left the territory within the ten days during which he had been ordered to do so. In accordance

"But even to this limited possession [160 acres] the poor Indian was to have no fee-simple title; he was to hold as a mere occupant at the will of the state of Georgia for just as long or as short a time as she might think proper. The laws at the same time gave him no par. ticular right whatever. He could not become a member of the state legislature, nor could he hold any office under state authority, nor could he vote as an elector. He possessed not one single right of a freeman." Clay, Speeches, II., p. 257.

Niles' Reg., XL., pp. 297, 298, 460–462.

THE SUPREME COURT AGAIN DISOBEYED.

457 with the provisions of the law of Dec. 22, 1830,1 he was condemned to four years imprisonment at hard labor for this crime. This sentence brought the whole matter again before the United States supreme court, which now in a formal decision declared all the claims made by Georgia on the ground of her "sovereignty" to be unjustified; the law of Dec. 22, 1830, to be unconstitutional; and the sentence. of Worcester to be null and void.3 Governor Lumpkin had already acquainted the legislature, before the citation of the state to appear before the United States supreme court, with his resolve to present a "determined resistance" to such a "usurpation." The decision of the court did not incline him to change his resolve. He continued to exhort the legislature and the people to stand firm for the sovereign rights of the state. The state court that gave the annulled judgment acted in accordance with this position. It refused to grant a writ of habeas corpus and took

'The law is given in full in Worcester vs. State of Georgia. Peters, VI., p. 521, seq.; Curtis, X., p. 215, seq.

2

See the complete details of the sentence in Niles' Reg., XLI., pp. 174-176. It has a quite peculiar flavor on account of the multitude of Bible texts to which judge Clayton appeals.

"From the commencement of our government, congress has passed acts to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indians. . . All these acts, and especially that of 1802, which is still in force, manifestly consider the several Indian nations as distinct political communities, having territorial boundaries, within which their authority is exclusive, and having a right to all the lands within those boundaries which is not only acknowledged, but guarantied, by the United States. . . The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community, occupying its own ter ritory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of congress. The whole intercourse between the United States and this nation is, by our constitution and laws, vested in the government of the United States. The act of the state of Georgia, under which the plaintiff in law was prosecuted, is consequently void and the judgment a nullity." Peters, VI., pp. 556, 557, 561; Curtis, X., pp. 240, 243, 244.

'Niles' Reg., XLI., p. 313.

not the slightest notice of the decision of the supreme. court. Worcester and his companion Butler had still to spend a year of imprisonment at hard labor, in company with common criminals. They were finally "pardoned" by gov. Lumpkin, partly because the outlook for a solution of the Cherokee question, in a way satisfactory to Georgia, seemed to render their further imprisonment unnecessary, and partly because their liberation seemed desirable for partisan reasons. For the insolent contempt of the authority of the supreme court, no sort of satisfaction was given, and indeed no sort of satisfaction was demanded. Jackson regarded this issue of the struggle with indifference. Perhaps he even took a quiet, mean joy in it, because Marshall, as he very well knew, was a determined opponent of his re-election."

Thus for the first time the doctrines of state rights laid down in the Kentucky resolutions had been fully carried out. From the beginning Georgia had chosen as her standpoint the fundamental principles that the federal authorities and the states, that is, the state governments, were "parties" who had no common judge and that therefore each party must "decide for itself." And she-at last indirectly supported by the federal executive-had remained a complete victor.

Niles' Reg., XLII., p. 78.

2 Ibid, XLIV., pp. 359, 360.

Depending upon a statement of G. N. Briggs of Massachusetts, who was at the time a member of congress, Greeley (The American Conflict, I., p. 106) relates that Jackson said: "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" Senator Miller of South Carolina said, in 1833, in the debate over the so-called force bill: "No reproof for her [Georgia's] refractory spirit was heard; on the contrary, a learned review of the decision came out, attributed to executive countenance and favor." Niles' Reg., XLIII., Suppl., p. 141.

THE DOCTRINE OF NULLIFICATION. THE COMPROMISE BETWEEN SOUTH CAROLINA AND THE FEDERAL GOVERN

MENT.

The pending presidential election had not been without influence upon the issue of the tariff struggle of 1828, and the reception of the latter at the south. The majority of the protectionists was so small that the days of their power were probably numbered, provided the incoming administration should support the opposite party with energy. And the prospects of Jackson, upon whom the antiprotectionists thought they could safely count, grew better every day. Moreover, the extinction of the national debt was close at hand, and the reasonable arguments, as well as the declamations, of the south could reckon on much more willing hearers as soon as the annual financial report showed a regular surplus. The protective system was thus deprived of all the props which had hitherto done it thankworthy service.

The Democrats won a more brilliant victory than they themselves had expected. Jackson received one hundred and eighty-three electoral votes against only eighty-three for Adams, and Calhoun, the irreconcilable enemy of the protectionists, was chosen vice-president by one hundred and seventy-one electoral votes. It was next to be dis covered how far men were justified in seeing in this a triumph of free trade principles. The inaugural address

1 Debates of Congress, X., p. 394.

"In New York, Pennsylvania, and the west general Jackson has been supported as the firm friend of the tariff and of internal improve

of the new president touched upon this point in a vague and extremely cautious way. It spoke, of course, of "revenue duties," but affirmed that "agriculture, commerce, and manufactures should be equally favored," and added the notable observation that "perhaps the only exception to this rule should consist in the peculiar encouragement of any products of either of them that may be found essential to our national independence." This declaration left both parties unsatisfied. The annual message was awaited with keen expectation. It undeceived the free traders still more completely, without giving the protectionists cause for rejoicing. It expressed an opinion in favor of a "modification" of the tariff, but wished to see the principle that American products must be enabled to compete with foreign adopted as "the general rule to be applied in graduating the duties." In regard to wares which were of especial importance in time of war "even a step beyond this point" ought to be taken. It was only safe to infer from these sayings that Jackson would gladly see a reduction of some duties; the decided rejection, on principle, of the whole protective system, which the south had wished and expected, could in no way be inferred from the general sentences which inclined to every side and said nothing at all decisive. These passages left it uncertain whether he had it in view to exercise even a moderate

pressure upon the protectionists. The recommendation for the division of the expected yearly surplus among the states, in proportion to the ratio of representation, for the execution of internal improvements, until a comprehensive change of the tariff brought about again an equality bements; but in the south he has been as zealously sustained, by those who deny the right and constitutionality of these things, as being the friend of southern interests,' believed by them to be seriously injured by the tariff and internal improvement laws." Niles' Reg., XXXV., p.

194.

'Statesman's Manual, I., p. 696. * Ibid, II., p. 703.