John Carter of South Carolina warned the House not to pass a law "which would, as to this portion of the Union, be registered on our statute books as a dead letter."[1428] James Hamilton, Jr., of the same State, afterwards a Nullification Governor, asked: "Is it nothing to weaken the attachment of one section of this confederacy to the bond of Union?... Is it nothing to sow the seeds of incurable alienation?"[1429]
The Tariff of 1828 alarmed and angered the Southern people to the point of frenzy. "The interests of the South have been ... shamefully sacrificed!" cried Hayne in the Senate. "Her feelings have been disregarded; her wishes slighted; her honest pride insulted!"[1430] So enraged were Southern Representatives that, for the most part, they declined to speak. Hamilton expressed their sentiments. He disdained to enter into the "chaffering" about the details of the bill.[1431] "You are coercing us to inquire, whether we can afford to belong to a confederacy in which severe restrictions, tending to an ultimate prohibition of foreign commerce, is its established policy.[1432]... Is it ... treason, sir, to tell you that there is a condition of public feeling throughout the southern part of this confederacy, which no prudent man will treat with contempt, and no man who loves his country will not desire to see allayed?[1433]... I trust, sir, that this cup may pass from us.... But, if an adverse destiny should be ours—if we are doomed to drink 'the waters of bitterness,' in their utmost woe, ... South Carolina will be found on the side of those principles, standing firmly, on the very ground which is canonized by that revolution which has made us what we are, and imbued us with the spirit of a free and sovereign people."[1434]
Retaliation, even forcible resistance, was talked throughout the South when this "Tariff of Abominations," as the Act of 1828 was called, became a law. The feeling in South Carolina especially ran high. Some of her ablest men proposed that the State should tax all articles[1435] protected by the tariff. Pledges were made at public meetings not to buy protected goods manufactured in the North. At the largest gathering in the history of the State, resolutions were passed demanding that all trade with tariff States be stopped.[1436] Nullification was proposed.[1437] The people wildly acclaimed such a method of righting their wrongs, and Calhoun gave to the world his famous "Exposition," a treatise based on the Jeffersonian doctrine of thirty years previous.[1438]
A little more than a year after the passage of the Tariff of 1824, and the publication of Marshall's opinions in Osborn vs. The Bank and Gibbons vs. Ogden, Jefferson had written Giles of the "encroachments" by the National Government, particularly by the Supreme Court and by Congress. How should these invasions of the rights of the States be checked? "Reason and argument? You might as well reason and argue with the marble columns encircling them [Congress and the Supreme Court].... Are we then to stand to our arms?... No. That must be the last resource." But the States should denounce the acts of usurpation "until their accumulation shall overweigh that of separation."[1439] Jefferson's letter, written only six months before his death, was made public just as the tide of belligerent Nullification was beginning to rise throughout the South.[1440]
At the same time defiance of National authority came also from Georgia, the cause being as distinct from the tariff as the principle of resistance was identical. This cause was the forcible seizure, by Georgia, of the lands of the Cherokee Indians and the action of the Supreme Court in cases growing out of Georgia's policy and the execution of it.
By numerous treaties between the National Government and the Cherokee Nation, the Indians were guaranteed protection in the enjoyment of their lands. When Georgia, in 1802, ceded her claim to that vast territory stretching westward to the Mississippi, it had been carefully provided that the lands of the Indians should be preserved from seizure or entry without their consent, and that their rights should be defended from invasion or disturbance. The Indian titles were to be extinguished, however, as soon as this could be done peaceably, and without inordinate expense.
In 1827, these Georgia Cherokees, who were highly civilized, adopted a constitution, set up a government of their own modeled upon that of the United States, and declared themselves a sovereign independent nation.[1441] Immediately thereafter the Legislature of Georgia passed resolutions declaring that the Cherokee lands belonged to the State "absolutely"—that the Indians were only "tenants at her will"; that Georgia had the right to, and would, extend her laws throughout her "conventional limits," and "coerce obedience to them from all descriptions of people, be they white, red, or black."[1442]
Deliberately, but without delay, the State enacted laws taking over the Cherokee lands, dividing them into counties, and annulling "all laws, usages and customs" of the Indians.[1443] The Cherokees appealed to President Jackson, who rebuffed them and upheld Georgia.[1444] Gold was discovered in the Indian country, and white adventurers swarmed to the mines.[1445] Georgia passed acts forbidding the Indians to hold courts, or to make laws or regulations for the tribe. White persons found in the Cherokee country without a license from the Governor were, upon conviction, to be imprisoned at hard labor for four years. A State guard was established to "protect" the mines and arrest any one "detected in a violation of the laws of this State."[1446] Still other acts equally oppressive were passed.[1447]
On the advice of William Wirt, then Attorney-General of the United States, and of John Sergeant of Philadelphia, the Indians applied to the Supreme Court for an injunction to stop Georgia from executing these tyrannical statutes. The whole country was swept by a tempest of popular excitement. South and North took opposite sides. The doctrine of State Rights, in whose name internal improvements, the Tariff, the Bank, and other Nationalist measures had been opposed, was invoked in behalf of Georgia.
The Administration tried to induce the Cherokees to exchange their farms, mills, and stores in Georgia for untamed lands in the Indian Territory. The Indians sent a commission to investigate that far-off region, which reported that it was unfit for agriculture and that, once there, the Cherokees would have to fight savage tribes.[1448] Again they appealed to the President; again Jackson told them that Georgia had absolute authority over them. Angry debates arose in Congress over a bill to send the reluctant natives to the wilds of the then remote West.[1449]