| The case of the Cherokee Nation. |
The Indians then caused an original bill to be filed in the Supreme Court of the United States against Georgia, together with a supplemental bill praying for a temporary injunction to restrain the Commonwealth from enforcing its jurisdiction, and for the issuing of a subpoena to Georgia to appear before the Court. The Court issued its summons, but the Commonwealth made no answer, and the Court decided, in its January term of 1831, that the Cherokee nation was not a "State" in the sense of that provision of the Constitution which designates the parties qualified to sue in the United States Courts. This decision was pronounced immediately after the execution of the Cherokee Tassells by the Georgia authorities, in defiance of a writ of error addressed to the Commonwealth by a United States court, requiring the Commonwealth to show cause why he should not be discharged from custody. It is probable that the Supreme Court was impressed by this demonstration of the impotence of the judiciary to interfere successfully with the political policy of a Commonwealth, even in behalf of personal liberty.
| The case of Worcester against Georgia. |
A year later the Court took a more national view and stand. A Presbyterian missionary to the Cherokees, the Rev. Samuel A. Worcester, of Vermont, had violated the Georgia statute, which made it a criminal offence to reside among the Cherokees after March 1st, 1831, without a license from the Governor, and without having taken an oath to support and defend the laws of the Commonwealth. He was indicted and tried by a Georgia court, found guilty, and condemned to imprisonment in the penitentiary of the Commonwealth. A writ of error was issued by one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, requiring the Commonwealth of Georgia to show cause why the prisoner should not be discharged. The writ was served on the Governor and the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth. The only answer which the Commonwealth gave to the summons was the sending up of the record of the case, signed by the clerk of the court which pronounced the judgment, and authenticated by the seal of the court. The judge of the Georgia court did not sign the record. Nevertheless the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the record of the Georgia court was properly before it, and the Chief Justice proceeded to make, in the Court's opinion of the case, an exhaustive review of the Indian relations of the United States, in accord with the principles of the Adams Administration, and to pronounce the statute of Georgia, asserting the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth over the Cherokee lands and over all persons residing or being on them, unconstitutional, null, and void, and the arrest, trial, and sentence of Mr. Worcester under the same to have been, therefore, without warrant of law.
But the Georgia authorities paid no attention to the decision. They did not liberate the prisoner or accord him a new trial. Later on, the Governor of the Commonwealth pardoned him as his own act of grace.
| The failure of the President to execute the decision in the Worcester case. |
It was certainly the duty of the President of the United States to have executed this decision of the Court with all the power necessary for the purpose which the Constitution conferred upon him. He did not do it. It is said on very good authority that he intimated, at least, that he would not do it. The Commonwealth simply defied the Court successfully, and the President and Congress acquiesced in the result. The President agreed in opinion with the Georgians upon the subject, and the doctrine which here triumphed was one more plank in the platform of the Jacksonian democracy, a real "States' rights" principle.