territory without a license.  The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, and in the decision of March 10, 1832, Marshall affirmed the status of the Cherokees as a “nation” within whose territory “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 statute was accordingly declared to be unconstitutional and Worcester was ordered to be discharged.

This ought to have been enough to protect the Cherokees in their rights.  But it was not, and for two reasons:  the contempt of Georgia for the Court’s opinions, and the refusal of Jackson to restrain the State in its headstrong course.  Already the state authorities had refused to take notice of a writ of error to the Supreme Court sued out in December, 1830, in behalf of a condemned Cherokee, Corn Tassel, and had permitted the execution of the unfortunate redskin.  The state court now refused to issue a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of Worcester, and the prisoner was held—­precisely as if the law under which he was convicted had been pronounced constitutional—­until he was pardoned by the Governor a year later.

This action on the part of the State was, of course, nothing less than nullification.  Yet Jackson did not lift a finger.  “John Marshall has made his decision,” he is reported to have said; “now let him enforce it.”  The South Carolinians were quick to seize upon the inconsistencies of the situation.  Nullification in their State was apparently one thing; in Georgia, quite another.  The very fact, however, that the Georgians had successfully defied the federal Supreme Court did much to encourage their neighbors in a course of similar boldness.  Jackson’s leniency toward Georgia has never been wholly explained.  He was undoubtedly influenced by his sympathy with the purpose of the State to establish its jurisdiction over all lands within its borders.  Furthermore he cherished an antipathy for Marshall which even led him to refuse in 1835 to attend a memorial meeting in the great jurist’s honor.  But these considerations do not wholly cover the case.  All that the historian can say is that the President chose to take notice of the threats and acts of South Carolina and to ignore the threats and acts of Georgia, without ever being troubled by the inconsistency of his course.  His political career affords many such illustrations of the arbitrary and even erratic character of his mind.

Meanwhile the great Indian migration was setting in.  Emulating the example of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi extended their laws over all of the Indian lands within their boundaries; and in all parts of the South the red folk—­some of them joyously, but most of them sorrowfully—­prepared to take up their long journey.  In 1832 the Creeks yielded to the United States all of their remaining lands east of the Mississippi.  By the spring of 1833 the