51, and of the latter number all but six came from Southern States,
and more than half of them from natives of Virginia.

* 4 Peters, 410.

Meantime the Supreme Court had become involved in controversy with
Georgia on account of a series of acts which that State had passed
extending its jurisdiction over the Cherokee Indians in violation of the
national treaties with this tribe. In Corn Tassel's case, the appellant
from the Georgia court to the United States Supreme Court was hanged
in defiance of a writ of error from the Court. In Cherokee Nation vs.
Georgia, the Court itself held that it had no jurisdiction. Finally, in
1832, in Worcester vs. Georgia, * the Court was confronted squarely with
the question of the validity of the Georgia acts. The State put in
no appearance, the acts were pronounced void, and the decision went
unenforced. When Jackson was asked what effort the Executive Department
would make to back up the Court's mandate, he is reported to have said:
"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."

* 6 Peters, 515.

Marshall began to see the Constitution and the Union crumbling before
him. "I yield slowly and reluctantly to the conviction," he wrote Story,
late in 1832, "that our Constitution cannot last .... Our opinions
[in the South] are incompatible with a united government even among
ourselves. The Union has been prolonged this far by miracles." A
personal consideration sharpened his apprehension. He saw old age at
hand and was determined "not to hazard the disgrace of continuing in
office a mere inefficient pageant," but at the same time he desired
some guarantee of the character of the person who was to succeed him.
At first he thought of remaining until after the election of 1832;
but Jackson's reelection made him relinquish altogether the idea of
resignation.

A few months later, in consequence of the Administration's vigorous
measures against nullification in South Carolina, things were
temporarily wearing a brighter aspect. Yet that the fundamental elements
of the situation had been thereby altered, Marshall did not believe. "To
men who think as you and I do," he wrote Story, toward the end of 1834,
"the present is gloomy enough; and the future presents no cheering
prospect. In the South... those who support the Executive do not support
the Government. They sustain the personal power of the President, but
labor incessantly to impair the legitimate powers of the