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JANUARY 14:
January 14, 1833:  Reverend Samuel Worcester is a missionary to the Cherokee Nation in Georgia. The state of Georgia ordered all whites living with Indians to swear alliegence to the state of Georgia. Reverend Worcester refuses to do so. On September 16, 1831, Reverend Worcester was sentenced to 4 years at hard labor in a Georgia prison. Even though the Supreme Court rules that it is uncontitutional for Georgia to jail Reverend Worcester, he will not be released until today.
 
 

BACKGROUND:
From http://www.georgiahistory.com/article.htm
 
 

The Missionary Case:  Worcester v. Georgia
by Octavia N. Starbuck

Ordained in Boston, Reverend Samuel Austin Worcester (1798-1852), age 28, was sent to the Cherokee Indian Mission by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to minister to the Cherokee. He became known among the Cherokee as The Messenger, and it was largely through his efforts that a facility was established to print in the Sequoyah characters (alphabet of the Cherokee). In addition to his zeal to christianize, Rev. Worcester had an aptitude for languages, particularly to translate the white man]s literature to Cherokee. Off that printing press would come a translation of the Bible, a weekly newspaper, a hymnal, tract on temperance, almanac, primer (beginning reader), dictionary, and grammar book.

With the Cherokee's adoption of a constitution in 1827, creating an independent Cherokee Nation, Worcester moved his family to the established Cherokee Capital at New Echota (Gordon County, Georgia). Gold is discovered on Cherokee land in 1829 and with the ensuing gold rush, Georgia Governor George Gilmer nullified the Cherokee sovereignty (independence), and declared the Cherokee to be governed by the laws of Georgia. In addition he signed an act declaring ita penal offense for a white man to remain in Cherokee country after March 1, 1831, unless he took an oath of allegiance to Georgia and obtained a permit from the Governor.

Reverend Worcester and several other missionaries refused to take the oath, believing that the Cherokee Nation was under the jurisdiction of the United States and not the State of Georgia. The missionaries were arrested July 7, 1831, charged with leading Indian resistance to Georgia laws, and marched by fife and drum to Camp Gilmer. In September Judge Augustin S. Clayton of the Gwinnett County Court in Lawrenceville found them guilty of illegal residence in Cherokee lands, and sentenced them to four years hard labor in the Georgia Penitentiary at Millegeville.

Governor Gilmer offered pardons to the missionaries if they wouldl either take the oath or leave the territory. Worcester and Dr. Elizur Butler refused and were incarcerated in Millegeville. They appealled to the U.S. Supreme Court in Worcester v. Georgia. Chief Justice John Marshall decreed the Georgia law unconstitutional and void, and ordered Worcester and Butler released. Governor Wilson Lumpkin ignored the ruling, knowing that President Andrew Jackson had no intention of enforcing the decision of the Supreme Court. In fact, President Jackson proclaimed: AJohn Marshall has rendered his decision, now let him enforce it.

Worcester and Butler remained in prison until January of 1832 (serving 16 months) when Governor Lumpkin compromised and released them. Worcester moved with the Cherokee Nation west in the Trail of Tears and established the Park Hill Mission in Oklahoma, providing a church, school, and another printing facility.
 

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From http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/3721/tears.htm
 

Migration from the original Cherokee Nation began in the early 1800s as Cherokees wary of white encroachment moved west and settled in other areas of the country's vast frontier. White resentment of the Cherokees had been building as other needs were seen for the Cherokee homelands. One of those "needs" was the desire for gold that had been discovered in Georgia. Besieged with gold fever and thirst for expansion, the white communities turned on their Indian neighbors and the U.S. Government decided it was time for the Cherokees to leave behind their farms, their land and their homes. A group known as the Old Settlers had moved in 1817 to lands given to them in Arkansas, where again they established a government and a peaceful way of life. Later they, too, were forced into Indian Territory.

Once an ally of the Cherokees, President Andrew Jackson authorized the Indian Removal Act of 1830, following the recommendation of President James Monroe in his final address to Congress in 1825. Jackson sanctioned an attitude that had persisted for many years among many white immigrants. Even Thomas Jefferson, who often cited the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution, supported Indian Removal as early as 1802.

The displacement of native people was not wanting for eloquent opposition. Senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay spoke out against removal. Reverend Samuel Worcester, missionary to the Cherokees, challenged Georgia's attempt to extinguish Indian title to land in the state, winning the case before the Supreme Court. Worcester vs. Georgia, 1832, and Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 1831, are considered the two most influential decisions in Indian law. In effect, the opinions challenged the constitutionality of the Removal Act and the US. Government precedent for unapplied Indian-federal law was established by Jackson's defiant enforcement of the removal.

The U.S. Government used the Treat of New Echota in 1835 to justify the removal. The treaty, signed by about 100 Cherokees knows as the Treat Party. relinquished all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in Indian Territory and the promise of money, livestock, and various provisions and tools. When the pro-removal Cherokee leaders signed that treaty, they also signed their own death warrants. The Cherokee National Council earlier had passed a law that called for the death penalty for anyone who agreed to give up tribal land. The signing and the removal led to bitter factionalism and the deaths of most of the Treaty Part leaders in Indian Territory.

Opposition to the removal was led by Chief John Ross, a mixed-blood of Scottish and one-eighth Cherokee descent. The Ross party and most Cherokees opposed the New Echota Treaty, but Georgia and the U.S. Government prevailed and used it as justification to force almost all of the 17,000 Cherokees from the southeastern homelands. Under orders from President Jackson, the U.S. Army began enforcement of the Removal Act. Around 3,000 Cherokees were rounded up in the summer of 1838 and loaded onto boats that traveled the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas Rivers into Indian Territory.

Many were held in prison camps awaiting their fate. In the winter of 1838-39, 14,000 were marched 1,200 miles through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas into rugged Indian Territory. An estimated 4,000 died from hunger, exposure and disease. The journey became an eternal memory as the "trail where they cried" for the Cherokees and other removed tribes. Today it is remembered as the Trail of Tears.