President Adams was deeply impressed with the seriousness of the situation. He felt that he must uphold the dignity and authority of the Government at all hazards and by all the means intrusted to him by the Constitution and the laws; and yet he was unwilling to provoke civil war, if it could be avoided, or to enter upon the work of coercion without the practically unanimous support of the country. He resolved, therefore, to lay the matter before Congress, and await its action. Congress did practically nothing, and the President was convinced that the nation was not prepared to have the Indian problem fought out under the issue of "States' rights" versus the Union. [Sidenote: Georgia and the Cherokees.] Encouraged by this success the Georgians now resolved to subject the Cherokees living within the limits of the Commonwealth to the laws thereof or force them to emigrate. In December of 1827, the legislature passed a law extending the criminal jurisdiction of the Commonwealth over a part of the lands occupied by the Cherokees. The Indians appealed to the President. The appeal came before the President during the last month of his official term, and he {216} discreetly and courteously resolved not to embarrass the new Administration by committing the Government to any position in the question. [Sidenote: Jackson and the Indian question.] President Jackson was even less inclined than his predecessor to allow the Indian question to resolve itself into the question of the constitutional spheres of authority between the Union and the Commonwealths. Moreover, he believed that Georgia was in the right in the Indian question. He replied to the Cherokee memorial that he knew of no alternative to submission to the jurisdiction of Georgia except emigration beyond the limits of the Commonwealth. His view was that the general Government could not hinder a Commonwealth from exercising jurisdiction over every person within its limits, except in such cases as were reserved from that jurisdiction by the Constitution of the United States, and could not lend its countenance to the creation of a new political organization within these limits against the will of the Commonwealth. This was the latter part of April, 1829. The Cherokees, influenced largely by the whites among them, resented the President's advice, and the council of chiefs resolved that no lands claimed by the Cherokees should be relinquished, except by consent of the tribe or tribes, under penalty of death for violation of their resolve, and rejected the overtures of the Government for the relinquishment of their claims.