80 Indiana University 
court, the feeling against the federal judiciary was anything 
but friendly.^2® 
In the meantime, prior to the Wayman vs. Southard deci- 
sion, the Supreme Court had made, in the spring of 1823, a 
second decision on the occupying-claimant land law. This law 
with some of its amendments thereto and the troubles it 
caused has been mentioned. Finally a case known as Green 
vs. Biddle had come to the Supreme Court on appeal from 
Kentucky to test the constitutionality of the whole proposi- 
tion. The decision of the court was that the Kentucky acts 
of 1797 and 1812 relative to land titles were both unconstitu- 
tional since they were an impairment of the contract between 
Virginia and Kentucky, made at the time of separation, 
whereby all land disputes were to be determined by the laws 
of the mother state.^-® When the full effect of this decision 
reached Kentucky, the cup of resentment against the federal 
judiciary was almost full.^-'^ Governor Adair in the fall of 
1823 sent an angry message to the legislature in opposition 
to the Supreme Court’s action. A warm debate arose as to 
whether Governor Adair should receive a vote of thanks for 
his vehement warning given the legislature and the people 
against federal encroachments. In the course of his message 
the Governor had called those who opposed the relief measures 
“ignorant or designing men”.^^® It is noticeable that when a 
short time afterward a strong remonstrance against the Su- 
preme Court’s decision in Green vs. Biddle was adopted by 
both houses of the legislature, the vote was cast along relief 
and anti-relief lines. 
Petitions from Kentucky to Congress to amend the much- 
disliked Judiciary Act of 1789, which they thought respon- 
sible for the obnoxious decisions of the federal courts just 
mentioned,^®® had no more effect on that body in 1824 and 1825 
than had earlier attempts between Kentucky and Virginia 
to compromise among themselves the vexed and equally ob- 
noxious occupying-claimant laws.^^^ The Supreme Court’s 
action in the various cases which affected Kentucky caused it 
i 2 ,i Wheaton, op. cit., X, 1. 
X, 18. 
McMaster, A History of the People of the United States, V, 415. 
National Intelligencer, November 24, 1823. 
Ihid., January 22, 1824. 
Niles’ Register, XXV, 261. 
McMaster, op>. cit., V, 416, 
