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Indiana University 
prior claimants, and juries sometimes awarded them unrea- 
sonable sums allowed by law for improvements made.^^® This 
was inevitable and caused honest claimants in both Kentucky 
and Virginia to protest bitterly at the injustice of the law. 
But it was a problem of the troublous pioneer times, and one 
is led to the conviction that while perhaps Virginia and the 
Supreme Court were technically right in their view, on the 
whole, Kentucky was humanly and morally so. The first 
quarter of the nineteenth century was with the American 
people a period of restless political experimentation. Scarce- 
ly a year went by in which some state did not defy the pres- 
ident, Congress, or the Supreme Court, advocating nullifica- 
tion and secession or threatening resistance. Thirteen of the 
twenty-four states asserted boldly the doctrine of state su- 
premacy.^^® It is to the credit of the federal courts that in 
Kentucky’s cases of relief and land titles, they were neither 
swayed by the loudest clamor nor by the largest number of 
votes.^®^ 
An understanding of the fundamentals of the unexpected 
and unpopular decisions of the federal courts in which Ken- 
tucky was concerned at this time is considered necessary to 
give an accurate view of the already inflamed and complicated 
situation in the state. The masses of people had just begun 
to understand what had been decided in Green vs. Biddle 
when, in October, 1823, the state court of appeals announced 
its opinions in Blair vs. Williams and Lapsley vs. Brashear, 
declaring the replevin acts unconstitutional. If the cup of 
resentment had been nearly full in Kentucky over the attitude 
of the federal courts, it was now full and overflowing relative 
to the action of her own courts. The state became wild with 
excitement when it seemed to many of her people that no 
longer was the will of the majority safe in a democracy. 
Something had to be done quickly to crush this opposition 
from an unexpected source — the state courts. The judges of 
the court of appeals had been repeatedly threatened with 
violence if they upheld Judges Clark and Blair, but the two 
Kentucky Gazette, March 28, 1822. 
McMaster, A History of the People of the United States, V, 417, 418 ; Turner, 
The Rise of the New West, 137-139 ; Schouler, History of the United States of America 
under the Constitution, 1783-1865, III, 118-121. 
Sumner, Andrew Jackson, 170. 
Robertson, Scrap Book, 49, 
