<P> Andrew Jackson did not listen to the Supreme Court mandate barring Georgia from intruding on Cherokee lands . He feared that enforcement would lead to open warfare between federal troops and the Georgia militia, which would compound the ongoing crisis in South Carolina and lead to a broader civil war . Instead, he vigorously negotiated a land exchange treaty with the Cherokee . Political opponents Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, who supported the Worcester decision, were outraged by Jackson's refusal to uphold Cherokee claims against the state of Georgia . Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an account of Cherokee assimilation into the American culture, declaring his support of the Worcester decision . </P> <P> Jackson chose to continue with Indian removal, and negotiated The Treaty of New Echota, on December 29, 1835, which granted Cherokee Indians two years to move to Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma). Only a fraction of the Cherokees left voluntarily . The U.S. government, with assistance from state militias, forced most of the remaining Cherokees west in 1838 . The Cherokees were temporarily remanded in camps in eastern Tennessee . In November, the Cherokee were broken into groups of around 1,000 each and began the journey west . They endured heavy rains, snow, and freezing temperatures . </P> <P> When the Cherokee negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, they exchanged all their land east of the Mississippi for land in modern Oklahoma and a $5 million payment from the federal government . Many Cherokee felt betrayed that their leadership accepted the deal, and over 16,000 Cherokee signed a petition to prevent the passage of the treaty . By the end of the decade in 1840, tens of thousands of Cherokee and other tribes had been removed from their land east of the Mississippi River . The Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chicksaw were also relocated under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 . One Choctaw leader portrayed the removal as "A Trail of Tears and Deaths", a devastating event that removed most of the Native population of the southeastern United States from their traditional homelands . </P> <P> The latter forced relocations have sometimes been referred to as "death marches", in particular with reference to the Cherokee march across the Midwest in 1838, which occurred on a predominantly land route . </P>

The trail of tears refers specifically to the removal of the seminole