THE ACQUISITION OF FLORIDA
The Influence of Physical Geography upon Political Development--Defect
in the Southern Boundary of the United States before 1819--The Treaty
of Paris of 1763--The Boundary between Louisiana and
Florida--Occupation of Florida by the United States Forces during the
War of 1812--The Hold of the Spaniards on Florida Weakened by the War
of 1812--The British Troops in Florida during and after the War of
1812--Nicholls and his Buccaneer State in Florida--The British
Government's Repulse of Nicholls' Advances--Destruction of the
Nicholls Fort by the United States Forces--The Seminole War--The Fight
at Fowltown--The Seminole War Defensive--McGregor on Amelia
Island--General Gaines sent to Amelia Island--General Jackson placed
in Command in Florida--His Orders--Jackson's Letter to President
Monroe--Jackson's Operations in Florida--The First Treaty for the
Cession of Florida to the United States--Jackson's Popularity in
consequence of the Seminole War--The Attempt in Congress to Censure
Jackson--The same Attempt in the Cabinet--The Failure of the Attempt
to Censure Jackson in Congress--Assumption of the Responsibility for
Jackson's Acts by the Administration--Jackson Triumphant--The Treaty
of Cession Attacked in Congress, but Ratified by the Senate--Rejection
of the Treaty by the Spanish Government--Resumption of
Negotiations--The New Treaty Ratified by the Senate and by the Spanish
Government--Political Results of the Seminole War.
It was entirely natural that the quickening of the national spirit and
the growth of the national consciousness throughout the United States,
in the decade between 1810 and 1820, had, for one of their results,
the {20} extension of the territory of the United States, at some
point or other, to its natural limits.
[Sidenote: The influence of physical geography upon political
development.]
The element of physical geography always plays a large part in
national political development. The natural territorial basis of a
national state is a geographical unity. That is, it is a territory
separated by broad bodies of water, or high mountain ranges, or broad
belts of uninhabitable country, or climatic extremes, from other
territory, and possessing a fair degree of coherence within. If a
national state develops itself on any part of such a territory, it
will inevitably tend to spread to the natural limits of the same. It
will not become a completely national state until it shall have
attained such boundaries, for a completely national state is the
sovereign organization of a people having an ethnic unity upon a
territory which is a geographic unity.
[Sidenote: Defect in the southern boundary of the United States before
1819.]
In the second decade of this century, and down to the latter part of
it, the United States had not acquired the territory of the country as
far as to the natural southern boundary east of Louisiana. This
boundary was, of course, the Gulf of Mexico; but Spain held in quasi
possession a broad strip, and then a long peninsula, of land along and
within this boundary. In other words, the territory called Florida, or
the Floridas, was, politically, a colony of Spain, but geographically
a part of the United States. It was inhabited chiefly by Indian
tribes. Spanish rule in this territory was, therefore, foreign rule,
both from the geographical point of view and the ethnical. Indian rule
was not to be thought of in the nineteenth century. There was but one
natural solution of the question. It was that the United States should
annex this territory and extend the jurisdiction of the general
Government over it.
[Sidenote: The Treaty of Paris of 1763.]
The Treaty of Paris of 1763 was the first great {21} international
agreement which gave a fair degree of definiteness to the claims of
England, France, and Spain, upon the North American continent. In this
Treaty, France surrendered Canada, Cape Breton, and all claims to
territory east of the Mississippi River, from the source of the river
to the point of confluence of the Iberville with it, to Great Britain.
From this latter point, the boundary between the two powers was
declared to be the middle line of the Iberville, and of the Lakes
Maurepas and Pontchartrain, to the Gulf of Mexico. It is also
expressly stated in this Treaty that France cedes the river and port
of Mobile to Great Britain.
In this same instrument, Spain surrendered to Great Britain Florida
and every claim to territory east and southeast of the Mississippi.
[Sidenote: The boundary between Louisiana and Florida.]
The boundary between Louisiana and Florida had, to that time, been the
River Perdido. After the cessions above mentioned to Great Britain,
the British Government united the part of Louisiana received from
France with Florida, and then divided Florida into two districts by
the line of the River Appalachicola. That part lying to the west of
this river was named West Florida, and the part east of it was called
East Florida.
By a secret Treaty of the year 1762, which became known to the world
some eighteen months later, but whose terms were not executed until
1769, France ceded Louisiana to Spain. After this, therefore, the
North American continent was divided between Great Britain and Spain,
and the line of division was, so far as it was fixed, the Mississippi
River to the confluence of the Iberville with it, then the Iberville
and the middle line of the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the
Gulf of Mexico.
{22} The Treaty of 1762 between France and Spain, having been
concluded before the Treaty of 1763 between France and Great Britain,
gave Spain a certain show of title to the territory between the
Mississippi and the Perdido; but the Treaty of 1763, in which France
ceded this same territory to Great Britain, was, as we have just seen,
known first, and was the Treaty which France executed in respect to
this territory. The conflict of claims between Great Britain and
Spain, which was thus engendered, continued to be waged for twenty
years, and was settled in the year 1783, in so far as these two powers
were concerned, by the recession of Florida to Spain.
In this same year, Great Britain recognized the independence of the
United States, with a southern boundary extending from the point where
the Mississippi River is intersected by the thirty-first parallel of
latitude, along this parallel to the River Appalachicola, thence down
the Appalachicola to its confluence with Flint River, thence on the
line of shortest distance to the source of the River St. Mary, and
thence by the course of this stream to the Atlantic. Spain thus held,
as the result of these several treaties, all of the territory south of
this line, unless England reserved in her recession of Florida that
portion of Louisiana lying between the Iberville and the Perdido,
ceded by France to Great Britain in the Treaty of 1763, and united by
Great Britain with Florida. There is no evidence in the text of the
Treaty of 1783 that Great Britain made any such reservation, or in the
subsequent actions of the British Government.
By the Treaty of St. Ildefonso, of October 1st, 1800, also a secret
treaty, Spain receded Louisiana to France. The description of the
territory thus receded was very vague. It reads in the official
translation of the treaty, {23} "His Catholic Majesty promises and
engages, on his part, to cede to the French Republic, six months after
the full and entire execution of the conditions and stipulations
herein relative to his Royal Highness the Duke of Parma, the Colony or
Province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it now has in the
hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it; and such as
it should be after the treaties subsequently entered into between
Spain and other states."
There was here certainly opportunity for a dispute between Spain and
France as to the correct boundary between Louisiana and Florida.
France could claim with some reason the Perdido as the eastern
boundary of Louisiana, and Spain could meet this with a counterclaim
that, after the cession in 1763 of all Louisiana east of the Iberville
and the Lakes to Great Britain, and its union by Great Britain with
Florida, the line of the Iberville and the Lakes Maurepas and
Pontchartrain was the eastern boundary of Louisiana.
Before, however, any actual contest arose over the question, France
sold Louisiana to the United States, with the same vague description
of boundary contained in the cession of the territory from Spain to
France by the Treaty of St. Ildefonso. The question of boundary became
now one which must be settled between Spain and the United States.
The United States claimed at once that Louisiana reached to the
Perdido. Spain disputed the claim, and held that Florida extended to
the Iberville and the Lakes. Spain could make out the better abstract
of title. Spain certainly did not intend to recede to France in 1800
anything more as Louisiana than France had ceded to her in 1762. But
the United States had a show of legal title. It could be held that the
ancient boundary of Louisiana was the one intended both in the Treaty
{24} of St. Ildefonso and in that of 1803, in which France passed the
possession of Louisiana to the United States. The reasons of physical
geography and of national development certainly favored the annexation
of the whole of Florida to the United States; and with such forces to
back the apparent legal claim to a large part of it, the result of the
dispute could not well have been otherwise than it was.
The United States enforced its claim by military occupation of the
disputed district before the close of the War of 1812.
[Sidenote: Occupation of Florida by the United States forces during
the War of 1812.]
During the course of the war, the British forces had occupied
Pensacola. The Spanish governor either could not, or would not,
prevent them from doing so. Florida became thus, in spite of its
nominal neutral status, a base of operations for the enemy of the
United States. No more convincing evidence of the necessity for its
annexation to the United States could have been offered. It was thus
seen that not only the geography and the national growth of the Union
demanded it, but that the safety of the Union, in case of war with any
power, required it. The sea is the natural boundary of the United
States on the south, and it was the "manifest destiny" of the Union to
reach it.
The occupation of Florida would have been a sound and justifiable
policy for the United States, had the Government commanded a
sufficient military force for the purpose, when the British troops
took possession of Pensacola. General Jackson did expel the British
from Pensacola, but restored the place to the Spanish authorities, in
order to avoid a conflict with Spain while engaged in war with Great
Britain. We know now that the Congress of the United States had, by
secret acts passed before the beginning of the War, authorized the
{25} President to occupy Florida _east_ of the Perdido temporarily.
The President did not deem it wise, under the circumstances which
prevailed, to make use of this power; but the readiness of the
Congress to intrust the President with the authority to take
possession of the territory of a friendly power certainly shows that a
strong feeling existed among the representatives of the people that
Florida must be acquired by the United States upon the first fair
opportunity.
[Sidenote: The hold of the Spaniards on Florida weakened by the War of
1812.]
The occasion was destined soon to appear. The power of Spain upon the
American continents was everywhere in rapid decline. At the close of
the War of 1812, the Spanish occupation in Florida was confined
substantially to three points--Pensacola, St. Mark's, and St.
Augustine. The remainder of the province, by far the greater part of
it, was a free zone, in which desperate adventurers of every race and
land might congregate, from which they might make their raids for
murder and pillage into the United States, and into which they might
escape again with their prisoners and plunder.
[Sidenote: The British troops in Florida during and after the War of
1812.]
We have noticed the occupation of Pensacola by the British troops
during the War of 1812, and their expulsion by General Jackson from
this position in November of 1814. After this, they concentrated upon
the Appalachicola and established a fort some fifteen miles above the
mouth of this stream for their head-quarters and base of operations.
The British commander, one Colonel Nicholls, pursued from this point
the policy which he had already inaugurated at Pensacola. This policy
was the collection and organization of fugitive negroes, Indians, and
adventurers of every character, and their employment in raids into the
territory, and attacks upon the inhabitants, of the United States.
{26} It appears that Colonel Nicholls did not regard the Treaty
between the United States and Great Britain concluding the War as
putting an end necessarily to his hostile movements. He remained in
command at his fort on the Appalachicola for several months after the
ratification of the Treaty, and then went to London, taking with him
the Indian priest Francis, for the purpose of securing a treaty of
alliance between the British Government and his band of outlaws in
Florida.
[Sidenote: Nicholls and his buccaneer state in Florida.]
Before leaving the Appalachicola, he had incited the Indians and their
negro auxiliaries to continue hostilities against the United States,
by representing to them that the ninth article of the Treaty of Ghent
contained a pledge on the part of the United States to reinstate the
Indians in all lands held by them in the year 1811. He represented to
them that this provision restored to the Creeks the lands in southern
Georgia surrendered by them to the United States in the Treaty between
the Creeks and the United States made at Fort Jackson in August of
1814, although it was well understood by both of the high contracting
parties to the Treaty of Ghent that only those lands were intended
under this provision whose seizure by the United States had not been
confirmed by an agreement with the Indians; and the pledge as to these
only was conditioned upon the immediate cessation of hostilities on
the part of the Indians when the Treaty of Ghent should be announced
to them. This announcement had been made, and the actual continuation
of hostilities, therefore, after the announcement, made this whole
article nugatory.
Nicholls left the fort, with all its munitions, in the hands of the
negroes and Indians. The garrison {27} consisted of some three hundred
negroes and about twenty Indians.
[Sidenote: The British Government's repulse of Nicholls' advances.]
The British Government would not listen to Nicholls' proposition for
an alliance between Great Britain and the buccaneering state which he
was endeavoring to establish upon territory belonging politically to
Spain.
[Sidenote: Destruction of the Nicholls Fort by the United States
forces.]
The United States Government waited a year and a half for the
disbanding of this hostile force, or for its dispersion by the Spanish
authorities, and then, when forbearance had ceased to be a virtue, did
the work itself. The fort was destroyed by the explosion of its
magazine, which was pierced by a red-hot shot from the batteries of
the assailants, and almost the whole garrison perished. It was claimed
that the attack was made by the United States forces with the consent
of the Spanish authorities, whatever the significance of that may have
been.
Professor von Holst, in his great work, has designated the expedition
against the Nicholls Fort as a hunt by the United States army for
fugitive slaves. He does not seem to have recognized the danger to the
peace and civilization of the United States of the growth of a
community of pirates and buccaneers upon its borders. It does not
appear to have occurred to him that the most humane attitude toward
the slaves of Georgia may have been to prevent them from being drawn
into any such connection. He does not seem to have comprehended that
any public interest was subserved by disposing of the negroes captured
in this expedition in such a way as to prevent any future attempts on
their part at co-operation with the Indians in their barbarous warfare
upon the frontiers of the United States. In a sentence, he seems to
have regarded the entire incident as a prostitution of the military
power of the United States to the private greed of {28} slave-hunters,
and to have discovered in it a most convincing proof of the canting
hypocrisy of the free Republic. In view of all the facts of the case,
this certainly appears to be a very crude appreciation of the subject.
[Sidenote: The Seminole War.]
This same historian calls the attack upon the Nicholls Fort the
beginning of the Seminole War. It appears, however, more like the
termination of the War of 1812, so far as the negro outlaws of Florida
were participant in that War, than like the beginning of a new war.
Generals Gaines and Jackson and the War Department of the Government
seem to have so comprehended the event.
After the destruction of the Nicholls Fort, or the Negro Fort, as it
was then called, there was comparative peace, for a few months, on the
frontier. With the beginning of the year 1817, however, hostilities
were renewed. It is not known which party gave the first offence.
Ex-Governor Mitchell of Georgia, then holding the office of Indian
agent for these parts, thought both parties equally at fault. The
point is a matter of little moment. The conflict between civilization
and barbarism is irrepressible, and arises as often from the
encroachments of civilization as from the onslaughts of barbarism.
[Sidenote: The fight at Fowltown.]
In November of 1817, General Gaines endeavored to secure an interview
with the chief of the hostile Indians, but the chief refused to visit
the General, whereupon the General sent a detachment of soldiers to
the chief's village, called Fowltown, to repeat his invitation, and to
conduct the chief and his warriors to a parley-ground. The soldiers
were fired upon by the Indians as they approached the village. They
naturally returned the fire, and then seized and destroyed the
village. A few Indians were killed in the conflict.
{29} The Indian agent, Mitchell, called this event the beginning of
the Seminole War. It was certainly something more like it than was the
capture of the Negro Fort. Still it will be more correct to consider
it as being only the continuation of the War of 1812, in so far as the
participation in that War of Great Britain's Indian allies on the
southern border of the United States was concerned. They had never
really resumed the status of peace after acting during that War, at
the instigation of the British officers in Florida, against the United
States.
[Sidenote: The Seminole War defensive.]
Following the fight at Fowltown hostilities became much more active.
Fowltown was situated north of the Florida line, upon territory ceded
by the Creeks to the United States in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. If,
therefore, the incident of November 20th was the beginning of the
Seminole War, it stamps that War as defensive in its character. The
troops of the United States were attacked upon the territory of the
United States. If the further prosecution of the War should, in the
judgment of the President, or of the officer whom he might vest with
discretionary power in the execution of his will, require the crossing
of the Florida line and the pursuit of the enemy upon Florida
territory, the character of the War could not be changed thereby. This
could not be regarded as making war on Spain. Spain could meet and
satisfy the right of the United States to do this only by dispersing
the Indians herself, and preventing Florida from becoming a base of
hostile operations against the United States. Spain could claim the
rights of neutrality for Florida only when she discharged these duties
of neutrality. The general principles of international custom required
that of her. When, now, we add to this the consideration that Spain
had pledged {30} herself in a specific agreement with the United
States to do these very things, and that Florida, nevertheless, was
actually a free zone, over which no civilized state had any efficient
control, then it certainly appears that the right of the United States
to pursue its enemy into Florida was clearly in keeping with the
recognized law of nations. The President, therefore, ordered the
pursuit of the enemy into Florida, under the qualification that if
they took refuge in a Spanish fortification the fortress should not be
attacked, but the situation should be reported to the War Department
and further orders awaited. This order was issued on December 16th,
1817, to General Gaines, who was then in command of the forces on the
Florida frontier.
[Sidenote: McGregor on Amelia Island.]
Meanwhile an adventurer by the name of McGregor had, with a band of
freebooters, taken possession of Amelia Island, which lies off the
coast of Florida, just below the mouth of the St. Mary's River, and
had, in the name of the Governments of Buenos Ayres and Venezuela,
proclaimed the independence of Florida against Spain. They made the
island an entrepot for the smuggling of slaves into the United States,
a storehouse for the results of their robberies, and head-quarters
generally for piratical expeditions.
[Sidenote: General Gaines sent to Amelia Island.]
By a secret act of the year 1811, the Congress of the United States
had declared its unwillingness to have Florida, or any part of it,
pass from the hands of Spain into those of any other power, and had
authorized the President to prevent it. Acting upon this authority,
the President instructed General Gaines to go to Amelia Island and
take possession of it.
[Sidenote: General Jackson placed in command in Florida. His orders.]
About ten days later, December 26th, 1817, the President assigned
General Jackson to the command of the {31} troops acting against the
Indians. The day before the issue of the order to General Jackson, the
War Department had received the news of the Indian attack upon
Lieutenant Scott's boat while ascending the Appalachicola with
supplies for the United States troops at Fort Scott. The cold-blooded
massacre of almost the entire crew of the boat apparently moved the
War Department to more energetic measures. The order to General
Jackson, besides investing him with the command, empowered him to call
on the Governors of the adjacent Commonwealths for such military
forces as he might deem necessary, with those already in the field, to
overcome the Indians, and informed him that General Gaines had been
instructed "to penetrate from Amelia Island, through Florida, to the
Seminole towns, if his force would justify his engaging in offensive
operations." "With this view," the order to Jackson continues, "you
may be prepared to concentrate your forces, and to adopt the necessary
measures to terminate a conflict which it has ever been the desire of
the President to avoid, but which is now made necessary by their
settled hostilities."
[Sidenote: Jackson's letter to President Monroe.]
When Jackson received these orders he was in Tennessee. He wrote
immediately to the President: "Let it be signified to me through any
channel (say Mr. J. Rhea) that the possession of the Floridas would be
desirable to the United States and in sixty days it will be
accomplished." General Jackson naturally supposed that this letter was
duly received and read by President Monroe, and that a subsequent
order, giving him discretionary powers in the prosecution of the
campaign, contained the answer to it. As we shall see, however, the
President claimed later that he did not read Jackson's letter until a
year after it was written and sent to him. It was certainly {32} the
President's fault if he did not. General Jackson certainly could not
be held accountable for the President's strange negligence in
examining official correspondence, and he had good reason to think,
from the tone of the order issued to him after his letter had had due
time to be received and read, that the Administration desired him to
occupy Florida.
Upon taking command Jackson called his Tennessee veterans to him, and
reached with them the Florida frontier in March of 1818.
[Sidenote: Jackson's operations in Florida.]
When he advanced into Florida he found that the Spanish officials in
Florida were in collusion with the Indians, and that the instigators
of the hostilities were an Englishman, named Ambrister, and a
Scotchman, named Arbuthnot, together with two Indian chiefs named
Hillis Hajo and Himallemico.
An order from the War Department, of January 16th, 1818, instructed
the commander of the United States forces in Florida that the honor of
the nation required a speedy termination of the War with the
Seminoles, "with exemplary punishment for hostilities so unprovoked."
Jackson naturally considered himself empowered to do speedy and
thorough work. He felt it necessary to seize St. Mark's and Pensacola,
in order to destroy the base of operations and the places of refuge of
the enemy, and he caused the four ringleaders of the enemy to be
executed. By the end of May (1818) the campaign was ended, and Florida
was in the military possession of the United States. The President
assumed the responsibility for Jackson's deeds, but offered to restore
St. Mark's and Pensacola, and therewith the nominal possession of
Florida, to Spain, so soon as Spain would garrison these points with
forces able to maintain peace with the United States and {33} disposed
to do so. Spain accepted the offer, fulfilled in a way the conditions,
and the places were restored to her jurisdiction.
[Illustration: FLORIDA, at the Time of Acquisition.]
[Sidenote: The first Treaty for the cession of Florida to the United
States.]
It was now manifest to Spain, however, that she could not control
Florida, and that her possession of the province was, and could be,
only nominal. She now, therefore, agreed to cede it to the United
States. The treaty bears date of February 22nd, 1819. Its important
provisions are contained in the second and third articles. By these
articles Spain ceded the Floridas, with the adjacent islands dependent
thereon, to the United States; and agreed with the United States that
the boundary between the two powers in North America should be the
west bank of the Sabine River from its mouth to the thirty-second
parallel of north latitude, thence the line of longitude to the Red
River, thence up the course of the Red River to the one-hundredth
parallel of longitude from London, or the twenty-third from
Washington, thence the line of longitude to the Arkansas River, thence
the south bank of the Arkansas to its source, thence the line of
longitude to the forty-second parallel of north latitude, and thence
this line of latitude to the South Sea.
This settlement of boundary included that of all other claims, of
whatever character, of the Government, citizens, or subjects of either
power against the Government, citizens, or subjects of the other. All
such were mutually renounced.
[Sidenote: Jackson's popularity in consequence of the Seminole War.]
The results of the Seminole War raised General Jackson to a still
higher plane of popularity than he possessed as the hero of the War of
1812. It was evident that here was a character who would have to be
reckoned with in future presidential contests. It is possible that
Jackson's chief mentor, William B. Lewis, had {34} conceived, at this
date, the idea of Jackson's candidacy for the highest place in the
gift of the nation. And it is highly probable that the fears of all
the existing aspirants for the presidency were excited by the
appearance of this new and popular rival for public favor. It is
difficult to explain upon any other theory the attempt made in
Congress, during the session of 1818-19, to suppress Jackson by a vote
of censure.
[Sidenote: The attempt in Congress to censure Jackson.]
This procedure certainly had no connection whatsoever with the
question of slavery extension through the acquisition of Florida. When
we find Tallmadge, of New York, the self-same person who introduced,
at the same session, the proposition for restricting slavery in
Missouri, defending Jackson's course in every particular, while Cobb,
of Georgia, attacked it, and when we consider that John Quincy Adams,
the life-long opponent of slavery, sustained Jackson in the cabinet,
while Calhoun moved to bring him to account for disobedience to
orders, we are bound to conclude that we have here nothing whatsoever
to do with the question of slavery.
[Sidenote: The same attempt in the Cabinet.]
Crawford, of Georgia, the Secretary of the Treasury, was the prime
aspirant for presidential honors, after Monroe should have completed
his two terms, and Cobb was Crawford's right-hand man. Clay was also
working up his plans. These two men felt it necessary to discredit
Jackson in every possible way. Clay made a great bugbear out of
Jackson's military heroship, and so threatening did he make it appear
to the principle of civil government and republican institutions that
he really seemed frightened at it himself. Crawford set up the same
strain, through Cobb, in a feebler key. Calhoun seems to have been
animated rather by wrath at what he {35} conceived to be the violation
of his orders, or, at least, the exceeding of his orders, than by
jealousy of a presidential rival. His presidential fever had not, at
that moment, reached a high degree. But what shall we say of Adams,
who undoubtedly then considered himself a candidate for the
successorship to Monroe, and who stood against the whole Cabinet in
Jackson's defence, and carried the day against both Crawford and
Calhoun combined. Of course it may be said that Adams thought his own
turn would come before that of Jackson, and that he would gain
Jackson's support by his attitude. But against such a supposition must
stand the fact that the Cabinet pledged itself to secrecy in regard to
all that was proposed on the subject, and that for ten years Jackson
supposed that Calhoun was the friend in the Cabinet who had
successfully defended him against the other members under the lead of
Crawford. The attitude of Adams in the question was noble and
disinterested, as well as patriotic, and had Jackson known of it in
1824, it is altogether probable that he would never have charged an
unfair bargain with Clay upon Adams for his own defeat.
[Sidenote: The failure of the attempt to censure Jackson in Congress.]
Clay and Cobb represented that every movement made by Jackson, from
the moment of his appointment to the command of the expedition to the
end of hostilities, was illegal and in defiance of the orders of the
War Department. They said he had no right to call upon his old
soldiers instead of asking the Governor of Tennessee for the militia.
They claimed that he waged an offensive war upon his own
responsibility against Spain, when the War Department had expressly
forbidden him to attack the Spanish forts, and they accused him of
murdering two prisoners of war. The House of Representatives showed
what it thought of these accusations by voting {36} down the
resolutions which contained the censure by a majority of nearly two to
one, while the resolutions of like effect introduced into the Senate
were laid on the table and never taken up for consideration.
[Sidenote: Assumption of the responsibility for Jackson's acts by the
Administration.]
The Administration had, under the influence of the Secretary of State,
Mr. Adams, already assumed the responsibility for Jackson's acts, had
upheld their legality, and was even then bringing its negotiations
with Spain, in regard to the cession of Florida, to a successful
close; while the British Government had refrained from any
interference on account of the treatment of Ambrister and Arbuthnot.
[Sidenote: Jackson triumphant.]
The attempt to suppress Jackson broke down thus upon all sides, and he
emerged from the assaults of his rivals with a greater popularity than
he had ever before enjoyed, and with improved prospects as a
presidential candidate. With the worship accorded to a hero he now
enjoyed the sympathy extended to a martyr.
[Sidenote: The Treaty of Cession attacked in Congress, but ratified by
the Senate.]
The Treaty itself, ceding the Floridas, did not escape attack. Adams
regarded it as a great diplomatic triumph for the United States, but
Clay expressed great disappointment with it, because it sacrificed, as
he viewed it, the claims of the United States to the territory between
the Sabine and the Rio del Norte. And Crawford, who was seizing every
opportunity to discredit the Administration, by encouraging it to
false measures from his place in the Cabinet, and then professing
publicly his disapprobation of them, also saw in the point emphasized
by Clay a prime occasion for making political capital.
The Senate showed what its members thought of such manoeuvres by a
speedy and unanimous vote in ratification of the Treaty.
{37} [Sidenote: Rejection of the Treaty by the Spanish Government.]
The Spanish Government, on the other hand, rejected the Treaty. Mr.
Adams felt, at the moment, that this was a blow to his reputation as a
diplomatist, and perhaps to his chances for the presidency. But it did
not prove to be such. Had the Treaty been then ratified three large
land grants made by the Spanish King to certain Spanish nobles, at a
date earlier than Mr. Adams had supposed, would not have been
extinguished by it. The rejection of the Treaty by the Spanish
Government, which at the same time sent another Ambassador, General
Vives, to take the place of Don Onis, and to renew negotiations on the
subject, gave Mr. Adams the opportunity to insist upon the cession of
Florida with the extinguishment of the above mentioned grants.
[Sidenote: Resumption of negotiations.]
When the new Ambassador arrived, the country was in the midst of the
excitement over the question of slavery extension in the Louisiana
territory, the history of which will be related in a succeeding
chapter. The effect of this agitation was to arouse some doubt in the
minds of those opposed to the extension of slavery in regard to the
expediency of any addition to the territory of the United States
southward. Mr. Adams himself felt the influence of this doubt, and was
prompted, in part at least, by it to assume an attitude of
indifference toward the new propositions of the Spanish Ambassador. He
gave the Ambassador to understand that Spain could make such a treaty
with the United States in regard to the subject as would be
satisfactory to the latter, or take the consequences of leaving things
as they were. The unshakable determination of Mr. Adams won the day,
and the old Treaty, with a new provision extinguishing the above
mentioned land grants, was finally ratified by both Governments, two
years after the date of {38} the original agreement between Mr. Adams
and Don Onis.
[Sidenote: The new Treaty ratified by the Senate and by the Spanish
Government.]
The vote of ratification by the Senate of the United States was again
practically unanimous. Only four votes were recorded against it; and
of these four one was cast by a brother-in-law of Mr. Clay, one by a
subservient friend of the same gentleman, and one by a bitter personal
enemy of General Jackson. The province was soon transferred to the
United States and Jackson became its first territorial governor. With
this the United States attained its natural boundary on the south,
eastward from the mouth of the Mississippi, and a source of chronic
irritation was removed.
[Sidenote: Political results of the Seminole War.]
It was to be expected that this territory would be erected into a
Commonwealth in which the institution of slavery would be legalized;
but this did not deter the statesmen of the North from securing the
great advantages just indicated. Radical abolitionism had not yet
blinded them to the general and paramount interests of the Union. In
fact, the results of the Seminole War and of the diplomacy of the
Administration in connection with it had the immediate effect of
diminishing the ultra-Southern influence in the Government. They
brought Adams and Jackson to the front, and set Crawford and Calhoun
back in the course of their careers. They had, indeed, much to do, as
we shall see later, with the development of the era of personal
politics, which prevailed from 1824 to 1832, and which terminated
finally in the separation of the all-comprehending Republican party
into the Whig party and the Democratic party.
{39}