In a longing due to political and very cogent reasons. consequence of the violation of rights guarantied to the United States in New Orleans the house of representatives appointed a committee in 1803 to prepare a report on the propriety and possibility of annexing Florida. This committee came to the conclusion that "New Orleans and the Floridas must become a part of the United States, either by purchase or by conquest." This report was followed by no practical result, until, on account of European troubles, Spanish embarrassments offered a favorable opportunity therefor. A resolution and act of Jan. 15, 1811, empowered the president "under certain contingencies" and "with a due regard to the safety" of the United States, to take "temporary" possession of the territory east of Perdido and south of Georgia. In accordance with this act, Madison had West Florida occupied. His secretary of state, Monroe, in response to the "solemn protest" of the English ambassador against this step, justified it by asserting that West Florida belonged to the Louisiana territory ceded by France, but at the same time took the ground that the demands for indemnification which the United States had against Spain were a sufficient justification of the occupation. These claims had to serve, afterwards, as a justification for the attack upon East Florida." In the following year the territory as far as Pearl river was formally united with Louisiana, and that from Pearl river to Perdido with the Mississippi territory. The house of representatives wished to also authorize the president to take possession of East Florida, but the senate rejected the bill on account of the critical condition of the country. During the war with England Mobile also fell into the hands of the Americans, and the possession See the correspondence in Niles' Reg., I, pp. 187-189. of West Florida was thereby completely assured to them; but, on the other hand, they had to evacuate East Florida. All these steps, as well as the temporary occupation of Pensacola by Jackson, had no connection whatever with the slavery question. The latter was considered for a long time only as an interest pertaining peculiarly to Georgia and scarcely worth notice. And it was not until after the end of the war that it was brought into prominence by a curious occurrence. In November, 1812, a committee of the legislature of Georgia expressed its views very freely concerning the action of the federal senate in refusing its approval to the bill of the house of representatives, which authorized the president to occupy East Florida. The committee considered this policy "inexplicable" and "subversive of the safety and tranquillity of this section of the United States."" These words contained the clue to the peculiar interest which Georgia had in the question. For a long time, the fugitive slaves of Georgia found an asylum among the Indians of Florida. This "evil" was so severely felt that the state was constantly urging upon the federal government, that it should redress it by acquiring the territory. The complaints were not without effect. Secretary of war Crawford ordered general Jackson, March 15, 1816, to notify the commandant at Pensacola of the fact that a fort which had been built at Appalachicola, during the war, by the Englishman Nichols, was occupied by Indians and negroes, who enticed slaves to flee from the territory of the United States. If the commandant refused to interfere, then the fort was to be seized, provided this could be done without the authorization of congress. Before the command reached Jackson, he had already, on his own responsi bility, sent general Gaines against the fort, with the orders "to advise the governor of Pensacola of your [his] inroad 'Niles' Reg., III., p. 259. into the territory, and with its expressed object, to destroy these lawless banditti." Gaines charged colonel Clinch with the execution of the command. The latter took some gunboats with him. During the bombardment, which was preceded, as Clinch affirmed in his dispatches, by an attack from the negroes, a red-hot ball flew into the powder magazine. Of the three hundred negroes and about twenty Indians, who, according to the official report, were in the fort, two hundred and seventy were instantly killed by the explosion, and the rest were mortally wounded.' This "heroic deed," which was rewarded by congress in 1818, upon the motion of Pleasant of Virginia, with a grant of $5,465, was the beginning of the Seminole war, which cost the United States millions on millions and perhaps surpassed all other Indian wars in ferocity. And the object of the campaign which ended in this heroic deed was, according to the official records, the destruction of the refuge of fugitive slaves and the return of the fugitives to their rightful owners. The troops of the Union were degraded into slave-hunters; the victor of New Orleans and the future president of the republic had stooped to this; and congress crowned the glorious transaction by voting a reward. In the heated debates which the Seminole war excited, men shunned going back to its first cause, although the hunt for slaves continued to play a leading part in it. Only one Pennsylvanian betrayed, in an unguarded moment, how deeply slavery was entangled in the struggle, and he defended the man-hunting. For the rest, men quarreled over the question whether the war had been begun by the Indians, or whether the latter had first had reason to complain of the injustice of the whites. 'The records of these occurrences are in the fourth volume of the State Papers, XIX. Cong., 2d Sess. An interesting report is to be found in Niles, XI., p. 37. * Baldwin, Deb. of Congress, VI., p. 322. THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 339 So the last of the long series of games which had been played during the first thirty years of the Union under the new constitution, on the white and black chess-board of free labor and slavery, was of a bloody character. The stakes had been high enough, and the north had lost them all. Even for its half-victory in the question of slave importation, it had to thank its league with the northern slave states. It would have been contrary to human rature if the south had not, after these successes, played the game with doubled assurance, and, where possible, for doubled stakes. The stake and the hardihood of the play increased in the same ratio, as slavery swallowed up in the south all other interests and came to be the one interest on which all others were dependent. 'I call it the last, because it had the most widespread influence in the following period. CHAPTER IX. THE ECONOMIC CONTRAST BETWEEN THE FREE AND SLAVE STATES. THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. From the instant that slavery was brought into connec tion with the constitution, the south had shown a feverish irritation as soon as the "peculiar institution" was made a theme of discussion in any way whatever. A great part of the questions it called forth had been settled only after long and heated struggles. And during these struggles many a word had fallen on both sides which lifted with terrible certainty the veil of the future. But yet all the contests over the slavery question, with the exception of the debates in the Philadelphia convention, had been, so to speak, mere incidents. They constituted only one element of the regular political order of the day. "South" and "North," spoken in tones pregnant with meaning, soon became among the most frequent expressions of politicians. But "slaveholding" and "free" states had not yet become political catch-words. When they had become such, and when they became, as they did every day, more and more the keynote in all debates, fractional parties were formed on both sides, but especially in the north, which, appealing to the olden time, protested against this with increasing violence. Even since the end of the civil war, thick books have been written to prove that the slaveholding and free states might have peaceably got along with one another till the end of time, if on this side and that, political short-sightedness, fanaticism, and demagogism had not awakened discord and artfully kept it alive. The whole history of the Union since 1787 so clearly contradicts this view that it can be attrib |