Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

JACKSON SUBDUES THE INDIANS-PURCHASE OF FLORIDA. 647

XLVI.

cola, with supplies for Fort Scott. More than forty per- CHAP. sons, consisting of men, women, and children, were massacred. The War Department ordered General Jackson 1817. to invade the Indian Territory, and "bring the war to a speedy and effectual close." In three months he was on the ground, with an army composed of Georgians and Tennesseeans. He moved to the vicinity of where Tallahassee now stands; the savages made little resistance, but abandoned their towns, and their cattle and grain. With his usual energy, Jackson pressed on, and, without ceremony, seized St. Mark's, on Appalachee Bay, the only Mar. Spanish fort in that part of Florida, on the ground that its officers were aiding and abetting the Indians in their hostilities to the United States. One of the American armed vessels on the coast hoisted British colors, and two of the hostile Creek chiefs were decoyed on board. These chiefs Jackson unceremoniously hanged. On one of the April incursions against the enemy, two British subjects, Robert C. Ambrister and Alexander Arbuthnot, traders among the Indians, were taken prisoners. These two men were put on trial for their lives before a court-martial, on the charge of aiding the Indians. They were found guilty and sentenced to death, and immediately executed. The measure was much censured as unnecessary and unwarranted. Notwithstanding the protest of the Spanish governor against his invasion of Florida, Jackson soon appeared before Pensacola, which place surrendered. The governor in the mean time fled to a fort further down the May. bay, and finally to Havana.

These arbitrary proceedings were protested against by Don Onis, the Spanish Minister at Washington. The matter however was not pressed, as negotiations were soon after entered upon to purchase the territory in dispute.

American citizens had claims amounting to five millions of dollars against the Spanish government. Don Onis received instructions from home, that authorized

CHAP.
XLVI.

him to cede Florida to the United States for these claims The purchase was thus made, the American Government 1821. assuming the debt. Two years later Spain ratified the Treaty. Florida was then organized as a Territory, and General Jackson was appointed its first Governor.

1787.

The American people have never been indifferent to the political as well as the moral aspects of slavery. From the adoption of the Constitution till the time of which we write, the conscience and the sympathy of the religious portion of the nation, both North and South, found their expression on the subject in memorials addressed to their ecclesiastical assemblies, whose resolutions in reply condemned the system.

The Continental Congress legislated specially on the subject in adopting the ordinance by which the region north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi was conse1790. crated to freedom. During the second session of the First Congress, petitions were presented to that body, praying it to take measures to free the nation of the system. The committee to whom these memorials were referred, reported that Congress was not authorized by the Constitution to interfere with slavery as existing in the individual States. In accordance with this view, that body has ever acted, when disposing of the numerous memorials on the subject that have, from time to time, been presented to it.

1819.

Feb. 16.

The Northern States, for a quarter of a century, had been gradually freeing themselves of the institution, or making provision to that effect, while in the Southern States a different sentiment had been on the increase. The acquisition of Louisiana had given to them a vast region in which slave labor was profitable, especially in the cultivation of cotton. These antagonist opinions were suddenly brought into collision, and a strong sectional feeling was elicited.

The territory of Missouri asked permission to form a

DEBATES ON THE RESTRICTION OF SLAVERY.

649

XLVI.

constitution, preparatory to her admission into the Union CHAP. as a State. When the question was before the House of Representatives, James W. Tallmadge, a member from 1819. New York, proposed to insert a clause, prohibiting the further introduction of slaves into the territory, and also another clause granting freedom to the children of slaves already there, when they should attain the age of twentyfive years.

After a spirited debate both these propositions were adopted. The day following the passage of this bill came up a similar one to organize the Territory of Arkansas. This bill, after a strenuous effort to insert similar clauses, was finally passed without any restriction as to slavery.

The States admitted into the Union, since the adoption of the Constitution, had happened to come in alternately as non-slaveholding, and as slaveholding-Vermont and Kentucky; Tennessee and Ohio; Louisiana and Indiana; Mississippi and Illinois. As Alabama had applied for admission as a slave State, it was urged that Missouri should be admitted as free. This proposition soon lost its force by the application of Maine, the northeastern part of Massachusetts, presenting herself to be admitted as a free State. Here was an offset to Alabama, leaving Missouri to make the next slave State.

In the consideration of these bills the subject of slavery restriction in the territories came up for discussion. The members from the Southern States insisted that any restriction upon Missouri would violate the pledge given to the inhabitants of Louisiana, at the time of its purchase, that they should enjoy "all the privileges of citizens of the United States;" that such a restriction would eventually interfere with State rights; that the citizens of slaveholding States had the right to take their property into the territories of the Union. It was urged that it would be an act of humanity and a blessing to the poor slave, whose lot was so hard in the old exhausted

XLVI.

CHAP. States, to transfer him to the fertile plains of the west; that this would only be the diffusion of the system, but 1819. not its extension, as the number of slaves would not be increased thereby; and that the prohibition of slavery would diminish emigration from the South into the territories.

To these arguments it was replied: it was true that Congress was forbidden by the Constitution to interfere with slavery in the original thirteen States, but that this did not apply to the territories. They were the property of the Union, and Congress had the control of their organization. Would Congress be justified in spreading over them an institution which even its advocates on the floor of the house had again and again deplored as an evil?

It was contended that slave labor and free labor could not coexist on the same soil; and should the introduction of a few thousands of slaves exclude millions of freemen from the territories ? 1

The debate was conducted with great animation, mingled with much bitterness, and threats to dissolve the Union. The intense excitement was not limited to the National Legislature; it extended throughout the country, and it was by no means diminished by the speeches made on the subject on the floor of Congress, nor by the fact, which the discussion revealed, that during the previous year more than fourteen thousand slaves had been smuggled into the United States, from Africa and the West Indies.

The legislatures of some of the Northern States expressed their wish that slavery should not go beyond the Mississippi, while the people held conventions and memorialized Congress. Opposite views were as strongly expressed by some of the Southern States. Thus the country was agitated for nearly two years, and the diffi

'The Debates in Congress, Niles's Register, Vols 16. 17, and 18.

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

651

XLVI.

culty was still unsettled. When the bill came before the CHAP. Senate, Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois moved as an amendment, a clause forbidding the introduction of slavery into 1820. the Louisiana Territory north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, and west of the proposed State of Missouri. This was the line of the famous Missouri Compromise. The House, however, would not at first agree to this arrangement; but finally, through means of a committee of conference, Maine was admitted, and Missouri, on these conditions, after she should adopt a constitution.

1

The following year, when the constitution of Missouri was presented to Congress, it was found to contain a clause that prohibited free people of color from settling in the State. Though this clause "was adopted for the sake of peace-for the sake of internal tranquillity—and to prevent the agitation of the slave question," yet it was viewed far differently in Congress, and was the occasion of opening the restriction question with all its bitterness. The insertion of the offensive clause, under the circumstances, seemed to manifest as little regard for the Constitution of the United States, as respect for the opinions of those opposed to the extension of slavery. The citizens of any one State were, by the Constitution, entitled to the privileges of citizens in the other States. Free people of color were thus recognized in some of the States, but by this clause they were deprived of their rights. Another committee of conference, of which Henry Clay was the prime mover, was appointed by the Senate and House of Representatives. The difficulty was again compromised by which Missouri was to be admitted on the express condition that she would expunge the obnoxious clause, and then the President was authorized to admit her by proclamation. The Missouri Legislature complied, and the fact

1 Benton's Thirty Years' View, Vol. i. p. 8.

« PředchozíPokračovat »