The Middle Period, 1817-1858. John William Burgess
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.
| 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.
| 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.
| 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.
| 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 Vivês, 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.
| 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 the original agreement between Mr. Adams and Don Onis.
| 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.
| 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.
CHAPTER III.
SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1820
First Appearance of Slavery in the British North American Colonies—Early Theory of the Benefits of Slavery—The Earliest Legal Recognition of Slavery in the Colonies—Northern Colonies not well Adapted to Negro Labor—The Southern Colonies well Adapted to Negro Labor—Negro Slavery a Temporary Necessity in the South—Was Negro Slavery an Error and an Evil from the first?—Slavery Legislation in the Southern Colonies—Partus Sequitur Ventrem—Definitions of the Slave Class—The Test of the Slave Status as Fixed by the Virginia Statute—The Legal Position of the Slave—Tendency Toward Serfage in the Code of 1705—Public Relations of the Slave System—The General Object of the Laws in respect to Slaves—Slavery and the Revolutionary Ideas of the Rights of Man—First Prohibition upon Slave Importation—Abolition of Slavery in the Northern