hanged from the yardarm of his own schooner; Ambrister was shot. The fall of Pensacola finished the campaign. By the end of May, 1818, Florida was in the possession of the troops of the United States and Jackson was on his way to Tennessee, the idol of his men and a national hero in the estimation of the people of the Southwest.

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The outcome of these exploits might easily have been war with both Spain and Great Britain. Don Luis de Onis, the Spanish Minister at Washington, immediately suspended the negotiations then in progress respecting the Floridas and made a spirited protest against these acts of hostility and invasion.” He demanded the immediate restitution of the places which had been seized, indemnity for all damage to property, and the punishment of General Jackson. As for Great Britain, Lord Castlereagh afterward said that, such was the temper of Parliament and the country, war might have been produced by holding up a finger and an address to the Crown carried by an almost unanimous vote.

The Cabinet of President Monroe was divided over the course to be pursued. Calhoun insisted that Jackson had virtually committed an act of war, which should be promptly disavowed. But Adams held — and the President was inclined to side with him that in reality Spain had been the aggressor, and that Jackson had not violated the spirit of his orders. In order to terminate the war, Jackson had been obliged to cross the Spanish line. He had not done so with the purpose of waging war upon Spain.

Following a memorandum made by the President,

1

Adams replied to Don Onis in this spirit. Later, in a masterly state paper, he set forth the intolerable conditions which obtained on the Florida frontier. The lax conduct of the Spanish authorities was held to justify the aggressive measures of Jackson. The United States was prepared to restore Pensacola and St. Mark's whenever Spain should give guaranties for the observance of treaty obligations. So far from

consenting to punish Jackson, the United States demanded the punishment of those Spanish officials who had so flagrantly violated the obligations of the Treaty of 1795. "Spain must immediately make her election either to place a force in Florida at once adequate for the protection of her territory and to the fulfillment of her engagements, or cede to the United States a province of which she retains nothing but the nominal possession." This latter alter

native, indeed, the Administration never lost from view.

Confronted by the revolt of all her American colonies, Spain could hardly resist this insistent pressure upon a province which she could neither govern nor defend. On February 22, 1819, Don Onis set his hand to a treaty which ceded the Floridas in return for the assumption by the United States of claims of American citizens against her to an amount not exceeding $5,000,000. The treaty contained also a definition of the boundary between Spanish and American possessions on the North American continent. Beginning at the mouth of the Sabine River, the line ran along that river to the thirty-second parallel; thence due north to the Red River, which it followed to the hundredth meridian; thence north to the Arkansas and along that river to its source; thence to the forty-second parallel, which it followed to the Pacific. As the United States renounced all claims to the west and south of this boundary, so Spain surrendered whatever shadowy title she had to the Northwest.

The ratification of the Florida Treaty was delayed by the attempt of the Spanish Crown to grant extensive tracts to certain grandees, and by the vigorous opposition of Henry Clay in the House of Representatives. The treaty seemed to him a bad bargain. "What do we get?" he cried. "We get Florida loaded and encumbered with land grants which leave scarcely a foot of soil for the United States. What do we give? We give Texas free and unencumbered, and we surrender all our claims on

Spain for damages not included in that five millions of dollars." He challenged the right of the President and Senate to alienate territory without the consent of the House. Behind Clay's opposition lay some personal pique against the President and his Secretary of State; but he voiced, nevertheless, the spirit of the Southwest, which already looked toward Texas as a possible field of expansion and resented its surrender.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The westward movement is described in various chapters of volumes iv and v of McMaster, History of the People of the United States. The significance of the movement is best explained in F. J. Turner, Rise of the New West, 1819–1829 (in The American Nation, vol. 14, 1906), which contains also excellent chapters on the social and economic life of the different sections of the country. Th highways and waterways to the West are described in A. B. Hurlbert, Historic Highways of America (16 vols., 1902-05). A summary account of the development of transportation is given in J. L. Ringwalt, Development of Transportation Systems in the United States (1888). Among the biographies which contribute materially to an understanding of the new West may be mentioned Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas H. Benton (1887), and James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson (3 vols., 1860). Edward Eggleston, The Circuit Rider (1888), and the Autobiography of Peter Cartwright (1856), touch upon important aspects of frontier life. The importance of the German element in American history is admirably set forth in Faust, The German Element in the United States (2 vols., 1909). The spread of New Englanders in the West is described by L. K. Mathews, The Expansion of New England (1909). The diplomatic negotiations which resulted in the cession of Florida are reviewed by F. E. Chadwick, The Relations of the United States and Spain (1909).

CHAPTER XV

HARD TIMES

THE phrase "era of good feelings" applied to the Administration of President Monroe is a misnomer. It is descriptive neither of politics nor of business and industry, for the historic Democratic party was all but rent by bitter personal animosities, and the country was prostrated by a severe industrial crisis.

The first symptoms of hard times appeared in the early months of the year 1819. Undoubtedly the causes of the crisis were world-wide; but local conditions go far to explain the industrial collapse in the United States. All indications point to the conclusion that the country was experiencing the inevitable reaction from a period of too rapid commercial expansion and of unsound speculation. The high prices of commodities after the war had given a sort of fictitious prosperity to industry and trade, and had encouraged unduly the spirit of commercial enterprise. On credit easily secured from wild-cat banks, the Western pioneer had bought lands beyond the purchasing power of his own meager capital; and the speculator in turn had borrowed money to secure title to lands which he would unload upon unsuspecting settlers. State banks had met these demands by liberal issues of notes which were imperfectly covered by their specie reserves. It needed only a