a great dinner at which the leading guest, to the dismay of the young Van Buren and other supporters of Crawford, toasted DeWitt Clinton, the leader of the opposing Republican faction.  At Baltimore there was a dinner, and the city council asked the visitor to sit for a picture by Peale for the adornment of the council room.  Here the General was handed a copy of the Senate committee’s report, abounding in strictures on his Seminole campaign.  Hastening back to Washington, he filled the air with threats, and was narrowly prevented from personally assaulting a member of the investigating committee.  When, however, it appeared that the report was to be allowed to repose for all time on the table, Jackson’s indignation cooled, and soon he was on his way back to Tennessee.  With him went the news that Adams and Onis had signed a treaty of “amity, settlements, and limits,” whereby for a consideration of five million dollars the sovereignty of all Florida was transferred to the United States.  This treaty, as Jackson viewed it, was the crowning vindication of the acts which had been called in question; and public sentiment agreed with him.

Dilatory tactics on the part of the Madrid Government delayed the actual transfer of the territory more than two years.  After having twice refused, Jackson at length accepted the governorship of Florida, and in the early summer of 1821 he set out, by way of New Orleans, for his new post.  Mrs. Jackson went with him, although she had no liking for either the territory or its people.  On the morning of the 17th of July the formal transfer took place.  A procession was formed, consisting of such American soldiers as were on the spot.  A ship’s band briskly played The Star Spangled Banner and the new Governor rode proudly at the fore as the procession moved along Main Street to the government house, where ex-Governor Callava with his staff was in waiting.  The Spanish flag was hauled down, the American was run up, the keys were handed over, and the remaining members of the garrison were sent off to the vessels which on the morrow were to bear them on their way to Cuba.  Only Callava and a few other officials and merchants stayed behind to close up matters of public and private business.

Jackson’s governorship was brief and stormy.  In the first place, he had no taste for administrative routine, and he found no such opportunity as he had hoped for to confer favors upon his friends.  “I am sure our stay here will not be long,” wrote Mrs. Jackson to a brother in early August.  “This office does not suit my husband....  There never was a man more disappointed than he has been.  He has not the power to appoint one of his friends.”  In the second place, the new Governor’s status was wholly anomalous, since Congress had extended to the territory only the revenue and anti-slave-trade laws, leaving Jackson to exercise in other matters the rather vague powers of the captain general of Cuba and of the Spanish governors of the Floridas.  And in the third place, before his first twenty-four hours were up, the new executive fell into a desperate quarrel with his predecessor, a man of sufficiently similar temperament to make the contest a source of sport for the gods.