Clay and Cobb represented that every movement made by Jackson, from the moment of his appointment to the command of the expedition to the end of hostilities, was illegal and in defiance of the orders of the War Department. They said he had no right to call upon his old soldiers instead of asking the Governor of Tennessee for the militia. They claimed that he waged an offensive war upon his own responsibility against Spain, when the War Department had expressly forbidden him to attack the Spanish forts, and they accused him of murdering two prisoners of war. The House of Representatives showed what it thought of these accusations by voting down the resolutions which contained the censure by a majority of 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.