As the war between the United States and Great Britain (1812-15) did not grow out of slavery, nor was it waged to acquire more slave territory, nor did it directly tend to perpetuate slavery where established, we pass it over.
(37) W. G. Summer's Andrew Jackson, ch. iii.
(38) In 1821 at Indian Springs, Florida, a forced treaty was negotiated with the Creek Indians for part of their lands by which the United States agreed to apply $109,000 of the purchase price as compensation to Georgia claimants for escaped slaves, and $141,000 for "the offsprings which the females would have borne to their masters had they remained in bondage."—Rise and Fall of Slavery (Wilson), vol. i, 132,454.
(39) Osceola, or As-Se-He-Ho-Lar (black drink), was the son of Wm. Powell, an English Indian-trader, born in Georgia, 1804, of a daughter of a Seminole chief. His mother took him early to Florida. He rose rapidly to be head war-chief, and married a daughter of a fugitive slave who was treacherously stolen from him, as a slave, while he was on a visit to Fort King. When he demanded of General Thompson, the Indian agent, her release, he was put in irons, but released after six days. A little later, December, 1835, he avenged himself by killing Thompson and four others outside of the fort, thus inaugurating the second Seminole war. He hated the white race, and his ambition was to furnish a safe asylum for fugitive slaves.
Surprises and massacres ensued for two years, Osceola showing great bravery and skill, and not excelling his white adversaries in treachery. He fought Generals Clinch, Gaines, Taylor and Jesup, of the U. S. A. Jesup induced him (Oct. 21, 1837) under a flag of truce to hold a parley near St. Augustine, where Jesup treacherously caused him to be seized, and the U. S. authorities (treating him as England treated Napoleon) immured him in captivity for life, hopelessly, at Fort Moultrie. His free spirit could not endure this, and he died of a broken heart three months later (January 30, 1838), at thirty-four years of age. His body lies buried on Sullivan's Island, afterwards the scene of a larger struggle for human freedom.
The remains of the civilized statesman-champion of perpetual human slavery, Calhoun, and the remains of the savage, untutored Seminole Chief, Oscoeola, the champion of human liberty, lie buried near Charleston, S. C. Let the ages judge each—kindly!
XII MISSOURI COMPROMISE—1820
In pursuance of the policy of trying to balance, politically, freedom and slavery, and to deal tenderly with the latter, and not offend its champions, new States were admitted into the Union in pairs, one free and one slave.
Thus Vermont and Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio, Louisiana and Indiana, Mississippi and Illinois were coupled, preserving in the Senate an exact balance of power.(40)
When Missouri had framed a Constitution (1819) and applied for admission into the Union, Alabama was on the point of admission as a slave State, and was admitted the same year, and thus the usage required the admission of Missouri as a free State. In 1790 the two sections were nearly equal in population, but in 1820 the North had nearly 700,000 more inhabitants than the South.