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 to discuss and to take part in whatever touched the public welfare. Now it was a question of State versus national power in the Creek region, and they with other Alabamians took such a lively hand in it that Francis S. Key, the author of The Star Spangled Banner, had to be sent down as special commissioner to smooth matters over. A year later it was Texas struggling against the absolutism of Santa Anna, and so keen was the interest felt at Montgomery that a mass-meeting was held in the theatre, funds were contributed, and a company of forty men under Captain Ticknor was raised in the immediate neighborhood. In addition to the princely pay of $8 a month, there was the uncertain promise of a square mile of land out there. They got just six feet of it; for they were massacred after surrender at Goliad. In 1840, their attention was engrossed by the picturesque "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" campaign. Log cabins, coon-*skins, and hard cider were seen on every hand, and the "Great ball," which the Whig enthusiasts rolled through so many cities as a spectacular admonition to "keep the ball rolling," passed through the streets inscribed with denunciations of the Nullifiers.