Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/163

Rh motives, of perceptions and conclusions — the aspiration to the presidency — clouded his discernment.

In the second session of the fifteenth Congress a debate took place which was destined to be of far greater consequence to Clay's political fortunes than anything that had gone before. It was the first clash between Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson. This is the story. The Floridas were still in the possession of Spain. They served as a place of refuge for runaway slaves, and a base of operations for raiding Indians. Spain was bound by treaty to prevent hostile excursions on the part of the savages, but too weak or too negligent to do so. There were frequent collisions between whites and Indians on the border, one party being as often the aggressor as the other. General Gaines sent soldiers against the Indians, and an Indian war began. In December, 1817, General Jackson took command. He received authority to pursue the Indians, but, as the administration understood it, he was to respect Spanish rights. This was Jackson's famous Seminole war. He enlisted volunteers in Tennessee by his own proclamation, without waiting for the President to call upon the governor for a levy of militia in the legal, regular way. He broke into Florida in March, 1818, took the Spanish fort of St. Mark's, hung Indian chiefs who had been captured by stratagem; ordered a Scotchman and an Englishman, Arbuthnot and Ambrister, whom he had found with the Indians, to be tried by court-martial for having instigated the sav-