120. The War of 1812, as it is commonly called, came at the end of a long period of warfare which had been carried on upon both sides of the Atlantic. In 1755, England and France began a contest which lasted, with short cessations from fighting, for sixty years. In 1815, the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo ended the contest. America was closely connected with the long war, for it broke out on American soil. The first fight of seven years - the French and Indian War left America in 1763 in the hands of Great Britain. When the English colonies fought for their independence, they drew the French into a fresh fight with England. This last war had grown out of the close connection which the United States had with France and England. The chief result of the war was to make the United States more independent of Europe. The long peace which now followed in Europe, lasting till 1853, helped the United States to grow strong and self-reliant.

121. Monroe's Administrations. - For a while there was an end to party strife. The Federalist party no longer had any strength. The opposition it had shown to the war made it

very unpopular. Yet the Democratic-Republican party had abandoned some of its distinctive principles. It no longer stood for opposition to strong national assertion. When James Monroe was elected

1

in 1816 to succeed Madison, there were but thirty-four electoral votes cast for the opposing candidate ; when he was reëlected four years later, there was but one vote cast against him. Thus the period of his administration came to be known as the Era of Good Feeling.

122. The Great Lakes as a Bond of Peace. The Union of eighteen States had a great country which it was to occupy. The boundaries were not changed by the war. Its most important neighbor was England, with its Canadian possessions on the north.

James Monroe.

1 James Monroe was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, April 28, 1758. He was a student at William and Mary College, but the war broke up his studies; he entered the army as lieutenant in 1776 and rose to be lieutenant colonel. He made Jefferson's acquaintance when that brilliant leader was governor of Virginia, and was pushed forward by him into various positions of influence. He took part in the State convention which adopted the Federal Constitution, and was senator from his State from 1790 to 1794. When Washington sent the Federalist Jay to England, he sent the antiFederalist Monroe to France. On his return he was governor of Virginia for three years. Then Jefferson sent him to France to negotiate the treaty which led to the purchase of Louisiana. He was Secretary of State under Madison and for a while acting Secretary of War. He retired to private life after serving as President for two terms, and died in New York, July 4, 1831.

April 28,

1817.

The chief theater of war had been on and about the Great Lakes separating the two nations, and with a foresight rarely seen in national relations, the two countries entered upon an agreement by which each power was to keep only one naval vessel on Lake Ontario, two on the Upper Lakes, and one on Lake Champlain; and these vessels were not to be larger than one hundred tons' burden, and were to be armed each with only one eighteen-pound cannon. It is not easy to overestimate the value of this provision in keeping the peace between the two countries.

123. Dealings with Spain and the Indian Tribes. - Spain was another neighbor, possessing Florida on the south, and Mexico on the southwest. She also claimed all the western coast of North America, as far north as the British possessions. But England and Spain were not the only foreign neighbors of the United States. Within the boundaries of the country were peoples who made treaties with the United States, just as did foreign nations like England, France, or Spain.

The United States acted toward the Indians who lived within its territory as it acted toward the English or the Spaniards who occupied land lying outside of its territory. That is, the United States did not deal with each separate Englishman who owned a strip of land in Canada, or with each separate Spaniard who owned a bit of Florida; it dealt with the nation of Great Britain, or the nation of Spain. When the United States bought Louisiana, it bought it of France, and not of the different French or Spanish people who owned plantations in Louisiana. Thus, when it came to deal with the Indians, it did not deal with each separate Indian.

But though there were many Indians in the country, there was no general Indian nation with a government. There were separate Indian tribes, and it was with each of these tribes that the United States had dealings. Each tribe had a tract of country over which it roved. Here were its hunting grounds, and here its few fields which the women planted and harvested from year to year. A bark hut was the most

lasting building. When the game was gone from one place, the Indians moved to another. It was not easy to say what were the exact boundaries of the country occupied by each tribe. The whites, as they cleared away the woods and planted their farms, were quite sure to be taking possession of land which the Indians claimed as their own.

Indian Wars. The pioneer whites were thus constantly getting into trouble with the Indians. When fighting became general, the United States, or the State in which the trouble occurred, was called upon to defend the whites, and an Indian war followed. The Indians were certain to be defeated, and then the United States would make a treaty with the tribe, buy the land which had been fought about, and compel the Indians to move farther away. Thus, in 1814, as we have seen, when the country was in arms against Great Britain, there was a fight going on with the Creek Indians in Georgia and Alabama. The end of it was that the Creeks were obliged to give up a large portion of their territory and move West. Many of them, however, still remained, and there was bitter feeling between them and the settlers.

124. Jackson in Florida. The difficulty was greater because the country in dispute lay next to the Spanish possessions in Florida. These possessions had but few Spanish villages or plantations. A tribe of Indians, the Seminoles, was scattered over the peninsula. Many Seminoles had been driven out of the Southern colonies before the War for Independence. Now it was an easy matter for slaves in Georgia and Alabama, when they ran away from their masters, to plunge into the thickets and swamps of Florida. The Creeks and Seminoles were always ready to help them. A border war sprang up, in which the whites were constantly crossing the Florida line to recapture slaves or to fight the Indians.

General Andrew Jackson' was placed in command of an ex

1 We have already met Jackson in the account of the War of 1812. He was born of north of Ireland stock March 15, 1767, in the Waxhaw settlement on the border between North and South Carolina. He had so little