it alone the final result might have
been as bad.

Two new States were added to the Union in President Jackson's
time--Arkansas (1836) and Michigan (1837). The population of the United
States in 1830 had risen to nearly thirteen millions (12,866,020). There
was no foreign war during his administration, although one with France
was barely averted; and no domestic contest except with the Florida
Indians--a contest in which these combatants held their ground so well,
under the half-breed chief Osceola, that he himself was only captured by
the violation of a flag of truce, and that even to this day, as the
Indian Commissioners tell us, some three hundred of the tribe remain in
Florida. The war being equally carried on against fugitive slaves called
Maroons, who had intermarried with the Indians, did something to prepare
the public mind for a new agitation which was to remould American
political parties, and to modify the Constitution of the nation.

It must be remembered that the very air began to be filled in Jackson's
time with rumors of insurrections and uprisings in different parts of
the world. The French revolution of the Three Days had roused all the
American people to sympathy, and called forth especial enthusiasm in
such cities as Baltimore, Richmond, and Charleston. The Polish
revolution had excited universal interest, and John Randolph had said
"The Greeks are at your doors." All these things were being discussed at
every dinner-table, and the debates in Virginia as to the necessity of
restricting the growing intelligence of the slaves had added to the
agitation. In the session of 1829-30 a bill had passed the Virginia
Assembly by one majority, and had failed in the Senate, prohibiting
slaves being taught to read or write; and the next year it had passed
almost unanimously. There had been, about the same time, alarms of
insurrection in North Carolina, so that a party of slaves were attacked
and killed by the inhabitants of Newbern; alarms in Maryland, so that
fifty blacks had been imprisoned on the Eastern Shore; alarms in
Louisiana, so that reinforcements of troops had been ordered to Baton
Rouge; and a traveller had written even from Richmond, Va., on February
12th, that there were constant fears of insurrections, and special
patrols. Then came the insurrection of Nat Turner in Virginia--an
uprising described minutely by myself elsewhere; the remarkable
inflammatory pamphlet called "Walker's Appeal," by a Nort