g that the State would secede from the
Union if force were used to collect any revenue at Charleston. South
Carolina has always been rather "advanced" regarding the matter of
seceding from the American Union.

President Jackson, however, ordered General Scott and a number of troops
to go and see that the laws were enforced; but no trouble resulted, and
soon more satisfactory measures were enacted, through the large
influence of Mr. Clay.

Jackson was unfriendly to the Bank of the United States, and the bank
retaliated by contracting its loans, thus making money-matters hard to
get hold of by the masses.

"When the public money," says the historian, "which had been withdrawn
from the Bank of the United States was deposited in local banks, money
was easy and speculation extended to every branch of trade. New cities
were laid out; fabulous prices were charged for building-lots which
existed only on paper" etc. And in Van Buren's time the people paid the
violinist, as they have in 1893, with ruin and remorse.

Speculation which is unprofitable should never be encouraged.
Unprofitable speculation is only another term for idiocy. But, on the
other hand, profitable speculation leads to prosperity, public esteem,
and the ability to keep a team. We may distinguish the one from the
other by means of ascertaining the difference between them. If one finds
on waking up in the morning that he experiences a sensation of being in
the poor-house, he may almost at once jump to the conclusion that the
kind of speculation he selected was the wrong one.

The Black Hawk War occurred in the Northwest Territory in 1832. It grew
out of the fact that the Sacs and Foxes sold their lands to the United
States and afterwards regretted that they had not asked more for them:
so they refused to vacate, until several of them had been used up on the
asparagus-beds of the husbandman.

[Illustration: SCALPING A MAN BETWEEN THE SOUP AND THE REMOVE.]

The Florida War (1835) grew out of the fact that the Seminoles
regretted having made a dicker with the government at too low a price
for land. Osceola, the chief, regretted the matter so much that he
scalped General Thompson while the latter was at dinner, which shows
that the Indian is not susceptible to cultivation or the acquisition of
any knowledge of table etiquette whatever. What could be in poorer taste
than scalping a man between the soup and the remove? The same day Major
Dade with one hundred