In 1814 Jackson was appointed a major-general in the service of tho United States; and, among other operations, he succeeded in taking Pensacola on the 7th of November, and raised himself to the highest point of reputation and popularity among his countrymen by the repulse of the British forces in their attack on New Orleans, on the 8th of January 1815. The next military command which he held was that of the war against the Seminole Indians of Florida in 1818. Jackson's proceedings iu this war, from first to last, were extremely irregular and high-handed ; the force at the head of which he placed himself was raised and officered not only without but in direct oppo sition to the orders of the general government: in carrying on his operations against the Indians, ho did net scruple to seize, one after another, several forts and porta belonging to Spain, with which country the United States were at peace, and to put down the Spanish authori ties by the power of the sword—conduct of which his government marked its disapproval by the immediate restoration of the places thus unwarrantably seized; but his most extraordinary act was the execution of the two Englishmen, Arbuthnot and Ambrister. Alex ander Arbuthnot was taken in tho Spanish Fort of St. Mark's, along with two Indian chiefs, and Robert C Amin-later, a few days after wards, on an excursion which the force made from that post to destroy a neighbouring Indian village. The two Indian chiefs were hanged at once, and without trial; the justification urged being that by their own usual practice in like eases, and by the general manner in which they carried on war, the Indian tribes were to be considered as having put themselves beyond the pale of the ordinary law of nations. Arbuthnot and Ambrister were both, after a few days' confinement, tried at St. Mark's by court martial, when Arbuthnot was sentenced to suffer death, and Ambrister to be whipped and further confined, but General Jackson annulled the latter sentence, and Arbuthnot was hung and Ambrister shot. Jackaon's biographers assert that there could be no doubt that these persons were acting in concert with the Indian'. Bat even to take the lives of Indian prisoners of war was an extreme proceeding, and one of very doubtful propriety; the charge upon which the two Englishmen were tried was only the very vague one of "inciting the Indians to war ;" in these circumstances it was certainly a startling exercise of military power for a general to set aside the sentence of a courtmartial, as was done in the case of Ambrieter. But Jackson himself vindicated what he had done, on the ground that Arbuthnot and Ambrister, by assisting in war against the United States while they were at peace with Great Britain, became outlaws and pirates ; thus resting their liability to suffer death, when taken prisoners of war, not on the ground of their having united their fates with savage., but on that of their having been the subjects of a
power with which the United States were at peace—a principle alto gether unknown to the law of nations. However, although a stout fight was made in Congress by the opposite party, Jackson's friends, supported by the feeling out of doors, where his military reputation and his ultra-democratic professions bore down everything, carried a succession of votes in his exculpation by large majorities. The judg ment of impartial men will place this among the least defensible class of military executions.
General Jackson afterwards acted as commissioner on the part of the United States in the negotiation with Spain for the transference of Florida; and after the arrangement of the treaty to that effect he was, in 1821, appointed the first governor of the province. Ho held this post for a year, and was then again elected a member of the senate for the state of Tennessee.
When the election of a new president came on at the cud of 1824, General Jackson was a candidate, along with Mr. Adams, Mr. Clay, and Mr. Crawford ; and on the first vote he had a large majority over the nearest of his competitors. No candidate however having the majority required by the constitution, the election devolved upon the House of Representatives, and Adams was elected. Jackson however was elected in 182S, and again in 1832; so that he was at the head of the government of his native country for the eight years from 1829 to 1S37. His presidency was distinguished by the rapid growth and extension of democratic tendencies of all kinds; and, at the same time, of both the spirit of territorial extension, with its near conse quences, conquest, and war, and of the influence of the southern states and the elaveholding interest; but the subject in regard to which the president personally came forward in the most conspicuous manner was in the affair of the United States Bank. This bank, the renewal of the charter of which was the ostensible matter in dispute, was a powerful instrument in the hands of tho general government ; and hence the renewal of its charter, though supported by both houses of Congress, was resisted, and successfully, both by the popular voice and by the president whom that voice had placed in office, and who had been one of the most hardened and resolute of the democratic leaders throughout his life.
General Jackson survived his presidency about eight years, and died at his seat called the Hermitage, near Nashville, in Tennessee, on Sunday the 8th of Juno 1845. He was married, but had no issue. A colossal statue has been erected to his memory in President's-square, Washington.