munication, like the former, proving ineffectual, and determined no longer to have more responsibility than power, he took measures to bring the subject before the government, in a way that would admit of no further neglect.

On the 22d of April, he issued the general order which has been presented to our readers, forbidding the officers of his division to obey any order from the war department, which did not pass through the office of his adjutant general. About two months after this, the president still declining any decision on the matter, and suffering it to fester by delay, an order was issued from the war department, to General Ripley, then in command at New Orleans; which, in compliance with General Jackson's general order, he did not obey. Finding one of his officers involved in difficulty by an act of military subordination and fidelity, General Jackson immediately assumed an attitude which none but a martinet can fail to admire. In a letter to the president, of the 12th August, 1817, he referred to his former communications on this subject, and to the cases which had produced them-repeated the substance of his general order, and stated the dilemma of General Ripley, and with his characteristic spirit and honor, thus relieved him from all responsibility: "This has given rise to proper disobedience of General Ripley, to the order of the department of war above alluded to, for which I hold myself responsible." He adds, "In the view I took of this subject on the fourth of March, I had flattered myself you would coincide, and had hoped to receive your answer before a recurrence of a similar infringement of military rule rendered it necessary for me to call your attention thereto. None are infallible in their opinions, but it is nevertheless necessary, that all should act agreeably to their convictions of right. My convictions in favor of the course I have pursued are

strong, and, should it become necessary, I will willingly meet a fair investigation before a military tribunal. The good of the service, and the dignity of the commission I hold, alone actuate me. My wishes for retirement have already been made known to you; but, under existing circumstances, my duty to the officers of my division forbids it, until this subject is fairly understood." The final decision, when it came, was, that orders to inferiors should pass through the commanding officer of the division, always thereafter, unless in case of necessity; thus admitting a principle contended for by General Jackson, and terminating a practice, which, under the aspect of legal authority, was subversive of discipline, injurious to service, and repugnant to justice.

It is true that by the constitution, the president is commander-in-chief of the army, and that, by a custom almost equivalent to law, the orders of the secretary are considered the orders of the president, and that, among the illegitimate descendants of this custom, was the practice of confiding the power of the department to lieutenants of the line, whose enormous deviations from propriety, as in the order to Colonel Sparks, brought it into question and disrepute. But the president is commander-in-chief, only in the same sense in which the general is commander of his division, and has no stronger claim to the obedience of the general, than the latter has to the obedience of the colonel; and his orders, whether issued under his sign manual, or through the secretary of war, or the imposing instrumentality of a subaltern, are to be restrained by the laws of congress and the principles of the constitution. No man will contend, that his authority in the army is absolute-that he can of his own accord inflict capital punishment on a soldier-can make a lieutenant command a captain—a colonel a general, or exact duty from either without allowing him his proper rank. Now

*

the essence of rank consists in the superiority of command, which it confers; and any order of the president making an inferior disobey the orders of his superior, is a derogation of the rank of that superior, and produces a disorder, the removal of which necessarily exposes to disturbance, in a similar and equivalent degree, the authority of the president over the superior.

The order to Colonel Sparks required a direct and violent disobedience to General Jackson's command, as that to Major Long effected it. To have rendered these orders entirely legal and expedient, they should have been communicated through the commanding general. They would then have preserved the just equality between responsibility and power, which the nature of delegated authority requires. And instead of causing one act of obedience, and one of disobedience, they would have produced two acts of perfect obedience, through agents related in due subordination to each other. The course pursued by the government, moreover, involved the signal injustice of fixing publicly the proportion of General Jackson's power and responsibility, upon which proportion, it must be presumed, he consented to assume the latter; and then privately, and without his knowledge, reducing the former below that proportion, by a proceeding much in the nature of an ex post facto law. The silence and hesitation persevered in, respecting his remonstrances, while they tended to produce an impression that the reasons he advanced were not disapproved, created a strong demand for the decisive measures he adopted, and the fact which is but too apparent that the irregularity he complained of, was calculated, if continued, to disappoint the department, as well as the general, as it might be retorted by the latter in various perplexing ways, furnishes another strong objection to it. Its only excuse is a complete justification of it, where it can be

shown, and a marked condemnation of it, where it cannot be shown; viz. necessity. To this fair adjustment and full redress, General Jackson brought this abuse in the service, and for the spirit and judgment he displayed on that occasion alone, he deserves the gratitude of the army, and the respect of his fellow-citizens.

CHAPTER XIII.

Causes that led to the Seminole war- -General Jackson invades Florida-Is censured for at-Defence of the measure- -His letter to the governor of Georgia-Detail of the causes which elicited it-Destruction of the Chehaw village, and its consequences.

OUR readers will recollect that in the month of August, 1814, while a war existed between the United States and Great Britain, to which Spain had formally declared herself neutral, a British force, not in the fresh pursuit of a defeated and flying enemy, not overstepping an imaginary and equivocal boundary between their own territories, and those belonging, in some sort, as much to their enemy as to Spain; but approaching by sea, and by a broad and open invasion of the Spanish province, at a thousand miles, or an ocean's distance from any British territory, landed in Florida, took possession of Pensacola, and the fort of Barrancas, and invited by public proclamations all the runaway negroes, all the savage Indians, all the pirates, and all the traitors to their country, whom they knew, or imagined to exist, within reach of their summons, to join their standard, and wage an exterminating war against the portion of the United States, immediately bordering upon this neutral, and thus violated territory of Spain. The land commander of this British force, it will be recollected, was the famous Colonel Nicholl, of proclamation memory, who, driven from Pensacola by the approach of General Jackson, actually left, to be blown up, the Spanish fort of Barrancas, when he