Adams the Younger--The Son Also Rises Part I

 

Famous parents and a daunting legacy--John and Abigail Adams.  John Quincy admired and respected his distant father but bitterly resented his mother who was never satisfied with him and whose sharp tongue made it abundantly clear to him.

At the end of his long life John Quincy Adams was revered as Old Man Eloquent by opponents of slavery and reviled in equal measure as a Yankee mad man by the Southern slave-holding aristocracy.  As a boy and young man, he lived in his famous father’s shadow, an errand boy and gopher for the great man on his diplomatic postings for the infant American republic.

In between he lived an eventful life, full of public service, accomplishments, and occasional respect all the while battling what is now evident as severe depression and self-doubt.

The younger Adams was born on July 11, 1767 at the family home in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts to John and Abigail Adams.  His mother came from prominent local gentry and his father was a rising lawyer with political aspirations who was soon prominent among Patriot leaders including his cousin Samuel Adams, merchant John Hancock, and fellow lawyer James Otis.

In his early childhood the boy’s father was often busy with his law practice and politics in near-by Boston or away from home for extended periods of time as a delegate to the Continental Congress.  His mother constantly reminded him of how important a man his father was.  One summer day in 1777 he learned about the Declaration of Independence, which his father had done so much to bring about, from a letter read to him by his mother.

Just a year later he packed his bags to accompany his father on a critical diplomatic mission to France where he joined Benjamin Franklin in the delicate negotiations to obtain French support for the war effort.  The boy was from the beginning more than a companion, he was something of a cross between a domestic servant to his father and eventually a secretary.  He absorbed the details of the intrigue around him, including his father’s prickly relationship with the famous and beloved Franklin and learned from the elder Adams’ sometimes curt bluster how not to conduct diplomacy.  While on this trip John Quincy began keeping the diary he would maintain for more than 40 years, giving later scholars a priceless insider account of early America and its politics.

                                

                                              John Quincy Adams age 10--his father's aide and errand boy in Europe.

In 1780 he again accompanied his father when he was made Minister to The Netherlands.  On this trip the boy’s duties were more substantial.  He also got an education, matriculating at Leiden University in 1781.  At the tender age of 14 he was considered competent enough to be loaned to another American diplomat, Francis Dana, who he served as official secretary for the mission to the Court of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, Russia.  He also traveled in the Scandinavian countries of Finland, Sweden, and Denmark.

During his years abroad he became fluent in French—the court language of much of Europe—and Dutch as well as passable in German and other languages.

When Quincy returned to the now independent United States, he was already one of the most experienced diplomats the country had despite not being out of his teens.  He enrolled, of course, at his father’s alma mater Harvard and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1787.  The same year his father became the first Vice President under George Washington.

From 1787 to ’89 Young Adams read law with Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport, Massachusetts then returned to Harvard to win a Master of Arts degree in 1790. He passed the Bar in 1791 and began to practice law in Boston.

Despite his notable achievements his mother constantly compared him to her husband and found him wanting.  He loved and admired his often distant father, but came to fear the dominating Abigail, who he blamed for his frequent bouts of melancholia.

Young Adams first came to public notice—and earned the esteem and admiration of the President—for penning a series of polemics in support of Washington’s refusal to be drawn into the wars swirling around the French Revolution, despite a treaty of alliance.  It was Washington, not his father, who insisted that the 26-year-old take up duties as Minister to The Netherlands.  But the young man did not want to take the job.  He feared he would never get out from under his father’s shadow if he pursued a career of public service.  His father convinced him that it was his patriotic duty to do so. 

In addition to his duties in Holland, Adams also carried papers and instructions to John Jay who was trying to negotiate a treaty with Britain clearing up many points of contention in the post-revolutionary period.  He shuttled back and forth between capitals.  When Jay concluded his controversial treaty which many considered far too favorable to the British, Adams wrote to his father urging him to support it as the best possible deal.  The elder shared it with the President who incorporated points from the letter in his Farewell Address.

Washington kept the young man in service, appointing him Minister to Portugal and then Legate to Berlin.  Washington was uncharacteristically effusive in his praise calling Adams “the most valuable of America’s officials abroad.”

                                John Quincy Adams 1797 by John Singleton Copley about to leave to become Minister to Prussia.
 

When his father became President, it again was Washington who urged him to name his son Minister to Prussia despite the inevitable charges of nepotism.  He served from 1797 to 1801, his father’s whole single term as President.  He secured a renewal of the Prussian-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce on very liberal terms.

Before returning to the United States, he married Louisa Catherine Johnson, the British-born daughter of an American merchant in London.

                           

                                    Louisa Catherine Adams, a cultured and accomplished wife.

When he returned to Massachusetts with his new wife, he secured an appointment as Commissioner of Monetary Affairs in Boston by a Federal District Judge.  But that sinecure fell victim to the deep personal animosity between two erstwhile old friends and comrades—the elder Adams and newly elected President Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson wasted no time rescinding the nomination, a slap in the face that did not go unnoticed.

In the end, the offense propelled John Quincy to enter electoral politics as a Federalist, another footstep in his father’s path he has sworn never to undertake. He was elected a member of the Massachusetts State Senate in April 1802 and that fall ran for the United States House of Representatives and lost.  But in March of the next year the Massachusetts General Court elected him to the U.S. Senate where he quickly became a leading voice of the Federalist minority.

But it was during that period when John Quincy engaged in one of the most embarrassing acts of his career.  He penned a series of six satiric ballads in the style common to Harvard undergraduates mocking the Democratic-Republicans and Jefferson.  They were not printed but circulated hand to hand and read with great mirth at Washington taverns where the political elite gathered.  Although written anonymously, it quickly became apparent that they were written by Adams.  One of them, Dusky Sally, a famously lurid ballad about Jefferson’s dalliance with his slave Sally Hemmings was written in 1803 but published anonymously in 1807.  Jefferson was naturally furious.  Some Adams apologists dismiss the work as a schoolboy prank.  It was not.  It was a political dirty trick propagated by a highly sophisticated 40-year-old sitting U.S. Senator.

Despite his service in the Senate, Adams’s expertise in foreign policy and relations caused him to abandon other Federalists and support the President’s Louisiana Purchase and the Embargo Act.  Both of these acts were particularly loathed by Massachusetts Federalists who saw them as a plot to create permanent Southern dominance via new states carved out of the vast land acquisition and whose merchants were badly hurt by the Embargo, a measure meant to keep the U.S. out of the world war between France and Britain.  The General Court met early and stripped Adams of his Senate seat in 1708.  Adams promptly resigned the party of his father and joined his former enemies, the Democratic Republicans.

His new party did not entirely trust its convert.  Instead of seeking a new elected post or political appointment, Adams took the Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard.  From his lofty perch he wrote extensively promoting a neo-classical, Ciceronian ideal of disinterested public discourse based on reason and illuminated by rhetoric.  Despite his best efforts, public discourse in the U.S. was taking a vastly different direction.  Still, he would happily have remained in the academy had not duty called once again.

President James Madison called on him to take the critical diplomatic post of Minister to Russia in 1709.  His wife Louisa and their youngest son Charles Francis Adams accompanied him to the Tsarist court.  After reporting the fall of Moscow to Napoleon and his subsequent disastrous winter retreat, Adams was dispatched to Ghent to serve as to serve as chief negotiator of the U.S. commission to negotiate a treaty to end the War of 1812.  Louisa and Charles had to make a harrowing winter coach ride across war torn Europe, always in danger of being caught up in battle or attacked by roving bands of brigands and deserters to join her husband.

 

John Quincy Adams, center, at the signing of the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812.

The peace commission succeeded in gaining a remarkably lenient treaty, mostly restoring the status quo ante bellum even though at the time it was negotiated, the British had dominated the war and humiliated American armies.  But the European wars had left the Mother Country bleeding, exhausted, and broke and Adams knew that they had little appetite for an extended war in North America.  America’s biggest victory, which might have justified even better terms, came after the treaty was signed when Andrew Jackson smashed and destroyed a British Army attacking New Orleans.

John Quincy Adams was thus absent from the actual conflicts of his country’s two first wars, making his personal experience vastly different than most other Americans.

After the treaty was concluded, a grateful Madison named Adams Minister to The Court of St. James, the country’s most distinguished diplomatic post.  He served in London from 1814-17.

On his return home from eight years abroad, newly elected President James Monroe named him Secretary of State, a post for which he was manifestly qualified, and which was then widely regarded as the natural steppingstone to the Presidency.  He stood at the President’s side for two terms, his most trusted advisor and master of foreign policy.

Adams racked up impressive achievement after impressive achievement while at the State Department.  First, he had to address the thorny problem of Florida, which was only tenuously held by Spain, weakened by the Napoleonic Wars on its soil and a mere shadow of a once mighty empire.  Southerners long had ambitions in Florida, and various plots and filibustering schemes were constantly afoot.  The British had agents on the ground in Florida—either actually in service to the Crown or merchant/traders functioning de facto—and seemed to have its own plans to snatch the province to hem in expansionist America to the south.  Florida, and particularly the large and powerful Seminole tribe that dominated its interior, was also a haven for escaped slaves.  Large number of Creek warriors, defeated by Andrew Jackson’s western army, also fled into the arms of the Seminole.

Monroe, undoubtedly with the approval of Adams, ordered Jackson to pursue the fugitive Creek into Florida.  The Hero of New Orleans did so with his customary enthusiasm and ruthlessness.  In the process he captured and hanged two British subjects he suspected of arming the natives, precipitating an international crisis.  Monroe’s Cabinet was unanimous in the opinion that Jackson had exceeded his orders and should be court martialed and removed from command.   Adams alone supported the General, arguing that if the Spanish could not police her territories, the United States had the right to do so in self-defense.  His argument carried the day with Monroe, who only issued a reprimand to Jackson.  But the touchy Jackson assumed that Adams was responsible for the “rebuke to my honor,” thus beginning the bad blood between the two.

Adams skillfully advanced the same arguments to injured Britain and Spain.  In the Adams–Onís Treaty Spain ceded Florida to the U.S. and the boundary between the Louisiana Territory and Spanish Tejas (Texas) was cleared up.

At the same time, Adams had to clear up several post-war issues with Britain, including the final evacuation of frontier posts still held by the British on American soil and clearly defining a western boundary.  The terms of the Treaty of Paris which had ended the Revolutionary War assumed that the Mississippi River extended north to Lake-in-The-Woods from which point a line would be drawn to the Pacific coast. The issue had come to a head in the Oregon country where the British Hudson Bay Company and John Jacob Astor’s American Fir Company were in fierce completion for the highly lucrative fur trade. 

Adams could build on the work of Richard Rush, temporary Secretary of State until Adams could come to Washington.  The Rush–Bagot Treaty agreed to in early 1817 demilitarized the border between the US and British North America including naval disarmament on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain—the traditional invasion routes that had been used by both sides. The US and Britain also agreed to joint control over the Oregon Territory.  Adams successfully helped shepherd the treaty through Senate ratification in 1818 and used it as a springboard for more talks.

The Treaty of 1818, negotiated by Albert Gallatin and Richard Rush under Adams personal supervision, secured a favorable border for the United States along the 49th Parallel including a sizable chunk of Oregon and deep-water ports from which to ship the valuable furs.  Use of the Oregon Territory remained open to both nations and mutual freedom of navigation was guaranteed.  In addition, the treaty formalized the rights of Americans to their traditional fisheries in the Grand Banks offshore from Newfoundland and Labrador.  The result was the longest undefended border in the world and a permanent end to hostility between the two English-speaking powers.

However, the Hudson Bay Company continued to run roughshod over American fur traders for some time, building to a demand by expansionists to seize all of the Oregon territory and the cry of Fifty-Four-Forty or Fight! almost brought the two nations to war again until the Oregon Treaty of 1846 confirmed the 49th Parallel as the boundary and gave American complete jurisdiction of everything south of that line.

Secretary of State John Quincy Adams at the globe presents Monroe Doctrine to President James Monroe, left and the Cabinet in this historic painting by Allyn Cox in Great Experiment Hall in the U.S. Capitol.

Of course, Adam’s biggest accomplishment was enunciating what became known as the Monroe Doctrine in 1823.  This was a response to Spain’s crumbling new world empire. Several countries had declared independence.  Spain was threatening to send armies to reconquer some of what they had lost and other European powers, particularly the British, French, and Russians were making noises about moving into the void.

Many Americans wanted the U.S. to intervene actively on behalf of the newly independent Republics, some dreamed of a Pan American union.  Southern interests were looking for areas into which to expand their plantation and slave culture and carve out new states.  With an audience in Europe in mind Adams delivered a speech on Independence Day 1821 declaring that while the United States supported the new republics, it would not intervene militarily on their behalf unilaterally, declaring that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” but warning of European intervention.

From this nugget grew an official state paper which was presented to Congress on December 2, 1823 declaring that it is the policy of the United States that further efforts by European powers to colonize land or interfere with states in the Americas would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention.  The Monroe Doctrine became the basis of American foreign policy and remains in force to this day.

Tomorrow—The Presidency and after.

in 1814 They Took a Little Trip Along with Gen. Jackson Down the Mighty Missisip

This 1922 illustration show General Andrew Jackson on the breast works in the Battle of New Orleans with his Tennessee Volunteers, Army Regulars, and Jean Lafitte's pirates.  Few if any of the Tennesseans would have been in buckskin and coonskin caps, Most had at least fragments of uniforms after months of campaigning against the Creeks and capturing Mobile from the Spanish. 

Probably the most important battle ever fought after a war ended occurred on January 8, 1815.  Thousands of British troops, including regiments that had distinguished themselves in the Napoleonic Wars and elite units of Royal Marines, were shattered by murderous fire from make-shift American breastworks manned by U.S. Volunteers, Regular Army, local militia (including units of Freemen), U.S. Navy gunners, and pirates under the command of Major General Andrew Jackson.  The Battle of New Orleans was a devastating, bloody defeat for the British and a stunning American victory.  

Most Americans know little about the battle, and much of that is wrong based on two Cecil B. DeMille epics—The Buccaneer in 1938 with Fredric March as Jean Lafitte and the 1958 remake with Yul Brenner as Lafitte and Charlton Heston as General Jackson—or as the rollicking yarn in the 1959 #1 hit record The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton and written by Arkansas folk singer Jimmy Driftwood. 

The sleeve of Johnny Horton's single The Battle of New Orleans--the #1 pop and country hit of 1959.

On December 24, 1814 diplomats in Ghent, Belgium signed a treaty ending the War of 1812.  Despite recent victories including the capture and burning of Washington by the very same troops that would be thrown into battle at New Orleans, the terms of the peace treaty were essentially a wash—largely an agreement to return to territorial boundaries and possessions as they were before the war.  The British did promise to evacuate a string of forts across the Northwest Territories from Ft. Detroit to Mackinac Island and to withdraw their support from Native tribes waging war against settlers across the frontier.  But the Americans failed to win promises to end forced impressment of American seamen, ostensibly the main cause of the war.  There was no way to get word to the forces destined to collide at New Orleans. 

Admiral Alexander Cochrane was in overall command of the British fleet and invasion forces after the successful attack and burning of Washington, D.C. 

Admiral Alexander Cochrane had disembarked a force of 11,000 Red Coat Regulars, Royal Marines and sailors on December 23 after American gunboats defending the approaches to the city on Lake Borgne were overwhelmed on December 16.  An advance guard of 1,800 British troops reached the shores of the Mississippi River about 9 miles south of the city. 

Jackson arrived at New Orleans from Mobile on November 30 after being appointed a Major General in the Regular Army and placed in command of the Military District encompassing most of the lower South.  His promotion from the commanding General of the Tennessee Militia and of the U.S. Volunteers raised for the Creek War was a recognition of his success in that bloody campaign against a faction of the Muscogee  Nation.  He found former New York City Mayor Edward Livingston, who fled to the southern city to avoid legal woes at home, was organizing militias of residents—French and Spanish Creoles, Americans, Freemen, and even slaves.  Jackson rallied the city and began to prepare a defense.   

A New Orleans Free Men of Color Militia company and Chocktaw native allies served with distinction on the American line.

In need of men and guns, Jackson reluctantly agreed to allow the pirates of Barataria led by the legendary buccaneer Jean Lafitte to join his forces in exchange for a pardon and amnesty from Louisiana Governor William Claiborne.  Lafitte did not personally command men in the battle.  He remained at Jackson’s headquarters and provided information on the land and intelligence on British movements.  His brother-in-law, Dominique You, organized three batteries of artillery among the privateers and smugglers and his accurate, withering fire, in the battle were later commended by Jackson himself. 

Jean Lafitte and his brother-in-law Dominic You who actually commanded the pirate guns on the line with devastating results to the British.

Ascertaining correctly that without shallow draft skiffs the British could not launch an assault on the city, Jackson began fortifying a narrow strip of land at Chalmette Plantation to where he expected the British to advance between the Mississippi River on their left and an impassable swamp on the right.  He used soldiers and slaves procured from nearby plantations to build barricades of barrels and lumber from the city and bales of cotton dug into the mud.   

Jackson was working on the defenses when he got word of the British advance on December 23.  In typical aggressive manor, the General declared “By the Eternal they shall not sleep on our soil.”  He organized and personally led a night assault on by 1,800 men against the ill-conceived British bivouac, taking them by surprise and inflicting serious casualties.  He then fell back to his defensive line and resumed fortifications. 

General Edward Pakenham commanded the land forces in the campaign against New Orleans--battle hardened British regulars and Royal Marines.

The British were stunned by the assault.   The next day, December 24, the land commander, General Edward M. Pakenham arrived.  He was outraged at the precarious position Cochrane had placed his troops.  He saw immediately that an advance along the river would expose his troops to murderous fire.  He proposed an attack up the undefended Chef Menteur Road instead, but was overruled by Cochrane, who had contempt for American military ability after his easy victories in Maryland and insisted that if Pakenham did not attack with the army, he would take the line by himself with Marines and sailors and let the Army, “bring up the baggage.” 

Pakenham ordered a strong probing reconnaissance on December 28, but by that time the earthworks along the Rodriguez Canal were nearing completion.  The reconnaissance raids were easily repulsed and confirmed Pakenham’s fears.  The next day the Americans began digging in artillery behind the line.  Jackson installed eight batteries.  His guns included one 32-pound gun, three 24-pounders, one 18-pounder, three 12-pounders, three 6-pounders, and a 6-inch (150 mm) howitzer.  He also sent two big 24-pounders and two 12-pounders across the river under the command of Navy Commodore Daniel Patterson to provide covering fire on his flank. 

On New Year’s Day Pakenham and Cochrane unleashed an intense three-hour artillery barrage against the American earthworks, now called Line Jackson.  The American guns responded.  There was some damage to the earthworks, and three guns were destroyed.  Green troops holding the left of the line by the swamp broke and ran under the salvos—although the British commanders never knew it.  A planned follow-up assault was called off when the British ran out of ammunition at hand without creating substantial breached in the defense. 

Still leery, Pakenham decided to delay his attack until his full effective force of more than 8,000 troops were brought up.  Meanwhile, Jackson continued to reinforce his earthworks and batteries.  On January 8 the British general was ready.  His battle plan called for his main force to advance in two columns against the American defenses.  The column on the left, next to the River, was commanded by Major General John Keane and a brigade under Major General Samuel Gibbs attacked on the right next to the cypress swamp.  Another brigade under Major General John Lambert was held in reserve. 

But the key to the success of the operation was an attack on Commodore Patterson’s battery across the river.  Colonel William Thornton and 850 men were to cross the river hours before the main assault and quickly close in on the battery, hopefully taking it by surprise.  They were then to turn the guns and rake Jackson’s line from the flank, which would have had devastating consequences.  But Thornton and his men were delayed.  A canal dug by Royal Navy sailors to expedite the attack collapsed and the men had to drag their boats through the mud to get to the river.  The attack began 12 hours late, almost at the same time the two main columns began to advance on the east side of the river.  Although Thornton would eventually succeed in taking Patterson’s battery, it was too late to be put to use—the main battle was already lost. 

A panoramic view of the British assault on the American Breastworks by Jean Hyacinthe de Ladotte who served with the New Orleans militia in the battle.

The main assault began before daybreak under cover of a thick fog.  But when the sun came up, the fog burned off, and the columns were exposed to the American artillery.  British senior officers were bravely, if foolhardily, leading the attack from the van, most on horseback and fully exposed to the withering fire.  One by one they went down killed or wounded creating confusion.  As the attack on the right struggled to the canal in front of the American lines, it was discovered that the scaling ladders and fascines—bundles of sticks and straw to be laid down to create firm footing on swampy ground—had been forgotten.  As the troops next to the swamp floundered, their commander, Gibbs was killed. 

Seeing the distress of the other column, Keene led an oblique maneuver over the open ground between the columns with a regiment.  Brave, but foolhardy, the maneuver exposed his troops to prolonged devastating fire.  Keene was severely injured. 

Colonel Rennie, in command of the remaining troops in the left column led by a Highland regiment by the river, did manage to capture a forward American redoubt.  But the American 7th Infantry, a Regular Army outfit, emerged from the line and counter attacked.  Within half an hour Rennie was dead, most of his troops dead or injured the redoubt was recaptured. 

The death of General Pakenham.

Two main assaults on the right were repulsed as grapeshot tore through the ranks.  Pakenham was un-horsed and killed.  A handful of troops did reach the American breastworks, where they were mauled.  With all of their senior commanders out of commission and with no orders to either renew the attack or retreat, the men stayed on the field, most of them in formation, as they were ripped to pieces by American fire.  After an additional 20 minutes of slaughter, Lambert finally came up and took command.  He saw that the situation was hopeless, despite getting word that the cross-river battery had finally been taken and ordered a general retreat. 

It was not only a humiliating battlefield loss, but it was also costly.  That day the British reported 2,042 casualties with 291 killed including Pakenham and Gibbs, 1,267 wounded including Keane, and 484 captured or missing. By contrast Jackson’s command had 71 casualties with 13 dead; 39 wounded and 19 missing. 

The next day, January 9, Cochrane began a naval attack on Fort St. Philip which protected New Orleans from an amphibious assault from the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River.  The American garrison held out for ten days.  Discouraged, Cochrane finally decided to sail away from New Orleans, his prize denied him. 

By the time they lef5 on February 5, the British losses for the whole New Orleans campaign were 386 killed, 1,521 wounded and 552 missing, a casualty rate of nearly 20%—twice the 10% losses that define being decimated. 

Cochrane, however, wasn’t done.  On February 12 he attacked and captured Ft. Brower at the entrance to Mobile Bay. He was preparing an assault on the port city when word finally arrived of the peace treaty.  Reluctantly, he re-embarked his troops and sailed for home.  Which was probably a good thing for him.  The aggressive Jackson was preparing an overland march from New Orleans and planned to lay siege to the British in Mobile and destroy the Army there. 

Signing of the Treaty of Ghent on Christmas Eve 1814.  The leading British delegate Lord Gambier shaking hands with the American negotiation team leader John Quincy Adams--Andrew Jackson's future nemesis and opponent for the Presidency. 

Had things gone differently, treaty or no treaty, the British would have been hard to dislodge form New Orleans and would have had little impetus to speedily abide by provisions in the treaty calling for the evacuation of the forts in the Northwest Territories or suspend aid to native tribes.  In fact, since the treaty never mentioned the disposition of territory in the southwest or American claims to the Louisiana Territory, they could have claimed that they were not required to surrender the key port city at all. 

While the British held New Orleans, they could effectively strangle American Western expansion because new settlers on the frontier could find no way to get their crops and goods to market.  The British could hold out there, but the Americans would be compelled to raise a new army and attempt to retake the city overland in a new war.  Alternatively, they could use the city as a bargaining chip for other concessions—perhaps continued sway over those northern forts, or a surrender to American claims on the Pacific Coast. 

America, except for grumpy, Federalist New England, wildly celebrated the victory.  It boosted national morale after the humiliating defeat at Washington and helped begin to forge a new sense of nationalism.  With New Orleans secure and the British out of the Northwest—although it took nearly two years for them to evacuate all those forts—western expansion was guaranteed.  Within thirty years all the land east of the Mississippi would be settled and prosperous and the trans-Mississippi West including Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa would cease to be frontier.  Eastern Native American tribes, except for the Seminole in Florida and a few small, scattered bands would be either destroyed or brutally relocated to Indian Territory on lands west of the Missouri.  As the New Englanders had feared, much of the expansion came with the creation of new slave states and territories.  The power of the South was enhanced, and sectional tensions over the extension of slavery and other issues would become an open sore. 

Not the least of the outcomes of the Battle was the rise in fortunes of the victorious commander.  Andrew Jackson was hailed as a hero.  He would go on to other adventures, including unauthorized forays in Spanish Florida.  After being defeated in 1828 by John Quincy Adams by a vote in the House of Representatives to break an Electoral College failed to elect a President in the multi-candidate election, Jackson would go on to win two terms in the White House on the crest of a wave of Democratic populism.  As President he would simultaneously vigorously prosecute the Indian Removal policy while defying Southern attempts to assert the power to nullify national law. 

And all of that was plenty of consequence for a battle without a war.