oped for to confer favors upon his friends. "I
am sure our stay here will not be long," wrote Mrs. Jackson to a
brother in early August. "This office does not suit my husband....
There never was a man more disappointed than he has been. He has not
the power to appoint one of his friends." In the second place, the new
Governor's status was wholly anomalous, since Congress had extended to
the territory only the revenue and anti-slave-trade laws, leaving
Jackson to exercise in other matters the rather vague powers of the
captain general of Cuba and of the Spanish governors of the Floridas.
And in the third place, before his first twenty-four hours were up,
the new executive fell into a desperate quarrel with his predecessor,
a man of sufficiently similar temperament to make the contest a source
of sport for the gods.

Jackson was prepared to believe the worst of any Spaniard, and his
relations with Callava grew steadily more strained until finally, with
a view to obtaining possession of certain deeds and other legal
papers, he had the irate dignitary shut up overnight in the calaboose.
Then he fell upon the judge of the Western District of Florida for
issuing a writ of habeas _corpus_ in the Spaniard's behalf; and all
parties--Jackson, Callava, and the judge--swamped the wearied
officials at Washington with "statements" and "exhibitions" setting
forth in lurid phraseology their respective views upon the questions
involved. Callava finally carried his complaints to the capital in
person and stirred the Spanish Minister to a fresh bombardment of the
White House. Monroe's Cabinet spent three days discussing the subject,
without coming to a decision. Many were in honest doubt as to the
principles of law involved; some were fearful of the political effects
of any stand they might take; all were inexpressibly relieved when,
late in the year, word came that "Don Andrew Jackson" had resigned the
governorship and was proposing to retire to private life at the
Hermitage.

CHAPTER IV

THE DEATH OF "KING CAUCUS"

On a bracing November afternoon in 1821 Jackson rode up with his
family to the Hermitage free for the first time in thirty-two years
from all responsibility of civil and military office. He was now
fifty-four years old and much broken by exposure and disease; the
prospect of spending the remainder of his days among his hospitable
neighbors on the banks of the Cumberland yielded deep satisfaction.
The home-loving