r of Florida. Jackson took command of the troops after many white
settlers had been massacred. First line of steamships between New York and
Liverpool opened. On July 4 ground was broken for the Erie Canal. First
school for deaf-mutes opened at Hartford. First insane asylum in America
opened by the Friends in Philadelphia. Mississippi admitted to the Union.

Depression continued in England; several Luddites executed for smashing
machinery; eighteen persons hanged for forging Bank of England notes;
habeas corpus suspended. Pindaree and Mahratta wars in India; Lord
Hastings, the English governor-general, won a series of victories and
greatly extended the British power. The Prince Regent of England hooted by
mobs because of his conduct to his wife.

Eleven persons in Philadelphia and seven in Norwich, England, killed by
steamboat boiler explosions, resulting in violent public opposition to
steam vessels. Cholera epidemic started in Bengal, spread over Asia and
Europe, crossed the Atlantic, and caused a million deaths before it was
checked some years later. Beranger, French poet, imprisoned for blasphemy.

Mme. de Stael, French writer, and Thaddeus Kosciusko, Polish patriot and
soldier in the American Revolution, died.

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that James Monroe became
President of the United States on March 4.=

1818

The army of occupation withdrawn from France. King Frederick William III
of Prussia, at the instigation of Metternich and the Russian Czar
Alexander, having become an implacable opponent of liberalism and popular
education, began to suppress schools and colleges. General discontent in
Spain, and several abortive uprisings occurred against Ferdinand VII,
whose misgovernment had left an empty treasury and an unpaid army. Andrew
Jackson invaded Florida, and Congress refused to rebuke him; negotiations
with Spain for the purchase of Florida. Illinois admitted to the Union,
and the contest over the admission of Missouri commenced in Congress.
Pensions granted to needy Revolutionary soldiers, and to the widows and
children of Revolutionary soldiers--the beginning of the pension system.
The number of stripes in the United States flag reduced to thirteen, the
number of stars to be equal to the total number of States in the Union.

Polar expeditions sent out both from America and from England. In the
latter country, Abraham Thornton, accused of murder, claimed the right to
prove his in