A violent controversy arose in congress on the subject of slavery, when Missouri first applied for authority to form a State government, which arrayed the South against the North, the slaveholding against the non-slaveholding states. Missouri, having been considered a portion of Louisiana, had derived from her connexion with the French and the Spaniards the custom of holding slaves, which she considered as her right. It was proposed, however, that in “admitting the territory to the privileges of a state, slavery, or involuntary servitude, should be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes of which the party should have been duly convicted; and that all children born within the said state after its admission into the Union should be free at the age of twenty-five.” This clause divided congress into two parties: the non-slaveholding states demanded the restriction; the southern and slave states rejected it. The contest of opinion was violent in the extreme. Two principles seemed involved in this question; not only resistance to slavery, but resistance to the interference of congress in the internal government of individual states; and hence many advocates of sound liberty and friends to the emancipation and elevation of the slave opposed the restrictive clause. After much violent discussion, the Missouri question was settled by a compromise, which, while it allowed slavery in Missouri, prohibited it in all the territory of the United States north and west of the northern limits of Arkansas; and in August, 1821, Missouri became the twenty-fourth state in the Union. In 1821 Monroe entered upon his second presidential term, having been re-elected, as was also Daniel Tomkins as vice-president. The fourth census, taken in the year 1820, showed the population of the United States to be 9,625,734; about a million and a half of whom were slaves. On the 7th of March in this year, General Jackson was appointed governor of Florida and Elijeus Fromentin chief-justice. The Spanish officers, very unwilling to give up their posts, threw many impediments in the way of the new government, and refused to give up the archives which had been stipulated for; and even when they were obtained, certain documents were kept back by Don Cavalla, the Spanish governor. But Jackson, who very well understood how to exercise authority, sent an armed force to bring Cavalla before him; and as he still refused, had him carried from his bed to prison, when he took possession of the papers, after which he was discharged. Again these summary measures were severely commented upon; but they were only according to Jackson’s mode of action—prompt, overbearing, and successful. Florida was divided into two counties, St. John’s, on the east of the Suwaney river, and Escambia on the west. Jackson’s term of office expired with the rising of congress, and he declined a re-appointment.