From 1790, our Government had endeavored to reënslave these people. No Northern statesmen objected to the policy; while those of the South had come to believe that, although the Union may not have been formed solely for the purpose of capturing slaves, yet that duty was regarded by them as _one_ of its most important objects. It had now become evident that no military force could pursue them into their retired fastnesses, or seek them out when scattered among the hommocks, the swamps and everglades of that singular country. Southern statesmen now turned their attention to the purchase of Florida. That would deprive the Indians and Exiles of the nominal protection of Spanish laws, and would bring them under the jurisdiction of the United States; they therefore addressed themselves to that policy with renewed assiduity. Recent events had convinced the authorities of Spain that it was impossible for them to maintain the dignity of the Spanish crown, or the sanctity of her soil from invasion against an American army, when in pursuit of fugitive slaves. She had seen her territory invaded; her forts at Pensacola and at St. Marks captured, and that upon the Appalachicola destroyed; her subjects massacred; her authority despised, and her rights as a nation treated with indignity by our army. There was, indeed, no other way for her but to accede to the proposition of the United States. [Sidenote: 1819.] A treaty was negotiated (February 22), and in consideration of five millions of dollars, Florida was transferred to the United States, and the Seminoles were brought within the jurisdiction which they most dreaded. The slaveholders of Georgia, who had so long pressed their claims for fugitive slaves, now became more clamorous. They saw, with intense interest, the pertinacity with which the Executive had pressed the claims of those who lost slaves, in the then recent war with England. Under the Treaty of Ghent, the President insisted upon full indemnity to those whose slaves had left the country, under British aid; and when the English ministry refused, and insisted upon the same construction as that placed upon the treaty of 1783, which contained the same words, the American Executive refused, and the question was referred to the umpirage of the Autocrat of Russia, who held an entire nation in slavery, and could not be expected to decide in any other manner, than that most favorable to the institution.[48] [Sidenote: 1820.]