The Missouri Compromise--Erie Canal Opened--Political Parties and Great National Issues--President Jackson Crushes the United States Bank--South Carolina Pronounces the Tariff Law Void--Jackson's Energetic Action--A Compromise--Territory Reserved for the Indians--The Seminole War-- Osceola's Vengeance--His Capture and Death--The Black Hawk War--Abraham Lincoln a Volunteer--Texas War for Independence--Massacre of the Alamo --Mexican Defeat at San Jacinto--The Mexican President a Captive--Texas Admitted to the Union--Oregon--American Statesmen Blinded by the Hudson Bay Company--Marcus Whitman's Ride--Oregon Saved to the Union--The "Dorr War." The Missouri Compromise, by which Congress, after admitting Missouri as a slave State, took the parallel of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes as a dividing line through the rest of the Louisiana Purchase, between slavery and freedom, averted for another generation the great struggle between North and South. At peace with the rest of the world, the United States had time to devote to national development without the distraction of war, and financial questions, the tariff and internal improvements engrossed the attention of Congress and of the States. The opening of the Erie Canal, connecting Lake Erie with the Hudson River, in 1825, made central New York the great highway of commerce and of travel, and New York gradually became the leading State of the Union in population, wealth and trade. There was a strong agitation in favor of a general system of roads and canals, connecting the various parts of the country, and to be constructed at the expense of the nation, and not of the States. The party known as National Republicans, direct successors of the Federalists, supported this proposition, and also advocated a high tariff on imports and an extension of the charter of the United States Bank, about to expire in 1836. The Democratic Republicans, now known simply as Democrats, denied the constitutional authority of the national government to construct roads and canals, or to impose a tariff except for revenue, or to charter a national bank. During the administration of John Quincy Adams the National Republicans succeeded in having tariff laws enacted in 1824 and 1828, which gave substantial and, in the view of the Democrats, excessive protection to domestic manufactures.