I must tie the bag and save the country."
So Jackson sent a proclamation to the people of South Carolina
begging them to think before they dragged their state into war.
For war they should have, he told them plainly, if they persisted
in their ways.
But South Carolina replied defiantly talking of tyranny and
oppression, and declaring again their right to withdraw from the
Union if they wished.
Both sides were so defiant that it seemed as if there might indeed
be war. But there was none.
South Carolina found that the other Southern states would not join
her as she had expected. So when the Government yielded so far as
to reduce the tariff to some extent South Carolina grew quiet again
and the danger passed.
Jackson was twice elected President. And at the end of his second
term two states were added to the Union. In June, 1836, Arkansas,
part of the Louisiana Purchase, became a state. It was still rather
a wild place where men wore long two-edged knives called after
a wild rascal, Captain James Bowie, and they were so apt to use
them on the slightest occasions that the state was nicknamed the
Toothpick State.
Arkansas came in as a slave state, and early the following year
Michigan came in as a free state. Michigan had belonged at one
time to New France, but after the War of Independence Britain gave
it up to the United States when it became part of the North West
Territory.
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