38 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 



England. At the very first reports of what 

 had occurred, the press flamed with demands 

 for the vindication of Britain s outraged honor. 

 The cabinet were much embarrassed to refrain 

 from serious action before the arrival of full and 

 official information as to the affair. War might 

 have been brought about, Castlereagh later 

 told Rush, &quot;if the ministry had but held up a 

 finger/ When all the facts were known, how 

 ever, the government was fully justified in its 

 caution; for on the evidence submitted it was 

 obliged to admit that Arbuthnot and Ambrister 

 had by their relations with the Indians forfeited 

 the right to protection by the British Govern 

 ment against the military power of the United 

 States. Jackson s high-handed proceedings in 

 Florida were in the long run more violently 

 assailed in his own country than abroad. The 

 Monroe administration only with much dif 

 ficulty agreed upon sustaining him, and rival 

 politicians in Congress attacked him without 

 mercy. Popular feeling, however, especially in 

 the West, was enthusiastically in his favor, and 

 eventually made him President of the United 

 States. Not least among the influences that 

 worked to bring him this distinction was the 

 wide-spread tradition that in executing Arbuth- 



