Only Callava and a few other officials and
merchants stayed behind to close up matters of public and private
business.
Jackson's governorship was brief and stormy. In the first place, he
had no taste for administrative routine, and he found no such
opportunity as he had hoped for to confer favors upon his friends. "I
am sure our stay here will not be long," wrote Mrs. Jackson to a
brother in early August. "This office does not suit my husband....
There never was a man more disappointed than he has been. He has not
the power to appoint one of his friends." In the second place, the new
Governor's status was wholly anomalous, since Congress had extended to
the territory only the revenue and anti-slave-trade laws, leaving
Jackson to exercise in other matters the rather vague powers of the
captain general of Cuba and of the Spanish governors of the Floridas.
And in the third place, before his first twenty-four hours were up,
the new executive fell into a desperate quarrel with his predecessor,
a man of sufficiently similar temperament to make the contest a source
of sport for the gods.
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