1782]

GUARANTEE OFFERED SPAIN

23

September 19, 1781, Mr. Jay submitted, on September 22, propositions for a basis of amity and alliance' which included two of extreme importance, as follows:

"VI. The United States shall relinquish to his Catholic Majesty, and in future forbear to use or attempt to use, the navigation of the river Mississippi from the thirty-first degree of north latitude that is, from the point where it leaves the United Statesdown to the ocean."

"VIII. That the United States shall guarantee to his Catholic Majesty all his dominions in North America."

Jay, however, most fortunately and wisely added on his own responsibility a statement that this offer must necessarily be limited by the duration of the pending circumstances, "and consequently that if the acceptance of it should, together with the proposed alliance, be postponed to a general peace, the United States will cease to consider themselves bound to any propositions or offers which he may now make on their behalf." He was upheld throughout by a resolution in Congress April 30, 1782,3 which might be read as a withdrawal of the offer itself, an interpretation no doubt intended by Madison, its introducer and a vehement opponent of such concession.

Nothing could have been more fortunate than Spain's vacillations and procrastination. They saved the United States from an unhappy situation whose only solution later was war or a dismemberment of the newly formed Confederation and the erection of a separate sovereignty west of the Alleghanies.

A forcible indication of Spain's intentions appeared in the Madrid Gazette of March 12, 1782, which mentioned the arrival of a letter from the commander-in-chief at Havana giving news of an expedition of sixty-five militia and sixty Indians which had left St. Louis January 2 and had seized the post of St. Joseph on Lake Michigan, "which the English occupied at two hundred and twenty leagues distant from that of the above-mentioned St. Louis. They made prisoners of the few English they found in it. . . . Don Eugenio Purre took possession, in the name of the king, of that place and its dependencies, and of the river of the Illinois; in con

...

1

Diplom. Cor., IV, 760-762.

'Ibid., V, 380.

'Ibid., IV, 761.

24

SPAIN CAPTURES PENSACOLA

[1782

sequence whereof the standard of his majesty was there displayed during the whole time."1 As Jay well said, it was not necessary for him to swell his letter with remarks on this subject; the meaning was self-evident: it was carrying out the views as to the occupancy of the lands east of the Mississippi expressed in the fourth proposition of Spain in the communication laid before Congress February 2, 1780.2 The Spanish action, however, was more than offset by Clark's expedition and his capture of Kaskaskia, in southwestern Illinois, and it was this little border army which gave the United States the claim of actual conquest and occupancy of this region which became of such importance in the discussion of the final settlement of our boundaries. The one real success of the Spanish arms was in the capture by Galvez, the young governor of Louisiana, of the British posts in West Florida, that at Pensacola falling May 9, 1781, a success which gave Congress much concern as giving Spain a claim to the region in the coming negotiations for peace.

Franklin was of one mind with Jay as to the attitude of Spain. "I am surprised," he writes, "at the dilatory, reserved manner of your court. I know not to what amount you have obtained aids from it, but if they are not considerable it were to be wished you had never been sent there, as the slight they put upon our offered friendship is very disreputable to us, and of course hurtful to our affairs elsewhere. I think they are short-sighted and don't look very far into futurity, or they would seize with avidity so excellent an opportunity of securing a neighbor's friendship, which may hereafter be of great consequence to their American affairs. If I were in Congress I should advise your being instructed to thank them for past favors and take your leave." He gave this advice a little later in any case. He wrote April 22, 1782: "Here you are greatly wanted, for messengers begin to come and go and there is much talk of a treaty proposed, but I can neither make nor agree to propositions of peace without the assistance of my colleagues. I wish, therefore, that you would resolve upon the journey and render yourself here as soon as possible. You could be of infinitive service. Spain has taken four years to consider

1

Diplom. Cor., V, 363.

'Supra., 18. 'Franklin to Jay, January 19, 1782, Diplom. Cor., V, 119.

1782]

BOUNDARIES CLAIMED BY SPAIN

25

whether she would treat with us or not. Give her forty, and let us in the meantime mind our own business." 1

Jay accepted Franklin's advice, and in June, 1782, left Madrid for Paris, leaving Mr. Carmichael as chargé d'affaires. The dismal failure of the final attack on Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, paved the way to a general pacification. Peace negotiations began with both France and her Spanish ally, secretly and actively opposed to the broad and generous treatment of the United States by Great Britain. Both allies would gladly have seen the United States hemmed in by the Alleghanies, and both lent their efforts to this. Count d'Aranda, the Spanish ambassador at Paris, charged with the Spanish negotiations for peace, soon made known the reason for Spain's unwillingness to enter into alliance with the United States on the bases offered by stating Spain's real expectancies. He insisted, "First, that the western country had never belonged to, or been claimed as belonging to, the ancient colonies. That previous to the last war it had belonged to France, and after its cession to Britain remained a distinct part of her dominions, until, by the conquest of West Florida and certain ports on the Mississippi and Illinois, it became vested in Spain. Secondly, that supposing the Spanish right of conquest did not extend over all that country, still it was possessed by free and independent nations of Indians whose lands we could not with any propriety consider as belonging to us." A few days later Count d'Aranda sent Mr. Jay a map "with his proposed lines marked on it in red ink. He ran it from a lake near the confines of Georgia, but east of the Flint River, to the confluence of the Kanawha with the Ohio, thence round the western shores of Lakes Erie and Huron, and thence round Lake Michigan to Lake Superior." "

2

The evident association of France with Spain, to despoil the United States of territories into parts of which had already begun the stream of settlers from Virginia and North Carolina, brought a separate settlement between Great Britain and the United States, and the signing of a provisional treaty, November 30, 1782, effected without the knowledge of France or Spain as to details, and in direct, and as we now know, necessary disregard of the explicit

'Jay to Livingston, November 17, 1782, Ibid., VI, 22.

'Ibid., 23.

26

INSTRUCTIONS OF CONGRESS

[1782

instructions of Congress to "make the most candid and confidential communications upon all subjects to the ministers of our generous ally, the King of France, and to undertake nothing in the negotiations for peace or truce without their knowledge and concurrence, and ultimately to govern yourselves by their advice and opinion.": The action of France in supporting Spain's claims, and in urging, even so early as 1781, the presentation of the American "demands with the greatest moderation and reserve, save independence,' cannot now be regarded as due to a mere desire to please Spain. Such support can only be understood when we recognize that French statesmen had already begun to look to Spain for the restitution of Louisiana, which had been given her twenty years before, and which was to be forced from her by France twenty years later. Vergennes himself attempted its recovery for France, and "Spain was willing to return it, but asked a price which, although the mere reimbursement of expenses, exceeded the means of the French treasury."

Had the instructions from Congress been followed, the new republic would have ended with the Alleghanies; Canada would have been bounded by the Ohio, and Spanish North America would have reached east to Georgia and the Kanawha. The large views of the British government of the period on one hand, the independent action of the American commissioners on the other, saved the United States from so serious a situation. The Spanish and French Bourbons were thwarted in reality by the adhesion of England to the old colonial charters. It is true that there were intrigues later, on the part of British officials in Canada, to restore the Quebec boundary of 1774; and Spain, as will be seen, conspired to separate Kentucky and the South-west from the Union, but with slight adjustment the lines consented to by Shelburne were to stand until carried to the Pacific, at the expense of the power which had desired to restrain the Union to, roughly, what are now New England and the Atlantic states north of Florida.

The time has come for Americans to recognize the magnanimity, taking the word in its broadest sense, of the English ministry

1Secret Journals, Diplomatic Correspondence, IV, 477 and 505.

Report of Conference to Congress, May 28, 1781, Dip. Cor., IV, 453–457. Adams, United States, I, 353. Winsor, The Westward Movement, 213.

1783]

DISAPPOINTMENT OF SPAIN

27

which made the peace of 1783. The names of Shelburne, Oswald, Jay, Franklin, and Adams are those of the men who stood at the parting of the ways and guided so fortunately the affairs of the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race at a most critical period for both. The first held, following the views of Adam Smith and Dr. Price, that it was "better by far for England that North America should become a powerful sovereignty, controlled by men of English blood, embracing the whole Mississippi Valley, than that that fertile valley should be subjected to the paralyzed power of Spain; and that the English-speaking people of America should in this way be so weakened as to be permanently dependent upon an alliance with France. It was on these principles that the peace of 1782-3 was negotiated." 1

The deep disappointment of Spain was expressed in a paper submitted to the king by the Spanish negotiator, Count d'Aranda, "The independence of the English colonies has been recognized. It is for me a subject of grief and fear. France had but few possessions in America, but she was bound to consider that Spain, her most intimate ally, had many, and that she now stands exposed to terrible reverses. From the beginning France has acted against her true interests in encouraging and supporting this independence, and so I have often declared to the minister of that nation." 2

It was not until February 22, 1783 that the Spanish government was able to bring itself to declare its acceptance of the situation. The foreign minister, Florida Blanca, then informed La Fayette, who at the moment was at Madrid, in a note which carried a

'Wharton, Introduction to Diplomatic Correspondence, p. 328. "It is impossible," says Lecky, "not to be struck with the skill, hardihood, and good fortune that marked the American negotiation. Everything the United States could with any shadow of plausibility demand from England they obtained, and much of what they obtained was granted them in opposition to the two great powers by whose assistance they had triumphed."-Lecky, England in the XVIII Century, V, 199, ed., 1893. This treaty, made with such secrecy, had also, by securing America on the side of peace, the very important result of saving Gibraltar to Great Britain. The British cabinet had "actually resolved to exchange Gibraltar for Guadeloupe when the news of the accomplished peace with America induced them to reconsider their determination."-Lecky, IV, 284. Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, III, 305– 306, 314.

'John Basset Moore, American Diplomacy, 18.