28

SPAIN'S UNFRIENDLY ATTITUDE

[1783

threat, that it was "his majesty's intentions to abide for the present by the limits established by the treaty of the 30th of November 1782, between the English and Americans; yet the king intends to inform himself particularly whether it can be in any way inconvenient or prejudicial to settle that affair amicably with the United States." 1

Spain for twelve years more was to occupy the same sinister position. "All this while she was seeking to lure any one who would act in concert with her, both among the wild tribes of the South-west and among the almost as wild frontiersmen of the outlying settlements of the confederacy and the later Union.""

1Count of Florida Blanca to La Fayette, February 22, 1783, Diplom. Cor., VI, 261.

2 Winsor, The Westward Movement, p. 327.

CHAPTER II

DISCONTENT AND INTRIGUE IN THE SOUTH-WEST AND THE TREATY OF 1795

By the provisional treaty between the United States and Great Britain, which was to go into effect when terms of peace should be concluded between Great Britain, France, and Spain, the northern boundary of West Florida was established at the parallel of thirtyone degrees. A separate secret article however provided that, should Great Britain recover West Florida, its northern boundary should run due east from the mouth of the Yazoo in latitude 32° 28', a line established by England in 1764 for her own administrative purposes. The concession was yielded by the American commissioners as a compromise with the British negotiator, Oswald, who had endeavored to extend this boundary to the Ohio.'

The provisional treaty between Great Britain, France, and Spain, of January 20, 1783, made definitive as also that with the United States, September 3, 1783, yielded the Floridas to Spain without assignment of limits. When the British and American understanding came to be known, Spain naturally took her stand upon the line 32° 28′ as the boundary not only established in 1764, but recognized by both England and the United States. She claimed the territory by right of conquest during the war, and when the conquest was made, the more northerly line was undoubtedly that in force. There is no gainsaying the fact of the strength of Spain's contention.

Spain during the war had also extended her posts northward and was in occupancy at Natchez and Walnut Hills, (now Vicksburg.) Settlers from the American side had been moving in under Spanish control. As soon as the secret article became known, Spain at once demanded that this region should be regarded as within the boundaries of Florida as ceded to herself, and held to her contention 'Diplom. Cor., VI, 567.

30

GARDOQUI'S MISSION

[1785

by the continuation therein of her military posts. The American confederacy thus found itself, in 1784, with every river of its territory, leading to the Gulf of Mexico, in the hands of a power which did not dissemble its unfriendliness; and, what was of deeper importance, it was itself threatened by dissolution and civil war. The almost anarchy of the four years succeeding the revolution was Spain's opportunity, and she did not hesitate to use her advantage.

Spain's first envoy, Señor Gardoqui, with the title of chargé d'affaires, a title the modesty of which was in itself indicative of Spanish reluctance to deal with the new nation, did not arrive in the United States until May 15, 1785, nearly six years from the first effort of Congress to enter into diplomatic relations with his country. He carried plenary powers to arrange all questions of dispute, but his mission was destined to be chiefly one of intrigue for separation of the western country from the Union. He was already well known to Mr. Jay, to whom he had given much assistance in his difficulties while near the Spanish court.

It was the era of the most picturesque episode of American history-the great crossing. From 1769, when that fine type of courage and self-reliance, Daniel Boone, had gone into Kentucky, a stream of daring and independent frontiersmen had been pouring over the Alleghanies, and the region which is now Kentucky and Tennessee had nearly a hundred thousand people who, in reason and by right, looked upon the Mississippi as their proper highway to the ocean. To close this only outlet meant to them either war between the United States and Spain or the setting up of an independent West, which would settle the difficulty in its own way either by hostile operations against Spain on its own account, by a recognition of Spanish sovereignty or, as was in the minds of some, by reuniting with Great Britain.

The chaotic condition of the affairs of the American confederacy, the widespread belief, preceding the almost fortuitous forming of the constitution, in the disruption of the existing weak union of the states, and the leaning toward Spain of some of the most influential men of the West, gave Gardoqui good grounds for believing that it was possible to unite again the western country, south of the Ohio, to Louisiana. The withholding of any conces

1785]

SOUTH-WESTERN INTRIGUE

31

sion of the navigation of the great highway of the people, combined with dissatisfaction with their political status, was Gardoqui's main hope toward bringing this about. His attitude was a perfectly reasonable one. It could not be otherwise when feeling was such that Sevier, the ex-governor of Franklin, the short-lived state of a year, set up, in 1786, from the western portion of North Carolina, could write the governor of Louisiana, September 12, 1788, informing him that the inhabitants of Franklin were unanimous "in their vehement desire to form an alliance and treaty of commerce with Spain, and put themselves under her protection," " Sevier continued, begging "for ammunition, money and whatever other assistance Miro could grant, to aid the contemplated separation from North Carolina;" "which," said Sevier, "has refused to accept the new constitution proposed for the confederacy, and therefore a considerable time will elapse before she becomes a member of the Union, if that event ever happen." "

1

Intrigue had begun indeed, before the arrival of Gardoqui. Miro, the acting governor at New Orleans, had entered into a treaty, May, 1784, with representatives of the various tribes of the then South-west, headed by a half-breed named McGillivray, the product of a Scotch father and an Indian mother, who desired to put his people under the protection of Spain, in anticipation of the setting up of an independent government by the western Americans.

3

Washington, who, in addition to his other great qualities, was the greatest practical statesman of the revolutionary period, expressed in the same year after a trip to the West covering nearly seven hundred miles, his deep sense of the danger, in a letter to Governor Benjamin Harrison of Virginia. "The western states," he said, "(I speak now from my own observation) stand as it were upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them any way."4

It was in such conditions, of which the above is necessarily but the barest sketch, that Jay, elected by Congress, May 7, 1785, secretary for foreign affairs, received from Congress, July 21,

'Gayarré, Louisiana, 257.

See McGillivray to Miro, Ibid., 159.

Ibid., 258.

'Washington to Harrison, October 10, 1784, Correspondence, IX, 63.

32

JAY AND GARDOQUI

[1786

powers to treat with the Spanish envoy; limited, however, by instructions "that he enter into no treaty, compact or convention whatever, with the said representative of Spain, which did not stipulate our right to the navigation of the Mississippi, and the boundaries as established in our treaty with Great Britain." Gardoqui was equally explicit, his letter to Jay, May 25, 1786, stating that "the king will not permit any nation to navigate between the two banks belonging to his majesty." The result was an impasse in dealing with which Jay, for once, failed to reach the high standard of judgment and statesmanship which so distinguished his fine career. On August 3, 1786, he addressed Congress in a speech advising, as the negotiation seemed otherwise impossible of accomplishment, acceptance of a treaty; one of the articles of which would stipulate that the United States would forbear the use of the navigation of the Mississippi, below their territories, but that on account of this the treaty should be limited to twentyfive or thirty years.

Jay's arguments were: "1. Because unless that matter can in some way or other be settled, the treaty, however advantageous, will not be concluded. 2. As that navigation is not at present important, nor will probably become much so, in less than twentyfive or thirty years, a forbearance to use it while we do not want it is no great sacrifice. 3. Spain now excludes us from that navigation and with a strong hand holds it against us. She will not yield it peaceably and therefore we can only acquire it by war. Now, as we are not prepared for a war with any power; as many of the states would be little inclined to a war with Spain for that object at this day, and as such a war would for those and a variety of obvious reasons be inexpedient, it follows that Spain will, for a long space of time yet to come, exclude us from that navigation. Why, therefore, should we not (for a valuable consideration, too) consent to forbear to use what we know is not in our power to use? 4. If Spain and the United States should part on this point, what are the latter to do? Will it after that be consistent with their dignity to permit Spain forcibly to exclude them from a right which, at the expense of a beneficial treaty, they have asserted? They will find themselves obliged either to do this, and be humiliated, or they 1State Papers, I, 249.