1786] DEMANDS OF THE NORTH 3833 must attack Spain. Are they ripe and prepared for this? I wish I could say they are." 1 The navigation interests of the North, ignoring the situation in the Western country, demanded the trade facilities which Spain was willing to offer, and were ready to sacrifice the West to these. The North felt that its own interests were being sunk, for what appeared to it a contest for an abstract right which it would require years to make into concrete value. The ocean-carrying trade was perishing under British orders in council which forbade American vessels to carry fish to the West Indies or any but British ships to carry American goods to Britain. Spanish-American ports were closed to all but Spanish vessels. The proposed treaty with Spain would open Spain and the Canaries to American products, to the lumber, tar, fish, grain, and flour which America was ready to supply so cheaply, and in such quantities. Why should this potentially great and lucrative traffic, the only one which could bring money into a country destitute of mines of gold and silver, be forgone for the benefit, still in the far future, of a small community of widely scattered frontiersmen, who would be occupied, for years to come, chiefly in fighting the Indians? In the vote taken August 29, 1786, on the motion to repeal the instructions of a year before, exacting the right of navigation, every member present from the seven Northern states voted “aye"; every Southern member present (all the states of the South being represented except Delaware) voted "no." The motion was entered in the journal as carried. An objection brought forward next day, that the Articles of Confederation required the assent of nine states to treaties, brought a storm of debate in which the North and South were as rigidly and oppositely arrayed as they were to be seventy-five years later. Madison, greatly depressed, wrote Jefferson: "To speak the truth, I almost despair even of [having the convention of 1786 called at Annapolis fulfill the first intent, the accomplishment of a commercial reform]. You will find the cause in a measure now before Congress, of which you will receive the detail from Colonel Monroe. I content myself with hinting that it is a proposed treaty with Spain, one article of which shuts up the Mississippi twenty-five 'Congress, Secret Journals, IV, 53–54. 34 FEARS OF SEPARATION [1788 or thirty years; passing by the other Southern states, figure to yourself the effect of such a stipulation on the Assembly of Virginia already jealous of Northern politics, and which will be composed of about thirty members from the Western waters; of a majority of others attached to the Western country from interests of their own, of their friends or their constituents, and of many others who, though indifferent to the Mississippi, will zealously play off the disgust of its friends against federal measures. Figure to yourself its effect upon the people at large on the Western waters, who are patiently waiting for a favorable result to the negotiation with Gardoqui, and who will consider themselves as sold by their Atlantic brethren. Will it be an unnatural consequence if they consider themselves as absolved from every federal tie, and court some protection for their betrayed rights? This protection will appear more obtainable from the maritime power of Britain, than from any other quarter; and Britain will be more ready than any other nation to seize an opportunity of embroiling our affairs. . . . As far as I can learn the assent of nine states in Congress will not at this time be got to the projected treaty, but an unsuccessful attempt by six or seven will favor the views of Spain, and be fatal I fear to an augmentation of the federal authority, if not to the little now existing. My personal situation is rendered by this business particularly mortifying. Ever since I have been out of Congress I have been inculcating on our assembly a confidence in the equal attention of Congress to the rights and interests of every part of the republic, and on the Western members in particular, the necessity of making the Union respectable by new powers to Congress if they wished Congress to negotiate with effect for the Mississippi.' 1 On September 16, 1788, the adoption of a resolution by the expiring Congress of the old confederacy that the subject "be referred to the federal government which is to assemble in March next," gave the death blow to Spain's contention. She was now to deal with a concrete government instead of with the representatives of thirteen loosely bound states. Gardoqui returned to Spain in 1789, with nothing accomplished in the way of a treaty, leaving behind him a state of extreme tension, which Señores Saunders and Viar, who, together, were now 'Madison to Jefferson, August 12, 1786, Writings, II, 262. 1791] NEGOTIATIONS REOPENED 35 the representatives of Spain near the American government, proceeded to increase by threatening letters respecting the "United States meddling with the affairs of nations who are, by treaties solemn and ratified, allied with Spain,"1 these nations and allies being the Indians of the South-west. The South was wiser than the North. The West's only practical outlet, in a day which knew only the creeping transport to the Atlantic seaboard of the slow-moving wagon over almost impossible mountain roads, was the Mississippi. It knew no other sea than the great river, and no other ship but the flatboat. The government of the Union must stand by their demands or the hundred thousand of population now in Tennessee and Kentucky would arrange the question in their own way, by setting up an independent government which would win the right of navigation by force of arms, or by becoming a part of the Spanish dominions. The West was seething with intrigue, and no conspirator was more deeply immersed than James Wilkinson, a Marylander, a soldier of the revolution, who was later to become general-in-chief of the American army; was to be allied with Burr's adventure; was long the paid agent of Spain, and was to play a part in American history as ignoble as that of Benedict Arnold, but more fortunate than his brother traitor through the long burial of the proofs of his villainy in the archives of Simancas.2 The constant and rapid flow of population across the mountains and down the Ohio added to the difficulties of the situation. There were but so many more voices to be raised in protest against the trying conditions now also accentuated by the difficulties with the Indians of the South-west, whom Spain, as mentioned, had taken under her protection. It was clear that an agreement or war must come. This was as plain to Spain as to Washington and his cabinet, and December 16, 1791, the Spanish minister for foreign affairs made known the readiness of Madrid to negotiate. William Carmichael, chargé d'affaires at Madrid, and William Short, chargé at Paris, were appointed the American commissioners, with lengthy instructions dated March 18, 1792, 'State Papers, I, 265. 2 For copies of Wilkinson's treasonable correspondence see Gayarré, Louisiana (Spanish Domination). 36 TREATY OR SEPARATION [1793 which demanded the parallel of thirty-one degrees as a boundary, the free navigation of the river, and a place of deposit for American goods near the mouth.1 But Gardoqui was again the commissioner for Spain, and the American commissioners found Spanish views, as expressed by him, unchanged. In their despatch of May 5, 1793, they stated very clearly the impressions which Gardoqui had received in the United States. "He still sees them divided among themselves and without efficient government. . . . He saw some individuals of the Western country, or going to settle there, who treated their adhesion to the rest of the Union as visionary. From hence he has formed opinions, which he has not concealed from us, that the United States do not desire this navigation or the limits we ask, or at least do not desire it so generally as that they could be brought to make any general effort to obtain it. . . . He did not conceal from us that he thought it impossible the Northern, Middle, and Southern states should ever be brought to act in concert with respect to a foreign enemy out of their territory; and even if they should, that they had no means of acting efficaciously until they should have a marine -an event he regarded as never to take place, or at least to be so far off as not to be worthy of present consideration.” 2 Gardoqui's impressions did not differ so greatly from those of American statesmen at this moment. In 1794 it was the opinion. of Randolph, who had succeeded Jefferson as secretary of state, that "the people of Kentucky either contemning or ignorant of the consequences, are restrained from hostility by a pack-thread. They demand the conclusion of the negotiations or a categorical answer from Spain. What if the government of Kentucky should force us either to support them in their hostilities against Spain, or to disavow and renounce them, war at this moment would not be war with Spain alone. The lopping off of Kentucky from the Union is dreadful to contemplate, even if it should not attach itself to some other power." This other power was now England. Simcoe wrote to the Lords of Trade (September 1): "It is generally understood that above 'State Papers, I, 252–257. 'Carmichael and Short to secretary of state, Ibid., I, 262-263. 1794] TREATY CONCLUDED 37 half the inhabitants of Kentucky and the Western waters are already inclined to a connection with Great Britain." Thurston, a Kentucky observer, had just before written to Washington that a powerful faction was scheming to place the country under British protection.1 The French minister, Genêt, who arrived in 1793, had views which looked to reuniting Louisiana with France. He was enlisting in the West men in the French service, to act against Spain, which was now (1794) at war with France; and was commissioning officers, among whom, as major general, was George Rogers Clark, now through drink but the shadow of a once great figure. The whole so-called civilized world was, however, in one of its periodic throes of social reconstruction; the French revolution was in full progress; the French nation was spreading its new-found views with the sword; America, which had but just come to its real birth, in the newly formed constitution, was still with the unformed mind and the weakness of infantile conditions, and apparently, to the European observer, and to many patriotic but despairing Americans, ready for despoilment. On November 24, 1794, in the month and year in which the new treaty between Great Britain and the United States was signed in London by John Jay and Lord Grenville, Thomas Pinckney, American minister in London, was commissioned envoy extraordinary to attempt to conclude the long abortive negotiations at Madrid. He arrived June 28, 1795, and found changed conditions. Godoy, Duke of Alcudia, soon to be known as Prince of the Peace, from the peace with France signed at Bale, July 22, 1795, was now an all powerful minister. The treaty with Great Britain, in which was seen a possible alliance between that country and the United States, and the former's threatening posture toward Spain, were taken to heart by Godoy, and on October 27, 1795, was signed a treaty which conceded all the United States could fairly ask and more than could have been hoped. It stands a memorial of elevation of mind and breadth of view not generally accorded the young favorite of Charles IV and his queen, and who was far more the statesman and able man of affairs than history has generally allowed. Free ships were to make free goods; a convention was 'Winsor, The Westward Movement, 542–543. 'Godoy, Memoirs, I, 458. |