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hesitate; we must take part with Spain, and our note of December 21, 1804, was intended to communicate and impress this idea." 1

The remainder of the negotiation was but a beating of the air. Though the American negotiators, in a note of April 9, made a distinct threat of war, saying if Spain was indisposed to "adjust these important concerns. . . on fair and equal terms," that "the United States are not unprepared for or unequal to any crisis that may occur," and declaring that they had submitted with unexampled patience to the injuries of which they complain," Señor Cevallos, feeling secure under the ægis of Napoleon took no notice of the threat and proceeded four days later to discuss the western boundary of Louisiana, which he said "should be by a line beginning on the Gulf between the river Caricut, or Cascassia, and the Armenta, or Marmentoa, (and) should go to the north, passing between the Adaes and Natchitoches, until it cuts the Red River." The boundary thence only was to be a subject of negotiation.3

Monroe at this time could write in his diary, "No other alternative presented itself to me than to abandon the object and return to London, or to submit to the terms which it was sufficiently understood France was willing to accept, and seemed in some measure to dictate, which amounted to this: that we should create a new loan of about seventy millions of livres, and transfer the same to Spain, who would immediately pass them over to France, in consideration of which we should be put in possession of the disputed territory, under stipulations which should provide for the adjustment of the ultimate right there, and reimbursement of the money by instalment in seven years."

Notwithstanding this conviction and the passing of four months in unavailing discussion, the American envoys on May 12, 1805, made one more effort in a statement of what they termed their "ultimate conditions." These were, in case Spain would cede all territory east of the Mississippi and arbitrate the claims of the citizens and subjects of each power under the convention of August 11, 1802, the United States would waive all other claims and cede all right to territory west of the line formed by the Rio 1 State Papers, II, 636. Ibid., II, 662. 'Monroe's diary at Aranjuez, April 22, 1805, MSS. State Department.

2

Ibid., II, 659.

84

MONROE'S COMPLETE FAILURE

[1805

Colorado to its headwaters, thence to the south-westerly source of the Red River, thence along the highland forming the watershed of the Mississippi and Missouri and of the Rio Bravo, thence north, with a belt of thirty leagues on each side of the line, or on the American side only, to "remain neutral and unsettled forever."!i The Spanish minister of state, denying the claim of the United States to the territory which they offered to cede for the Floridas, and declaring the propositions wholly unjust to Spain and inadmissible, the American envoys, on May 18, 1805, stated that they considered the negotiations closed. Three days later, Monroe had audience of their Spanish Majesties, left Madrid May 26, reached Paris June 20, remained there until July 17, in the vain hope that the French government would relent, and reached his post at London July 23, conscious of humiliating failure. Pinckney was recalled in October and G. W. Erving was sent from London to take charge of the legation as chargé d'affaires. Pinckney's successor, James Bowdoin, did not leave the United States until the following summer, and then only to touch at Santander, proceed to London for consultation with Monroe, and thence to France, where he was to be associated with General Armstrong in Paris, to which capital any further negotiation in Spanish matters was now transferred, the presence of a minister at Madrid being regarded undesirable in what had become very strained relations. How strained, may be judged from the reception by Godoy, in December, of Mr. Erving's remonstrances against the seizures of American ships in flagrant violation of the treaty of 1795. Receiving Erving with "the good-natured courtesy which marked his manners," he asked, "How go our affairs? Are we to have peace or war?" As to the seizures the prince said it was impossible for Spain to allow American vessels to carry English property. "But," said Erving, “we have a treaty which secures us that right"; to which Godoy replied, "Certainly, I know you have a treaty, for I made it with Mr. Pinckney"; and proceeding to announce that the free goods provision would be no longer respected, said: "You may choose either peace or war. It's the same thing to me. I will tell you candidly that if you will go to war this is certainly the moment and you may take our possessions from us. I advise you to go to war now, if you 1 State Papers, II, 665. จ Ibid., 666.

1

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GODOY OFFERS PEACE OR WAR

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think this is best for you; and then the peace which will be made in Europe will leave us two at war." 1

There was in this a hint of the foreboding which Godoy-far the cleverest Spaniard of his time-must have had of the storm which was soon to break upon Spain from France. He may have hoped that an American war would bring difficulties to France, in which would lie safety to the peninsula which itself was soon to be much more seriously threatened than was distant Florida.

1

Erving to Madison, December 7, 1805, MSS. State Department, Adams, III, 38.

CHAPTER V

WAVERING BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE, PROPOSED ALLIANCE WITH GREAT BRITAIN ABANDONED FOR INTRIGUE WITH FRANCE

HAD Jefferson had a tithe of Napoleon's foresight and decision he would now have acted as Armstrong advised in a letter sent to Monroe while still at Madrid. "It is simply," he said, "to take a strong and prompt possession of the northern bank of the Rio Bravo, leaving the eastern limit in statu quo. A stroke of this kind would at once bring Spain to reason and France to her rescue, and without giving either room to quarrel. You might then negotiate and shape the bargain pretty much as you pleased."

But the timidity of character common to both Jefferson and Madison stood in the way of such action, politically wise and morally just. While deprecating even the possibility of war, they had been pressing the claim to West Florida to the very verge of hostilities, and this, though assured by statement after statement, official and unofficial, from Frenchman and Spaniard of its baselessness. Nor was Madison blind to the truth and meaning of such statements. He could write Jefferson: "If [France] should persist in disavowing her right to sell West Florida to the United States, and above all can prove it to have been the mutual understanding with Spain that West Florida was no part of Louisiana, it will place our claim on very different ground-such probably as would not be approved by the world, and such certainly as would not with that approbation be maintained by force." "

Jefferson, every effort of whose administration thus far had been toward the unjust despoilment of Spain, could write: "That our relations with Spain should be of a peaceable and friendly character

1

Armstrong to Monroe, May 4, 1805, MSS. State Department.

2 Madison to Jefferson, March 27, 1805, Jefferson MSS., Adams, III, 55.

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GALLATIN FAVORS A NAVY

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has been our most earnest desire. Had Spain met us with the same dispositions, our idea was that her existence in this hemisphere and ours should have rested on the same bottom; we should have swam or sunk together. We want nothing of hers and we want no other nation to possess what is hers. But she has met our advances with jealousy, secret malice, and ill-faith. Our patience under this unworthy return of disposition is now on its last trial. And the issue of what is now depending between us will decide whether our relations with her are to be sincerely friendly or permanently hostile. I still wish and would cherish the former but have ceased to expect it." 1

It is impossible to reconcile the conduct of the American executive and the sentiment of these letters. Gallatin, secretary of the treasury, and in many ways the most solid mind of the administration, said: "The demands from Spain were too hard to have expected, even independent of French interference, any success from the negotiation." Though he had been steadily opposed to any increase of expenditures for the navy, he now said that which was the only real solution of the problem of the preservation of American dignity. "Perhaps a law making efficient provision for building a dozen of ships of the line would be the most dignified and most forcible mode of reopening the negotiation." He could not help, however, hedging somewhat in remarking, “But it will be a doubt with some whether the remedy be not worse than the disorder.""

Deeply moved by the humiliation which his diplomacy had brought, Jefferson's thoughts now turned again to a British alliance. On August 7, 1805 he wrote Madison the suggestion, and asked that he would consult the secretaries of war and of the navy, and himself on the same date wrote Gallatin, on whose judgment he had special reliance. Jefferson's views, given more fully in a later letter to Madison, were that "the treaty should be provisional only, to come into force on the event of our being engaged in war with either France or Spain during the present war in Europe. In that event we should make common cause and England should

'Jefferson to Bowdoin, April 27, 1805, Writings, VIII, 351. 'Gallatin to Madison, August 6, 1805, Writings, I, 238. 'Jefferson, Writings, VIII, 375.

'Ibid., VIII, 375.