and thence to Virginia. A few days later forty men with supplies for the fort were captured by Clark as they came down the Wabash. Thus the conquest of Vincennes was completed, with cost to the Americans of only one man slightly wounded.

Had Clark been reënforced, as he expected to be, he would have pushed on to Detroit and have taken Canada in flank. But that was not to be. A regiment was organized for his aid, under Evan Shelby, but was diverted to good work elsewhere. So Clark, acting under the orders of Jefferson, who was now governor of Virginia, went on to the Mississippi River and built Fort Jefferson, just below the mouth of the Ohio, in the spring of 1780, thus establishing the American claim to that great river. Nor was that the only American post on the Mississippi. At the very time when Clark had set out for Kaskaskia, in February, 1778, a smaller party of adventurers went from Pittsburg down the Ohio and the Mississippi, in boats, as far as Natchez, where, on February 18, they raised the American flag and proclaimed possession of the country in the name of the United States. Spain, whose territories they were thus invading, took little notice of them at the time; they seemed too insignificant; but later she strenuously though vainly protested against their act and its results.

In such fashion did the thirteen colonies, in the midst of the throes of the Revolution, enter into practical possession of the goodly "hinter

land" which they had helped England to wrest from France. Thus did they fasten open, for themselves and for their posterity, that door of empire through whose crevices Spottswood had peeped and at which the young Washington had knocked so rudely. Thus did they expand their coast strip westward to the Mississippi River, claiming, and promising to make good their claim to, the whole continent, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the St. Mary's River to the Great Lakes. Upon that goodly realm, with all its further potentialities, presently to be recognized as necessities, they maintained a masterful hold, until the capitulation at Yorktown and the ensuing Treaty of Paris confirmed it to them forever.

In the making of that treaty the chief point of controversy was the confirmation or repudiation of Clark's conquest of the region north of the Ohio River, and therein, after the first passage of words, curiously enough our ally was the very power with which we had been at war, while our chief foe was the power which had been our ally in that war. The English government displayed in the making of peace some of that wisdom which it so much lacked before and during the war. It realized that the colonies were lost to it forever. But it still held Canada and various West India islands, and it realized that if it was to hold these permanently and develop a large commerce with America, it would be far better for it for the colonies to possess

the Mississippi Valley than for France or Spain to have it. Indeed, it would be to its advantage to have the colonies develop themselves, into a strong and extensive English-speaking nation, which would in time dominate the continent, rather than have them a stunted and feeble state at the mercy of France and Spain.

For those reasons England was inclined to make a treaty of peace on liberal terms. She first tried, naturally enough, to regain the territory north of the Ohio for herself. All south of that river she conceded unhesitatingly to the United States, but all north of it she wanted to retain, or to regain as a part of Canada. To that the United States would not listen for a moment. Its peace commissioners would not even discuss the matter. Franklin, the most conciliatory and least aggressive of them, when the subject was broached by the English commissioners, unhesitatingly replied, “No, sir! If you insist upon that, we go back to Yorktown!" Faced with such resolution on the part of Franklin, and knowing that his two colleagues, Jay and Adams, were if possible even more determined upon that point, the English government gracefully yielded and practically signified its willingness to surrender the whole eastern half of the Mississippi Valley, up to the lakes, to the United States. Botta, in his " History of the American War," strangely says that this agreement "brought within the territory of the United

States immense countries, lakes and rivers, to which, up to that time, they had never pretended any sort of claim." As a matter of fact, the United States had ever since the Seven Years' War explicitly and strenuously claimed it all.

The treaty was not, however, to be made simply between England and the United States. Had such been the case, it would speedily have been concluded in satisfactory fashion. But France had to be consulted. She had been our ally in the war, and was supposed to be our sincere friend. Accordingly it was agreed that the United States should not sign a treaty with England until France and England had also come to terms. Moreover, Congress, believing in the disinterested friendship of France, and having an exalted opinion of the wisdom and astuteness of French diplomats, categorically instructed the three American commissioners to be guided and governed by French counsels in all the negotiations. Truly, America has cause to thank God that her commissioners had the sense and manhood, when it came to the sticking-point, to disobey and violate those instructions! For France was strongly opposed to the granting of the American claims to the territory beyond the Alleghany Mountains, and Spain, between whom and France a working understanding existed, was still more bitter against us.

Spain particularly wanted to keep the United States shut away from the Mississippi River, so