USA > Florida > The purchase of Florida; its history and diplomacy > Part 2
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Yet for the accomplishment of the general purposes of the war, America became an essential ally. A large part of the British naval force was located in American waters, engaged in blockading as well as in more active service, and the situation demanded all the land force which England could command. Spain, however, did not yield to the per- sistent representations of France and America until an offer of mediation on her part had been curtly rebuffed by the British minister.
Still she constantly refused an alliance with America except upon what were felt to be the preposterous terms she had already offered, and a small wonder is it that con- gress felt that, as the price of a treaty, she was seeking to de- spoil an ally. Now that she was actually a party to the war, the necessity for a treaty became less urgent, for was she not at war with England as effectively for her own objects as she would be for ours, and why donate to her the valuable Mississippi? Doubtless the effect of a Spanish-American alliance on England and other nations would be favorable to the United States, but the price was exorbitant. Jay remarked: "The cession of this navigation will, in my opin- ion, render a future war with Spain unavoidable and I shall
1. Carmichael to Committee on Foreign Affairs, Nov. 28, 1780. Wharton, Vol. IV, p. 167.
2. By secret convention of April 12, 1779, with France.
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The Purchase of Florida
look upon my subscribing to the one as fixing the certainty of the other."1 But Spain proceeded to accomplish by force of arms that which she had been unable to secure by diplomatic arrangement with the struggling colonists. De- clining to recognize any right of the colonies to the Mis- sissippi or any land bordering thereon, either to the east or west, she found thus a fruitful field for her arms and her valor. In January, 1781, an allied Spanish and Indian force set out from the town of St. Louis of the Illinois and captured the post of St. Joseph. In the name of his Cath- olic Majesty they took possession of the town and surround- ing country with impressive formality. Thus had the American struggle for liberation become also a Spanish war of conquest. The capture of St. Joseph caused ill-concealed alarm among the American leaders. Speaking of this con- quest, Franklin, in a letter to Livingston, said: "While they decline our offered friendship, are they to be suffered to encroach on our bounds and shut us up within the Appalach- ian Mountains ? I begin to fear they have some such pro- ject." 2
Montmorin, writing to Vergennes of a conversation with Count de Florida Blanca in 1782, says :
"I thought right, Monsieur, to report these incidents to you, in making you observe the condition of things and understand the absolute carelessness, or even repugnance of Spain to the establishing the independence of America. If it is so marked now, what will it be when Spain succeeds in taking Gibraltar? Then the war will have no other object than that same independence which she now regards with so much indifference, and perhaps fear.
"I confess, Monsieur, that this idea torments me. Re- member, Monsieur, that the system of M. de Florida Blanca has always been to make Spain mediator between England
1. Jay to Congress, Oct. 3, 1781. Wharton, Vol. IV, p. 743.
2. Dated Passy, April 12, 1782. Wharton, Vol. V, p. 300.
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Early Relations with Spain
and her colonies. He has followed that system with pertin- acity. He has never wished to declare himself openly for the United States, and even now he seems to draw himself away from them still more. This conduct seems to me to announce very evidently the desire that England should address herself to Spain to obtain a modification to the inde- pendence of America, that will make the sacrifice less hard." 1
In 1781 when negotiations for peace between Great Britain and the United States were seriously considered, the question of the western boundary of the new nation became of paramount importance. Should England retain that por- tion of the United States bordering on the Mississippi, as it seemed likely that she might, the neighborhood of her possessions would be immediately dangerous to our peace. Should she also retain Canada and West Florida or even Canada alone, by applying herself to the settlement of that country and pushing her trade with vigor, a new nursery for her marine would be speedily established.
From the confidence that the western territory lay within the United States, the British posts were reduced and the American government exercised in that section. Large bounties of land had been promised to the already discontented and mutinous army, and the country was furthermore relied on as an important source for discharg- ing the debts piled up in eight years of war. By the sur- render of this tract to Great Britain a large number of people, men, too, not behind their eastern brothers in zeal and suffering for the cause of liberty, would be thrown back within her power.
To the absurd and dangerous Spanish proposition that the western boundary be a line one mile east of the Missis- sippi, the objection was made that the only principle which
1. Madrid, March 30, 1782. Wharton, Vol. V, p. 287.
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The Purchase of Florida
could justify such a limitation, would also justify mu- tilations of an immense extent.1 Deserted by their allies and opposed by their enemies, the colonies had much to fear from the peace negotiations. England was reluctant to acknowledge the independence of her "rebellious sub- jects." Spain, at length, reconciled to their freedom, sought to circumscribe and weaken them. France, though seek- ing their freedom, feared the reconciliation and possible future alliance of the old Anglo-Saxon nation with the new, and so sought to place the late colonies in a position of tutelage to her. Friend and foe alike feared their strength. Nor did the subsequent history prove the French and Spanish fears to have been without reason. For the Amer- ican example in a few short years inspired the French Revolution, and pointed out the way to struggling South American colonies to emerge from their cruel tyrannies. Count de Florida Blanca's fears were not unfounded ; for the United States has turned its guns on both the allies of its early days.
As the final date of the peace convention approached it became more evident that a determined effort was to be made to shut in the new nation by the Appalachian Mountain Ranges, and congress adopted a series of instructions to guide the American commissioners in their task.
It was not to the interest of our French allies that an amicable treaty, such as would inspire mutual confidence and friendship, should be consummated between England and the colonists. Their purpose was to plant such seeds of jealousy and discord in the pact as would compel our subservience to them. They sought to keep some point in contest between America and England, to the end of the war, to preclude the possibility of our sooner reaching an agreement, to keep us employed in the war, to make us
1. Secret Journal of Foreign Affairs, p. 153. August, 1782.
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Early Relations with Spain
dependent on them for supplies, and, even after the treaty, to compel us to look to them for protection and support. These considerations inspired France in her purpose to make England formidable in our neighborhood, and to leave us as few resources of wealth and power as might be consistent with our national integrity and independence. 1
In a conference between Jay and the Count d'Aranda, the Spanish diplomat insisted on two principal objections to our right to the Mississippi River. First, that the western country had never been claimed as belonging to the ancient colonies. That previous to the last war (1763) it belonged to France and after its cession to England re- mained a distinct part of her dominions until by the con- quest of West Florida and certain posts on the Mississippi and the Illinois rivers, it became vested in Spain by right of conquest. 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 consider as belonging to us. In accord- ance with his views thus expressed, Count d'Aranda sent Jay a map with the proposed western boundary line marked in red ink. It ran from a lake near the confines of Georgia, but east of the Flint River, to the confluence of the Kan- awha with the Ohio, thence round the western shores of lakes Erie and Huron, and thence round Lake Michigan to Lake Superior. 2
Jay seems to have been thoroughly convinced from the conferences with Count de Vergennes, the French min- ister of foreign affairs, and his private secretary, M. de Ray- neval, that France would oppose our boundary pretensions, that they would oppose our extension to the Mississippi, and our claim to the free navigation of that river. They would probably support the English claims to all the country above
1. Letter from Jay, Nov. 17, 1782. Wharton, Vol. IV, p. 48.
2. Jay to Livingston, Nov. 17, 1782. Wharton, Vol. VI, pp. 22-23.
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The Purchase of Florida
31° and certainly to all the country north of the Ohio. And that in case we refused to divide with Spain in the manner proposed, she would aid that country in negotiating for the territory she wanted east of the Mississippi and would agree that the residue should remain to England. 1
The good faith of France in the preliminary negotia- tions of 1782 has been a fruitful source of discussion among historians, and while the Bourbon dynasty was with- out doubt guilty of treachery to America, there is not suf- ficient proof to sustain all the suspicions of Jay at this junc- ture. La Fayette, while passionately disclaiming any love or partiality for Spain, still insisted that she was earnestly desirous of maintaining harmony and living in friendship and neighborly union with the United States. 2
In the final peace provisions Florida was allotted to Spain without any remonstrance by the United States. The conviction, prevailing as far back as 1777, that the inde- pendent sovereignty of the new nation would necessitate sooner or later the absorption of Florida and the Mississippi valley, may consistently explain why the United States made no objection to Florida's going to Spain from whom it could be more readily obtained than from England. Time, without treaty, so argued Luzerne in a dispatch to Vergennes, will in forty years fill the valley of the Mississippi with the pop- ulation of the United States and if so there is no use in hazarding peace for a stipulation which without being ex- pressed is one of the necessities of the future. 3
By the final treaty of 1783 the free navigation of the Mississippi was given to the United States. The Spanish ministry vigorously protested that the navigation of the river could not be ceded by the king of England, and that
1. Letters of Jay to Livingston, Paris, Nov. 17, 1782.
2. La Fayette to Livingston, Bordeaux, March 2, 1783. Wharton, Vol. IV, p. 269.
3. Wharton, Vol. I, p. 358.
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Early Relations with Spain
his cession could have no real force unless the Catholic king should think proper to ratify it. This question caused an acrimonious discussion, which, not settled until 1795, threatened at various times to plunge the two countries into war. The Spanish arms, they insisted, had conquered and possessed two harbors of the river on the day the treaty between Great Britain and the United States was concluded - the 30th day of November, 1782 - hence England could not dispose of it. 1
In the final treaty the southern boundary of the United States and the northern boundary of the Floridas was fixed at 31° north latitude. Here were the germs of another controversy with Spain. During the British occupation of the Floridas the boundary had been 32° 28'. The boundary of 31° was based on the charter of Georgia given by George II, which he had no right to grant since it embraced terri- tory that then belonged to Spain. She refused to evacuate that portion of West Florida which lay between 31° and 32° 28', basing her refusal on the ground that she had driven the English out of this province before the treaty of Paris, and England had no right to cede lands which belonged to Spain by the unquestionable title of conquest. This ques- tion, like that of the Mississippi navigation, remained a sub- ject of contention for twelve years.
The American envoys contended that England had the undoubted right to fix the line wherever she pleased, the provisional articles of her peace with the United States hav- ing been signed and also ratified before the signature of the Spanish preliminaries in 1783.
In the treaty with the United States there was a sep- arate article as follows :
"It is hereby understood and agreed that in case Great Britain at the conclusion of the present war, shall recover,
1. Secret Journal of Foreign Affairs, Vol. III, p. 517.
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The Purchase of Florida
or be put in possession of West Florida, the line of north boundary between the said province and the United States, shall be a line drawn from the mouth of the river Yassous where it unites with the Mississippi due east, to the river Apalachicola."
Does not this clause raise some question as to the integ- rity and sincerity of the two contracting parties? By the cession of Florida to Spain, and the independence of the United States, the concern of Great Britain with the Flor- ida boundaries terminated, and it now becomes a Spanish- American issue.
CHAPTER II.
TO THE TREATY OF 1795.
T HE boundaries established by the Proclamation of 1763, irregular and manifestly unsatisfactory, were adopted by the treaty of Paris which gave us a place in the brother- hood of nations.
The southern boundary, particularly, seemed likely to cause grave complications, partly from its irregularity and partly from its arbitrariness, for the barrier of an unseen and imaginary line is unable to withstand the resistless logic of national and racial history. From the Mississippi River it followed the 31st degree of latitude to the Chattahoochee River, then down that stream to the junction with the Flint ; thence in a straight line to the source of the St. Mary's River and, following that stream, to the Atlantic Ocean. It seemed but natural that with the unity, growth and expan- sion of the young republic, new boundaries would become essential. Spain and England maintained their hostile posi- tions on our different sides, vultures poised in the air ready to swoop down and devour the carcass of the nation whose dissolution seemed imminent. Nor did France seem likely to hold back at such a crucial moment. Our representa- tions to those countries were met with contempt, our pro- tests with mirth, our threats with ridicule. Anarchy raised high its head throughout the land. War and a common danger had brought union and friendship; peace and tran- quillity proved but the forerunners of a disunion and jeal-
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The Purchase of Florida
ousy whose ravages were scarcely less devastating than those of fire and sword. Cold type fails adequately to de- scribe the conditions existing in those states which had driven from their confines the proud armies of the haughty Briton, but could not now cope with the insignificant and contemptible rebellions of demagogues, fanatics and whis- ky distillers - the aristocracy of the disreputable. On all sides the European countries proceeded to acquire by fraud and cunning what they had failed to secure by treaty. The British still retained the northern line of forts which they were pledged to evacuate and even pushed them farther south until they were in the region of the present city of Cincinnati.
Spain imitated the example of our northern neighbor. Nor were the Spanish claims entirely without merit. She had a measure of right to the boundary of 32° 28', for she had conquered that, and, even more, had carried her flag to the Great Lakes. She occupied and garrisoned the posts of Natchez and Walnut Hills. The boundary of 31° had its ori- gin in the grant of Carolina by Charles I, but this was then understood to be the latitude of the St. John's River. When Oglethorpe planted his colony of Georgia he attempted to acquire possession of the land down to the St. John's River. In 1763 the line between Georgia and Florida was fixed at St. Mary's River, and the northern boundary of West Florida at 31°. In 1765 a commission to the gov- ernor of Georgia extended that province to the Mississippi. This jurisdiction was revoked two years later by the terms of the commission given to Governor Elliott in which West Florida was extended northward to 32° 28'. The region north of this was reserved during the period of most exten- sive British control for the Muskogee Indians. Thus Spain had repudiated the right of England to fix the southern boundary of the United States at 31° and proceeded to for-
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1733101
To the Treaty of 1795
tify the Mississippi as far north as the post of New Madrid. Chickasaw Bluff (now Memphis) and Walnut Hills (now Vicksburg) were included in the zone of Spanish fortifica- tions. In June, 1784, at Pensacola, the capital of West Florida, a treaty of amity and commerce was concluded be- tween the representatives of the Seminole Indians and the officers of the Spanish government, whereby the subscrib- ing savages bound themselves and their peoples to obey the orders to be communicated from Louisiana and Florida and to "expose for the royal service of his Catholic Majesty our lives and fortunes," and to give special trade and com- mercial rights to the Spanish traders. These Indians were mostly domiciled in the territory claimed by both Spain and the United States.
Meanwhile the course of society was moving irresis- tibly onward, pushing back the virgin forests and the un- tamed savages; the frontiersman and the pioneer, the fear- less scouts of civilization, had crossed the mountains, and were beginning to form settlements along the Ohio and its tributaries. Though the Alleghenies had not served to dis- courage their migration, they presented a formidable barrier to any extensive traffic or intercourse between the new country and the old, the West and the East, the trans- mountain and the seaboard peoples. Their natural outlet was in another direction. The Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Gulf of Mexico were the successive links in the water- way which could furnish them an easy and natural com- munication with the outer world. The free navigation of the Mississippi they felt to be theirs by moral right, by legal right, and by treaty right. Thoroughly inured to the dan- gers and hardships of the forests - natural difficulties they could tolerate. But of artificial restraint, the dictates of treaty, or of law, they were intolerant. Soon restive and rebellious under the treatment accorded them by the "down-
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The Purchase of Florida
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river Spanish" they began to show them that ill-concealed hatred and contempt which had been their heritage from the days of Drake and the Armada.
These Westerners whose life was a constant, bitter and terrible struggle with the very elements of nature, were in poor frame of mind to respect the dictates of laws and treaties which meant only added hardship. Patriotism, maintained at the cost of terrible suffering, and stunted by injustice and oppression, can never attain the luxurious growth of unwavering devotion. And Spain was not slow to take advantage of this unrest in our Western country. In 1786 and 1787, she was insidiously laboring on our south- western border to divert the allegiance of the trans-Alle- gheny settlers who had become particularly inflamed over a project lately pending before congress, to barter our Mis- sissippi rights for certain commercial privileges mainly ad- vantageous to the North and East.
In the spring of 1786, Gardoqui, the Spanish minister, wrote to Jay requesting him to lay before the continental congress the question of a treaty with Spain which should settle the boundary dispute and the claim to the navigation of the Mississippi. Jay was informed that his Catholic Majesty "will not permit any nation to navigate between the two banks belonging to his Majesty.". Further, that Spain refused to be in any way bound by the western and south- ern boundary lines fixed by the treaty of peace between England and America. The Spanish minister also requested the immediate payment of the principal of the debt con- tracted by the United States in Spain during the Revolution, warned them of the danger of losing the Spanish trade in case no treaty were concluded, and, by way of inducement, reminded Jay of the influence of the king of Spain with the Barbary powers, which the king might use in the inter-
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To the Treaty of 1795
ests of America, if a satisfactory treaty were secured.1 There were many in congress at this time willing to make a treaty with the Castilian king, fixing the Florida line at 32° 28' and these same legislators consented to give Spain the full control and navigation of the Mississippi River for a period of twenty or thirty years. But the Spanish prop- osition of a western boundary line was nowhere viewed seriously in this country and we are inclined to doubt if it were even in the palaces where it originated.
But Gardoqui refused in any event to consent to any article declaring our right to the Mississippi in express terms and stipulating to forbear the use of it for a given time. 2 Gardoqui, now cognizant of the secret article of the treaty of 1783, although soon willing to drop the contention for a cis-Mississippi boundary, insisted upon a treaty giving to Spain the line of 32° 28' and the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi. Stronger counsels prevailed in congress and no agreement was reached. The feeling that a new form of government would soon displace the confederation caused a suspension of negotiations until the new régime had been established. 3
Soon after the close of the Revolutionary War, Spain began to forward to the United States complaints of the con- duct of those Americans who had settled within the Spanish lines, or along their borders. There was a suspicion and dread of American "conquest by colonization ;" nor do the fears of the Spanish seem to have been entirely ground- less. With a surprising lack of ordinary foresight, Spain had issued an invitation to emigrants to settle in her coun- try - both in the Floridas and in Louisiana. Further,
1. Gardoqui to Jay, May 25, 1786. MSS. State Dept., letter No. 126, Negotiation Book, pp. 26-31.
2. Jay to Congress, April 11, 1787, letter No. 124, Negotiation Book, p. 127.
3. Congressional Resolution, Sept. 16, 1788, letter No. 125, Ne- gotiation Book, p. 170.
38 The Purchase of Florida
this invitation was a few years later made more attractive; one thousand acres of land gratis to every American who would remove to West Florida - and four hundred dollars for every hundredweight of tobacco which he might raise and deliver at New Orleans, exemption from all taxes and military service, and extravagant prices for all provisions and farm products. These same terms were offered settlers upon the western banks of the upper Mississippi. Gen- eral John H. McIntosh, an officer in the Revolutionary army and a defender of Sunbury, accepted the invitation and occupied land near Jacksonville, and for two years held office under the Spanish régime. Then, detected in plots to over- throw the Spanish authority, he was sent to Havana and imprisoned in Moro Castle.
Georgia proceeded to enter into treaties with the Creek Indians for the establishment of a boundary and the pur- chase of certain of their lands, without regard either for the rights of Spain or the United States. It seems inaccurate to dignify by the name of a treaty an agreement made between Americans and helpless Indians, amid a scene of drunkenness, debauchery and fraud, disgraceful alike to the commissioners who were concerned in it, and the state which sought to enforce* it. The treaty of Galpinton (1785) between Georgia and the Creeks was one of this character : The Creeks claimed, with justice, that in this and other agreements the contracting Indians were either drunk, or without power, or induced by fear or fraud. In private sales similar methods were pursued. The trader or settler meeting a stray Indian indulged with him in a bottle of "fire water" and the victim the next day found to his sur- prise and indignation that his pale-faced host possessed a deed to all his property. Small wonder that the Indians complained of all this "pen-and-ink work." Nor did the settlers pretend to respect the treaty limits secured even in
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To the Treaty of 1795
this disreputable manner. General Henderson called back- woodsmen in general "a set of scoundrels who scarcely believed in God or feared the devil." The tribes, gradually yielding to superior force, retreated, followed, or rather attended, by those inseparable parasites, Indian traders, a species of the white race that has never found a panegyrist or deserved one; a crew of whom nothing good has ever been said, though a few probably do not deserve the stigma which has blackened the name. This swarm of traders with its long train of pack-horses and apprentices thus kept pace with the slow and uncertain movement of the redskins. This constituted the primary stratum of civilization or society in that, as in most, sections ; but "civilization" is a term which can hardly belong to such a mongrel horde.
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