USA > Florida > The purchase of Florida; its history and diplomacy > Part 4
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"It is certain that if Spain were to retain any jurisdic- tion over our entrepot, her officers would abuse that juris- diction and our people would abuse their privileges in it : both parties must foresee this and that it will end in war : hence the separation. Nature has decided what shall be the geo- graphy of that in the end, whatever it might be in the beginning, by cutting off from the adjacent countries of Florida and Louisiana, and enclosing between two of its channels a long and narrow slip of land called the Island of New Orleans. The idea of ceding this could not be haz- arded to Spain in the first step : it would be too disagreeable at first view, because this island with its town constitutes at present their principal settlement in that part of their dominions, containing about ten thousand white inhabitants of every age, and sex : reason and events however, may by
1. Letter No. 151, MSS. State Dept., p. 359.
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little and little, familiarize them to it. That we have a right to some spot as an entrepot, for our commerce may be at once affirmed - the expediency too may be expressed of so locating it as to cut off the source of future quarrels and wars. A disinterested eye looking on a map will remark how conveniently this tongue of land is formed for the purpose : the Iberville and Amit channel offering a good boundary and convenient outlet on the side for Florida and the main channel an equally good boundary and outlet on the other side for Louisiana : while the slip of land between is almost entirely morass or sand bank : the whole of it lower than the water of the river in its highest floods : and only its western margin (which is the highest ground) secured by banks and inhabited: I suppose this idea is too much even for the Count de Montmorin at first, and that therefore you will find it only in general terms a port near the mouth of . the river with a circumjacent territory sufficient for its sup- port, well defined, and extraterritorial to Spain, leaving the idea to future growth." ..
In 1790 the probability of a war between England and Spain presented a favorable opportunity for pressing our claims at the Castilian court. In a special set of instruc- tions, Mr. Carmichael, our minister to Spain, was directed in meeting the Spanish secretary to
"Impress him thoroughly with the necessity of an im- mediate settlement of this matter and of a return to the field of negotiation for this purpose : and though it must be done delicately yet he must be made to understand unequivocally that a resumption of the negotiation is not desired on our part, unless he can determine in the first opening of it to yield the immediate and full enjoyment of that navigation. .. There is danger indeed that even the unavoidable delay of sending a negotiator here may render the mission too late for the preservation of peace : it is impossible to answer for the forbearance of our Western citizens. We endeavor
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to quiet them with the expectation of an attainment of their rights by peaceable means, but should they in a moment of impatience, hazard others, there is no saying how far we may be led : for neither themselves nor their rights will ever be abandoned by us. But should an accommodation take place, we retain indeed the same object and the same resolu- tions unalterably : but your discretion will suggest that, in that event, they must be pressed more softly and that patience and persuasion must temper your conferences till either these may prevail, or some other circumstance turn up which may enable us to use other means for the attainment of an object which we are determined in the end to obtain at every risk." 1
Owing to the prospect of an English-Spanish war it seemed likely that Great Britain would seize New Orleans. To England, Jefferson directed John Adams to intimate that we could not look with indifference upon the acquisition by that nation of Louisiana and Florida, for, he declared, "a due balance on our borders is not less desirous to us than a balance of power in Europe has always appeared to them." , He insisted to Washington that rather than see Louisiana and Florida added to the British Empire, the United States should join actively in the general war then supposed to be pending. Circumstances, however, did not take the favorable turn hoped for and nothing came of this attempt at arbitra- tion. But at home matters rapidly assumed serious propor- tions. The Western settlers became more and more restive and inclined to replace the rules of international law with the judgment of force, while in the South the lawless element held high carnival : and complaints were constantly made by Spanish and American officials of frequent and wanton violations of territory. 2 War seemed imminent. In
1. Letter No. 121, Foreign Letters, p. 376. Jefferson to Carmich- sel, Aug. 2, 1790. Trescott's Diplomacy of Washington and Adams's Terms, p. 226.
2. Carondolet, writing of the settlements beyond the Alleghenies
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1791 statements persistently appeared in the newspapers that hostilities between the United States and Spain were inevitable, and that preparations for a resort to force were being made by both nations. These reports were given full credit abroad. 1
Spanish officials continued to guard the Mississippi River, imprison all Americans captured thereon, and confis- cate their goods. Each seizure added another element of danger to the situation already felt to be most critical. Jefferson fully appreciated the acuteness of the situation, and directed Carmichael to push negotiations to a deter- mination. "An accident at this day," he wrote, "would put further parley beyond our power : yet to such accidents we are every day exposed by the irregularities of their officers and the impatience of our citizens. Should any spark kindle these dispositions of our borders into a flame, we are involved beyond recall by the eternal principles of justice to our citizens, whom we will never abandon. In
declared: "This vast restless population, progressively driving the Indian tribes before them and upon us, seek to possess themselves of all the extensive regions which the Indians occupy - at the same time that they menacingly ask for the free navigation of the Missis- sippi. If they achieve their object, their ambitions would not be confined to this side of the Mississippi. Their writings, public papers, and speeches all turn on this point, the free navigation of the Gulf by the rivers . which empty into it, the rich fur trade of the Mis- souri, and in time the possession of the rich mines of the interior pro- vinces of the very kingdom of Mexico. Their modes of growth, and their policy are as formidable for Spain as their armies. .... Their roving spirit and the readiness with which they procure sustenance and shelter facilitate rapid settlement. A rifle and a little corn meal in a bag are enough for an American wandering alone in the woods for a month. ... With logs crossed upon each other he makes a house and even an impregnable fort against the Indians. . . . . Cold does not terrify him and when a family wearies of one place, it moves to another and settles there with the same ease. If such men come to occupy the banks of the Mississippi and Missouri, or secure their navigation, doubtless nothing will prevent them from crossing and penetrating into our provinces on the other side, which being to a great extent unoccupied, can oppose no resistance."
1. Short to Jefferson, July 24, 1791. Vol. I, Instructions, MSS. State Dept., p. 101.
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such an event Spain cannot possibly gain, and what may she not lose ?" 1
M. Gardoqui, the Spanish envoy, was impressed with what he felt to be the local aspect of the Mississippi question and so reported to the court of Madrid. The navigation of the Mississippi, he felt, was only demanded to pacify the Western settlers and that the eastern or maritime states were not only indifferent but probably even hostile to the idea. While to a limited extent this had been the feeling, it had given way to a strong sentiment in favor of securing our demands in that quarter even at the cost of war. The Spanish court was more likely to trust the reports of Gar- doqui, who had now returned home, than the representations of the American minister, whose interests demanded that this belief be completely eradicated. "The very persons to whom M. Gardoqui alluded are now come over to the opinion heartily that the navigation of the Mississippi in full and unrestrained freedom is indispensably necessary and must be obtained by any means it may call for."
In the light of a hundred years Jefferson's argument for persuading Spain to cede New Orleans and Florida and grant us the navigation of the Mississippi shades on the humorous. As a neighbor, he declared, the United States would be safer for Spain than would England, for conquest was inconsistent with our principles of government and our theories of right. Further it would not be to our interest for ages to come, to cross the Mississippi or maintain a connection with those who should.
But nothing more, worthy of record, was done until the administration received an intimation from the Spanish government that it would resume negotiations at Madrid. War clouds were lowering over Europe. The wild excesses of revolution and anarchy had awakened the continent.
1. Vol. I, Instructions, p. 26. Jefferson to Carmichael, April 11, 1791.
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Peace abroad was necessary that the nations might suppress resistance at home. Washington in December, 1791, nomin- ated Carmichael, then chargé d'affaires in Spain, and Mr. Short, then chargé in France, commissioners plenipoten- tiary to negotiate and conclude a treaty with Spain. The question of the Florida boundary and the navigation of the Mississippi were to be settled. In addition the treaty should provide for certain commercial advantages in the Spanish- American possessions. The commissioners were instructed along the lines already developed, but were cautioned that the treaty should neither expressly nor by implication con- cede any claim of Spain to the Mississippi : that this should be taken as a right and not as a grant from Spain: neither should any compensation be given for the navigation. If this was insisted on, it should be set off by the duties already paid at New Orleans and the claims for the detention of American shipping at that port. The commissioners did not meet at Madrid for a full year after their appointment.
At that time history was being made with incredible rapidity. The French, mad with the enthusiasm of liberty and license, and particularly hostile to the reigning houses of Europe, had started on their mission of carrying freedom to the oppressed and founding republics in all lands. As a likely field for this work the Spanish-American possessions did not long escape their attention and, further, had not Spain invited their loss by uniting with legitimate Europe to overthrow republican France? It came to the ears of Jefferson that France proposed to send a strong force early in the spring of 1793 to offer independence to the Spanish- American colonies beginning with those bordering on the Mississippi. To prevent any hostile feeling or demonstra- tion on the part of the United States, she did not object to an arrangement by which the Spanish holdings on the east side of that river should be received into our confederation.
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"Interesting considerations," writes Jefferson to Carmichael and Short, "require that we should keep ourselves free to act in this case according to circumstances, and consequently that you should not by any clause of treaty bind us to guar- antee any of the Spanish colonies against their own inde- pendence nor indeed against any other nation. For when we thought we might guarantee Louisiana on their ceding Florida to us, we apprehended it would be seized by Great Britain, who would thus completely encircle us with her colonies and fleets. This danger is now removed by the concert between Great Britain and Spain and the times will soon enough give independence and consequent free com- merce to our neighbors, without our risking the involving ourselves in a war for them." 1 For Louisiana or the Floridas to fall into the possession of hostile England, it had been felt, would be ample ground for actual intervention on the part of the United States. In the hands of decadent and paralytic Spain it was thought that in time they would certainly gravitate into American possessions.
The commissioners met at Madrid about the first of February, 1793, but in the kaleidoscopic change of events circumstances were now vastly different from those which had induced their appointment. The ministerial power of Spain which had been transferred from Count d'Aranda, had again been shifted, and was now held by Godoy, the notorious libertine and paramour of the Spanish queen. The difficulty between England and Spain was settled and had been superseded by most friendly relations. The concil- iatory attitude which Godoy had adopted towards France in the hope of saving the unfortunate King Louis was rudely destroyed by his decapitation. This change was soon fol- lowed by a French declaration of war against Spain, and
1. Vol. I, Instructions, p. 260. Jefferson to Carmichael and Short, March 23, 1793.
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the American commissioners were thus deprived of the support upon which they had fondly relied from the only power in Europe able and willing to facilitate the negotia- tions. Even worse, the inevitable tendency of events led to an alliance between Spain and the combined enemies of France at whose head stood, hated and hating, England. The relations between England and the United States were most unfriendly and, at this very period, war between these two countries was considered imminent. Spain quickly con- cluded an alliance offensive and defensive with England, whose terms fully covered any contingency of hostilities with the United States. The commissioners realizing the unfor- tunate state of affairs wrote to Jefferson : "We cannot help considering it unfortunate that an express commission should have been sent to treat here." Surely circumstances had not conspired to give any hope of success.
Gardoqui, late Spanish minister to the United States, was appointed to conduct the negotiations. While here he had been thoroughly impressed with our weakness and the divid- ed feeling on the Mississippi question, and was impervious to all arguments. The commissioners wisely determined not to press their case, and found this course quite agreeable to the ever dilatory and procrastinating policy of Spain. In- structions from Philadelphia directed them to proceed. They managed to reach Godoy but were unable to make any headway on the main points of their mission. They laid before him, however, certain complaints on the Spanish interference with the Indians along the southern border, and secured his promise, of whatever value they might have considered this, that Spain would not interfere in case the United States should declare war against the refractory redskins. Continued failure induced the dissolution of the commission, and Carmichael took his departure leaving Short at Madrid credited as chargé. He found much
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difficulty in being either received or acknowledged, even in that capacity.
In the meantime the troublesome and autocratic Genet had landed in America and was proceeding in that auto- cratic and insulting course which ended in the demand for his recall. Taking every advantage of the popular enthus- iasm then existing in favor of the French cause, he pro- ceeded in defiance of international law and American sove- reignty to fit out privateers and enlist volunteers for the French service. The French government had imposed upon him the double character of accredited diplomat and revolu- tionary propagandist. Intrigue in Kentucky and the South, and the conquest of Louisiana were the prime objects of his mission - a point generally ignored in the treatment of this interesting character and his turbulent career in the United States. Arriving at Charleston in April, 1793, he energeti- cally set about his prescribed tasks.
Ignoring Washington's proclamation of neutrality, Genet carried things with a high hand, confident of his success in an appeal to the people, if that became necessary. He approached Jefferson who, forbidding any attempt to involve American citizens, expressed indifference as to what insurrections might be excited in Louisiana, and even declared that a little spontaneous invasion would promote the interests of the United States. Expecting that America would soon be at war with Spain, our secretary of state may have deemed it wise not to cut himself off from an acquain- tance with Genet's designs against the Spanish colonies, particularly since the movement was represented as nothing more than a plan to give independence to Louisiana.
Genet had two anti-Spanish projects on foot, one for a military expedition, to be organized in South Carolina and to rendezvous in Georgia, for the invasion of Florida, the other for a like expedition against New Orleans and Louis-
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iana, to be set on foot in Kentucky. French emissaries were freely employed, and for the Florida enterprise Governor Moultrie of South Carolina, General Elijah Clarke of Geor- gia, Samuel Hammond, and William Tate, all men of honor and standing in the South were speedily enlisted. The expedition under the command of General Clarke, according to the prospectus, was to be supported by the French fleet.
Plans for the conquest of Louisiana had been presented to the French authorities when the relations between France and Spain became strained, after the outbreak of the French Revolution, but the plan of expedition here attempted seems to have been proposed by George Rogers Clark, who had distinguished himself during our Revolutionary war by the conquest of the Illinois country, but who was now reduced to an equivocal position from the combined influence of intemperance and pecuniary embarrassment. In 1788, he had offered his services to Spain, for a land-grant, and was now even more ready to expatriate himself for France. Genet's agents and Clark, in Kentucky, actually undertook the procuring of supplies and boats and sought to interest the discontented Kentuckians in the scheme for securing the freedom of the Mississippi by replacing Spain at its mouth by the French Republic.
Unquestionably there existed in Kentucky highly in- flammable materials. Her allegiance and patriotism had already been severely tested, and the refusal by Spain of the free navigation of the Mississippi was regarded as a great grievance and suspicions were generally entertained that no proper efforts had been made to secure it. George Rogers Clark declared that he could raise fifteen hundred men and the French at St. Louis, with the Americans at the Natchez would eagerly join his command. . With the first fifteen hundred all Louisiana, beginning at St. Louis, could be won for France, and with the aid of two or
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three frigates at the mouth of the Mississippi, he would agree to capture New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana. And only a little further assistance would be needed to secure Pensacola and even Santa Fé and the rest of New Mexico. By July, Genet wrote home that he was arming Kentucky and preparing a general insurrection in the provinces adjoining the United States.
But Genet's disregard for our national authorities served as a boomerang; he lost his most powerful friends and popular sentiment proved fickle. His plottings, however, aroused the Spanish governor Carondolet, whose force of sixteen hundred men was strung along six hundred leagues of river navigation. Urgently demanding reinforcements from home, in the anxious moments of despair he wrote to the English in Canada for assistance.
At the moment when success seemed assured Genet's career was terminated by the fall of the Girondist party in France. Genet was recalled and a new minister, Fauchet by name, arrived with instructions to terminate an expedition, which, had not Washington refused his connivance, must have been a success. An advance by the United States on the debt due to France, on which Genet relied, would have enabled him to proceed with these plans as well as the mari- time war against England on the American coast. But he failed to support the project with efficient organization and financial resources and it collapsed under the hostility of the federal authorities. Only about two hundred men had been under arms, but many others awaited the call to war.
In one of its aspects the movement was a continuation of the efforts of the Westerners to expel the Spanish from the Gulf of Mexico - efforts which found later expression in Jackson's expedition, and in the Mexican and Cuban wars. In another of its aspects it was a phase of the repeated designs of France to recover her control of Louis-
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iana, for it is a mistake to suppose that this design dates from the efforts of Napoleon and Talleyrand in 1799 and 1800.
If the Clark expedition had been more efficiently man- aged it was not so chimerical as it now appears. Its ulti- mate design was the conquest of New Orleans, Louisiana, and New Mexico. Considering the weakness of Spanish rule in Louisiana, the attitude of leading Westerners, the excited feeling in the West against Spain and the Federal authorities, the expectation of statesmen like Jefferson that 'a war with Spain was inevitable, and the widespread sym- pathy for France in the United States, such a proposal as Clark's was not without hope of success. The details of its inception and progress reveal the inchoate condition of national feeling in the West and the many hazards which beset our control of the Mississippi Valley.
Genet had found an active lieutenant in General Elijah Clarke, an officer of prominence in the Revolution, who had for some time been an active disturber of the peace on the Florida border. 1 First a leader in unwarranted violations of the McGillivray Indian treaty of 1790, he had made war on the Indians and the Florida Spanish. Under Genet's advice and assistance he formed a party in Georgia, called the Sans Culottes, based on hatred of the Spanish, and sympathy for the French control of the Spanish-American possessions. He was guilty of the grossest violations of neutrality and repeatedly attacked the Spanish posts. At the head of a band of adventurers with whom Georgia abounded, he invaded Florida and established a post on the St. Mary's River. This enterprise he was soon compelled to abandon. And with some measure of justice the Spanish minister complained that the American officials in that
1. For the Genet-Clarke correspondence see the Annual Report of the American Historical Association of 1896, Vol. I, page 930.
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quarter were in sympathy with these marauders, if they did not actively countenance and assist their plans. Clark had set an example which others of his ilk were not slow to follow, to the consternation of the Spanish authorities of that section. As an inducement and reward for his work he, together with George Rogers Clark, was commissioned a major general in the French service.1 The bold and unblushing manner in which Genet conducted his operations induced many to believe that he had at least the secret if not the open connivance of the federal government. 2 The French designs against Louisiana continued unabated even after Genet's recall. His work was not without its results, and, under his encouragement and advice, there were num- erous violations of Spanish sovereignty by American citi- zens. The Spanish representative, M. Jaudenes, repeatedly called the attention of this government to these matters in his correspondence in 1793 and 1794.
At the close of 1793 the bitter warfare between Hamilton and Jefferson had reached a climax and upon the resignation of the latter, Edmund Randolph, the attorney general, was transferred to the state portfolio and to him fell the task of directing the Spanish negotiations. By midsummer of 1794 it had become clear to the administration that Spain was tired of the English treaty and sought an arrangement with France. It was felt that this might offer a good opportunity to win Spanish gratitude and a Spanish treaty by a friendly mediation in the quarrels from which Spain wished herself extricated. Apparently the time was not yet come for that. The danger of a Spanish-American war became more threatening. The spirit of Kentucky was growing daily more bitter and defiant, and the acts of the
1. See Boston Sentinel, Nov., 1793, Jan., 1794. Congressional Docu- ments, and Vol. V, Domestic Letters, pp. 319-321, Jefferson to the Gov- ernor of Kentucky.
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