USA > Florida > The purchase of Florida; its history and diplomacy > Part 6
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1. Letters to Secretary of State, Vol. I, p. 1. D'Yrujo to Secre- tary of State, Jan., 1797.
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nary, took such measures for the defense of the fort at Natchez as to foil any attempt to capture it by surprise.
However much the treaty of 1795 may have been ap- plauded by both parties as a diplomatic victory, the cor- respondence of the ensuing years shows how utterly it had failed to smooth the ruffled waters. The Chevalier d'Yrujo repeatedly complained to Pickering of the violation of Span- ish territory by the inhabitants of Georgia. Slaves had escaped from their masters and, reaching the border, had found safety in the wilds of Spanish Florida. Failing to secure their return by peaceable methods the Georgia settlers had taken the matter in their own hands and recaptured the fugitives in joyful contempt of all restraints of international law. 1
In the meantime England and Spain, recent allies, had become embroiled in a war whose echoes were heard on this continent. With a view to attacking the Spanish pos- sessions in the Floridas, overtures were made by the English to General Elijah Clarke of Georgia, whose intrigues against these same regions we have already noted. The Spanish minister further took occasion to complain to our secre- tary of state of aid given by officials in those regions to some measures set on foot by the British to attack Amelia Island. 2
In June of this year (1797), President Adams sent a communication to the senate complaining that the Spanish in Louisiana were interfering with the demarcation of the boundary line. Feeling had become so strong on this ques- tion that war was feared. As a justification or an excuse for not giving up the posts on the Mississippi, D'Yrujo advanced the clause in the Jay treaty with England giving that power certain rights and privileges on this waterway
1. Domestic Letters, Vol. X, p. 13.
2. Ibid., pp. 35-57.
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inconsistent with and even in violation of the provisions of the Spanish treaty which undertook to confine the nav- igation to the United States and to Spain. 1
It was evident that the Spanish would use force, if necessary, to prevent our making an establishment at Natchez -- one of the posts in dispute about forty miles north of 31° latitude. Added to these difficulties were the still troublesome Indian questions. In answer to the Amer- ican claims that the Spanish officials were inciting the In- dians in the southwest, D'Yrujo made the counter-claim that the Americans were really inciting the redskins in the hope that under the cover of an Indian war they could seize more land and possibly capture some of the Spanish territory. The correspondence, diplomatic more in name than in fact, rapidly grew bitter and acrimonious, each party to it insin- uating that the other was guilty of misrepresentation. 2 Pickering, whose manner of conducting such a correspon- dence partook more of the nature of the cross sword with its heavy swinging blow than the rapier with its keen, grace- ful thrust, was scarcely the equal of the skillful and diplo- matic D'Yrujo, who was particularly fitted for such contest though later guilty of grave indiscretions.
Among the papers transmitted to congress by the pres- ident was a letter connecting Colonel William Blount, a senator from Tennessee, with an attempt to incite the In- dians of that section for the purpose of forwarding a scheme for invading the Spanish territories with the connivance and assistance of the British. Upon the basis of this letter, the house of representatives presented articles of impeach- ment.
In brief, Blount's scheme was to transfer New Orleans and the neighboring districts to the British by means of a joint expedition, England to furnish a naval force, and a
1. Domestic Letters, Vol. X, pp. 58, 77, 83.
2. Ibid., pp. 111-134.
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co-operating force of backwoodsmen and Indians to be raised on the western frontier of the United States. Heavily involved in land speculations in Tennessee and wishing to organize an English company for the purchase of his prop- erty, Blount dreaded the consequences of a transfer to the French, a military and not a commercial nation, of the outlet of the Mississippi. He believed that it would be for the best interests of the Western people, as well as for his own personal benefit as a land speculator, that Louisiana should pass into the possession of the English.
As it was too late for a trial at that session, the senator was meanwhile sequestered from his seat. In December, 1798, when Congress assembled for the third and final ses- sion, the senate, after this long delay, resolved itself into a high court of impeachment to try the alleged conspirator for high treason. Meanwhile, having been elected to the state senate of Tennessee and chosen its president, Blount declined to appear in person before the United States sen- ate to answer the charges in the articles of impeachment. His counsel, for he had taken the precaution of being repre- sented, pleaded to the jurisdiction of the senate court on two grounds :
(1) That senators are not "officers," who, in the meaning of the constitution of the United States, were liable to impeachment.
(2) That, having been expelled from that body, Col- onel Blount was not now subject to trial even as a sen- ator.
This plea to the jurisdiction was sustained by the sen- ate, though it is difficult to state whether on one or both of the grounds alleged. Suffice it to say that, unfortunately, the case was never reviewed and decided on its merits and thus by a legal technicality ended the first as did most of the later federal impeachment trials. The historian must la- 6
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ment this termination of a proceeding which, had it been carried through, would have resolved the questions then in dispute with Spain and left to future generations some light on the murky intrigues which were so frequent at that time and in that section. To the layman an acquittal on a technicality, then as now, was an added proof of the defen- dant's guilt. Else why should he not rather court than flee from an investigation which would exonerate and re- move all stain or doubt? Colonel Blount, notwithstanding this somewhat undignified termination of his senatorial career, became a popular leader in his own state where what was looked upon as a martyrdom for a popular cause en- deared him to the hearts of his fellow people.
D'Yrujo sought to justify the action of the Spanish officials in Louisiana in refusing to deliver up the posts along the Mississippi and in resisting a present survey of the boun- dary line upon the very basis which had been disclosed in Senator Blount's letter - that of hostile intrigues against Florida and Louisiana aided by Great Britain. Spain sin- cerely apprehended that if the Natchez and other Mississippi posts were evacuated a clear road would be opened for the British into Louisiana. This representation upon the part of D'Yrujo seemed to Pickering but a miserable sub- terfuge of Spanish policy. We were not likely to submit patiently at the hands of that country to the indignities we had suffered from England when she, pursuing what ap- peared to be a similar policy in defiance of treaty obliga- tions, had maintained for four years a series of forts upon our northern frontier. But the revelations of Blount's letter bearing out the accusations of a British intrigue against Florida justified Spain not only in her refusal to surrender these posts but in actually strengthening her fortifications in that territory as well as in Louisiana and along the Mis- sissippi - as a measure of defense in short.
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With more of childlike simplicity than diplomatic skill Pickering immediately turned the Spanish ambassador's let- ter over to Liston, the British minister, demanding an ex- planation with something of an intimation at the same time that D'Yrujo's accusations were not taken seriously by the United States. Liston admitted that certain individuals had proposed such a plan of action to him -that the English should invade Florida and the neighboring Spanish territory by sea and then rely upon the assistance and co-operation of American citizens -- but that he and his government had refused to countenance the scheme for the reason that it would arouse the Indians and violate the neutrality of the United States. In view of the English record in inciting our northern Indians at this and later periods and her no- torious contempt for that American neutrality, for which she here professed such a respect, we are inclined to doubt the merit and veracity of England's reply, especially since Liston abruptly declined to furnish further particulars. But his denial suited our desires and so it was accepted. The Spanish minister, however, insisted upon his original accu- sations and rightfully took exception to Pickering's undiplo- matic method of approaching the English representative.
D'Yrujo here foolishly resorted to a newspaper state- ment. Pickering retorted likewise through the agency of the press and sent copies of this letter to his political friends that they might rejoice with him in his undignified course. Fisher Ames, in a letter congratulating the secretary of state upon the merits of his published reply to "the little Don," wrote, "You have not left a whole bone in his skin." Picker- ing more than once expressed his contempt for "the Spanish puppy" to whom he constantly imputed dishonorable mo- tives. Without in any sense meaning to defend all of the actions of D'Yrujo, Pickering's attitude toward him, based mostly on prejudice and preconceived ideas, was unfair
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and conspicuously out of place, in one holding the office of secretary of state. While there exists no real opposing evi- dence to the truth of Liston's disclaimer, one of the letters in the published correspondence signed "Robert Liston," seems inconsistent with that minister's representations. The contrast between Pickering's contemptuous attitude toward D'Yrujo and his deferential manner toward Liston was most marked.
D'Yrujo in the meantime received further information which confirmed him in his suspicions of an English attack. This plan was to attack upper Louisiana and surprise the posts of St. Louis and New Madrid, by a descent of the Mississippi, through either the Fox or Ouisconsin or Illi- nois rivers or other parts of the territory of the United States, which the Americans were not in a position to de- fend. 1 Senator Blount's letter, the Spanish minister felt, vindicated him in his accusations and he hastened in the name of his Catholic Majesty to request for the suspended senator a satisfaction proportioned to so scandalous a crime and all the pains and punishments which the laws of the country dictate for such offenses.2 Nor was D'Yrujo's indig- nation soothed by Blount's acquittal upon the mere legal technicalities which his counsel were able to raise.
At the same time the troublesome Ellicott and the American commander in that section, Percy Smith Pope, were engaged in an abortive attempt to stir up hostility to the Spanish about Natchez and the Nogales. 3 During this year D'Yrujo addressed a complaint to Pickering on the vio- lation of Spanish territory and a request for due reparation and punishment for the participants in what appeared to be a slave raid into Florida. As was natural along this na-
1. Vol. I, Foreign Ministers to Secretary of State. D'Yrujo to Sec- retary Pickering, March 2, 1797.
2. Ibid., D'Yrujo to Pickering, July 6, 1797.
3. Vol. I, Domestic Letters. Gayoso to Pope, June 13, 1797.
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tional boundary line, slaves constantly escaping from their masters on either the one side or the other made their way into Florida or Georgia; these slaves had formerly been reciprocally delivered up to their rightful owners by the Georgia or Spanish officials and serious trouble thereby averted. On one occasion some five slaves escaping from their Spanish owners in Florida made their way into Georgia where the officials declined to surrender them and met with the reply that the governor of Florida would in the future decline to return any more escaping from the United States. This bit of reciprocity inspired by Georgia herself aroused much feeling and the settlers determined to take matters into their own hands. William Jones and John Knoll were the leaders in a particularly offensive raid to recapture fug- itive slaves. These repeated and contemptuous violations of her territory, arousing Spain to the real humiliation and helplessness of her situation, brought energetic protests from D'Yrujo. There is abundant proof that the preparations for this expedition were known and connived at by the people of Georgia and even by the American commandant of that region.
Nor were Pickering's attacks the only onslaughts against which the Castilian minister was forced to contend. The year 1797 was for D'Yrujo full of untoward incidents and he must have fully realized what a thankless task it is to serve a master unpopular in the country to which he is accredited. The American press, especially at Philadelphia, subsidized by the different parties, had of late increased in malignity and bitterness. The Federalists largely patron- ized a paper known as Porcupine's Gazette, published by William Cobbett, an able but scurrilous writer who, in his effusions, frequently went under the euphonious name of "Peter Porcupine."1 Ostensibly the mouthpiece of the ultra-
1. William Cobbett, a British journalist born in 1762, had in his younger days a strange career of romance and adventure, first in the
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Federalists, of whom Pickering was an excellent example, the paper served as a means of propagating British opinions of a deeper design.
D'Yrujo having protested to the United States against the Jay treaty as hostile to his Catholic Majesty, Porcupine's Gazette proceeded to abuse him and his master in terms the most bitter and disgusting. In at least three different edi- tions of his paper during the month of July, in letters signed "Philip Fatio," D'Yrujo had been thus addressed. A few examples of the phrases found therein serve to show their general tenor and justify D'Yrujo's protests to our govern- ment. "Don de Yrujo was another Quixote." "It gives his story the lie." "The posts are never to be given up, the line is never to be run. No such things are intended." "But indeed what notions of honor can reasonably be ex- pected from the representative of a power who, for the sake of imaginary security, has deserted and treacherously turned his arms against his ally."1 "From a tawny pelted · nation which Americans have ever been taught to despise." "You are the only nation on earth who can vie with the French in perfidy and cruelty."2 "But because I know it
army and later in Paris. The anarchy and excesses of the Revolution drove him from France and he emigrated to Philadelphia. Here he advocated the Federalist cause in a newspaper which he set up. He also attacked Dr. Benjamin Rush for his system of treating yellow fever and other dangerous maladies by wholesale bleeding. Although Dr. Rush secured a verdict for $5,000, Cobbett succeeded in overthrow- ing this barbarous theory. In 1800 Cobbett returned to London and published the "Works of Peter Porcupine" which had an immense sale. He soon became obnoxious to the government and was often prosecuted for libel. In one case he was fined £1000 and sentenced to Newgate for two years. In 1816 he established the "Twopenny Trash," which had so large a sale and so aroused the workingmen as to in- spire the active hostility of the government. After being forced to leave England for two years, he was elected to Parliament in 1832. He was the author of many books and with an extraordinary com- mand of English he established a reputation as a satirist second only to that of Swift and Junius. The inveterate foe of humbug and tyranny he nevertheless wrote with much justice and good sense.
1. Gazette of July 14, 1797.
2. Ibid., July 15.
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is your office to dress up the sweepings of Don Carlos' brains and render them less disgusting to public view." "In- stead of a stupid, vain, insolent, half Carmagnole, half don- like composition." "Your dear, natural, atheistical, cut- throat allies have sunk us almost to a level with yourselves: under their bare influence Americans are fast descending to that last degree of degeneration at which the Knights of Castile have already arrived." 1
With righteous indignation at this abused and abusive liberty of the press D'Yrujo requested that the author be properly punished. The attorney general laid the matter before the grand jury of the federal circuit court and Cob- bett was bound over. McKean, the able chief justice of Pennsylvania, whose daughter D'Yrujo shortly afterwards married, issued a warrant charging the editor with having published "certain infamous libels on the king of Spain, the Spanish nation and the Spanish minister." But such was the political condition of that time that no indictment was returned against the malefactor either in the federal or state courts, despite an able and effective charge by McKean upon the law of libel as applicable to the case at hand. As Cob- bett was already under bond to keep the peace, for hav- ing too freely indulged his desire for vituperation in former cases, his recognizance was declared forfeited. The incident scarcely served to expedite the settlement of the questions at issue and the memory of these insults long rankled in the mind of D'Yrujo. Surely a nation, even though the free- dom of the press be one of its vital principles, owes to for- eign representatives full protection against such base and unwarranted insults.
By this time the United States was actively engaged in preparation for war with France. By a treaty of 1796 France and Spain had mutually guaranteed each other's
1. Gazette of July 19, 1797.
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territory in the Old and New World. With this as a basis, or more likely as an excuse, designs similar to those be- trayed by Blount's letter were being secretly considered by a group of ultra-Federalists of whom the secretary of state was at the head, though King and Hamilton were high in the councils. Our minister at London was to ap- proach the English government with the design as a mutual undertaking against the common enemies. In furtherance of this plan we find Pickering conducting the Spanish cor- respondence in such a manner as to invite or force a quar- rel, while he sought to promote an alliance with England.
The complete project of these conspirators has never been understood by posterity, if indeed it ever reached the point where even its promoters were clear as to its provi- sions. But as a factor in the general scheme a joint expedi- tion under the surveillance of England and the United States was to be undertaken against the Spanish-American colonies to incite or enable them to throw off Spanish rule. Pitt had planned some such undertaking in the Anglo-Spanish crisis of 1790 and the present Spanish alliance with France now offered the opportunity for its trial. Miranda, a South American by birth, one of those soldiers of fortune of whom in that day there was a superabundance and who today are not unknown, secretly sought the ear of the English min- istry, using the well-known disaffection in the Spanish col- onies as an inducement. As was eminently fitting the Eng- lish were to furnish the navy, the United States the army.
Following the traditional lines of such plots, a division of the spoils was agreed upon ere the scheme was hardly under way. The West Indies as a South American market for her manufactures, together with rights across the Isth- mus, was to be England's share, while to the United States was set apart the Floridas and all Spanish territory east of the Mississippi. It is impossible to state just how many of the Federalist leaders were in on the ground floor, so to
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speak, of this vast international bubble. Washington, we may be sure, was not. Adams had been approached by Miranda himself, but gave little encouragement to the scheme, partly from his dislike for Hamilton, who was a leading figure. Robert G. Harper, of South Carolina, the administration leader in the house, was naturally in favor of the plan, for any anti-Spanish project readily found favor with the South at that time. In fact, in 1797, Harper had suggested both to congress and his constituents the idea that a conquest of the Mexicos and the Floridas ought to furnish a sufficient consideration for an Anglo-American league against the two Latin nations. But Harper, with his inability carefully to guard a secret, was not received into the innermost chambers of the high temple of the plotters.
Pickering and King were engaged in conferences on the subject before the departure of Pinckney and Marshall for France. Great Britain, realizing the dangers of her own isolation and the prospect of a French invasion, had given Liston sufficient powers to arrange such agreements with the United States. The "X. Y. Z." correspondence hav- ing been displayed to the anxious public, Pickering ap- proached Hamilton with a project for capturing Louisiana. 1 Having already, between April and August, received several letters from the leader, Miranda, Hamilton, carefully con- cealing their contents from his patron, Washington, forward- ed a reply to our minister at London to be delivered or de-
1. The French government, enraged with the United States be- cause of the Jay treaty and the election of the Federalist John Adams, resorted to depredations on American commerce, and ordered our minister to leave Paris. In an effort to arrange matters amicably, Adams sent to France a commission consisting of Charles Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry, but the notably corrupt govern- ment refused to receive them. However emissaries from Talleyrand approached them secretly with the suggestion that if the United States should bribe certain members of the French government with liberal sums of money, the attacks upon American shipping would be stopped. These letters, signed "X. Y. Z." have always been known as the "X. Y. Z. dispatches."
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stroyed at his discretion. The scheme was such as might cap- tivate and dazzle the brilliant Hamilton with his all-consum- ing thirst for military glory. The seducing panorama before his hungry eyes was the battlefield of South America where he might win an immortal halo, as the liberator of the Spanish colonies, the Washington of the South. Hamil- ton's answer approved the scheme, provided the United States should have the principal agency and furnish the en- tire land force in which event he, of course, would play the leading rôle. Hamilton declared, as early as 1793, that we must have the Floridas and Louisiana as soon as possible. Spain he considered a constant source of annoyance and he insisted that the sooner we drove her off the continent the better --- and before Great Britain should expel her. To unite the American hemisphere in one great society of com- mon interests and common principles was his aim.
Preparations were speedily completed across the water and in October Miranda wrote to Hamilton, "All is ready for your president to say the word." But the word was never said and one of the greatest men of whom we have either the memory or the tradition, sorrowfully but unwill- ingly saw slip from his hands what he felt to be the grand opportunity of his life. In fact Adams had not been initiated into the real secrets. He, like Washington, was to be grad- ually drawn into the net. In the last efforts of despair we find Hamilton later approaching Gunn and Otis on the sub- ject, loathe to be deprived of this opportunity for fame and glory. "Tempting objects are within our power," he writes to Otis, and even in June of the following year we see him urging upon the reluctant members of Adams's official fam- ily the completion of our provisional land forces in the hope that some chance might yet secure these "tempting objects" to him. "Besides the eventual security against invasion," he argued as a reason for his contention, "we ought cer-
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tainly to look to the possession of the Floridas and Louis- iana, and we ought to squint at South America." Thus passes into oblivion a scheme at first apparently so pregnant with glory, but now so full of mystery and uncertainty. The whole matter seems to have been successfully hidden from Spain. 1
But new troubles were preparing for the unhappy D'Yrujo. Having been persuaded of the absolute liberty, or, more properly, license of the press in this country, the Span- ish minister proceeded to contribute to its columns and in one of the Philadelphia gazettes appeared D'Yrujo's last let- ter to the secretary of state, together with additional "de- famatory strictures" of the official in question.
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