USA > Florida > The purchase of Florida; its history and diplomacy > Part 9
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Monroe after the close of the negotiations for the pur- chase of Louisiana proceeded to London rather than to Madrid, considering the time unfavorable for a Spanish treaty. The strong protest and ill humor of Spain due to the cession of Louisiana were the principal reasons against attempting, at that time, to procure from the Spanish gov- ernment the residuum of territory desired by the United States. Indeed Spain presented so bold a front at this juncture as to induce the belief that she had an under- standing with some powerful quarter of Europe.
Writing to Pinckney, Madison discussed at some length the Spanish motives in opposing the transfer and the folly of such a course even if successful. In part he said :
"If it be her aim to prevent the execution of the treaty between the United States and France in order to have for her neighbor the latter instead of the United States, it is not difficult to show that she mistakes the lesser for the greater danger against which she wishes to provide. Admitting, as she may possibly suppose, that Louisiana as a French colony would be less able as well as less disposed than the United States to encroach on her southern possessions and that it would be too much occupied with its own safety against the United States, to turn its force on the other side against her possessions, still it is obvious in the first place that in proportion to the want of power in the French compared with the power of the United States, the colony would be insufficient as a barrier against the United States, and in the next place, that the very security which she pro- vides would still be a source of the greatest of all dangers she has to apprehend. The collision between the United States and the French would lead to a contest in which -Spain would of course be on the side of the latter; and what becomes of Louisiana and the Spanish possessions be- yond it, in a contest between powers, so marshaled? An easy and certain victim to the fleets of Great Britain and the land armies of this country. A combination of these forces.
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was always and justly dreaded by both Spain and France. It was the danger which led both into our Revolutionary war and as much inconsistency as weakness is chargeable on the projects of either which tend to reunite, for the purposes of war, the power which has been divided. France returning to her original policy has wisely, by her late treaty with the United States, obviated a danger which could not have been very remote. Spain will be equally wise in following the example and by acquiescing in an arrangement which guards against an early danger of controversy between the United States, first with France then with herself, and removes to a distant day the approximation of the American and Span- ish settlements, provides in the best possible manner for the security of the latter and for a lasting harmony with the United States. What is it that Spain dreads? She dreads, it is presumed, the growing power of this country and the direction of it against her possessions within its reach. Can she annihilate this power? No. Can she sensibly retard its growth? No. Does not common prudence then advise her, to conciliate by every proof of friendship and confidence the good will of a nation whose power is formidable to her ; instead of yielding to the impulses of jealousy and adopt- ing obnoxious precautions, which can have no other effect than to bring on prematurely the whole weight of the calam- ity which she fears?" 1
Louisiana then having become, by the ratification of the French treaty, a part of the United States, steps were im- mediately taken for the transfer of the province to its new owner. Claiborne, the governor of the Mississippi territory, was named as "governor of Louisiana and commissioner to receive the province from the French representative." Re- cent occurrences, particularly the protests of the Spanish minister against the cession, made it necessary to provide for such a contingency as the refusal by the Spanish authorities at New Orleans to give up the country according to her engagements with France. It must be borne in mind that although Spain had ceded Louisiana to France in October,
1. Vol. VI, Instructions, p. 149, Madison to Pinckney, Oct. 12, 1803.
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1800, she had never actually delivered possession of the province ; Spanish troops still manned the garrisons at New Orleans and Spanish grandees and nobles still dispensed law and justice in that city. Jefferson determined to be prepared for all emergencies and to make good our title even by employing force, an act of congress having duly author- ized this course. General Wilkinson was named as com- mander of these troops. The first question was whether our troops near New Orleans with the aid of well disposed inhabitants could dispossess the Spanish authorities. Gov- ernor Claiborne was instructed to communicate with M. Laussat, the French envoy, whose sanction and co-operation were particularly desired. Should it be decided that a coup de main was necessary, General Wilkinson should not hesi- tate. His forces were to consist of the regular troops near at hand, as many of the militia as might be requisite, and could be drawn from the Mississippi territory, and such volunteers from any quarter as could be picked up. To them would be added five hundred mounted militia from Tennessee who had been already requisitioned. In order to "add the effect of terror to the force of arms" word was given out that measures were in train for sending on from Kentucky and elsewhere a large force, sufficient to over- whelm all possible resistance. 1
At a conference between the Spanish and French offi- cials the method of transfer was agreed upon. With the Spanish troops drawn up in solemn procession, in the presence of a large concourse of people, the commissioners representing France and Spain played their parts. The French commissioner presented to the Spanish commissioner the order of the king of Spain for the surrender of the province, dated more than a year previous, and with this the order of Napoleon to receive possession in the name of
1. Vol. XIV, Domestic Letters, Madison to Governor Claiborne, Oct. 31, 1803.
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France. The Spanish governor then surrendered the keys of the city and with the lowering of the Spanish and the raising of the French colors, amid the booming of artillery the authority of King Charles gave way to that of Napoleon. For the brief space of twenty days, the French administered the province; then the formal delivery was made to the United States as, with bands playing and colors flying, the American troops marched into the city. Again the cannon boomed and again Louisiana had changed hands.
For the crowd that witnessed the ceremonies on that twentieth day of December, 1803, Claiborne's promise that this transfer would be the last, fell on incredulous ears. Within a century, nay within the lifetime of men then living, Louisiana had six times changed rulers. Ninety-one years be- fore when but a thousand white men had ventured within her limits, Louis XIV had farmed Louisiana to Antoine Crozat, the merchant monopolist of his day. Crozat in 1717 made it over to John Law, director general of the Mississippi Company who, in 1731, surrendered it to Louis XV. By treaty in 1762 it passed to the king of Spain; and Spain by the treaty of San Ildefonso had re-ceded it to France, who in 1803 sold it to the United States. The general im- pression prevailed among the American emigrants who crossed the Mississippi while Louisiana still belonged to Spain, and as early as 1793-95, that shortly the country would be annexed to the United States. It had been the policy of Spain to encourage American emigration into up- per Louisiana. The distance to New Orleans was great and the intervening country was a vast wilderness penetrated only by a river difficult of navigation. The Spanish were in constant fear of a British and Indian invasion from Can- ada, and the Americans they knew to be naturally hostile to the British and thus ready to protect the country.
There was soon apparent in the city of New Orleans a strongly marked opposition to American sovereignty.
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This antipathy, strong among the people, was still further in- creased by the emissaries of the old régime. By the terms of the treaty, the Spanish troops continued to hold the barracks, the magazines and the hospital and daily mount guard in New Orleans. Meanwhile American soldiers oc- cupied redoubts about the city and in the tents along the marshes contracted poisonous fevers while their govern- ment at extravagant prices hired buildings for the storage of provisions, implements, tents, baggage and arms, powder and guns and hospital stores. Not until April, 1804, did the first detachment of three hundred Spanish troops depart for Pensacola.
For more than a year the principal commissioners, the commissary of war, the paymaster and treasurer of the army, the late intendant, the revenue and custom house officials, surgeons, chaplains, regimental officers of every rank lin- gered in New Orleans and openly boasted of the day not far distant when the trans-Mississippi territory would again be Spanish territory. Though the Americans might insist that the cession was a permanent one, yet why these Spanish officials? Was not their presence, so long after they should have departed or been ejected, proof that the recovery of the province was seriously contemplated? So prevalent was this belief that many feared even to show a decent respect for the territorial government lest, when the retrocession should come, they be made to suffer for their disloyalty. Much less could men be induced to accept office; and when October arrived and the government was about to organize five of the legislative council, appointed by Jefferson, refused to serve.
CHAPTER IV.
WEST FLORIDA BETWEEN THE MOBILE AND THE MISSISSIPPI.
FOR 'OR $15,000,000 the United States had purchased a province and a quarrel.
In the early spring of 1804 congress passed an act, "For laying and collecting duties on Imports and Tonnage within the Territory ceded to the United States by Treaty of April 30, 1803, between the United States and the French Repub- lic, and for other purposes." The eleventh section of this act read: "And be it further enacted that the president be, and hereby is, authorized, whenever he shall deem it exped- ient to erect the Shores, Waters and Inlets of the Bay and River Mobile and of the other Rivers, Creeks, Inlets and Bays emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, east of the said River Mobile and west thereof to the Pascagoula, inclusive, into a separate District and to establish such place within the same, as he shall deem expedient, to be the Port of Entry and Delivery for such District and to designate such other Places within the same District not exceeding two, to be Ports of Delivery, only. Whenever such separate District shall be erected, a collector shall be appointed to reside at each of the Ports of Delivery which may be established, etc." The indignant D'Yrujo, Gazette in hand, penned in burning words a letter to Madison on what he had at first believed to be an "atrocious libel against the government of this country," but which he now unhesitatingly declared as "one of the greatest insults which one power can be guilty of
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towards another" .- words scarcely diplomatic but full of feeling withal. "How could I expect," he wrote, "that the American government which prides itself so much on its good faith, which is so zealous in the preservation and de- fense of its own rights would have violated with all the solemnity of a legislative act those of the king, my master, by usurping his sovereignty?1 . . . What would have been the sensations of the people of America if, soon after the treaty made by Spain with the United States, in the year 1795, by which the boundary line between the territory of the two powers was fixed at the 31° of latitude, the king, my master, had authorized any of his chief officers in Amer- ica to divide a part of Georgia into districts and to establish custom houses in various points of them, simply because it was imagined that the territory in which he chose to place them belonged to that portion which would remain to him according to the boundary line which had not then been drawn?
"The right which the United States arrogate of legis- lating in the territories mentioned in the said eleventh section is not better founded than would be that of his Catholic Majesty to have made laws in the former instance for a great part of Georgia. But even if the treaty of the thir- tieth of April had given any ground or appearance of found- ation for the establishment of such pretensions it was natur- al that the United States from a sentiment of justice, of deli- cacy and of that decorum and respect which nations owe to each other, should have proceeded by the ordinary way of negotiation to clear up their doubts and to establish their conduct upon a basis which would not be in contradiction to their principles.
"The congress however, so far from observing the established usages in cases of this nature, proceeds at once to a decision and not only authorizes the president to exe-
1. Vol. I, D'Yrujo to Secretary of State, March 7, 1804.
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cute certain acts in West Florida which indisputably belongs to the king, my master, but expresses this in such vague : and indefinite terms that the president may consider himself authorized by the said act to annex a part of East Florida to the district of which mention is made in the eleventh section and to place a collector of the customs in Apalache or Pensacola. . . . The authority given to the president is . unlimited, east of the River Mobile, and comprehends indi- rectly the power of declaring or rather making war since it is not to be presumed that any nation will patiently permit another to make laws within its territories without its con- sent.
"If the act on the part of the United States of legis- lating in the possessions enumerated in the above mentioned section be a real insult towards the king, my master, even if there could exist any doubts as to the true limits of Louis- iana acquired by the treaty of the thirtieth of April last, how much greater must that offense appear when there does not exist any well-founded reason by which the United States can establish any pretensions to West Florida."
The right to West Florida and the merits of the respec- tive claims of the United States and Spain to that province have been an academic question for a century - even after its practical settlement by the treaty of 1819 - nor does the issue seem to have been satisfactorily determined, though one hundred years have rolled by since first it arose. It may be permissible then to take up and weigh the various arguments which have been presented, in an effort to reach the truth of the matter or rather to ascertain the merits of the case.
When, under Washington, the matter was first broached, the desideratum of this nation was the Floridas and New Orleans - the territory east of the Mississippi and south of our then southern boundary. And when Jefferson opened the negotiations with Napoleon for a purchase, it was not
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the province of Louisiana but rather New Orleans and the Floridas that he wished to secure. The fact that Spain had not ceded the Floridas was only later known to the United States. The correspondence of Jefferson clearly shows that his idea was that by securing New Orleans and the Floridas the United States would possess a well rounded national domain east of the Mississippi. Therefore, we must con- clude that Jefferson began the negotiation with the idea that the territory of West Florida extended to the Missis- sippi with 31° latitude for its northern boundary, as settled in the Spanish-American treaty of 1795. Had it been un- derstood that West Florida extended only to the Perdido, Jefferson should and would have given instructions to negotiate for the purchase of both Floridas, New Orleans and that part of Louisiana east of the Mississippi and be- tween that river and the Perdido.
We will further recall that Napoleon made several unsuccessful attempts to persuade Spain to cede the Floridas to him after he had secured Louisiana by the treaty of San Ildefonso and a minister, General Bournonville, was sent to Madrid for that express purpose. Among other things the duchy of Parma was offered in exchange, but to the United States was attributed the failure of the negotiation. From the extent of the seacoast, the number of good har- bors and the situation of the Floridas, France, owning Louisiana, was anxious also to possess those provinces. 1
No definite limits had been stated in our treaty of pur- chase because they were not known. But the United States construed the treaty in the manner most favorable to itself - a disposition as natural among nations as among indi- viduals. At the time of the delivery of the province of Louis- iana at New Orleans, orders were obtained from the Spanish authorities for the delivery of all the posts on the west side
. 1. Vol. VI, Instructions, p. 226, Madison to Livingston, March 31, 1804.
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of the Mississippi as well as the island of New Orleans. With respect to the posts in West Florida orders for the delivery were neither offered to nor demanded by our commissioners. The defense of our side of the dispute together with a statement of our claims is clearly and succinctly given in a letter from Madison to Livingston. We can do no better than to quote therefrom at length.
"This silence on the part of the executive was deemed eligible - first because it was foreseen that the demand would not only be rejected by the Spanish authority at New Orleans which had in an official publication limited the cession eastwardly by the Mississippi and the island of New Orleans, but it was apprehended, as has turned out, that the French commissioner might not be ready to sup- port the demand and might even be disposed to second the Spanish opposition. Secondly because in the latter of these cases a serious check would be given to our title and in either of them a premature dilemma would result between an overt submission to the refusal and a resort to force. Thirdly because mere silence would be no bar to a plea at any time that a delivery of a part, particularly at the seat of government was a virtual delivery of the whole, whilst in the meantime, we could ascertain the views and claim the interposition of the French government and avail ourselves of that and any other favorable circumstances for effecting an amicable adjustment of Spain. . . .
"The territory ceded to the United States is described in the words following, 'the colony or province of Louisiana with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, that it had when France possessed it and such as it ought to be according to the treaties subsequently passed between Spain and other states.'
"In expounding this threefold description, the different forms used must be so understood as to give a meaning to each description, and to make the meaning of each coincide
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with that of the others. The first form of description is a reference to the extent which Louisiana now has in the hands of Spain. What is that extent as determined by its eastern limits? "It is not denied that the Perdido was once the east limit of Louisiana. It is not denied that the terri- tory now possessed by Spain extends to the River Perdido. The River Perdido we say then is the limit to the east extent of the Louisiana ceded to the United States.
"This construction gives an obvious and pertinent meaning to the term 'now' and to the expression 'in the hands of Spain,' which can be found in no other construc- tion. For a considerable time previous to the treaty of peace in 1783 between Great Britain and Spain, Louisiana as in the hands of Spain was limited eastwardly by the Mississippi, the Iberville, etc. The term 'now' fixes its extent as enlarged by that treaty in contradistinction to the more limited extent in which Spain held it prior to the treaty.
"Again the expression 'in the hands or in the pos- session of Spain' fixes the same extent, because the expres- sion cannot relate to the extent which Spain by her internal regulations may have given to a particular district under the name of Louisiana, but evidently to the extent in which it was known to other nations, particularly to the nation in treaty with her, and in which it was, relatively to other nations, in her hands and not in the hands of any other nation. It would be absurd to consider the expression 'in the hands of Spain' as relating not to others but to herself and to her own regulations; for the territory of Louisiana in her hands must be equally so and be the same whether formed into one or twenty districts or by whatever name or names it may be called by herself.
"What may now be the extent of a provincial district under the name of Louisiana according to the municipal arrangements of the Spanish government is not perfectly
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known. It is at least questionable whether even these ar- rangements have not incorporated the portion of Louisiana acquired from Great Britain with the west portion before belonging to Spain, under the same provincial government. But whether such be the fact or not the construction of the treaty will be the same. The next form of description refers to the extent which Louisiana had when possessed by France. What is this extent? It will be admitted that for the whole period prior to the division of Louisiana between Spain and Great Britain in 1762-63 or at least from the adjustment of boundary between France and Spain in 1719 to that event, Louisiana extended in the possession of France to the River Perdido. Had the meaning then of the first description been less determinate and had France been in possession of Louisiana at any time with less extent than to the Perdido, a reference to this primitive and long con- tinued extent would be more natural and probable than to any other. But it happens that France never possessed Louisiana with less extent than to the Perdido; because on the same day that she ceded a part to Spain the residue was ceded to Great Britain and consequently as long as she possessed Louisiana at all, she possessed it entire, that is in its extent to the Perdido. It is true that after the cession of West Louisiana to Spain in the year 1762-63, the actual delivery of the territory by France was delayed for several years, but it can never be supposed that a reference could be intended to this short period of delay during which France held that portion of Louisiana without the east por- tion, in the right of Spain only, not in her own right ; when in other words she held it as the trustee of Spain; and that a reference to such a possession for such a period should be intended rather than a reference to the long possession of the whole territory in her own acknowledged right prior to that period.
"In the order of the French king in 1762 to Mons.
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d'Abbadia for the delivery of West Louisiana to Spain it is stated that the cession by France was on the third of November and the acceptance by Spain on the thirteenth of that month, leaving an interval of ten days. An anxiety to find a period during which Louisiana, as limited by the Mississippi and the Iberville, was held by France in her own right may possibly lead the Spanish government to seize the pretext into which this momentary interval may be converted. But it will be a mere pretext. In the first place it is probable that the treaty of cession to Spain which is dated on the same day with that to Great Britain was like the latter a preliminary treaty, consummated and confirmed by a definitive treaty bearing the same date with the definitive treaty including the cession to Great Brit- ain, in which case the time and effect of each cession would be the same whether recurrence be had to the date of the preliminary or definitive treaties. In the next place the cession by France to Spain was essentially made on the third of November, 1762, on which day, the same with that of the cession of Great Britain, the right passed from France. The acceptance by Spain ten days later, if nec- essary at all to perfect the deed, had relation to the date of the cession by France and must have the same effect and no other, as if Spain had signed the deed on the same day with France. This explanation which rests on the soundest principles, nullifies the interval of ten days so as to make the cessions to Great Britain and Spain simultan- eous, on the supposition that recurrence be had to the preliminary treaty and not the definitive treaty, and con- sequently establishes the fact that France at no time pos- sessed Louisiana with less extent than to the Perdido, the alienation and partition of the territory admitting no dis- tinction of time. In the last place, conceding even that during an interval of ten days, the right of Spain was incomplete and was in transition only from France or in.
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