USA > Mississippi > A history of the Mississippi valley, from its discovery to the end of foreign domination. The narrative of the founding of an empire, shorn of current myth, and enlivened by the thrilling adventures of discoverers, pioneers, frontiersmen, Indian fighters, and homemakers > Part 24
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The next day after the battle, called Fallen Tim-
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bers because of the place where the Indians hid, the commander of the British fort-one Major Campbell -sent a messenger to ask Wayne "what he meant by such threatening action in sight of His Majesty's flag?" Wayne replied that his "guns talked for him." Then Major Campbell threatened to open fire on Wayne if his men came within range of the fort. It is said that Wayne at once rode to the fort walls in the hope that Campbell would shoot, and thus give ample excuse for an attack; but Campbell became suddenly discreet.
In these trying conditions, Wayne showed that Washington had been mistaken in thinking him lacking in judicial sense. He swept the ground clean of huts and traders' stores, including Tory McKee's, to the walls of the fort, and then marched up the river de- stroying all Indian property on both sides, until (Sep- tember 17), he reached the junction of the St. Marys and St. Joseph, and there built a fort the memory of which is perpetuated to this day by the vigorous city of Ft. Wayne, Ind. It was a point of great importance, for the new fort commanded the portage of the Wabash.
For twenty years,-beginning with the days when Connolly, as Lord Dunmore's agent, had created a war with the Indians along the Ohio-the home seekers who had crossed the Alleghanies, had been harassed by red men who were incited to devilish deeds by the Brit- ish, but the end had now come. The British were ready to make a treaty that would avert war, and the Indians were abandoned to their fate. The end for which Washington had hoped when St. Clair marched into the Indian Country was attained by "Mad" Anthony Wayne. The Indians saw that our enmity was as much
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to be dreaded as our friendship was to be desired. The territory northwest of the Ohio was now definitely opened for settlement, and homemakers soon thronged the shores of Lake Erie as well as the banks of the Ohio.
Meantime, while Wayne was yet on the way to the Maumee, Jay had been sent to England to negotiate a treaty. The treaty which he secured was better than war, and that is the best one can say of it, and it was that far desirable only because the news of Wayne's victory arrived in London while Jay was negotiating. By this treaty, concluded November 19, 1794, the British once more agreed to take their soldiers out of American territory, and this time they did as they agreed to do. The treaty threw us into actual if un- declared war with France, but the integrity of the region won by the good work of George Rogers Clark was, at last, definitely and forever secured.
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RETREAT OF INDIANS
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JAMES MADISON. From the original portrait by Stuart.
PORT WASHINGTON
HOW CINCINNATI 1790.
XXII
IN THE SOUTHWEST AFTER THE REVOLUTION.
When the French Government Was Treacherous Toward the United States-Political Work of the Deter- mined, Quick-Witted, Self-Reliant Frontiersmen- In spite of Influential Demagogues the Kentucky Conventions and Proceedings Afforded "a Salutary Precedent"-Kentucky Becomes a State-Tennessee as the State of "Franklin"-"The Territory South of the Ohio River"-The Irritating Work of the Spanish-Wilkinson's Speculations and His Traitor- ous Contracts with the Spanish-Other Sordid Traitors.
To fully comprehend the things done in the South- west-in the Kentucky and Tennessee region especial- ly-after the Revolution, it is necessary to remember that the people of the frontier had migrated across the mountains to improve their condition. They were,
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as a whole, people of small means, who had come to make homes. They had endured, and they were willing to endure, every hardship incident to wilderness life in order to get on in the world. Only determined fortune seekers-men who would not be easily balked when working for any end-would start on such a career, and every day of such a life as they experienced made them the more determined to surmount every obstacle in their way. They were not only the most determined men in the world, but they were among the most active minded. A man who has to learn to dodge bullets by jumping when he sees the flash of the powder, learns also to make decisions quickly on all other matters in which he has a personal interest. And last of all they were entirely self-reliant. It was inevitable that these frontiersmen should "look out for Number I !" when any question of policy arose, and should "do it on the jump."
It is necessary to remember, further, that these fron- tiersmen had become, perforce, accustomed to take a cross-cut route to order. They were used to what may be called Deckhard-rifle justice. It had been necessary to preserve order on the frontier when the nearest courts of law were hundreds of miles away, and the in- tervening space was a most dangerous wilderness. In the emergency the strong men of the new community compelled all to keep order and deal justly. Where pos- sible the forms of the law were observed, but when an appeal to the forms of law threatened to defeat justice, the forms of the law were swept away. They compre- hended what was afterwards called "the higher law"- the appeal for rights which the forms of law denied,
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and right they would maintain at the muzzles of their rifles.
Before this people, the most active-minded and self- reliant people in the world, lay the Mississippi and its navigable tributaries. It was the only outlet by which to convey their surplus products to the markets of the world. They had a "natural right" to absolutely free navigation on its waters to the high seas. In their be- lief (and it was a sincere belief) they would have had a natural right to a free navigation of the river even had a cheaper route to the East been available. They did not use much the term "higher law," but their orators thundered the words "Natural Rights" from every stump-top west of the Alleghanies.
But at the mouth of the Mississippi the Spaniards were in power, and they were determined, not only to hold the mouth, but to control the entire stream and all the land east of it except certain districts already settled when the Revolution ended.
People who learn from the school histories that the Battle of Yorktown was won with the aid of French troops, and that Lafayette was a sincere friend of the struggling colonies, think of the French King of that date as also a friend of the Colonies. But only a little further reading is necessary to learn that in spite of the sympathy of the French people, the French government (especially Vergennes, the prime Minister,) was ani- mated solely by a desire to injure the British in what he did to help the Americans. While he was glad to free the British colonies from the British yoke, he was determined to make the new republic a vassal to France, or to disrupt it, and secure the vassalage of a part.
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When in 1779 John Jay was selected to go to Spain to secure a recognition of the United States Govern- ment, he learned immediately after arrival that he would not be received unless the sovereignty of Spain over the Mississippi and all its valley (save only the parts actually settled by the Americans) were first conceded. To support this claim the Spanish sent an ex- pedition from St. Louis on January 2, 1781, across the country to a small post on the St. Joseph River (pro- bably near the site of La Salle's old post). This post was captured, robbed and abandoned in haste. On this "conquest" was based a claim to the Illinois and Wabash country.
And the French Government, while pretending friendship, sent a special envoy (Luzerne) to the United States, who supported the Spanish claims.
Weighed down by the enormous debt incurred dur- ing the war, and by adversity on the field of battle, and by the relentless pressure of adroit envoys, Congress yielded, for the time, the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi to Spain (1781), though Spain refused to accept that alone; and finally, when the end of the war was at hand, Congress instructed the American peace commissioners to follow French dictation in fixing the bounds of the new Nation.
But when the treaty of peace was made the instruc- tions of Congress were disregarded (Franklin said a man might as well sell the front door of his house as for the United States to abandon the navigation of the Mississippi), and, unknown to the French minister, concluded the agreement which extended the American territory to the Mississippi and the thirty-first parallel.
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If the British refused to adhere to the bargain, as has just been related, it was certain that Spain, with her clutch on the southwest corner of the American terri- tory, would ignore that bargain altogether. A Spanish General (Galvez) had taken Natchez from the British during a war between Spain and England; the United States had never had possession of the Natchez terri- tory, the Spanish said, and they held firmly to the claim they had presented to Jay in 1779.
Under this claim the navigation of the Mississippi was closed. Only by bribing Spanish officials could a flatboat cargo be taken to New Orleans. The stirring settlers west of the Alleghanies were like cattle corralled in a gulch. They could not escape over the mountains, and the Spanish closed the natural outlet. Washington, whose wisdom becomes more manifest as the years pass, was striving to create a way of transporting the Western surplus to the East by improving the water- ways furnished by the Ohio, the Monongahela, and Potomac; but he was a hundred years ahead of his time in his urgency for good roads and cheap transpor- tation. The people west of the Alleghanies were shut in. No markets could be reached. The opening of the Mississippi-a free opportunity to go to market with their surplus products-was necessarily the chief sub- ject of thought and influence west of the Alleghanies. And fortunate it has been for the Nation that this was so.
The restlessness of the Kentucky people was first manifested in the efforts to establish a state Govern- ment. Conventions were held from time to time, be- ginning on December 27, 1784, for this purpose. The
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proceedings at this convention formed a "salutary pre- cedent," to quote the words of Madison. The people fully appreciated their shut-in condition. They fully understood their natural right to the free navigation of the Mississippi. They knew very well that Congress had been willing to make bargains with Spain detri- mental to their interests. They knew that many people of the seaboard regarded them as communities made up of men little if any better than desperadoes. They knew, further, that the Union was a dry wall-a loose conglomerate-that New York, for instance, was at one time at the point of war with both Connecticut and New Jersey because of New York's tariff laws. There were demagogues a plenty in Kentucky to tell the people all these facts and to exaggerate the evils conse- quent thereon, but the work of the home-makers in their political proceedings, as with their axes, formed a salutary precedent.
Chief among the demagogues was General James Wilkinson. As an aid to General Gates, he had been guilty of entering into a vile conspiracy against Wash- ington, wholly regardless of the peril of the country, but he was now a citizen of Kentucky, in the salt and skin trade, and looking to the Mississippi and even to the Spanish mines west of it, as means for laying "the foundations of opulence."
Animated solely by selfish motives, Wilkinson wished to set up an independent state west of the Alle- ghanies, instead of a member of the Union. He soon found that this was going further than the people would follow, but, hoping to create trouble, he led a convention (August, 1785,) to demand a separation
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from Virginia instead of petitioning for the boon. He was able to exert influence in this matter solely by his ability to exaggerate the evils under which the people labored, but he failed in spite of his influence. Vir- ginia ignored the form of the demand and yielded.
Delays due to the war with the Indians north of the Ohio prevented a prompt consummation of the work, and Wilkinson again argued for complete national inde- pendence of the region. It was during the days when George Rogers Clark and Benjamin Logan were obliged to raid the Ohio Indians to protect the Ken- tucky settlers, and he naturally found listeners who were indignant because neither the Virginia legislature nor Congress (Congress was the only National govern- ment then) protected the region. Moreover, there were Spanish aggressions on the south (to be described fur- ther on). Nevertheless the work of the conventions held to organize a state continued to afford a "salutary precedent," and in February, 1791, Congress accepted Kentucky as a member of the Union.
Meantime the people of the Tennessee region had been engaged in the work of State building, also. In June, 1784, the North Carolina legislature ceded all the lands west of the mountains to Congress. On August 23, delegates from the settlements of the Tennessee met at Jonesboro, organized a convention with John Sevier as president, and then (two-thirds consenting), voted "that they be erected at once into an independent state," an event that was celebrated with "turbulent joy" by the people who had assembled to attend the proceedings. But when a constitutional convention was gathered, in November, the North Carolina assembly had meantime
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rescinded the resolution to give the western territory to Congress, and public opinion had so far changed that the convention did nothing.
Late in 1785, however, another convention was held. These delegates believed that to set up a state government regardless of the legal aspects of the North Carolina control would in some way relieve them of their troubles-would open the Mississippi, for in- stance-and they adopted a constitution. Concern- ing the new state, so-called, that was then organized, two facts are interesting : the so-called state was named Franklin, and it was provided that every office-holder must be a member of the Presbyterian Church. Doak, of Princeton, with his sack full of books, had labored to some purpose.
North Carolina, however, having rescinded the act giving the Tennessee district to Congress, once more resumed sway over the Tennessee settlements. John Sevier had been elected Governor of the "State" of Franklin, and the organization of districts was com- pleted under his energetic administration, but North Carolina had also a complete set of district and county officials in the same localities, and in the inevitable clash the old State party won, so that Sevier, at last (1788), became a fugitive from the recognized officers of the law.
Meantime the loose conglomerate called the United States had been fusing into a Nation. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire adopted the Constitution, mak- ing the necessary ninth State, and five days later Vir- ginia followed. In November, 1789, North Carolina joined in, and then, on February 25, 1790, it once more
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deeded the land west of the mountains to the Nation. On April 2, Congress accepted the gift, and in May established a form of government for "the Territory south of the River Ohio," with William Blount, of North Carolina, as Governor.
Blount was, on the whole, the man for the place. He was assimilated by the people, so to speak. The work of making the State of Tennessee was done by a convention over which he presided, which met on Jan- uary II, 1796, and published the state constitution on February 6. It is worth while noting that James Rob- ertson, who had helped to make the rifle government of Watauga and Nashville, had a part in framing this constitution, and that Andrew Jackson was also a mem- ber of the convention.
The work of the Spanish during all this time must now have consideration. In 1784 Don Estevan Miro succeeded Galvez as Governor of New Orleans, and he was as urgent as his King could wish to extend the actual power of Spain over the unsettled part of the Great Valley east of the Mississippi.
His first move was to unite with Alexander McGil- livray, (a half-breed Creek, whose Scotch father had given him a good education), in the formation of a league of Creeks, Choctaws, Cherokees and Chickasaws against the Americans. In May, 1784, Miro, at Mobile and Pensacola, met delegations of the various tribes, and by large subsidies of supplies started them on a desultory system of raiding known as the Oconee war.
Previous to this time the Americans had opened a trade with the Spanish. Flat-boats had been built, loaded with cured meats, grain, flour, whiskey and furs,
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and floated to New Orleans. Spanish law forbade the trade, but Spanish officials, for a consideration, encour- aged it more or less, though every speculating boatman was sure to be robbed sooner or later. Miro became active in the system of robbing.
While Miro urged the Indians to war and destroyed the river traffic of the Americans, Don Diego Gardoqui was sent by the Spanish Government to negotiate a treaty with Congress by which Spain was to control the Mississippi and gain other advantages. He was to offer desirable concessions in trade with Spain, (con- cessions, however, which could be withdrawn at any time), in return for what was demanded in the Great Valley. The seaport merchants were eager to make the treaty, but hearing the turmoil west of the moun- tains-the talk of independence by such men as Wil- kinson, and the just complaints of the producers-Con- gress refused to do anything.
Of course nothing was done-nothing could be done-to open the Mississippi. In fact, Spanish traders began to spread up the river, and thus several were found at Vincennes when Clark, during a raid on the Indians (August, 1786), arrived there. One of the traders, whose goods Clark confiscated, is said to have lost $10,000.
Clark's work was illegal, but it was not unprovoked, for many an American had been ruined by Spanish con- fiscations. Clark contemplated a filibuster expedition down the river, at least as far as Natchez, at this time, but nothing was done.
While Clark contemplated the manful if illegal raid on Natchez, Wilkinson adopted a diplomatic
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method of freeing trade on the Mississippi that was entirely successful for himself. Going to Natchez (fall of 1786), he established friendly relations with Don Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, the commandant. The next spring he loaded a fleet of flat-boats with "flour, bacon, butter and tobacco," and floating down the rivers, reached New Orleans in June. No Spanish officer molested him, and he sold his produce at a price that yielded him $35,000 profit, after the usual division of spoils with the officials. How great was the price that he paid for immunity may be inferred by the fact that 3,000 barrels of flour were shipped to Philadelphia, consigned to Gardoqui, the profits on which made up his share of the plunder.
But it was not by bribery alone that Wilkinson suc- ceeded. The threat of a raid on Natchez had impressed the Spanish authorities. They knew that on the upper waters lived "a Respectable Body of Prime Riflemen," numbering more than 20,000. If these riflemen were once let loose, a freshet of fire would come down the river, and sweep the Spanish into the Gulf. George Rogers Clark, at Vincennes, was not the only one who had threatened, or was to threaten, such a revenge for injuries suffered, and Wilkinson was adroit enough to bribe with one hand while with the other he delicately pointed to the angry hosts of Kentucky and Tennessee.
Wilkinson went still further, but it is a shameful tale, and need not be elaborated. He sold himself to the Spanish. Plans for delivering the settled, as well as the unsettled, parts of the Great Valley into Spanish control were concerted and placed on paper. These documents are yet in existence, as are letters that Wilkin-
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son wrote, and all unite to show his treasonable inten- tions. But worse is yet to be told. To further the plans for rousing the frontiersmen to desperation, Wilkinson advised Miro to set the Southern Indians raiding the home-makers at a time when no raids were to be ex- pected. To further his own sordid schemes, this man strove to desolate the outer line of homes, and to spill the blood of the women and children living in them.
A number of the most prominent citizens of Ken- tucky became involved in the Spanish conspiracy. John Sevier, when his State of Franklin was going to pieces, offered to throw himself "into the arms of His Spanish Majesty." James Robertson opened negotiations with Miro, and to please the Spaniard, named a district (what was later a county) of Tennessee "Mero."
One can believe that these men (as they afterwards asserted) had no intention of becoming loyal subjects of Spain. They had, if one may use the slang of to-day, surplus products to burn ; to find a market for these and so realize the financial prosperity for which they had endured the hardships of the wilderness, they were ready to cut loose from the United States and join Spain. But if this had been done they would have served Spain as the Texans served Mexico.
Wilkinson, Judge Henry Innes and some others were sordid traitors. They accepted Spanish money as the price of efforts to detach the territory west of the mountains from the United States for the benefit of Spain. But more than half of those who talked of uniting with Spain were men who were looking to the ultimate expansion of United States territory by fili- bustering methods.
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In 1788 Col. George Morgan, of New Jersey, after vainly trying to get from Congress a grant of land for a colony near Kaskaskia, accepted (October 3d) a grant of 12,000,000 acres from the Spanish, to be located around New Madrid. Gardoqui had promoted this scheme to draw off the adventurous from the American frontier. Free transportation down the Ohio and aid in building houses were promised to the emigrants, but no great number of home-makers went across the river.
It was at this period (the end of 1788) that Col. John Connolly (he who precipitated Lord Dunmore's war) came to Kentucky to see what could be done to turn the discontented frontiersmen toward Canada for relief. The British had planned to send 10,000 men to sweep the Spanish from the Mississippi. If the fron- tiersmen joined in this movement the river would quickly be theirs, and the markets of the world would, under the British flag, be open to them.
Connolly disclosed the entire plan to Wilkinson. If Wilkinson had unselfishly desired the instant pros- perity of the Mississippi Valley, regardless of the rights of the Union, as he professed, here was a golden oppor- tunity. But sincerity and unselfishness were in no degree qualities of Wilkinson's character, and he would have nothing to do with a people by nature honest. He saw clearly that his personal interests were to be pro- moted best by adhering to the intriguing Spanish; and he had Connolly mobbed and frightened out of the country.
As commonly told, the story of the Kentucky and Tennessee region, in the years following the Revolu- tion, is doleful reading. The men most frequently
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named in the story were sordid and traitorous, but they were not fair representatives of the people as a whole. They were to the whole people as the desperadoes in some frontier towns were to the general populations of those communities. The more one considers the gen- eral character of the frontier home-seekers the more ad- mirable they appear. And even their threats and ram- pant attitude, under the restrictions placed on the com- merce of the Mississippi, were, in the long run, of the utmost benefit to the Nation. For it is absolutely cer- tain that but for their rampant attitude the merchants of the coast cities would have sold the Mississippi for a Spanish song. And how their rampant attitude af- fected the Nation when the French came once more to the Mississippi shall be told in the final chapter.
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WILLIAM CHARLES COLE CLAIBORNE.
First territorial Governor, as also the first Governor of the State of Louisana. One of the Commissioners appointed to take possession of Louisiana after its purchase.
XXIII
THE NATION GETS ITS OWN.
Speculators in Georgia Land Start the Movement for Ousting the Spanish-The "Inevitable and Irresisti- ble Intrigue of the Spanish Nature"-Citizen Genet and His Mississippi Scheme-The Southern Indians Sent against the Frontier-A Satisfactory Treaty Made, but the Spanish Were Not Willing to Yield the Territory then until a Sufficient Force of Sol- diers to Take It Was on the Ground.
After the inauguration of Washington, Guardoqui returned to Spain, and the Spanish intrigues degen- erated into a struggle to retain what Spain already held -including Natchez-within the American boundaries, as described in the Treaty with Great Britain. Galvez had conquered Natchez as well as Mobile from the British. No one disputed Spain's right to hold Mobile,
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