The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources, Part 30

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897. cn
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Boston ; New York : Houghton, Mifflin and Co.
Number of Pages: 622


USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 30


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Against all these usurped functions Governor Martin issued a manifesto : and in June Sevier replied, taking the ground that the Separatist movement had followed upon their being cast off from the parent State by the act of cession, and no revocation of that cession could undo their action.


In September, 1785, Benjamin Franklin, sharing now with Washington the highest veneration of their countrymen, had landed in Philadelphia on his return from his long and distin- guished service in Europe. He soon received a letter which Sevier had written to him in July, in which the Separatist gov- ernor communicated the purpose of the Holston communities to perpetuate Franklin's signal name as that of their new com- monwealth, and asked his counsel and support. Sevier at much the same time had written a propitiatory letter to the Vir- ginia authorities ; but in neither case did the new magistrate elicit what he wanted. Indeed, the struggling and unkempt little republic was to find few friends outside its own limits. In October, 1785, Massachusetts had moved in Congress and Virginia had favored a motion that Congress would support any State against a secession of a part of it ; but the members were not quite prepared to act. Patrick Henry was at the same time warning the Virginia delegates of the dangerous proximity of this rebellious State. If Congress hesitated, the Virginia Assembly promptly made it high treason for any attempt to dismember her territory in such a revolutionary way, and au- thorized the governor to employ the military power of the State in suppressing any such movement.


While the future of the south frontiers was uncertain through all these movements, Congress made an effort to act in a na- tional capacity and soothe the irritated tribes. In the preceding March. that body had authorized the appointment of commis- sioners to treat with the Indians. As the summer wore on,


343


GREENVILLE CONVENTION.


rumors of war were frequent, and in September, Colonel Mar- tin, now living on the Holston, as the Indian agent of Vir- ginia, had informed Patrick Henry that the southern Indians were preparing, in conjunction with the Wabash tribes at the north, to raid the frontiers. There was need of prompt action, and in October the commissioners sought to open negotiations with the Creeks at Galphinton, but those wary savages kept aloof. In the latter part of November, 1785, they succeeded better with the Cherokees, and met nearly a thousand of them at Hopewell on the Keowee (November 18-28). It was a principle with these national agents to act as if no private or state agreements had already been made with the tribes. It was not unexpected, therefore, that both North Carolina and Georgia complained that lands which they had reserved as bounties for their soldiers, in the late war, were recklessly acknowledged to belong to the Cherokees. The Indians showed by a map that the territory which they had not parted with covered more or less of Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Georgia. It included both the Henderson purchase and the lands of the Cumberland communities, but they were not disposed to dis- place their occupants. The line, as agreed upon, was to run from the mouth of Duck River (where it joins the Tennessee) to the ridge separating the Cumberland and Tennessee valleys, and on leaving this water-parting it was to strike the Cumberland, forty miles above Nashville. The whites within the Indian territory were to have six months to remove ; but those who were living - some three thousand in number - between the French Broad and the Holston were to remain till their case could be adjudicated by Congress. The treaty included a formal ac- knowledgment of the supremacy of the United States, and made it obligatory upon the Indians to give prompt notice of any intended hostilities of the Spaniards.


These were the conditions when, late in 1785, a new conven- tion met at Greenville to adopt a permanent constitution for the new State. One Samuel Houston drafted the document which was first considered. It gave the name of Frankland to the State, and was in various ways too ideal for a practical people. It has only very recently been brought entire to the attention of scholars. It called for a single legislative chamber, made land-owning necessary to office-holding, but even this


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qualification must be unaccompanied by membership in the professions of law. medicine, and theology, while an adhesion to Presbyterian forms of church government was required. A small majority settled the question both of rejecting this consti- tution and substituting substantially the existing one of North C'arolina. The final vote displaced the name of Frankland and adopted that of Franklin.


And so the year 1785 closed with no improvement in the affairs of the western country.


The year 1786 was perhaps the most hopeless of the long collapse which followed upon the peace, - hopeless not so much from accumulating misfortunes, as from an aimless un- certainty. The affairs of the several States were more critical, or were thought to be more critical, than the condition of the whole confederacy. So each commonwealth demanded at home the services of its best men, and sent its less serviceable citi- zens to Congress. The business of that body lagged through the lack of assiduity in its members. A scant attendance either blocked work entirely, or, on the spur of an unlooked -for quorum, impulse rather than wisdom directed their counsels. Throughout the States the paper money problem disquieted trade, and the famous case of Trevett against Weedon in Rhode Island showed how the courts stood out against the populace. The Shays rebellion in Massachusetts had shown that the rottenness of the core could break out on the surface, while the promptness of Governor Bowdoin and General Lin- coln in suppressing the insurrection gave some encouragement that the old spirit which had won independence still lingered.


Washington summed up the general apprehension when he said, " That experience has taught us that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a coercive power." No such power existed. The treaty of Hopewell, on which the federal authority had staked its reputation for ability to deal with the Indians, was proving an empty act, and the later treaty which the same commissioner had made with the Choctaws and Chickasaws in January, 1786, was only less empty because it concerned bounds more remote from the whites ; nevertheless, its provisions were not beyond the observation of Robertson and


345


CLARK AND LOGAN.


the Cumberland people, who resented what they deemed federal interference with their rights. When Congress ratified both treaties in April, it had little effect but to make the federal purpose seem more impotent than before.


This antagonism of the central authority and the frontiers- men was naturally the occasion of a savage unrest, and as the spring opened, the exposed settlements were in great alarm. On the north, the tribes of the Wabash were giving way to a long- harbored enmity. The Shawnees, at a conference on the Miami, had but grudgingly acknowledged the new Republic, while their promises of peace lasted no longer than there was white man's rum to drink. So the western settlements were beset on all sides. Patrick Henry sent the appeal of Virginia to Congress for help, and in July its secretary informed him that two companies of infantry had been sent to the falls of the Ohio to cooperate with the militia. Henry urged upon the Virginia delegates in Congress that the only way to prevent " loss and disgrace " was to rush upon the hostile towns. The result of a spasm of energy on the part of some Kentucky colonels was that in the face of the political turmoils which the settlements were experiencing, as we shall see, a thousand men gathered at the rapids of the Ohio, and were organized by George Rogers Clark for a dash upon the Wabash towns. The expedition, which was made in the autumn of 1786, proved a failure. Clark, now but a shadow of his former self, could not control his men, and with an ex- hausted commissariat, and having accomplished nothing in pro- portion to the outlay which had been incurred, he turned back with a disordered rabble. His disgrace was in some measure offset when Colonel Logan, with five hundred mounted rifle- men, by way of diverting the savages from retaliatory move- ments, slipped hastily among them and disconcerted them by the rapidity of his havoc. This and a dash of Sevier at the south, later to be mentioned, were the only relief of a pitiful season of Indian war. During it all, the federal government, by the aid it gave here and elsewhere, met drafts on its treas- ury for five times the amount which its Indian department had required in any previous year since the Revolutionary War had closed. In the autumn, Congress made a new effort to control the Indian affairs, when, on November 29, Dr. James White was made its agent for the southern tribes. Virginia at once


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THE SOUTHWEST INSECURE.


yielded to the federal action by withdrawing her own agent, General Martin, though this officer was still retained by North Carolina in his old service.


Amid this bustle of savage war, which was beating the fron- tiers on all sides, the communities of the Tennessee, Cumber- land, and Kentucky were still struggling with their political problems, and Congress was warming in debate over the ques- tion of the Mississippi.


Let us turn first to the latter anxiety. Miro, in his capital of New Orleans, now a motley town of some five thousand souls, in which the French masses were far from being content under their Spanish masters, was pursuing a policy of trade that stretched far out into the American territory, as the peace of 1783 had defined it. As director of this trade, Miró had a divided purpose. He felt that he must not gather too large gains by imposing upon the tribes prices which the Americans could cut down, for he well understood how the Indians could be led to hostile alliances by reason of better bargains.


Miró's organization of this trade was a successful one. He carried on a considerable part of it up the Mississippi, beyond the Arkansas to the Illinois, and here, among the Sacs, his fac- tors contended in rivalry with the Canadians coming down from Mackinac. From Mobile, now an active little settlement of some seven hundred and fifty people, he sent some sixty thou- sand dollars' worth of goods north to the Choctaws and Chicka- saws. From Pensacola he distributed about forty thousand dol- lars' worth of goods among the Creeks and Cherokees ; but Miró found it good policy to relinquish to McGillivray some share of the profits, while allowing that chief a pension of six hundred dollars beside. From all these channels, it was calculated that the Spaniards reaped a profit of about a quarter of the outlay.


This trade up the Mississippi necessarily brought the Span- ish agents into contact with the adventurous Kentuckians who dared to traffie down its current, and it could only be a ques- tion of time before some violent rencontre would take place. Natchez. at this time, was a place of some fifteen hundred inhab- itants. It lay within the bounds claimed by the Americans, but was still ocenpied by Spain. This possession was a standing challenge to the unruly frontiersmen, and even on the seaboard


347


JAY AND GARDOQUI.


an expedition would have been formed to capture it, could a certain swaggerer, John Sullivan by name, have commanded the following which his ambition coveted.


There were still some lingering English in Natchez who had been engaged in trade there, when Miró, in June, 1786, warned them of the necessity of leaving or becoming Spanish subjects. In this he was acting under orders from Madrid, by which he was told to allow them an interval to close up their affairs. Just about the same time, an Ohio flatboat, laden with flour and kickshaws, floated to the landing. Spanish officers seized the vessel and confiscated the cargo. The owner was allowed to journey homeward, and as he went he told, with such embellisli- ment as his injured sense suggested, the story of this Spanish outrage. The news, spreading like wildfire, reached Clark at Vincennes, while on the expedition which he made so ruin- ous ; and here, in retaliation and to appease the cupidity of his men, he seized the stock of a Spanish trader in the town. The news of Clark's indiscretion reached Wilkinson in December, while he and his adherents were waiting at Danville for the convention to gather, to which reference will be later made. Wilkinson, already in correspondence with Miró, and looking forward to a complicity in trade with the Spanish governor, seized the restless interval to frame a remonstrance against Clark's act, and signing it with others, it was dispatched to Williamsburg, accompanied by affidavit affirming the unfit- ness of Clark for command, arising from habits of drink. The memorial pointed out the danger that such lawless conduct would create, and how the fortunes of the west were put in jeopardy. These representations had, in due time, their effect.


Meanwhile Jay, struggling with Gardoqui, had been embar- rassed by the positive position which Congress had taken as to the occlusion of the Mississippi in its vote of June 3, 1784. So in May, 1786, Jay had asked Congress to appoint a committee to counsel with him ; and on this committee, indicating the pre- dominating views of Congress, were Rufus King and Colonel Pettit of Pennsylvania, who shared Jay's opinions, while Mon- roe, sure to be outvoted, was made a third member, and repre- sented the southern interests. With the backing of a majority of his advisers, Jay, on August 3, reported to Congress a plan


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involving the closing of the Great River for a term of years, as a price for commercial advantages. The scheme immediately aronsed the indignant opposition of the southern members. Grayson of Virginia protested. Madison wrote in heat to Jeffer- son, and wondered if New England would sacrifice her fisheries for the tobacco trade. Monroe fancied he saw in the opposition of New York a purpose to profit by the closing of the river so as to gain time to develop western communications by the Hudson. Washington, however, still adhered to his dilatory policy. The debates in Congress which followed showed that it was a contest between the North and South, with the Middle States in the balance. Jay carried seven States, and there were five against him. The Articles of Confederation required nine States to decide such questions, and with a clear majority of two for rescinding the vote of June 3, 1784, it became a ques- tion whether the articles or a majority should control. If pressed to an issue, it might cause serious danger to the confed- eration itself. Monroe wrote to Patrick Henry on August 12 that the majority, if they could not force the minority to con- cede their point, intended to dismember the Union and set up an eastern confederacy. He was furthermore moved to suggest that the South should use force to prevent Pennsylvania going with the North. Madison was more moderate, and trusted to time to convince the Eastern States that, as carriers of the country, the Mississippi was really of paramount importance to them. The year (1786) closed in a ferment. The North was told that it understood the South and the West no better than England understood the seaboard when she brought on the Revolution, and that the West had no intention of cultivating its soil for the benefit of Spain. The West claimed that it could put twenty thousand troops in the field to protect its interest, and that it could recruit this force from two to four thousand yearly.


If not united on the Mississippi question, Congress had no divisions on maintaining the bounds which Great Britain had conceded in the treaty of 1783, and on August 30 Jay was instructed to stand by its provisions. A few weeks later, when the incident at Natchez became known, and Clark's retaliatory act was reported, feelings ran so high that Jay and his friends did not think it prudent to be too urgent. Madison and those


349


VIRGINIA AND KENTUCKY.


working for a convention to reform the government had be- come conscious that the Mississippi question was creating a sentiment antagonistic to any movement to reinforce a central government. He accordingly brought the question before the Virginia Assembly, and late in November that body gave an unequivocal expression of its views in opposition. It was ap- parent now, as the winter came on, that a hasty step on the part of Jay and his friends must produce irretrievable disaster, not only on the seaboard but through the west, where the proceed- ings of Congress had been narrowly watched.


To go back a little. In January, 1786, Virginia had agreed to an act of separation from Kentucky, if the act should be accepted by a convention to be held in September. She also made it a condition that Congress should admit the new State to the Union after September, 1787. When this action became known in Kentucky, it is probable that among the body of the people there was a general assent to its provisions. Not so, however, with some ambitious designers who had already begun to look to the advantages of Spanish trade ; and as the election of delegates approached, it became evident that measures would be set on foot, intended to move the community beyond a mere acquiescence in the conditions of the parent State. The occur- rence at Natchez and the debates in Congress were opportune aids to such schemers. Wilkinson entered upon the stage to remove what he called the ignorance of the people. "They shall be informed," he said, " or I will wear out all the stirrups at every station." The chief contest was to come in the district where Wilkinson was the candidate of the absolute Separatists. He was opposed in the canvass by Humphrey Marshall, and took unfair means for victory, as Wilkinson's opponents said. The revolutionists carried the election "two hundred and forty ahead," as he wrote. " I spoke three and a half hours. I pleased myself and everybody else except my dead opponents." As the time for the convention approached, Wilkinson wrote (Au- gust 18) to a friend : " Our convention will send an agent to Congress in November to solicit our admission into the confed- eracy, and to employ the ablest counsel in the State to advocate our cause. I could be this man, with £1,000 for the trip, if I could take it." He was thus quite ready to anticipate the date


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which the Virginia Assembly had prescribed, but was not yet prepared for that complete independence which he was yet to advocate, after his interview with Miro the following year. Mere commercial success seemed now his ardent hope, and he was buying tobacco in large quantities. "I look forward to independence," he said, with villainous glee, "and the highest reputation in this western world."


When the convention met in September, it was apparent that the draft upon its members, which the expeditions of Clark and Logan had made, was going to prevent a quorum for some time at least. The convention thus failing of an organization, Wil- kinson and his friends found time to draw up a representation in censure of Clark's acts at Vincennes, which was dispatched to the Virginia Assembly. So the year (1786) passed out in this respect in comparative inaction.


Now, to glance at the Franklin communities. They were growing more and more distraught. The anti-Separatists had set up a magistracy representative of North Carolina, and the two factions brawled at each other. Every attempt at a con- ference was met by an unbending adhesion to their respective principles. To darken the sky still more, some reckless hordes of Cherokees and Chickasaws hovered about the exposed sta- tions, and bid defiance to any restraint of their head men, who, on the first of August, had made a new concession to the whites in granting other lands between the Blue Ridge and the naviga- ble rivers. Things finally got to such a pass with the maraud- ers that Sevier mustered a band of one hundred and sixty horsemen, and made a dash which scattered their forces.


So, a third year (1786) of the uneasy peace closed beyond the mountains with little chance of confirmed tranquillity. An attempt had been made in July to control more effectually public sentiment by the starting of a newspaper, The Pitts- bury Gazette, at the forks of the Ohio : and to strengthen the bonds of union with the parent State, the settlers had opened a road from Louisville to Charleston on the Kanawha. But in December, some disaffected spirits prepared and circulated a manifesto, that " Great Britain stands ready with open arms to receive and support us." It was a sign that the coming year was to have new developments.


CHAPTER XVI.


THE SPANISH QUESTION.


1787-1789.


Six years had passed since the colonies had become a recog- nized Republic. It was daily becoming a more and more serious question if the country could disentangle itself from the diffi- culties which environed it. There were divided counsels among those who had done the most to achieve its independence. Pat- rick Henry still believed in the confederation, for the good it had done, and thought the South in discarding its articles would lose a safeguard. George Mason was suspicious of the grow- ing power of the North. Under such champions as these, Vir- ginia was likely to unite as one body and lead a compacted South, if the question of the Mississippi was pushed much farther by the commercial North. Madison and Washington represented more moderate sentiments, - the one felt that a stronger union must be attained at some risks of southern rights ; the other had little sympathy with the feverish resent- ment of Patrick Henry. Jefferson was sure that the West, while it had such a dominion in view as the navigation of the Mississippi would secure, could not be held back by the North.


The vast bulk of the American people lay within two hundred and fifty miles of the Atlantic coast, - possibly four millions in all. Beyond the mountains, and excited over this question of Spanish arrogance, lay but a small fraction of this population. This relatively scant body of people was almost entirely south of the Ohio, for the region to the north could hardly be called settled as yet, though the French along the Illinois and Wabash were mixed with a small proportion of English and Scotch. Living beyond the Mississippi, and mainly towards its mouth, and in the adjacent Floridas, were perhaps thirty or forty thon- sand French and Spaniards, not without jealousies of each other, and by no means confident of maintaining a successful


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THE SPANISH QUESTION.


front against the banded rifles of the Kentucky and the Ten- less((.


Miro and Gardoqui, each aiming at the same result, but hardly less jealous of each other than the discordant parties of Louisiana, knew very well that there were two important fac- tors in this problem of the west, viewed from the Spanish side. One was the active loyalty of MeGillivray and the sympathy of the southern tribes, whose adherence must be secured by gifts and favoring traffic. It was not long before the Chicka- saws disclosed to General Martin, the Indian agent of Caro- lina, that Spanish emissaries were intriguing for their trade.


The other factor was the disaffection of the western people towards the federal union, which Navarro, the Spanish intend- ant, was trying to make the most of by holding out lures for migration to the Spanish territory. The policy of Miró and the intendant was hardly more compatible than those of the governor and Gardoqui. It was the hope of Navarro to show a bold front towards the American frontiersmen ; Miró believed in seducing them by the relaxation of commercial requirements at New Orleans.


The Mississippi question had become, in the western mind, inextricably mixed with the danger which it was thought a stronger government, the likely outgrowth of the proposed fed- eral convention, would impose on the south. The substitution of a majority rule, a probable result of such a change of gov- ernment, for a two-thirds' rule, now their protection in all ques- 'tions like that between the new Republic and Spain, could but portend the downfall of their southern influence. The part of the west nearest the seaboard, and likely to maintain by water- ways an intercourse with the coast, as was the case with what is now West Virginia, was little affected by the pressing exi- geney of the Mississippi question. But as one went farther beyond the Kanawha, indifference gave place to excited feeling when the Spanish demands were mentioned. This was distinctly seen a year or two later, when the proposed Federal Constitution was under debate. While ninety-seven per cent. of the nearer west was pledged to the support of that instrument, ninety per cont. of the Kentucky settlements were as strongly adverse. Yet even in the most settled parts of Kentucky, commercial rea- sons, as they did in the tide-water districts, stood for adhesion,




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