USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 31
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353
DANVILLE CONVENTION.
and the two votes which Kentucky gave for the constitution in the Virginia convention came from Jefferson County, the best compacted of the settlements.
With all this western discontent, the people were very far from unanimity on any remedial plan. Some were strenuous for forc- ing Congress to legislate in their interests. Others strove for absolute independence, with or without the alliance of Spain. Still others looked to union with Louisiana, whether that province remained Spanish or French. The most audacious spirits talked of attacking New Orleans, and wresting Louisiana from Spain to use it as a counter influence against northern overbearing. It was a difficult task to reconcile all these opposing views. There was one man who thought that he could mesh all in his own net, and he was the vain, smooth, and dashing Wilkinson.
The convention at Danville, in which he expected to be a power, and which for want of a quorum had failed of an organ- ization, finally got to work in January, 1787. This delay had disarranged the plan which Virginia in her enabling act had set, and opened the way for revolutionary measures; but the members proved temperate despite Wilkinson's adverse persua- sions, and simply voted to ask Virginia to rearrange her dates, while Kentucky waited in patience. This sober negation was a signal triumph of good temper, for there can be little doubt that the new-fledged political club of Danville, a gathering of representative spirits, had reflected the current aspiration when, at a meeting on January 6, 1787, they had voted that immediate separation from Virginia would tend to the benefit of Ken- tucky. Whether from ignorance or for mischief, there had come rumors that Jay's measure of closing the Mississippi had become a law, and to spread this untruth a circular was given out in some quarters in March, which also kept concealed the really strenuous efforts made by the parent State to promote the west- ern interests. All such forced manœuvres were but a part of the policy of the Wilkinson faction to coerce public opinion. To increase the disquiet, Gardoqui was at the same time making incautious advances to such western leaders of opinion as he could reach. Madison, in March, 1787, disclosed the evidence of this to Jefferson, expressing dread of the consequence of such appeals to the wild ambition of the frontiers. Nor were the reports which reached him of British intrigue less disquiet-
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THE SPANISH QUESTION.
ing, for he knew that emissaries from Canada "had been feel- ing the pulse of some of the western settlements." It was pretty certain, too, that there were those south of the Ohio who met them with listening ears. Meanwhile, Gardoqui had been in conference with the Virginia delegates, who had been charged to deliver to him the not uncertain opinions of their Assembly, - demands which we have seen Wilkinson found it convenient to ignore. The minister and his interlocutors had indulged to their liking in menace and expostulation, but to little effect.
By March, 1787, these incidents and alarming reports from the west had brought Jay's project to at least a temporary stand. Madison did not view with unconcern the trail which the debates in Congress on the Mississippi question had laid on the southern consciousness. "Mr. Henry's disgust exceeds all measure," he wrote to Jefferson, and at times it seemed as if the movement towards a federal convention, which he had so much at heart, had received an irrevocable setback.
On April 11, 1787, Jay finally reported to Congress the draft of an agreement with Gardoqui for the closing of the Mis- sissippi, as an accompaniment of a commercial treaty with Spain. It was at once apparent that Congress had lost much of its sympathy for the project, and after an acrimonious debate on the 23d, in which the Northern States were charged with trying to protect their vacant lands against the competition of the west, the rival feelings began to subside, and Jay soon grew quite of the mind to make, either by treaty or force, Spain 'yield to the inevitable.
So the burning question passed ; and for the next eighteen months we hear little of it, except as it offered a ready excuse to the intriguers in their efforts to sway the western people in their own private interests. But for this, it would have been accepted as finally disposed of by Congress till at least the am- bitious hopes of the west could find more propitious times. The trials of savage warfare and the seething condition of western internal politics were not favorable, at present, to any decisive aggression on the power of Spain.
The Franklin movement was nearing a collapse. There was a hope in March that Evan Shelby, representing North Caro- lina, might effeet a compromise with Sevier, but all signs ailed.
355
WILKINSON AT NEW ORLEANS.
It next looked as if the Chickamaugas might entrap the luck- less governor, and his last appeal to Benjamin Franklin had failed. The Holston Separatists seemed cowed, and in the nick of time (May 21) a firm and judicious address from Governor Caswell satisfied most people that the end of the upstart com- monwealth had come.
In Kentucky, the convention met in May, 1787, and the tricks of the intriguers were discovered when it was learned that there was no warrant for the circular of March. Soberer counsels prevailed, and the members accepted anew the trials of patience.
Wilkinson, with a growing consciousness of his loss of polit- ical power, had turned to fostering his own pecuniary gains. In the preceding autumn (1786), he had visited Natchez, and had opened friendly relations with Gayoso, the Spanish com- mander. He had established them in part by an intimation that if Kentucky felt it necessary, she might invite England to descend with her the Mississippi and effect a joint occupancy of Louisiana and New Mexico.
Some time in the winter, Steuben had applied to Gardoqui for a passport to enable a gentleman to visit New Orleans, but the request was refused. Steuben's friend was Wilkinson, who at a later day explained that, under the guise of a commer- cial venture, his real object was to open confidential communi- cations with Miró. Gardoqui's refusal did not daunt him, and gathering together his flour, bacon, butter, and tobacco, he had everything ready to send a flotilla down the river in the spring. In June, 1787, his barges were tied up to the banks at New Orleans, without an attempt of any Spanish officer to seize them. There is some mystery as to the way in which Wilkin- son secured this prompt exemption. It is not improbable that Gayoso's reports to Miró had made the Spanish governor timid, and that he had learned that Gardoqui, who was not accom- plishing all he wished, needed more time for further efforts be re a rupture with the Republic was forced. If Miró hesi- tat 1 at all, Wilkinson seems to have succeeded in teaching him that there was more profit in trade than in war. He speed- ily exemplified his maxim by driving such bargains with the Spailish merchants that he sold his tobacco for five hundred
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THE SPANISH QUESTION.
times its cost. Whether Wilkinson deceived the governor or betrayed his country mattered little to himself as long as he accomplished his object in ensnaring Miro in his commercial plot, through which a division of profits was to enrich both.
The sanguine American had already entered upon ambitious projects in Kentucky, for which bountiful returns in trade were quite necessary. In October, 1786, he had bought the site of the future Frankfort, and had secured the passage of a bill in the Virginia Assembly to erect a town upon it. He was to have a fine house of his own there, and to make improvements suited to establish the new settlement as the headquarters of his busi- ness operations. Indeed, its situation admirably fitted the place to become the seene of busy labors in the construction of barges for the river trade.
Gardoqui, in Philadelphia, had kept a jealous eye upon Miró's activity in New Orleans, and in the previous January the Span- ish governor had found the minister's 'emissaries watching his movements. If there was to be any sharing of profits, Gar- doqui was not inelined to be forgotten, and to propitiate him Miró had shipped a lading of three thousand barrels of flour to Philadelphia.
In all this Wilkinson was shrewd, and supposed he perma- nently covered his traeks, as he did to his contemporaries, but researches at Madrid at a later day revealed his rascality. He is said to have filled his pockets with $35,000 from his venture, and with these gains he took ship for Philadelphia. He carried away also a permit for further trade, which was renewed in 1788 and 1790, with all the advantages which came from the power to bribe by it whoever was prompted by avarice to sell his independence. Before Wilkinson was ready to leave, Miró obtained from him an outline of what the Spanish faction pro- posed to do in Kentucky. In September, Miró transmitted it to Madrid, where it tells a damning tale to-day. The sleek American did not quite succeed in inspiring confidence, for both Miró and Navarro were themselves too much entangled in the plot to be conseious of rectitude ; nor was he altogether trustful of it in an accompliee. They accordingly in Novem- ber, just as Wilkinson was setting sail, and not certain of the turn of affairs, appealed to the home government for aid in fortifying the line of the Mississippi, whereby to hold back
357
KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE.
from the mines of Mexico " a poor, daring, and ambitious people, like the Americans," for as such Navarro, whose phrase this is, not inaptly rated the people he was dealing with.
Wilkinson, on his way home, passed through Richmond just after Christmas, 1787. He here heard of the outcome of the federal convention. The result alarmed him, and he declared that the first Congress under the new government would pass Jay's measure and settle the destiny of the west.
Before following Wilkinson over the mountains for other intrigues, let us glance a moment at the condition in which, on his return in the early months of 1788, he found Kentucky. The revolutionist party had, in the preceding August, estab- lished at Lexington The Kentucky Gazette, as an organ in their interests. It appeared on a half-sheet of coarse paper, ten inches by nineteen, with the imprint of John Bradford, who two years before had come to Kentucky, a man of some six- and-thirty years. The press had been carried from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, and thence floated down the river to Limestone, and so transported by packhorses to Lexington. By a mishap on the way the type " fell into pi," as the publisher announced in his first issue.
This initial number of the revolutionary organ was barely circulated before, on September 17, 1787, the convention of which so much was expected, and for which a remarkable patience had been exercised, came together. Its opinion was now unanimous for separation from Virginia, and the necessary vote to propitiate Congress to accept the new State was passed, - all being done in accordance with the requirements of the enabling act of Virginia. It seemed now fairly certain that the dignity of Statehood was at hand. The recent setting up, in July, of the northwest territory at Marietta was deemed an earnest of the purpose of Congress to apportion the western country into States.
Looking to a similar movement south of Kentucky, the un- fortunate Franklin experiment had delayed the final cession of the North Carolina lands. These lay still farther south, and stretched to the Mississippi in a strip of territory which, by some interpreters of the South Carolina charter, belonged to that
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THE SPANISH QUESTION.
State. Georgia, however, was thought to have at least as good a title to it. It was a question where the dne west line began, and as the Savannah had different tributaries at the northwest, the point selected by each was to give as much territory as pos- sible to its own jurisdiction. South Carolina claimed to run the line from the junction of the Tugaloo and Keowee rivers, where they form the Savannah. Georgia claimed the source of the Keowee as the real head of the Savannah, and that the line should start westward at that fountain. The claims of the two States were before Congress in May, 1786, for adjudication, and the decision had not been reached when South Carolina, on March 8, 1787, made a cession of her rights, and on August 9, Congress accepted it.
The year 1787 had, from the exasperation of the Indians, been a restless one throughout the regions watered by the afflu- ents of the Gulf, as well as upon the adjacent waters which flowed into the Atlantic. Savannah had even been threatened, and new defenses were planned. The Tennessee region had been hard pressed under the assaults of the Creeks, and Rob- ertson was forced to ask assistance of Kentucky and Sevier. Finding, as he said, that the Creeks " talked two tongues," he had marched in June, 1787, against the savage strongholds near the Muscle Shoals, and had found among their villages some French traders, who had supplied them with arms, and he had other proofs that emissaries from the French on the Wabash had for two years been inciting them against the Cumberland people. There had been some Indians murdered near the Clinch River, and Governor Randolph of Virginia sought as best he could to stop the retaliatory countermarches, and to hold Logan and Crockett in cheek. Amid all this savagery, James White and James Conner visited the site of Knoxville, and located here a warrant for land which they had received for service in the revolutionary army. So a new western town was started.
Early in 1788, Wilkinson was baek among his Kentucky friends, nursing his secret. If not disclosed to his nearest con- federates to its full extent, it was to be better understood, many years later, when Miró's dispatch of January 8, 1788, to his
359
THE CUMBERLAND PEOPLE.
government was found, and it appeared how traitorously the wily Kentuckian had bargained away the western settlements. His correspondence with Miro in the spring of this year (1788), which was sent down the river by boat, and has also been preserved, shows how he attempted to augment the hopes of the Spanish governor by assuring him that all was well ; that there was no likelihood of Congress thwarting their plans ; and that he had succeeded in blinding Washington, "the future king of America," as he called him. With these assur- ances, Miró had little difficulty in writing to Madrid that the frontier colonies were secure for Spain.
Well he might think so, for both from Cumberland and the Holston, as well as from Kentucky, came the welcome tidings. In the Cumberland district, Robertson and McGillivray had indeed been running a tilt at each other. The Cumberland leader, supposing that Spanish intrigue had aroused the Creeks and the Chickamaugas, had made, as we have seen, a dash upon. them at the Muscle Shoals. Miro had protested against Rob- ertson's suspicions, and McGillivray had taken his revenge upon the whites. After this bloody satisfaction, that half-breed Creek intimated to Robertson that if he would consider the ac- count closed, he was quite willing to bury the hatchet. Where- upon 'reconciliation went so far that in the spring of 1788, McGillivray informed Miró that Robertson and the Cumber- land people were preparing to make friends with the Creeks and throw themselves into the arms of Spain. This meant a substantial triumph of Spanish interests, for Nashville, the Cumberland capital, which had grown to be a settlement of eighty or ninety log huts gathered about a court-house, had become the rallying-point for some five thousand hardy pio- neers. These were scattered along eighty odd miles of the river bank, and constituted a self-sustaining community, thrown upon its own resources, and separated by a trackless wilder- ness from the dwellers on the Kentucky. With the settlement about Jonesboro', one hundred and eighty-three miles away, these Cumberland people had more intercourse, but still it was not very close. The track lay through a dangerous country, in which Martin had had many a struggle with the irascible Chickamaugas ; but the way was soon made safer, when the trail was improved, and armed patrols passed to and fro. It
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THE SPANISH QUESTION.
was over this trail that the North Carolina judges came at times, under the escort of such a guard, to administer back- woods justice in the court-house at Nashville.
Passing over this route from North Carolina, young Andrew Jackson, now in his twenty-first year, and armed with a commis- sion as public prosecutor, had stopped on his way at Jonesboro', where he found the legitimate government restored and Sevier a fugitive. Hard pressed in his disappointment, that luckless magistrate had courted the authorities of Georgia, and proposed to occupy a part of its territory on the great bend of the Tennes- see with such followers as he could make adhere to his fortunes. This failed. At times he thought that he could plunge into an Indian war, or lead an attack on the Spaniards, and in this way prolong his power. Then he thought he could do better to offer his services to Miro and Gardoqui, as he did on Sep- tember 12, 1788, and throw himself and his State "into the arms of his Spanish Majesty," just at a time when Congress, : rising to the exigeney, had determined (September 16) to insist at all hazards on the navigation of the Mississippi. MeGillivray got wind of Sevier's purpose, and confirmed the Spanish author- ities in the hopes which Sevier raised. With all this tergiver- sation, Sevier had seemingly no heart to turn upon the parent State, and when Gardoqui sent Dr. James White to open terms of agreement with Sevier, the latter is said to have informed Shelby of the plot that Gardoqui was proposing.
So Sevier lived on for a while in this uncertainty. At last, trusting to his popularity to save him, he put himself within reach of one Tipton, an old enemy, and in October he was arrested and carried before a judge. There is a story, admit- ting of embellishments, which goes to show that he was rescued under the eyes of the judge and suffered to vanish into the devious ways of the wilderness, and that the youthful Jackson stood by and witnessed the escape. This was the tale which Jackson told to amuse the loungers when, a short time after- wards, he reached Nashville ; but he carried more important tidings when he took to the Cumberland settlers the story of the adoption of the new Federal Constitution, and diselosed the preparations which were making, when he left the seaboard, for the election of Washington as the first President.
After March, 1788, Miró had been left alone in New Orleans,
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THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.
Navarro having departed for Spain with reports. While the governor was still worrying over seven hundred hungry souls who had been burned out in New Orleans and thrown upon the resources of his granaries, he had some satisfaction in believing that he had at last got into close touch with different sections of the American southwest. He would not have been so com- placent in his joy if he had known that his rival, Gardoqui, at about the same time, had received orders from Madrid to play into Wilkinson's hands.
The critical time for Kentucky had come in June, 1788, just as Miró, at New Orleans, was receiving renewed assurances from Wilkinson, brought by a flotilla which that speculator had dispatched from Frankfort. On the 2d of that month, Congress had voted to make Kentucky a State of the Union, and had appointed a committee to draft the bill. This was no sooner done than, on July 2, 1788, the news of New Hampshire's adoption (June 21) of the constitution came. This counted the ninth State in the column, and made the trial of the new government a certainty.
Virginia had been for some time considering whether she also should accede, and the question in her convention was turning largely upon what would be the effect on the West and the navigation of the Mississippi by the operation of the new constitution. It had long been felt that the risk was great, and that the acceding of Virginia was doubtful. Washington, in April, thought that the widespread apprehension in Kentucky would swing Virginia into opposition. At that time, it was supposed that nine of the fourteen Kentucky members of the Virginia convention had committed themselves against the new constitution. When the convention met, it proved that seven members instead of nine stood out, and rallied with the rest about Grayson and Henry. These leaders, however, proved unequal to force a majority of the convention to agree with them, and on June 26, Virginia, to make a tenth State, by a sufficient majority in the convention, had wheeled into line before the news from New Hampshire had come.
It seemed now in Congress that Virginia, having been com- mitted to the federal experiment, and the old Congress hav- ing become moribund, it was best to leave the question of setting up Kentucky as a State to the approaching government.
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THE SPANISH QUESTION.
Accordingly, on July 2. the day on which the ninth State was known to have been secured, the committee which had been appointed to grant an enabling act asked to be discharged.
This outcome caused a sore disappointment in Kentucky. Publie sentiment was inclined to charge the majority of Con- gress with jealousy of the west. It was alleged that its mem- bers had a direct purpose of delay till, under the new order of things, Vermont could be brought into the Union to offset the new Southern State.
This apparently was the conviction of John Brown, one of the representatives in Congress from Kentucky, and in this frame of mind he had had an interview with Gardoqui. This agent had intimated to the Kentuckian that Spain was ready to bargain with his constituents for the navigation of the Missis- sippi. Brown diselosed by letter the proposition to some friends in Kentucky, and probably took Madison into the secret. It is not certain that Gardoqui was as guarded, and in the attempt to vindicate Brown's loyalty, which has been made of late years by his grandson, it is said that the Spanish agent made no seeret of his purpose. It seems certain that Gardoqui's proposition never took the form of a settled understanding. On the other hand, it is not known that it elicited from Brown any repugnance. He may have kept silence the better to draw Gardoqui into actions which could be used to force Congress to uphold vigorously Kentucky's demands of Spain and her requirements of Statehood. Brown had indeed already eom- mitted himself as an advocate of the independence of Kentucky within the Federal Union. In April and May, Madison had per- suaded him that the Mississippi question stood a better chance of solution under the new government than under the old. . Jefferson had told him that " the navigation of the Mississippi was, perhaps, the strongest trial to which the justice of the federal government could be put." In July, Brown had written to his Kentucky friends that Spain would not give up the Mis- sissippi as long as Kentucky was a part of the United States, and there is small doubt of Brown's serious apprehensions. There is little question that Gardoqui, in some way, brought similar importunate claims to Henry Innes and George Nicho- las, two other influential Kentuckians. The extent to which these three friends went at Gardoqui's bidding shows them at
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THE WILKINSON FACTION.
least to have been indiscreet, while it is just as certain that the conduct of Wilkinson and Judge Sebastian, in the way in which such advances were met by them, proved themselves unmistak- able traitors. Sebastian made a bold acknowledgment in the end. Wilkinson sneakingly sought ever after to cover his tracks.
When, on July 29, the Kentucky convention met, Wilkinson made a show of causing Brown's suspicions of Congress to be disclosed ; but he did not think it prudent to reveal Brown's account of Gardoqui's insinuating promises. A considerable
212
28
ASSE
ISSEF
Gut- St, Ann
B: Cansewal
River
MISSISSIPI
NEW MADRID. [From Collot's Atlas.]
part of the convention, irritated by the procrastination of Con- gress, was ready to follow Wilkinson and Sebastian in declaring for the immediate independence of Kentucky, but the majority was against it. The conservative stability of the Scotch-Irish did much to produce the result, though the efforts of the east- ern merchants to close the Mississippi, and the avowed purpose to seat the new government in New York, instead of further south, brought contrary influences to bear.
The Wilkinson faction finally succeeded in getting another convention ordered for November, but before it met there were two new phases of the complex political condition rapidly de- veloping, and they need consideration.
NOTE. - The map on the two following pages is from a " Map of the Northern and Middle States " in Jedediah Morse's American Geography, Elizabethtown, 1789, engraved by Amos Doo- little. It was repeated in the Boston, 1793, edition.
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