The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources, Part 46

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 46


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Three weeks before Carondelet had written this anxious let- ter, Michaux, returning from the west through the Holston country, had reached Philadelphia (December 12, 1793), and in a month's time he was conferring with Brown and Orr, Ken- tucky members of the House, " on the disposition of the federal government and the execution of General Clark's plan." This was on January 12, 1794. On the 24th, Michaux sent $400 to Clark, - so pitiful the contrast with Carondelet's supposed sums, - and wrote letters to his Kentucky friends. Before these missives reached Clark and his friends, this American " general of the legion of the French Republic " had valiantly published in The Centinel of the North West, a paper printed at Cincinnati, on January 25, his proposals for raising troops, - two thousand were talked of, - promising each one thou- sand acres of land, two thousand if they served a year, and


540


THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.


three thousand if for two years. They were also assured of a due share of all lawful plunder. It was understood that the general was gathering flatboats at the falls for a jubilant voy- age down the Mississippi.


Jefferson, who more and more had found himself outside the President's confidence, had at the opening of the year with- drawn from his advisers to give place to another republican, Randolph. The government, after all its efforts to check this western movement, had felt sensibly the weakness of Shelby, whose elevation had not indneed to render him conservative. The letters of the Kentucky governor to Randolph continued to be couched in the language of evasion. Instead of giving adhesion to the requests of the government, he preferred to discuss the unquestionable rights of the west to the navigation of the Mississippi. He went on repeating the tales of Spanish instigation of the Indians, which went without saying; but he showed no patience with the government's efforts to accomplish by peaceful diplomacy the results which he wished for.


The animosity in Kentucky against the government was indeed undisguised, and Shelby's course, with the support of popular sentiment, was in contrast with the assiduity of Blount in Tennessee, who supported Robertson in checking all symp- toms of reaction. In Kentucky, every action of the adminis- tration was serutinized for a symptom of inimical predisposition, and there was good ground, it was thought, for apprehension, when, in April, 1794, it was announced that Jay, an enemy of western interests, had been selected for the mission to Eng- land.


As the spring progressed, there was an inereasing anxiety in government circles. Wolcott believed that an expedition had already started. Letters from St. Clair confirmed the stories of the excited condition in Kentucky. He repeated to the see- rotary of state the rumors which he had heard of a French fleet to cooperate, - doubtless the spreading of Nicholas's views. He wrote of letters to Clark from the eastern Jacobins passing through the hands of a certain " Monsieur Micheau " at Lexing- ton, and that $2.000 had been sent to Clark.


St. Clair, during these days, was often writing to Washington of the precarious condition of the western country. He thought that the British were intriguing with certain Kentnekians to


541


GENET AND FAUCHET.


force that region into a Spanish war ; but he was at the same time confident that if the United States and Spain drifted into a con- flict, England would be found on the side of Spain, as Caron- delet and Simcoe had proposed. Spain, he contended, had good reason to tremble for the Mexican mines, and Carondelet was urging the better fortifying of the line of the Mississippi. It was certain, in St. Clair's view, that Carondelet and some leaders of opinion in Kentucky were in accord. Morgan, in St. Clair's judgment, " possessed a very great degree both of activity and insinuation, and is not much restrained by principle," and was depended upon by Carondelet to lure emigrants over the Mis- sissippi. . In another of his letters, St. Clair represents that Morgan's "exertions are turned to Kentucky, where there are a very great number of people who have been disappointed in obtaining land, and are ready to go to any place where it can be easily obtained. Many will make the experiment. If it continues to be one of their maxims to prevent the free naviga- tion of the Mississippi, the situation [New Madrid] directly opposite the mouth of the Ohio seems not to be ill chosen with a view to it. The Spanish commanders on the Mississippi are also assiduously endeavoring to induce the ancient French in- habitants to abandon their country, and they have succeeded with great numbers." St. Clair recommends, as a corrective of this, that the government should sell its lands on the Mississippi and the Illinois at low prices.


During the preceding summer, Genet's doings had become so high-handed in every way, both in his aims at the west and in similar but abortive efforts to attack Florida from the side of Georgia and South Carolina, - where probably there was some popular enthusiasm for the venture, - that even Jefferson, then in the cabinet, had seen the necessity of getting rid of his pesti- lent influence. So, on August 15, 1793, he had written to Morris in Paris, to demand that the French Republic should recall its minister. On the arrival of Fauchet, as Genet's successor, the western expedition was countermanded, and on March 29, 1794, Randolph wrote to the Kentucky authorities, saying, "The present minister of the French Republic has publicly disavowed and recalled the commissions which have been granted." In the fear that the Jacobin threats in the west would involve the country in a war with Spain, a bill had before this been intro-


542


THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.


duced into Congress, calling for the raising of 25,000 men for the defense of the southwest, but on Fauchet's disavowal of further incitements, the bill had been withdrawn. It was soon, however, clear that the passionate appeals at the west would take some time to lose their effect, and the government heard with some alarm that subscriptions were still pledged in Lex- ington for money, and that the President's proclamation was in many places suppressed. On May 24, when a convention gatlı- ered at Lexington, the Jacobin fever still ran high, and it was helped by the tone of the Kentucky Gazette. In June, Con- gress made it punishable by fine and imprisonment for a citizen to engage in any hostile enterprise against a foreign state, a provision soon to be further enforced in Jay's treaty. When the Jacobins spoke of it now as aimed at the French sympa- thizers. they were not pleased to be told that it had been also a provision of the treaty with France in 1778.


A comparison of the views of Hamilton and Randolph at this time shows how the two antagonistic parties of the cabinet were brought into pretty close conjunction in their apprehen- sions. Hamilton wrote to Jay, in May, 1794, that the navi- gation of the Mississippi, if secured, will be "an infinitely strong link of union between the western country and the At- lantic States. As its preservation will depend on the naval resources of the Atlantic States, the western country cannot but feel that this essential interest depends on its remaining firmly united with them." Randolph's letter was addressed to Jeffer- son, in August : "The people of Kentucky, either contemning or ignorant of the consequences, are restrained from hostility by a pack-thread. They demand a conclusion of the negotia- tion, or a categorical answer from Spain. . . . What if the gov- ernment of Kentucky should force us either to support them in their hostilities against Spain, or to disavow and renounce them. War at this moment with Spain would not be war with Spain alone. The lopping off of Kentucky from the Union is dread- ful to contemplate, even if it should not attach itself to some other power." There was indeed a strong apprehension that England might succeed in entangling the Kentuckians. Sim- roe was soon to write to the Lords of Trade (September 1) : " It is generally understood that above half the inhabitants of Kentucky and the western waters are already inclined to a con-


543


THE CREEKS.


nection with Great Britain." Thurston, a Kentucky obsever, had just before written to Washington that a powerful faction was scheming to place that country under British protection.


With these suppressed murmurings threatening to become open shouts in the autumn of 1794, we need, before passing on to the fulfillments of 1795, to turn back to the spring of 1793, and watch other ominous signs, which made these two years in the southwest exceptionally trying in their precarious condi- tions, since there was no question, in which the relations of Spain and the United States were involved, that did not inti- mately concern the danger of an Indian war. The federal gov- ernment could never be safely unprepared. When it was de- termined in May, 1793, to reinforce the federal troops in this endangered region, the government possessed abundant evidence of the complicity of Carondelet in the unrest of the Creeks, and it is now known that he was strenuously urging his government to let him band all the Indians in the interests of Spain. Jef- ferson sent the proofs of Carondelet's intrigues with the tribes to Carmichael at Madrid. The better to learn exactly what was going on in New Orleans, where branches of American commercial houses were become not uncommon, Jefferson was, in May, 1793, looking " for an intelligent and prudent native " to reside in that city, while, under cover of business, he could get opportunities to spy upon the intentions of Carondelet. In June, the government had learned that 1,500 men had been sent from Spain to Louisiana, and that Spanish posts on the upper Mississippi had been strengthened. A few days later (June 23), he wrote to Madison of the "inevitableness of a war with the Creeks, and the probability - I might say certainty - of a war with Spain." Some Ohio traders, who had gone down the Mississippi in their flatboats, and had returned to Philadelphia by water, were at the same time interrogated by Knox for in- formation, and at the close of the month. Jefferson was in pos- session of new evidence of Spanish instigation of the Creeks, which he transmitted to Carmichael. Later on, the administra- tion was urged by Georgians and Carolinians to authorize the mobilizing of four' or five thousand militia under General Pickens to attack the Creeks in the autumn. The government hesitated for fear of provoking a Spanish and perhaps an Eng-


544


THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.


lish war ; and upon the project of sending a secret agent to the Choctaws to induce them to join the Chickasaws against the Creeks, and so distract the latter, the cabinet was divided. Meanwhile Robertson was furnishing arms to the Chickasaws, and when Carondelet remonstrated with the government at Philadelphia, the tie in the cabinet vote enabled them to deny rendering any aid, and to assert that their influence was for peace.


In eastern Tennessee there was less restraint. Every issue of the A'norrille Gazette clamored for a war of extermination against the Creeks. Some of that tribe crossing the river in September, Sevier mustered his militia, and drove them back by a midnight attack, and, following them to their villages, burned them, and laid waste their fields. This was Sevier's last Indian campaign, and it brought peace to the borders of east Tennessee. The invasion of the Indian territory had been in defiance of the orders from Philadelphia ; but Andrew Jaek- son, three years later, then a new representative from Tennes- see, succeeded in getting the general government to reimburse the local authorities for the cost of it.


Washington, in addressing Congress at the end of the year 1793. told them that the Chickamaugas were still uneasy, and doubted if anything like a steady peace could be maintained with the southwestern tribes till there was some system of organized trade with them arranged, to prevent the provoca- tions to which they were at present subjected. He added, in another speech, that if the Creeks were to be sustained by the Spanish in their claims to bound on the Cumberland, and if the authorities at New Orleans persisted in a right to arbi- trate between the United States and the Indians inhabiting American territory, it was clear that an issue must come with Spain. He informed Congress that he had sent a messenger to Madrid to learn how far the government at Madrid sustained Carondelet in these pretensions.


A review of the next year, 1794, shows us pretty much the same troublesome conditions on this southwestern border. The chief perplexity was in the fact that the irresponsible frontiers-


NOTE. - The opposite " Map of the Tennassee government, by Genl. D. Smith and others," is from l'arry's American Allas, Philadelphia, 1795. It shows the Indian towns on the Tennessee, and their relation to Nashville and the Cumberland settlements. Cf. the map in Reid's Amer- ican Atlas, New York, 1796.


Sulph


Ferk


EClarlille


AK.dowels


Harpath Lurer


pitchers'r.


Nathvilles


Stones.


S.Bounds of inilifary Refervation


Cfrich


Darreng


1


n


the Suck


Shallow Ford


chafanng"


RunningW.


Towns


7.


DA Crow Town


Cheroke


Creeks crossing Place .


.


redar Cr.


s price ci.


12


Barron's Creek


1400


546


THE UNREST OF THE SOUTHWEST.


men caused much of the mischief. La Rochefoucault-Lian- court, who, a little later, went through this country, found it "allowed on all sides that the whites are in the wrong four times out of five." Unfairness in traffic had driven the Indian trade largely from the Georgian border to Pensacola, and the lawlessness of the borderers in inciting the enmity of some thirty-five thousand Indians, now supposed to be the combined numbers of the Creeks, Cherokees, and Choctaws, threw a serious . responsibility upon the Americans, whatever may have been the complicity of the Spaniards. These thirty-five thousand In- dians were said to be able to show twelve thousand warriors, old and young, and the mastery of the Creeks was indicated by their furnishing nearly half of this fighting force.


The conditions which generally prevailed were that the Cher- okces were the general rovers now plundering on the borders of Carolina and Georgia, now on the north against the Cumberland settlers, under the lead usually of the local Chickamaugas, or joining in combined onsets on the Chickasaws. The Creeks by their numbers strengthened almost every assault. The Choc- taws, nearer the Spanish, at New Orleans, did not so often appear, except by their strolling bucks. Back of it all was, as the Americans believed, and doubtless with right, the influence of Carondelet and his agents. It was said, perhaps in exaggera- tion, that the Spanish largesses paid to these tribes were some- thing like $55,000 a year, a sum nearly the equal of the revenne of Louisiana. The Indian confederation was broken by the friendliness of the Chickasaws for the whites, and it was Caron- delet's constant aim to rend this somewhat fitful alliance.


While this was the obstacle in the way of the Spanish gov- ernor, the nearest representative of the American government, Blount, at Knoxville, was quite as much tried to carry out the instructions of the secretary of war to prevent unauthorized attacks and retaliative inroads by the American settlers. In the spring of 1794, it appeared to the territorial assembly at Knoxville that such restraint was no longer judicious, and they petitioned the general government for open war with the Creeks. On June 6, Rufus King reported in Congress a bill for an offen- sive campaign against the Creeks and Cherokees. Instead of action upon it. Knox very soon entertained a deputation of Cherokees at Philadelphia, and reopened the question of the


547


ORR'S EXPEDITION.


boundaries which had been established by the treaty of July 2, 1791. They complained that the line, as marked, was as crooked as Blount's heart, and insisted upon a straight one which would have sacrificed sundry white settlements. The old line was left, however, to be amended a few years later, and, as a peace offering, Knox agreed to add $5,000 worth of goods annually to the largess the Cherokees had already received.


In September, 1794, the federal government not aeting promptly in giving permission for an active campaign, Robert- son ordered Major Orr to march with five hundred mounted Kentucky and Tennessee militia against the lower Cherokee towns. A small body of federal troops, who were ranging in the mountains, joined the expedition. Orr left Nashville on September 7, and, guided by a young man who had been a prisoner among the Chickamaugas, he took a circuitous moun- tain path, and on the 13th, swooped down upon two Indian villages in succession, and killed seventy of their defenders, having only two of his own men wounded. Blount and the federal government complain of the disobedience of orders, but the Nickajack expedition - as it was called - was too necessary to be made a subject of serious complaint. The Indians soon sued for peace, and as in the case of Sevier's expedition, Rob- ertson's prompt action brought peace to the frontiers in that part of the territory, and in a similar way, as in Sevier's case, the insubordination was later vindicated by Congressional ap- proval. On December 8, Washington informed Congress that both Creeks and Cherokees had confirmed existing treaties, and had restored prisoners and property. He added that the con- tinuanee of peace was hazarded by the constant and wanton mur- ders of tribesmen committed along the Georgian frontiers. Ed- mund Pendleton shortly afterwards (December 30, 1794) drew the President's attention to the impolicy of the largess system, and no doubt spoke the truth when he said : "The old counsel- ors among the Indians will profess to be at peace, and continue to receive their annuity, while their young men continue their depredations, and the others will say they cannot restrain them." The gift system, undoubtedly, as Washington saw, had this objection ; but the President could not bring himself to believe that the tribes did not in justice demand some recom- pense for the injury which had been done them.


CHAPTER XXIV.


PINCKNEY'S TREATY AND THE KENTUCKY INTRIGUE.


1795-1796.


ALTHOUGH when Jefferson left the circle of the President's advisers at the opening of 1794, the movement of the federal government for a treaty with Spain on the basis of a free navi- gation of the Mississippi had taken shape looking to the ap- pointment of a special commissioner to Madrid, it was not till the following autumn that the choice of such an agent was seri- ously considered, and then it was Patrick Henry who was the selection of the President. Henry refused the trust on account of his precarious health, and it was not till November 24 that this preliminary motion was effected by the transference of Thomas Pinckney, then in London, to the court of Madrid. This done, Washington hastened in December, 1794, to allay the continued irritation of Kentucky by writing to Innes that the initiatory steps for a treaty with Spain had been made. On February 15, 1795, Randolph instructed Monroe, then in Paris, " to seize any favorable moment " to bring the Missis- sippi question to an issue. Before Monroe could have received these injunetions, Tom Paine, in the convention, tried to seeure the help of France by proposing that the freedom of that river should be made a condition of peace between France and Spain. The treaty made by Jay, however, was too offensive to France to make her representatives anxious to abet any interests of the American Republic. They were, moreover, aggrieved at being, as they thought, rather cavalierly treated in not being early in- formed of the provisions of the Jay treaty. It was nine or ten months after the rumors of its conditions reached them before, in the autumn of 1795, the American papers brought them the full text of the treaty.


While thus, in the appointment of Pinekney, the negotia- tions were fairly inaugurated in Europe, the old question of the


549


THE YAZOO GRANTS.


Yazoo grants was revived in a way threatening new complications with Spain by forestalling the decisions of the negotiators. All efforts of holders under earlier grants to effect some compromise by consolidation had failed, and the whole matter, in the autumn of 1794, had seemed doomed to oblivion. But as matters now stood, there were four claimants somehow to be reconciled before these Yazoo projects could be put on a satisfactory basis. Spain still claimed to latitude 32° 30', and her claim, it was supposed, would be pressed with Pinckney. The federal government con- tended that the treaty of 1782 had given it the right to this contested region, and this right had been in part strengthened through the cession by South Carolina, in 1787, of that long, narrow strip lying between the extension of the northern bound- ary of Georgia and the south line of Tennessee, unless indeed that strip had been included already in the "territory south of the Ohio." Against this claim of the United States Georgia had rested her case on the royal commission to Governor Wright, and the federal rejection of her cession of the country in 1788. Counting upon her rights as Georgia understood them, her legislature had, in December, 1794, regranted some thirty million aeres for $500,000, at a price of about 11 cents an acre, to the four companies which had been the earlier recip- ients of the region, and this bill, amended in some respects to suit the governor's views, became by his signature a law on January 7, 1795. Thus passed to the control of these com- panies a large part of the present States of Alabama and Mississippi. These companies under their new names were the Upper Mississippi Company, which received a region in the northwest extending twenty-five miles south of the Tennessee boundary ; the Tennessee Company, which obtained much the same area as was given to it in 1789; the Georgia Mississippi Company, which covered the southwestern region extending from 31° 18' to 32° 40' north latitude ; and the Georgia Company, the largest of all, which received seventeen million acres lying between 32° 40' and 34°, but east of the Tombigbee River, its southern line running upon the 31st parallel. Its extension east and west was from the Alabama River to the Mississippi. It was soon discovered that every vote but one in the legislature which had made these imperial grants came from members in one or another of the companies, and eries of corruption were


550


PINCKNEY'S TREATY.


raised in all quarters of the State. It turned out also that many federal and state officials were complicated in the busi- ness. The terms of the grant made the lands free from taxa- tion. and when settled they were to be entitled to representa- tion in the legislature. That the governor had not vetoed the act was thought to have been due rather to his complacency than to any pecuniary connection of his own with the measure. There was a hope that a constitutional convention which was summoned for the following May would be able to right the wrong ; but the same interest which had swerved the legisla- ture from rectitude prevailed there, and the question was rele- gated to the next legislature, where there was not the same chance that the grantees could be protected. General James Jackson, who was in the federal senate, resigned his station to be elected to the coming legislature, and he carried a rescind- ing aet through that body ; but ultimately all innocent purchas- ers from the companies were duly protected.


Such a scandal further invalidating titles of lands still in dis- pute with Spain was an unfortunate conjunction at this stage of the negotiation at Madrid, and it is not perhaps surprising that Carondelet, on the Spanish side, sought further to arrest an amicable settlement. He had already made some show, by ceasing to incite the Indians, in acquiescing in the diplomatic movement ; but in the uncertainty attending the negotiations, he had determined to secure the long-sought vantage-ground in Ken- tucky which Spain had always desired. He was not unmind- ful of the chance that the Kentuckians in their restlessness might yield either to France or England. and was not quite sure which event Spain should most distrust. The Jacobins in the United States had already begun to play upon the patriotic impulses of their compatriots in Louisiana, and he had found handbills urging them to rise against their Spanish oppressors cirenlating in New Orleans. These same incendiary appeals contrasted the servile condition of the French Creoles with the freedom in Kentucky, and warned the French Louisianians to expect an armed flotilla to aid them in their revolt.


New Orleans at this time was not well prepared to withstand a vigorous assault. Collot, a French military observer, whom we have already encountered, and who was arrested later by Carondelet, described its forts as diminutive and badly placed




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