The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources, Part 47

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 47


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51


551


LOUISIANA.


to ward off an attack from without, though they might prove to be sufficient to quell a revolt. This last had probably been the governor's purpose in placing them. Five hundred men, sword in hand, could carry any one of them, as Collot claimed, and the guns of each could be turned, when captured, upon the others. None of them could hold more than a hundred and fifty defenders. The seaward defenses of the town were better. Fort Plaquemines, eighteen miles from the month of the Missis- sippi, was indeed settling on the piles on which it was built ; but its parapet was eighteen feet thick and lined with brick. It had twenty-four guns, and could house three hundred men, though only a hundred were now in it. The land within range of its guns was not practicable for any protection to the be- siegers, and the river at this point was twelve to fourteen hun- dred yards wide.


The province of Louisiana was just beginning to show signs of a commercial future, and if the money which was spent on largesses to the Indians could be turned to internal improve- ments, this business progress could be easily developed. The culture of indigo had, owing to a blight, been largely aban- doned, but a more important industry was just developing in the reintroduction of the sugar-cane. An Illinois Creole, Etienne de Boré, on his plantation six miles above New Orleans, had shown such a success in its growth that in a few years the products increased to five million pounds of sugar, two hundred thousand gallons of rum, and two hundred and fifty thousand gallons of molasses. Almost coincident with this new agricul- tural development, Eli Whitney, by the invention of the cotton- gin, which under the law of April 10, 1790, he had patented on March 4, 1794, had caused the exportation of cotton to ad- vance enormously, from two hundred thousand pounds in 1791 to eighteen million pounds in 1800. Collot, who had not found the Whitney invention in operation in 1795, said that the seeds were still separated by a coarse mill, which breaks the fibre and diminishes its value a quarter, but he adds, " A better machine has been introduced into the United States, which is no doubt susceptible of greater perfection, and the cotton has already re- sumed its old price."


The west, to be prosperous, shared with Louisiana the neces- sity of putting an end both to the endless maranding of the


552


PINCKNEY'S TREATY.


Indians and to the uncertainty of the civil government. The Indian question had practically now come to a composition of the feud existing between the Chickasaws and the Creeks. Both Robertson and the Spanish commander at Natchez ex- erted themselves as mediators, and in the early summer of 1795, these two tribes came to an agreement which, barring the out- bursts of some irrepressible bucks on each side, quieted the Indian country. News of Wayne's victory in the north served to increase the disinclination to war, and after some months there was, for the first time in a long period, substantial peace in the southwest, and in October, 1795, Washington congratu- lated. Hamilton on the prevalence of "peace from one end of onr frontiers to the other."


This condition relieved the people of Tennessee from the necessity of the military escort to which they had been accus- tomed in attending their conventions, and a disposition to pre- pare for entering the Union becoming manifest, Blonnt ordered a special cession of the territorial assembly for June 29, 1795, to consider the question of Statehood. A census was ordered to see if the sixty thousand persons, counting free people and " three fifths of all others," - the United States Constitution had given them the phrase, - necessary, under the precedence of the ordinance of 1787, to pass from a territorial condition, could be made out. If not, it was a question whether a lesser number would warrant their taking initiatory steps in the same direction. The count showed a population of seventy-seven thousand two hundred and sixty-three, while the vote for State- hood had been six thousand five hundred and four with two thousand five hundred and sixty-two in the negative, the latter mostly in middle Tennessee. So Blount issued a call for a constitutional convention to meet on January 11, 1796, though it was problematical if by that time the Spanish negotiations would have decided the question of the Mississippi. The pros- peet had indneed new eurrents of emigration from the east ; a new road had been ent over the Cumberland Mountains, and in the autumn of the previous year thirty or forty wagons went over it to establish new homes. A traveler that way in 1796 reports that between Nashville and Knoxville he met one hundred and seventy-five wagons, and seventeen or eighteen hundred bathorses, carrying emigrants and their property to the Cumberland settlements.


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553


KENTUCKY INTRIGUES.


Carondelet's hopes for some new distractions, which might tend to the Spanish interest, rested not on these stabler com- munities of the Cumberland, but on the more restless settle- ments on the Kentucky. In June, 1795, that Spanish governor addressed a letter to Judge Sebastian, at Frankfort, offering to send Colonel Gayoso to New Madrid, to meet those whom Sebastian might send there to discuss the question of the Mis- sissippi, - an effort necessarily subversive of the policy which the two governments had now entered upon at Madrid of com- ing to a conclusion by agreement on this vexed question. Later, and before he had received the letter of June, Sebastian was again apprised of the intention of Gayoso to be in New Madrid in October. That the meeting was held of course compromises Sebastian and his friends, as representatives of the United States, to an equal degree with Carondelet. Even if, as the Americans professed, they entered upon these private negotia- tions for business interests only, the matter was none the less one for the federal government to manage.


Gayoso went north from Natchez with other ostensible ob- jeets than to deal with the renegades whom he sought. He stopped at the Chickasaw Bluffs and bargained with the Indian owners for a tract of land along the river, six miles long and from a half mile to a mile broad, and on this he built and gar- risoned a fort. When General Wayne heard of this occupa- tion of American soil, he demanded an explanation, and Gayoso answered from " On board the Vigilant before New Madrid, 2nd October, 1795," that he had a right to treat with an inde- pendent tribe, and cited an agreement of the United States with the Chickasaws as to their bounds. He accompanied this with protestations of friendship. A few days before, he had written to St. Clair, then at Kaskaskia, asking for a conference to further the reciprocal interests of the two countries. From New Madrid, after thus trying to blind St. Clair, he sent Thomas Power - an Irishman, speaking French, Spanish, and English, naturalized in Spain, who professed to be a wander- ing naturalist - to open intercourse with Sebastian and his friends. This done, Power passed on to Cincinnati, and saw Wilkinson, then at Fort Washington, and wearing the Ameri- can uniform. This renegade American general now wrote to Carondelet, recommending that the Spanish governor should


554


PINCKNEY'S TREATY.


resuine his shipments up the river in order to restore confi- dence ; that he should fortify the month of the Ohio against any possible English inroad ; that he should establish a bank in Kentucky with American directors ; and that he should em- ploy George Rogers Clark and his followers in the Spanish service. It will be recollected that the French Republic had no further use of Clark and his soldiers of fortune. Sebastian went to New Madrid, but was not able to come to any agree- ment on the commercial ventures, which were to be a part of their plot, and he invited Judge Innes and William Murray to take part in the discussion. Being unable to agree with Gayoso, this official and Sebastian, in October, left New Madrid and proceeded to New Orleans, to lay the problems before Carondelet, reaching there in Jannary, 1796. Before their conferences were over, news reached New Orleans of the con- clusion of a treaty with Spain ; and the intriguers were forced to resort to other schemes. As these were in contravention of the treaty which had alarmed them, it is necessary now to follow the events which led to that pacification, and the conclu- sions which were reached, perfidions though they were on the part of Spain.


On December 8, 1795, the President had said to Congress that they might hope for a speedy conclusion of a satisfactory treaty with Spain, and before the terms of it were known, they were acenrately prefigured to the public.


, Pinckney had reached Madrid on June 28, 1795, but it was not till August 10 - such were the obstacles and prevarica- tions usually inherent in Spanish diplomacy -- that the Amer- ican commissioner was allowed to lay his propositions before the Prince of Peace, who had been appointed to deal with him. This grandee then submitted the impossibility of going for- ward. as he had not yet received any answer to the proposition which he had sent to the United States, to sell the right to navigate the Mississippi for a consideration, if the American Republic would guarantee the Spanish territorial possessions on its banks. Pinckney replied that his countrymen would never purchase a right, and that it was out of the question for them to make such a guarantee. He then rehearsed the old arguments. Spain had never questioned the provisions of the treaty of 1782 at the time she made with England the general treaty of Janu-


555


THE TREATY SIGNED.


ary 20, 1783, and nothing but the bounds of 1782 could ever satisfy the United States, as the same bounds had satisfied England in 1763, with the provision of a free navigation of the Mississippi from source to mouth, as inherent now as then.


The summer dragged on with little or no progress, and in October, disgusted and chagrined, Pinckney demanded his pass- ports. The work upon which no progress had been made in four months was now suddenly done in three days, and the treaty was signed on October 27, 1795. The next day Pinckney wrote to his own government that the threatening relations of Eng- land and the United States had obstructed the negotiations as well as the peaceful attitude of Great Britain towards Spain.


The text of the treaty arrived in Philadelphia on February 22, 1796, and the Senate promptly ratified it.


The bounds by the Mississippi and on Florida were exactly what the Americans had claimed under the treaty of independ- ence. Spain made no provision for rendering valid the grants she had made north of 31°, and they were left to the decision of the United States. It was provided that a joint commission should meet at Natchez, six months after ratification, to run the lines.


The navigation of the Mississippi, from source to mouth, was fully assured for both parties. Pinckney sought to save a conflict with Jay's treaty by inserting that, beside the two con- tracting powers, "others, by special convention," could enjoy the same right. Spain insisted that the grant to England in the Jay treaty of right to navigate the Mississippi was of no avail, as the United States only derived such a right by the present treaty.


The port of New Orleans was established for three years as a place of deposit, with no duties chargeable, and after that interval the same or other place of deposit should be allowed.


Both parties agreed to restrain the Indians on either side of the dividing line, and to use force if necessary. It was on the pretense that Spain did not impede an invasion of Georgia by the Seminoles, in 1815, that Monroe ordered Andrew Jackson at that time to pursue them over the Spanish line.


Spain agreed to evacuate all ports held by her on American territory within six months, and the United States were put under similar obligations, if conditions required it.


556


PINCKNEY'S TREATY.


Ratifications of this treaty of San Lorenzo el real were exchanged on April 26, 1796, and on August 2 it was duly proclaimed.


So decisive an abandonment of her old policy by Spain, as this treaty evinced, naturally raised the question of the sincerity of the Spanish government. Pinckney and Hamilton thought that the sudden change in the Spanish temper came from an apprehension that the United States and England, as a result of Jay's treaty, were preparing for a joint declaration of war against France and Spain. Such a fear may have prevailed in the French council, and Spain and the French Directory were now in close contaet. It was said that the Spanish king yielded reluctantly, and had no real intention of carrying the treaty out, if circumstances and delays could help him to retain the Spanish posts on the Mississippi. It was known that Gayoso later boasted that the treaty would never be put in force, and Caron- delet acted, both in his subsequent condnet and in the proposi- tions he forwarded by Sebastian to Kentucky, -as we shall see, - as if he was of like belief. It was also believed that Spain hoped to pacify the United States while she dallied with the provisions of the treaty long enough to profit from a nen- tral territory being interposed between Louisiana and a British attack. Talleyrand saw nothing but misfortune in Spain's abandonment of the east bank of the Mississippi, and looked in the end for a countervail to France in the cession of Florida and Louisiana.


Washington, when the treaty had been carried through the Senate, expressed the hope that it would prove "soothing to the inhabitants of the western waters, who were beginning to grow restive and clamorons." He little knew that Judge Innes, in whom he had confided all along to quiet the discontent, was deep in the nefarious plot of Sebastian, -the former being a circuit judge of the United States, and the other the chief justice of Kentucky. The infamous Sebastian engaged to give his ser- viees to Spain. to subserve her interests and subvert those of his own country, for a yearly pension of $2,000, and he received the stipend regularly.


After thus debasing himself, Sebastian, accompanied by Power, in the spring of 1796, sailed from New Orleans for


557


WILKINSON AND SEBASTIAN.


Philadelphia, and thence passed westward with the following propositions from Carondelet : To prepare Kentucky for a revolution, and to give them money to organize the project, $100,000 will be sent to Kentucky. When independence is declared, Fort Massae shall be occupied by Spanish troops, and $100,000 shall be applied in supporting the garrison. The northern bounds of Spanish territory are to be a line running west from the mouth of the Yazoo River to the Tombigbee, while all north of such a line shall, except the reservation recently fortified at the Chickasaw Bluff, belong to the revolted State, which shall enter into a defensive alliance with Spain. The new treaty of San Lorenzo shall not be observed ; but the new State shall enjoy the navigation of the Mississippi. Ten thousand dollars were to be sent in sugar barrels up the river to Wilkinson, now the general-in-chief of the American army !


Power was obliged to return to New Orleans with the report that the Spanish treaty had indisposed the Kentucky intriguers to further machinations. Wilkinson, however, was not forgot- ten, and if we are to believe a vindicator of that faithless per- sonage, this money in sugar barrels was only his return from a tobacco venture. The specie was sent by two messengers. One got safely through. The other was murdered by his own boat- men, but neither Wilkinson nor Judge Innes thought it prudent to bring the felons to justice, and they were hurried off beyond the Mississippi.


The late John Mason Brown of Louisville, in an elaborate attempt to vindicate his grandfather, John Brown, the Ken- tueky senator, from complicity in these Spanish conspiracies, sat- isfied himself that he successfully defended Innes and all exeept Wilkinson and Sebastian from the charges of baseness. "Lifted," he says, "to its last analysis, the story shows that certainly there were not more than two conspirators, Wilkinson and Sebastian. It does not seem that they communicated. They were base money-takers, both of them, but they made no proselytes, nor tried to." It is to be hoped that this explana- tion is true, but evidence is against it.


CHAPTER XXV.


THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.


1796-1798.


SPAIN had, indeed, during the course of 1796, entered upon a system of delay very characteristic of her national humor, in carrying out the provisions of the treaty of San Lorenzo; but its ratification (April, 1796) had postponed, if it had not averted, danger from that quarter. But in the place of one disquietude had come another. French arrogance, which had received a temporary check by the suppression of Clark's expe- dition and by the futility of Carondelet's ulterior plans, made evident early in the year, was again asserting itself. With the uncertain drift of diplomacy and through the wafting of pas- sions, the federal government was never quite sure that the pro- visions of Jay's treaty might not at any time become an obstacle to the continuance of the enforced and somewhat disheartening truce with England which, in April, was finally to be made operative. The public grew calmer because it was not informed ; and such events as the new treaty with Algiers, entered into just before the treaty with Spain, seemed to the casual observer indicative of a new success in European relations. In Febru- ary, 1796, Congress congratulated Washington on his birthday, with more warmth because it was generally felt that he was entering very shortly upon his last year in office. The Presi- dent himself was taking a more roseate view of public affairs than seemed warranted, and in March, 1796, he was writing to a friend : " If the people have not abundant cause to rejoice at the happiness they enjoy. I know of no country that has. We have settled all our disputes, and are at peace with all nations." This was true, but the prospect of a continuance of peace was not flattering. Pickering, at about the same moment, was pre- maturely planning for the garrisoning of Natchez, and prepar- ing to meet a new outbreak of the Creeks, between the enmity


559


TENNESSEE.


of whom and the retention of the Spanish posts he had not far to reach for reasons.


Early in the year, the nearest white neighbors of that tribe had made a notable movement in their convention at Knoxville on January 11, 1796. Completing its business on February 6, it had announced to the world a constitution, based on that of North Carolina, but more republican, as Jefferson said, than any before framed, though in some particulars respecting the taxa- tion of lands it has been held to be too favorable to the rich. It had been made without any enabling act of Congress, and in defiance of the right of Congress to order the census which preceded it, and to determine whether the territory should be made an autonomy within the Union or without it. It had cre- ated a new State, ready for union, if Congress wanted it, but a new State in any event. The convention had had some remark- able men in it. Blount, who had sat in the federal convention of 1787, presided over it, and he was destined to be its senator in Congress. James Robertson had been called to the chair when- ever the convention resolved itself into a committee of the whole. Andrew Jackson was there, soon to ride eight hundred miles on horseback to Philadelphia, and to claim a seat in the State's behalf in the national House of Representatives. He was better known now than when he looked on and saw the escape of Sevier from his enemies at the backwoods court-house. Tipton, one of those enemies, was now here, his associate in the conven- tion ; but Sevier was not there, though destined in a few weeks to be their chosen governor, and, later still, to be turned to by Washington's successor as a brigadier in the quasi war with France. The constitution gave and legalized the name of Tennessee to the incipient commonwealth. By Blount's agency the vexed and perennial question of the Mississippi, which was so near its settlement, was formulated as a fundamental law : "An equal participation of the free navigation of the Missis- sippi is one of the inherent rights of the citizens of this State : it cannot, therefore, be conceded to any prince, potentate, power, person or persons whatever."


By the end of March, 1796, the State had assembled its first legislature, and by it the new constitution was forwarded to the President, who on April 8 laid it before Congress. A month of hesitancy passed. The federalists, led by Rufus King,


560


THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.


rallied against its acceptance. They saw in it a trick to seeure another electoral vote for Jefferson in the coming count. One of this party wrote : "The people of that country have cashiered the temporary government, and self-created themselves into a State. One of their spurious senators has arrived, and has claimed his seat. No doubt this is one twig of the electioneer- ing cabal for Mr. Jefferson." Aaron Burr, who had been in the Senate since 1791, led the party of advocates, and led them successfully. The bill for the admission of the new State came to a vote on May 6, but Burr's margin of vietory was narrow. The President kept the question in doubt for some weeks, but finally approved the act on June 1.


Another fateful question came, in the same early months of 1796, to an issue. The legislature of Georgia, which was to wipe out the Yazoo seandal, convened in January, and a strong party in favor of canceling the vicious grants developed itself. Meanwhile, the corporate speculators had in many cases sold their rights under the threatened grants, and those of the Upper Mississippi Company were transferred to a company in South Carolina. The other companies sent agents to New England, and many prominent men invested in their shares, and Boston alone is said to have placed $2,000,000 in this way. With the prospect of trouble from innocent purchasers, or from others not so guileless, the legislature, on February 13, passed a rescind- ing act, accompanying their decision with proofs of the corrup- tion and evidences of the unconstitutionality of the slaughtered grants. To give the end something of melodramatic effect, the old act was publicly burned, the fire being ignited by a burning- glass, in the effort to link the deprecation of heaven with that of the vindicators of justice. It is not necessary now to trace out the sequel. Jackson, the champion of the vindicators, says that he was " fired at in the papers, abused in the coffec-houses, and furnished a target for all the Yazoo serip-holders, - but [he added ] I have the people yet with me." . His leadership led him into duels, and in one of them he was finally killed in 1806. Meanwhile, the new purchasers organized for prosecut- ing their claims, and when Georgia finally ceded the territory to the United States, in 1802, the justice of their demands was left to the determination of Congress.


561


ADET AND THE WEST.


It was in the spring of 1796 that Adet, now the French minister in Philadelphia, entered actively upon his scheme of wresting the western country from the Union. He selected for his agents to traverse that region two Frenchmen : one, Gen- eral Victor Collot, who is described, in the instructions for his apprehension, as being six feet tall, forty years of age, and speak- ing English very well. The other - Warin, or Warren, as the same instructions name him - is described as over six feet high, thirty years old, lately a sub-engineer in the American service, and speaking English tolerably. The expenses of the mission of these spies were to be borne by the French govern- ment. They were to observe the military posts and make gen- eral observations on the country, which Collot's journal has preserved for us. They were to select a spot for a military depot, and to make a list of influential persons whom they encountered. They were to sound the people on an alliance with France, and to point out how natural it would be for those beyond the mountains to seek a French connection. They were also told to express a preference for the election of Jefferson to the presidency, and this was natural. It was the belief that Gallatin, whose career in the whiskey insurrection had not been forgotten, had taken a map by Hutchins and marked out a route for these emissaries, even if he had not suggested the movement to Adet. The whole project was a part of the resentment of France at the Jay treaty, which was held to have annulled the treaty of 1778. It was supposed to be in the interest of annexing Louisiana to France, and to give her this larger domination in the Mississippi valley, - a scheme that Talleyrand, equal to any depth of infamy, had, as we have seen, formulated.




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