The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources, Part 48

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 48


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In May, McHenry, now in the cabinet, informed St. Clair of the departure of these spies, and hoped he would discover ground for seizing their papers. About the same time, the republican faction were credited with an attempt, ostensibly for economy's sake, to abolish the major-generalship of the army, but really with the purpose of getting rid of Wayne and put- ting Wilkinson as the senior brigadier at the head of the army, as a more manageable person than Wayne. The death of the latter before the end of the year brought Wilkinson to the top more naturally, and the French faction doubtless knew him to be as purchasable by France as by Spain.


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THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.


The French government, in March, 1796, had lodged with Monroe, in Paris, their complaints of the Jay treaty ; and when the tidings of the House's action. on April 30, in sustaining the treaty, reached France, the authorities of the seaports began a series of aggressions and condemnations of American vessels. By October, the exasperated Directory were determined on more offensive measures. Monroe advised the leaders that a war with the United States would throw the Americans into the arms of England, and set back the cause of liberty. This minister heard in August that France was planning a treaty with Spain, by which Louisiana and Florida would be surren- dered to French influence, and Canada was to be attacked, so as to surround the United States with alien interests. Monroe questioned the government, which promptly denied it.


Meanwhile, Adet's spies were working in the west. Collot, in Kentucky, had fallen in with Judge Breckenridge, and was endeavoring to convince him how a French alliance could with- stand the authority of the United States. Passing on by the route which had been marked out for him, Collot made obser- vation of the portage between the Wabash and Maumee, where wagons were regularly conveying passengers, and saw how it "ought to be fortified, if the northwestern States ever make a schism." Descending the Ohio, he stopped at Fort Massac, and found it occupied by a hundred men, and eight twelve- pounders mounted in its four bastions. The channel, being on the opposite side of the river, showed him how it could be passed in the night. Caught making sketehes, the commander, Captain Pike, arrested him, and he was only allowed to proceed by having an officer in company as long as he kept on American soil. Passing up to the Illinois settlements, where he had hoped to discover the French eager for his counsels, he was cha- grined to find that the people had no qualities of the French but courage. Collot, Michaux, and Volney give a poor account of these degenerate French. "They live .and look like sav- ages," says one. "Their thrifty American neighbors had got the upper hand of them," says a second. Collot even says they had forgotten the succession of the calendar; that they stubbornly adhered to old customs ; that they did not recog- nize their privations : that they were buried in superstitious ignorance, and lived the lives of indolent drunkards.


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WASHINGTON'S ADVICE.


At St. Louis, Collot learned that both Carondelet and Pick- ering had ordered his arrest, so that he was safe on neither side of the river. An American judge at Kaskaskia, he said, had " spread the most idle and injurious tales respecting the French nation, and particularly respecting myself."


St. Louis struck him as commanding in position the Missis- sippi and the route to the Pacific by the Missouri, "with more facility, more safety, and with more economy for trade and navigation than any other given point in North America." Of its six hundred population, two hundred were able to bear arms, and all were French. They were, in the main, happy laborers, less degenerate than those he had seen in the Illinois region, and among them were prosperous merchants. The fort had been strengthened at the time of Genet's proposed raid, and the garrison of seventeen men now in it was ordered to retreat, if necessary, to New Madrid.


Looking to a French irruption on the mines of Santa Fé, he found that it was practicable for two converging forces to fall upon them. One would ascend the Great Osage branch of the Missouri, and the other the Arkansas. The valley where Santa Fé was situated would bring the two armies near together. the one sixty miles and the other a hundred miles and more from the coveted goal.


While Collot was thus marking out the lines of a French invasion of the Mississippi valley, Washington, in his farewell address (September 17, 1796), was uttering a sober warning to the western intriguers. The east finds, he says, and will still more find, in the west, " a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad, or manufactures at home," while the west will obtain from the east " the supplies requisite to its growth and comfort. . . . It owes the secure enjoyment of in- dispensable outlets for its own productions to the Atlantic side of the Union. . .. Any other tenure by which the west can hold this advantage, either by its own strength or by connections with a foreign power, must be precarious. . . . The inhabitants of our western country have seen in the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that event, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the general government and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi." He


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THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.


urges them to be deaf to advisers who would conneet them with aliens.


As the autumn advanced, the relations between Spain and England, which had long been strained, and which had so much induced the treaty of San Lorenzo, grew more and more irrita- ble. A year or so before, Jefferson had written to Morris in London to intimate to the British government that a balance of power was as necessary in America as in Europe, and any dis- turbance of it by England's seizing Louisiana in case of a rup- ture with Spain would cause extreme uneasiness in America. It was a common rumor at this time that an expedition from Montreal would be started against Louisiana, if the Spanish should venture on a war. Collot heard of it on the Mississippi as to consist of two thousand British regulars, fifteen hundred militia, and a body of Indians, and he had given Gayoso warn- ing of it at Natchez. During the summer, an English spy had been examining the Ohio River, and it was a question if England would respect American territory in case of a determi- nation to attack Louisiana. St. Clair wrote from Pittsburg, on September 6, about this emissary : "Connolly has left the country, after making, it is said, an accurate survey of the Ohio, and sounding its depths in a number of places. He was stopped at Massae and his papers examined by the command- ing officer," and at the same time there were reports of English agents in Tennessee and Kentucky organizing military forees.


. War was declared by Spain against England on October 7, and not long after the declaration was received in London, Port- land wrote to Simcoe (October 24) to inquire what could be depended upon in Kentucky and the west. The current ques- tions now became complicated. Would England, with or with- ont the sympathy of the United States, make a descent of the Mississippi upon New Orleans ? Would the Spanish, with or without the aid of the French, ascend the Mississippi, make another attempt to wrest the west from the Union, and dash upon Canada ?. The last country was full of rumors of French intentions, and Governor Preseott, in October, 1796, issued a warning proclamation. The possession by this time of the lake posts surrendered under the Jay treaty, which was the cause of this French animosity, put the United States in a position to resist either expedition, northward or southward, if it should seom best.


565


ELLICOTT AND CARONDELET.


The immediate effect upon the United States of this Anglo- Spanish war was the excuse which Carondelet found in it to delay the surrender of Natchez and the other Mississippi posts, and to block the purpose of Andrew Ellicott, who had been designated by the President as the American commissioner for running the lines determined by the treaty of San Lorenzo. Ellicott had left Philadelphia on September 16, 1796, and near the end of October, he embarked all his stores and wagons on the Ohio. It was a low state of the river, and when he turned into the Mississippi, on December 18, he found himself sur- rounded by floating ice. He did not begin his further descent till January 21, 1797, when a detachment of American troops accompanied his. flotilla. At New Madrid, before its crumbling fort, he was stopped and shown a letter from Carondelet direct- ing the commandant to detain him till the forts were evacuated, which could not be done, as his excuse was, till the river had risen. He went on. At Chickasaw Bluff there was the same politeness and the same wide-eyed wonder when the treaty of San Lorenzo was mentioned. There were armed galleys hover- ing about in a rather inquisitive way. At Walnut Hills a can- non-shot stopped them, and he found the same politeness and ignorance. On February 22, 1797, he met a messenger from Gayoso, who commanded at Natchez, saying that the evacuation had been delayed by the want of suitable vessels. The Span- ish governor advised him to leave his armament behind, if he proposed to come on to Natchez. Ellicott went on without his troops and reached Natchez on the 24th. Entering upon a con- ference, he finally secured a promise to begin the survey on March 19; and he sent forward a notice of his arrival to Ca- rondelet. Gayoso asked him to pull down the American flag flying over his camp, but he refused.


On March 1, 1797, Carondelet arrived. He presented a new excuse for not evacuating the posts. It was not clear in his mind whether he should surrender the forts as they were, or should dismantle them first, and he must submit the question to the authorities in Madrid.


There was in Natchez, with its hundred variegated wooden houses, a mixed population of about four thousand, divided in sympathies, - a Spanish party, an English party, and an Amer- ican one. The Spanish party was really insignificant. The


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English party was made up of original British settlers, who had been joined by Tories from the States during the Revolution. The American party was mainly people whom the States for one reason or another had ejected from their communities. In the district about the town there may have been ten thousand souls, capable with the town of furnishing two thousand militia foot, and two hundred dragoons.


It appearing that Gayoso was strengthening the fort and re- mounting guns, Ellicott had offers of volunteers, coming from among the nine tenths of the people who were rejoicing in the prospect of relief from Spanish rule. While Ellicott hesitated about assuming any military control, he was determined to send up the river for his troops. It was not best to let the Spanish commander get too strong a hold upon the post. There was no neighboring height from which a cannonade could dis- possess him of the post, and New Orleans, a hundred leagues away, was within reach for succor. Gayoso objected to having the American troops at hand, but Ellicott was firm, only that he was willing they should bivouac a few miles up from the town. Lieutenant Pope, who was in command of the escort, had been strengthening it by enlistments up the river, as he could find willing Americans in the neighborhood of Fort Mas- sac, where he had stopped. He had had orders from Wayne not to move forward till he had tidings of the evacuation : but Ellicott's demand was pressing, and he descended the river, reaching the neighborhood of Natehez on April 24, 1797.


It was now apparent that Spanish agents were working upon the Chickasaws and Choctaws to secure their aid in what looked like a struggle for possession ; but Ellicott was as wary as his opponent. and courted the Choctaws till he felt sure of their neutrality. At this point there was a new reason given by the Spaniards - not offered before - for delay, which was that news had been received of a contemplated British descent of the river, and they must be met before they reached New Or- leans. Gayoso in fact had first heard of this intended British attack from Collot, when he passed down the river the pre- vious year. At that time, Collot had a marvelous tale to re- hearse. One Chisholm - an Englishman, whom one shall soon know something about -was raising a force in Tennessee, which, with the aid of the Creeks and Cherokees and fifteen


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WILKINSON AND POWER.


hundred Tories at Natchez, was to attack the Spanish, while the British from Canada, in company with Brant and his Indi- ans, were to descend the Mississippi. It was now just about the time when, as Collot then said, the American invaders would be gathering at Knoxville, where they had the countenance of the Governor of Tennessee.


The Spanish surveyor arriving at this juncture, and the sur- veying party having no necessity of witnessing the Anglo- Spanish conflict, Ellicott thought there was a chance to begin his work. Gayoso, who was now strengthening his works at Walnut Hills, thought otherwise, and notified Ellicott, on May 11, that the survey must be put off; and this decision was con- firmed by a proclamation which Carondelet himself issued on May 24. Ellicott protested, and enrollments of the townspeople began as if serious business was intended. A fortnight later, on June 7, 1797, a committee of the citizens assumed control of the town, all parties agreeing to be peaceable. Gayoso acqui- esced, since he could not do otherwise, and exhorted the popu- lace to keep quiet till the differences could be settled. This revolutionary tribunal was displaced in a few days by another appointed by Gayoso at Ellicott's dictation, and Carondelet confirmed the choice. This was one of the last acts of Caron- delet, for he was soon on his way to Quito to assume another charge, and Gayoso ruled in his place, receiving his commission on July 26, 1797.


This departing, short, fat, choleric, but good-humored gov- ernor was not to know the failure of another of his wily plans. He had, in May, 1797, once more sent his old emissary, Thomas Power, to Wilkinson, to ask him to keep back any additional American force, because he intended to hold Natchez till the British danger was passed, and he could hear from Madrid. Power was also to let the old Kentucky discontents understand that Spain had no intention of observing the San Lorenzo treaty, and that if they would swing that State away from the Union, Spain was ready to make the most favorable terms with them. It was the old story. Kentucky constancy to Spanish interest was to be tested very shortly in an attack on Fort Mas- sac. The time, however, had passed for even a show of assent, and when Power reached Detroit, where Wilkinson was, that general made an appearance of arresting him, and hurried him


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THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.


out of danger. This was in September, 1797; in the follow- ing January, Power was back in New Orleans reporting his failure to Gayoso.


While Power and Wilkinson, conscious that the end of Span- ish machinations in the west had come, were talking over at Detroit the failure of their hopes, Ellicott, at Natchez, was receiving (September, 1797) from his government the diselos- ure of another plan, to link the turbulent west with British aid in an attempt to wrest New Orleans and the adjacent re- gions from the hands of Spain. This intelligence was accom- panied by the announcement that Blount, now a senator from Tennessee, and shown to be a prime mover in this treasonable seheme, had been expelled the previous July by his associates in Congress, with but a single dissentient voice, and had hur- ried away from Philadelphia to escape further condemnation. Ellicott, on the receipt of this news, threw a new responsibility upon his committee of safety at Natchez, when he left it to its vigilance to detect and thwart any lingering treason in connec- tion with the same plot, which might exist in that neighbor- hood, of which, as we have seen, Collot had heard a vague rumor the previous year.


This dying spasm of western discontent needs to be eluci- dated. Blount had probably numerous accomplices. They have been reckoned at about thirty, upon whom more or less suspi- cion rested. They included a certain schemer, one Dr. Ro- mayne, Colonel Orr of Tennessee, Colonel Whitely of Ken- tueky, and a dnbions personage, named Chisholm. On April 21. 1797, Blount had written to Carey, the official interpreter of the Cherokees, in a way which showed that the southern In- dians were to be used in an attack on New Orleans, while a British Heet ascended the Mississippi, and a force of four thou- sand frontiersmen, directed by Blount and aided by Colonel Anthony Hutchins, a hot-headed officer of the English service, who was somewhat popular in the Natchez country, were to deseend that river.


After the plan was known, there was a diversity of opinion as to the end the plot was intended to subserve. Some, as one said, supposed the real object was to alarm the Spaniards, and when the intriguers had created serious apprehension in the Spanish mind, the movers were to offer their services to arrest


569


FRENCH INTRIGUES.


or oppose the progress of the plan, and place the Spanish authorities under such obligations as to reap immense advan- tages to themselves. The truth was probably more apparent, for the project was most likely intended to forestall a plot of France to secure possession of Florida and Louisiana, which Talleyrand had urged as an offset to the effects of Jay's treaty. A transfer of the trans-Mississippi region-to France was held « to be inimical to the interests of the land speculators of the west, who thought, by placing that region under the trustee- ship of England, to enhance the reciprocal advantages of an independent state, holding both banks of the Mississippi. It had for a long time been suspected that France was negotiating with Spain to renew her old hold on the Mississippi. As early as November, 1796, Oliver Wolcott felt convinced that the transfer had been secretly effected " with the object of having an influence over the western country." Rufus King, in Lon- don, was growing to think that the persistent grasp of Spain on the river posts was an indication that this had taken place. Liston, the British minister in Philadelphia, writing to Gov- ernor Prescott of Canada, warned him that France was not to be content with Louisiana, but was longing also for her old dominion over the country north of the Great Lakes. He be- lieved that Adet had sent thither a skulking emissary, who was passing under the name of Burns, and was seeking to excite the Canadians to revolt. The dread of this in Canada grew so before the year closed that it was feared that Lower and Upper Canada would be assailed, on the one hand from Vermont and on the other from the west, where Collot was numbering the western Indians and thought to instigate them to the attack. Rumor laid out a broad plan of attack. A French fleet was to ascend the St. Lawrence in July, 1797, while the Jacobins were to muster the invading force along the American frontier. In March, Liston found everything dark. "The damned French rogues," he wrote, " are playing the devil with this country, as they have done with all the world ; but when things are at the worst, they must mend."


Just before this, Pickering had written (February, 1797) to Rufus King that the change in sovereignty over Louisiana would be fraught with danger to the United States. The elec- tion of John Adams to the presidency the previous November


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(1796) and the defeat of Jefferson, the friend of France, in spite of Adet's warning that a republican defeat would estrange his country, had moved the French Directory to action meant, as Barlow reported, " to be little short of a declaration of war." In the spring of 1797, it was known that the Directory had ordered Pinckney away from Paris. Hamilton wrote back to King, on April 8, that " it portends too much a final rupture as the only alternative to an ignominious submission." Adet at this time, leaving for France, said there would be no war, but the federalists believed he only intended to prevent the Americans preparing for a conflict. Fisher Ames was urging a bold front. Robert Goodloe Harper, in a pamphlet, was going over the story of the past insincerity of France, and feli- citously divining her treachery in the days of the American Re- volution, in the way that abundant evidence, divulged in later days, has established it. As the summer began, Pickering was impressed with the French intentions, and on June 27, 1797, he wrote to King: " We are not without apprehension that France means to regain Louisiana and to renew the ancient plan of her monarch, of circumscribing and encircling what now constitute the Atlantic States," - thus reinforcing the view of Harper. The French view was exactly expressed by Rochefou- cault-Liancourt, when he said that " the possession of Louisi- ana by the French would set bounds to the childish avarice of the Americans, who wish to grasp at everything."


' It was this prevailing belief, going back to the previous autumn (1796), that had aroused Blount to the opportunity which he desired to make of advantage to the west. His move- ments and those of his associates, even before he wrote his letter in April to Carey, had been brought to the notice of Yrujo, the Spanish minister, and he had directed to it the atten- tion of Pickering. He added evidences, not only of a purpose to attack New Orleans, but of a plan to invade Florida from Georgia, while another force from Canada fell upon St. Louis and New Madrid.


The situation all around was perplexing for the administra- tion. Spain was pursuing a dubious course on the Mississippi. There were Franco-western designs on Canada. There were Anglo-western aims at New Orleans.


Liston, the British minister, when appealed to, acknowledged


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BLOUNT'S INTRIGUE.


that he had been approached by irresponsible persons in regard to a British attack on New Orleans ; but he said he had thrown discredit on it, and had referred the proposition, with his disap- proval, to his government. The ministry's response not coming, one John Chisholm, a Scotch adventurer, who has been already referred to, and who had conferred with Liston, had been, in March, 1797, sent to London by that minister, who had not only paid the fellow's passage-money, but had also, it was later believed, given him two sets of letters. One set was to accredit him on account of this nefarious business, and was prepared to be thrown overboard in case of necessity ; and the other set concerned some ostensible mercantile transactions. King, in London, was warned to keep watch on Chisholm, and he soon reported that he was leading a scandalous life, and that the British government for a while paid his petty obligations, but that later he was thrown into jail for debt. Grenville, how- ever, protested to King that the ministry had promptly rejected the whole proposition.


Meanwhile, Blount's letter, and his expulsion from the Senate in July, had set everybody in America wondering how wide- spread the defection was. Between the revelation of the plot and the final act of the Senate, Wolcott, on July 4, 1797, had written : " Our western frontiers are threatened with a new In- dian war. French and Spanish emissaries swarm though the country. There is reason to believe that a western or ultra- montane republic is meditated. . . . It is certain that overtures have been made to the British government for support, and there is every reason to believe, short of positive proof, that similar overtures have been made to Spain and France. The British will not now support the project." The opposite par- ties, now evenly balanced, as the election of Adams by a bare majority showed, and bitterer than ever against each other, scanned eagerly the names which were hinted at as associated with Blount. The federalists were rejoiced to find them all Jacobins. Boudinot expressed their opinions : " All who have been mentioned as concerned in the business are violent Jaco- bins, professed enemies to Great Britain, and who have been continual advocates for the French, and always vociferating a British faction. . . . We are not without fear that this may be a scheme of the democrats and Frenchified Americans to ruin


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THE UNITED STATES COMPLETED.


England in the American opinion, and give the Spaniards an excuse to break their treaty with us."


It is always unsafe to be determinate on diplomatic myste- ries, nor is there evidence that what Hawkesworth represented to King at a later day as the purpose of the British ministry was closely connected with this Blount undertaking. His lord- ship said that the ministry had indeed considered a project of seizing Louisiana, and might perhaps have used the British army then in Egypt for the object. Their purpose, he pro- fessed, was not so much acquisition of territory as to find in the success of the expedition a ground for securing other advan- tages at the peace. Colonel Trumbull, who was at this time in England, wrote to urge the United States' seizing Louisiana and Florida, and emancipating Mexico. He at the same time expressed the opinion that the federal government might count on the English navy to blockade on the Gulf, while the Ameri- cans did the work by land.




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