INTRIGUES AND LAND SPECULATIONS -- THE TREATIES OF JAY AND PINCKNEY (1793-1797)

THROUGHOUT the history of the winning of the West what is noteworthy is the current of tendency rather than the mere succession of individual events. The general movement, and the general spirit behind the movement, became evident in many different forms, and if attention is paid only to some particular manifestation we lose sight of its true import and of its explanation. Particular obstacles retarded or diverted, particular causes accelerated, the current; but the set was always in one direction. The peculiar circumstances of each case must always be taken into account, but it is also necessary to understand that it was but one link in the chain of causation.

Such events as Burr's conspiracy or the conquest of Texas cannot be properly understood if we fail to remember that they were but the most spectacular or most important manifestations of what occurred many times. The Texans won a striking victory and performed a feat of the utmost importance in our history; and, moreover, it happened that at the moment the accession of Texas was warmly favored by the party of the slave holders.

Burr had been Vice-President of the United States, and was a brilliant and able man, of imposing personality, whose intrigues in the West attracted an attention altogether disproportionate to their real weight. In consequence each event is often treated as if it were isolated and stood apart from the general current of Western history; whereas in truth each was but the most striking or important among a host of others. The feats performed by Austin and Houston and the other founders of the Texan Republic were identical in kind with the feats merely attempted, or but partially performed, by the men who, like Morgan, Elijah Clark, and George Rogers Clark, at different times either sought to found colonies in the Spanish-speaking lands under Spanish authority, or else strove to conquer these lands outright by force of arms.

Boone settled in Missouri when it was still under the Spanish Government, and himself accepted a Spanish commission. Whether Missouri had or had not been ceded first by Spain to France and then by France to the United States early in the present century, really would not have altered its final destiny, so far at least as concerns the fact that it would ultimately have been independent of both France and Spain, and would have been dominated by an English-speaking people; for when once the backwoodsmen, of whom Boone was the forerunner, became sufficiently numerous in the land they were certain to throw off the yoke of the foreigner; and the fact that they had voluntarily entered the land and put themselves under this yoke would have made no more difference to them than it afterwards made to the Texans.

So it was with Aaron Burr. His conspiracy was merely one, and by no means the most dangerous, of the various conspiracies in which men like Wilkinson, Sebastian, and many of the members of the early Democratic societies in Kentucky, bore a part. It was rendered possible only by the temper of the people and by the peculiar circumstances which also rendered the earlier conspiracies possible; and it came to naught for the same reasons that they came to naught, and was even more hopeless, because it was undertaken later, when the conditions were less favorable.

The movement deliberately entered into by many of the Kentuckians in the years 1793 and 1794, to conquer Louisiana on behalf of France, must be treated in this way. The leader in this movement was George Rogers Clark. His chance of success arose from the fact that there were on the frontier many men of restless, adventurous, warlike type, who felt a spirit of unruly defiance toward the home government and who greedily eyed the rich Spanish lands. Whether they got the lands by conquest or by colonization, and whether they warred under one flag or another, was to them a matter of little moment. Clark's career is of itself sufficient to prove the truth of this. He had already been at the head of a movement to make war against the Spaniards, in defiance of the Central Government, on behalf of the Western settlements.

On another occasion he had offered his sword to the Spanish Government, and had requested permission to found in Spanish territory a State which should be tributary to Spain and a barrier against the American advance. He had thus already sought to lead the Westerners against Spain in a warfare undertaken purely by themselves and for their own objects, and had also offered to form by the help of some of these Westerners a State which should be a constituent portion of the Spanish dominion. He now readily undertook the task of raising an army of Westerners to overrun Louisiana in the interests of the French Republic. The conditions which rendered possible these various movements were substantially the same, although the immediate causes, or occasions, were different. In any event the result would ultimately have been the conquest of the Spanish dominions by the armed frontiersmen, and the building up of English-speaking States on Spanish territory.

The expedition which at the moment Clark proposed to head took its peculiar shape from outside causes. At this period Genet was in the midst of his preposterous career as Minister from the French Republic to the United States. The various bodies of men who afterwards coalesced into the Democratic-Republican party were frantically in favor of the French Revolution, regarding it with a fatuous admiration quite as foolish as the horror with which it affected most of the Federalists.

They were already looking to Jefferson as their leader, and Jefferson, though at the time Secretary of State under Washington, was secretly encouraging them, and was playing a very discreditable part toward his chief. The ultra admirers of the French Revolution not only lost their own heads, but turned Genet's as well, and persuaded him that the people were with him and were ready to oppose Washington and the Central Government in the interests of revolutionary France.

Genet wished to embroil America with England, and sought to fit out American privateers on the seacoast towns to prey on the English commerce, and to organize on the Ohio River an armed expedition to conquer Louisiana, as Spain was then an ally of England and at war with France. All over the country Genet's admirers formed Democratic societies on the model of the Jacobin Clubs of France. They were of course either useless or noxious in such a country and under such a government as that of the United States, and exercised a very mischievous effect.

Kentucky was already under the influence of the same forces that were at work in Virginia and elsewhere, and the classes of her people who were politically dominant were saturated with the ideas of those doctrinaire politicians of whom Jefferson was chief. These Jeffersonian doctrinaires were men who at certain crises, in certain countries, might have rendered great service to the cause of liberty and humanity; but their influence in America was on the whole distinctly evil, save that, by a series of accidents, they became the especial champions of the westward extension of the nation, and in consequence were identified with a movement which was all-essential to the national well-being.

Kentucky was ripe for Genet's intrigues, and he found the available leader for the movement in the person of George Rogers Clark. Clark was deeply embittered, not only with the United States Government but with Virginia, for the Virginia assembly had refused to pay any of the debts he had contracted on account of the State, and had not even reimbursed him for what he had spent. He had a right to feel aggrieved at the State's penuriousness and her indifference to her moral obligations; and just at the time when he was most angered came the news that Genet was agitating throughout the United States for a war with England, in open defiance of Washington, and that among his plans he included a Western movement against Louisiana.

Clark at once wrote to him expressing intense sympathy with the French objects and offering to undertake an expedition for the conquest of St. Louis and upper Louisiana if he was provided with the means to obtain provisions and stores. Clark further informed Genet that his country had been utterly ungrateful to him, and that as soon as he received Genet's approbation of what he proposed to do he would get himself "expatriated." He asked for commissions for officers, and stated his belief that the Creoles would rise, that the adventurous Westerners would gladly throng to the contest, and that the army would soon be at the gates of New Orleans.

Genet immediately commissioned Clark as a Major General in the service of the French Republic, and sent out various Frenchmen–Michaux, La Chaise, and others–with civil and military titles, to cooperate with him, to fit out his force as well as possible, and to promise him pay for his expenses. Brown, now one of Kentucky's representatives at Philadelphia, gave these men letters of introduction to merchants in Lexington and elsewhere, from whom they got some supplies; but they found they would have to get most from Philadelphia. Michaux was the agent for the French Minister, though nominally his visit was undertaken on purely scientific grounds.

Jefferson's course in the matter was characteristic. Openly, he was endeavoring in a perfunctory manner to carry out Washington's policy of strict neutrality in the contest between France and England, but secretly he was engaged in tortuous intrigues against Washington and was thwarting his wishes, so far as he dared, in regard to Genet. It is impossible that he could have been really misled as to Michaux's character and the object of his visits; nevertheless, he actually gave him a letter of introduction to the Kentucky Governor, Isaac Shelby.

Shelby had shown himself a gallant and capable officer in warfare against both the Indians and the Tories, but he possessed no marked political ability, and was entirely lacking in the strength of character which would have fitted him to put a stop to rebellion and lawlessness. He hated England, sympathized with France, and did not possess sufficient political good sense to appreciate either the benefits of the Central Government or the need of preserving order.

Clark at once proceeded to raise what troops he could, and issued a proclamation signed by himself as Major General of the Armies of France, Commander in Chief of the French Revolutionary Legions on the Mississippi. He announced that he proposed to raise volunteers for the reduction of the Spanish posts on the Mississippi and to open the trade of that river, and promised all who would join him from one to three thousand acres of any unappropriated land in the conquered regions, the officers to receive proportionately more. All lawful plunder was to be equally divided according to the customs of war.

The proclamation thus frankly put the revolutionary legions on the footing of a gang of freebooters. Each man was to receive a commission proportioned in grade to the number of soldiers he brought to Clark's band. In short, it was a piece of sheer filibustering, not differing materially from one of Walker's filibustering attempts in Central America sixty years later, save that at this time Clark had utterly lost his splendid vigor of body and mind and was unfit for the task he had set himself. At first, however, he met with promises of support from various Kentuckians of prominence, including Benjamin Logan. 6 His agents gathered flat-boats and pirogues for the troops and laid in stores of powder, lead, and beef. The nature of some of the provisions shows what a characteristic backwoods expedition it was; for Clark's agent notified him that he had ready "upwards of eleven hundred weight of Bear Meat and about seventy or seventy-four pair of Veneson Hams."

The Democratic Societies in Kentucky entered into Clark's plans with the utmost enthusiasm, and issued manifestoes against the Central Government which were, in style, of hysterical violence, and, in matter, treasonable. The preparations were made openly, and speedily attracted the attention of the Spanish agents, besides giving alarm to the representatives of the Federal Government and to all sober citizens who had sense enough to see that the proposed expedition was merely another step toward anarchy.

St. Clair, the Governor of the Northwestern Territory, wrote to Shelby to warn him of what was being done, and Wayne, who was a much more formidable person than Shelby or Clark or any of their backers, took prompt steps to prevent the expedition from starting, by building a fort near the mouth of the Ohio, and ordering his lieutenants to hold themselves in readiness for any action he might direct. At the same time the Administration wrote to Shelby telling him what was on foot, and requesting him to see that no expedition of the kind was allowed to march against the domains of a friendly power. Shelby, in response, entered into a long argument to show that he could not interfere with the expedition, and that he doubted his constitutional power to do anything in the matter; his reasons being of the familiar kind usually advanced in such cases, where a government officer, from timidity or any other cause, refuses to do his duty. If his contention as to his own powers and the powers of the General Government had been sound, it would logically have followed that there was no power anywhere to back up the law. Innes, the Federal Judge, showed himself equally lukewarm in obeying the Federal authorities.

Blount, the Governor of the Southwestern Territory, acted as vigorously and patriotically as St. Clair and Wayne, and his conduct showed in marked contrast to Shelby's. He possessed far too much political good sense not to be disgusted with the conduct of Genet, which he denounced in unmeasured terms. He expressed great pleasure when Washington summarily rebuked the blatant French envoy. He explained to the Tennesseans that Genet had as his chief backers the disappointed office-hunters and other unsavory characters in New York and in the seacoast cities, but that the people at large were beginning to realize what the truth was, and to show a proper feeling for the President and his government. Some of the Cumberland people, becoming excited by the news of Clark's preparation, prepared to join him, or to undertake a separate filibustering attack on their own account.

Blount immediately wrote to Robertson directing him to explain to these "inconsiderate persons" that all they could possibly do was to attempt the conquest of West Florida, and that they would "lay themselves liable to heavy Pains and Penalties, both pecuniary and corporal in case they ever returned to their injured country." He warned Robertson that it was his duty to prevent the attempt, and that the legal officers of the district must proceed against any of the men having French commissions, and must do their best to stop the movement; which, he said, proceeded "from the Machinations no doubt of that Jacobin Incendiary, Genet, which is reason sufficient to make every honest mind revolt at the Idea." Robertson warmly supported him, and notified the Spanish commander at New Madrid of the steps which he was taking; at which the Spaniards expressed great gratification. The whole movement collapsed however when Genet was recalled early in 1794, Clark being forced at once to abandon his expedition.

Clark found himself out of pocket as the result of what he had done; and as there was no hope of reimbursing himself by Spanish plunder, he sought to obtain from the French Government reimbursement for the expenses, forwarding to the French Assembly, through an agent in France, his bill for the "Expenses of Expedition ordered by Citizen Genet." The agent answered that he would try to secure the payment; and after he got to Paris he first announced himself as hopeful; but later he wrote that he had discovered that the French agents were really engaged in a dangerous conspiracy against the Western country, and he finally had to admit that the claim was disallowed. With this squabble between the French and Americans the history of the abortive expedition ends.

The attempt, of course, excited and alarmed the Spaniards, and gave a new turn to their tortuous diplomacy. In reading the correspondence of the Spanish Governor, Baron Carondelet, both with his subordinates and with his superiors, it is almost amusing to note the frankness with which he avows his treachery. It evidently did not occur to him that there was such a thing as national good faith, or that there was the slightest impropriety in any form of mendacity when exercised in dealing with the ministers or inhabitants of a foreign State. In this he was a faithful reflex of his superiors at the Spanish Court. At the same time that they were solemnly covenanting for a definite treaty of peace with the United States they were secretly intriguing to bring about a rebellion in the western States; and while they were assuring the Americans that they were trying their best to keep the Indians peaceful, they were urging the savages to war.

As for any gratitude to the National Government for stopping the piratical expeditions of the Westerners, the Spaniards did not feel a trace. They had early received news of Clark's projected expedition through a Frenchman who came to the Spanish agents at Philadelphia; 13 and when the army began to gather they received from time to time from their agents in Kentucky reports which, though exaggerated, gave them a fairly accurate view of what was happening. No overt act of hostility was committed by Clark's people, except by some of those who started to join him from the Cumberland district, under the lead of a man named Montgomery. These men built a wooden fort at the mouth of the Cumberland River, and held the boats that passed to trade with Spain; one of the boats that they took being a scow loaded with flour and biscuit sent up stream by the Spanish Government itself.

When Wayne heard of the founding of this fort he acted with his usual promptness, and sent an expedition which broke it up and released the various boats. Then, to stop any repetition of the offence, and more effectually to curb the overbearing truculence of the frontiersmen, he himself built, as already mentioned, a fort at Massac, not far from the Mississippi. All this of course was done in the interests of the Spaniards themselves and in accordance with the earnest desire of the United States authorities to prevent any unlawful attack on Louisiana; yet Carondelet actually sent word to Gayoso de Lemos, the Governor of Natchez and the upper part of the river, to persuade the Chickasaws secretly to attack this fort and destroy it.

Carondelet always had an exaggerated idea of the warlike capacity of the Indian nations, and never understood the power of the Americans, nor appreciated the desire of their Government to act in good faith. Gayoso was in this respect a much more intelligent man, and he positively refused to carry out the orders of his superior, remonstrating directly to the Court of Spain, by which he was sustained. He pointed out that the destruction of the fort would merely encourage the worst enemies of the Spaniards, even if accomplished; and he further pointed out that it was quite impossible to destroy it; for he understood fully the difference between a fort garrisoned by Wayne's regulars and one held by a mob of buccaneering militia.

It was not the first time that Gayoso's superior knowledge of the Indians and of their American foes had prevented his carrying out the orders of his superior officer. On one occasion Carondelet had directed Gayoso to convene the Southern Indians, and to persuade them to send deputies to the United States authorities with proposals to settle the boundaries in accordance with the wishes of Spain, and to threaten open war as an alternative. Gayoso refused to adopt this policy, and persuaded Carondelet to alter it, showing that it was necessary above all things to temporize, that such a course as the one proposed would provoke immediate hostilities, and that the worst possible line for the Spaniards to follow would be one of open war with the entire power of the United States.

Of course the action of the American Government in procuring the recall of Genet and putting a stop to Clark's operations lightened for a moment the pressure of the backwoodsmen upon the Spanish dominions; but it was only for a moment. The Westerners were bent on seizing the Spanish territory; and they were certain to persist in their efforts until they were either successful or were definitely beaten in actual war. The acts of aggression were sure to recur; it was only the form that varied. When the chance of armed conquest under the banner of the French Republic vanished, there was an immediate revival of plans for getting possession of some part of the Spanish domain through the instrumentality of the great land companies.

These land companies possessed on paper a weight which they did not have in actual history. They occasionally enriched, and more often impoverished, the individual speculators; but in the actual peopling of the waste lands they counted for little in comparison with the steady stream of pioneer farmers who poured in, each to hold and till the ground he in fact occupied. However, the contemporary documents of the day were full of details concerning the companies; and they did possess considerable importance at certain times in the settlement of the West, both because they in places stimulated that settlement, and because in other places they retarded it, inasmuch as they kept out actual settlers, who could not pre-empt land which had been purchased at low rates from some legislative body by the speculators.

The companies were sometimes formed by men who wished themselves to lead emigrants into the longed-for region, but more often they were purely speculative in character, and those who founded them wished only to dispose of them at an advantage to third parties. Their history is inextricably mixed with the history of the intrigues with and against the Spaniards and British in the West. The men who organized them wished to make money. Their object was to obtain title to or possession of the lands, and it was quite a secondary matter with them whether their title came from the United States, England, or Spain. They were willing to form colonies on Spanish or British territory, and they were even willing to work for the dismemberment of the Western Territory from the Union, if by so doing they could increase the value of the lands which they sought to acquire.

American adventurers had been in correspondence with Lord Dorchester, the Governor General of Canada, looking to the possibility of securing British aid for those desirous of embarking in great land speculations in the West. These men proposed to try to get the Westerners to join with the British in an attack upon Louisiana, or even to conduct this attack themselves in the British interests, believing that with New Orleans in British hands the entire province would be thrown open to trade with the outside world and to settlement; with the result that the lands would increase enormously in value, and the speculators and organizers of the companies, and of the movements generally, grow rich in consequence. 16 They assured the British agents that the Western country would speedily separate from the eastern States, and would have to put itself under the protection of some foreign state. Dorchester considered these plans of sufficient weight to warrant inquiry by his agents, but nothing ever came of them.

Much the most famous, or, it would be more correct to say, infamous, of these companies were those organized in connection with the Yazoo lands. The country in what is now middle and northern Mississippi and Alabama possessed, from its great fertility, peculiar fascinations in the eyes of the adventurous land speculators. It was unoccupied by settlers, because as a matter of fact it was held in adverse possession by the Indians, under Spanish protection. It was claimed by the Georgians, and its cession was sought by the United States Government, so that there was much uncertainty as to the title, which could in consequence be cheaply secured. Wilkinson, Brown, Innes, and other Kentuckians, had applied to the Spaniards to be allowed to take these lands and hold them, in their own interests, but on behalf of Spain, and against the United States.

The application had not been granted, and the next effort was of a directly opposite character, the adventurers this time proposing, as they could not hold the territory as armed subjects of Spain, to wrest it from Spain by armed entry after getting title from Georgia. In other words, they were going to carry on war as a syndicate, the military operations for the occupation of the ceded territory being part of the business for which the company was organized. Their relations with the Union were doubtless to be determined by the course of events.

This company was the South Carolina Yazoo Company. In 1789 several companies were formed to obtain from the Georgia Legislature grants of the western territory which Georgia asserted to be hers. One, the Virginia Company, had among its incorporators Patrick Henry, and received a grant of nearly 20,000 square miles, but accomplished nothing. Another, the Tennessee Company, received a grant of what is now most of northern Alabama, and organized a body of men under the leadership of an adventurer named Zachariah Cox, who drifted down the Tennessee in flat-boats to take possession, and repeated the attempt more than once. They were, however, stopped, partly by Blount, and partly by the Indians.

The South Carolina Yazoo Company made the most serious effort to get possession of the coveted territory. Its grant included about 15,000 square miles in what is now middle Mississippi and Alabama; the nominal price being 67,000 dollars. One of the prime movers in this company was a man named Walsh, who called himself Washington, a person of unsavory character, who, a couple of years later, was hung at Charleston for passing forged paper money in South Carolina. All these companies had hoped to pay the very small prices they were asked for the lands in the depreciated currency of Georgia; but they never did make the full payments or comply with the conditions of the grants, which therefore lapsed.

Before this occurred the South Carolina Yazoo Company had striven to take possession of its purchase by organizing a military expedition to go down the Mississippi from Kentucky. For commander of this expedition choice was made of a Revolutionary soldier named James O'Fallon, who went to Kentucky, where he married Clark's sister. He entered into relations with Wilkinson, who drew him into the tangled web of Spanish intrigue. He raised soldiers, and drew up a formal contract, entered into between the South Carolina Yazoo Company and their troops of the Yazoo Battalion -over five hundred men in all, cavalry, artillery and infantry. Each private was to receive two hundred and fifty acres of "stipendiary" lands and the officers in proportion, up to the Lieutenant Colonel, who was to receive six thousand. Commissions were formally issued, and the positions of all the regular officers were filled, so that the invasion was on the point of taking place.

However, the Spanish authorities called the matter to the attention of the United States, and the Federal Government put a prompt stop to the movement. O'Fallon was himself threatened with arrest by the Federal officers, and had to abandon his project. 20 He afterwards re-established his relations with the Government, and became one of Wayne's correspondents; but he entered heartily into Clark's plans for the expedition under Genet and, like all the other participators in that wretched affair, became involved in broils with Clark and every one else.

In 1795 the land companies, encouraged by the certainty that the United States would speedily take possession of the Yazoo territory, again sprang into life. In that year four, the Georgia, the Georgia-Mississippi, the Tennessee, and the Upper Mississippi, companies obtained grants from the Georgia Legislature to a territory of over thirty millions of acres, for which they paid but five hundred thousand dollars, or less than two cents an acre. Among the grantees were many men of note, congressmen, senators, even judges.

The grants were secured by the grossest corruption, every member of the Legislature who voted for them, with one exception, being a stockholder in some one of the companies, while the procuring of the cessions was undertaken by James Gunn, one of the two Georgia Senators. The outcry against the transaction was so universal throughout the State that at the next session of the Legislature, in 1796, the acts were repealed and the grants rescinded. This caused great confusion, as most of the original grantees had hastily sold out to third parties; the purchases being largely made in South Carolina and Massachusetts. Efforts were made by the original South Carolina Yazoo Company to sue Georgia in the Federal Courts, which led to the adoption of the Constitutional provision forbidding such action.

When in 1802, Georgia ceded the territory in question, including all of what is now middle and northern Alabama and Mississippi, to the United States for the sum of twelve hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the National Government became heir to these Yazoo difficulties. It was not until 1814 that the matter was settled by a compromise, after interminable litigation and legislation. The land companies were more important to the speculators than to the actual settlers of the Mississippi; nevertheless, they did stimulate settlement, in certain regions, and therefore increased by just so much the western pressure upon Spain.

Some of the aggressive movements undertaken by the Americans were of so loose a nature that it is hard to know what to call them. This was true of Elijah Clark's company of Georgia freebooters in 1794. Accompanied by large bodies of armed men, he on several occasions penetrated into the territory southwest of the Oconee. He asserted at one time that he was acting for Georgia and in defence of her rights to the lands which the Georgians claimed under the various State treaties with the Indians, but which by the treaty of New York had been confirmed to the Creeks by the United States. On another occasion he entitled his motley force the Sans Culottes, and masqueraded as a major general of the French army, though the French Consul denied having any connection with him. He established for the time being a little independent government, block-houses and small wooden towns, in the middle of the unceded hunting grounds, and caused great alarm to the Spaniards.

The frontiersmen sympathized with him, and when he was arrested in Wilkes County the Grand Jury of the county ordered his discharge, and solemnly declared that the treaty of New York was inoperative and the proclamation of the Governor of Georgia against Clark, illegal. This was too much for the patience of the Governor. He ordered out the State troops to co-operate with the small Federal force, and Clark and his men were ignominiously expelled from their new government and forced to return to Georgia.

In such a welter of intrigue, of land speculation, and of more or less piratical aggression, there was imminent danger that the West would relapse into anarchy unless a firm government were established, and unless the boundaries with England and Spain were definitely established. As Washington's administration grew steadily in strength and in the confidence of the people the first condition was met. The necessary fixity of boundary was finally obtained by the treaties negotiated through John Jay with England, and through Thomas Pinckney with Spain.

Jay's treaty aroused a perfect torrent of wrath throughout the country, and nowhere more than in the West. A few of the coolest and most intelligent men approved it, and rugged old Humphrey Marshall, the Federalist Senator from Kentucky, voted for its ratification; but the general feeling against it was intense. Even Blount, who by this time was pretty well disgusted with the way he had been treated by the Central Government, denounced it, and expressed his belief that Washington would have hard work to explain his conduct in procuring its ratification.

Yet the Westerners were the very people who had no cause whatever to complain of the treaty. It was not an entirely satisfactory treaty; perhaps a man like Hamilton might have procured rather better terms; but, taken as a whole, it worked an immense improvement upon the condition of things already existing. Washington's position was undoubtedly right. He would have preferred a better treaty, but he regarded the Jay treaty as very much better than none at all. Moreover, the last people who had a right to complain of it were those who were most vociferous in their opposition. The anti-Federalist party was on the whole the party of weakness and disorder, the party that was clamorous and unruly, but ineffective in carrying out a sustained policy, whether of offence or of defence, in foreign affairs.

The people who afterwards became known as Jeffersonian Republicans numbered in their ranks the extremists who had been active as the founders of Democratic societies in the French interest, and they were ferocious in their wordy hostility to Great Britain; but they were not dangerous foes to any foreign government which did not fear words. Had they possessed the foresight and intelligence to strengthen the Federal Government the Jay treaty would not have been necessary. Only a strong, efficient central government, backed by a good fleet and a well organized army, could hope to wring from England what the French party, the forerunners of the Jeffersonian Democracy, demanded. But the Jeffersonians were separatists and State's-rights men. They believed in a government so weak as to be ineffective, and showed a folly literally astounding in their unwillingness to provide for the wars which they were ready to provoke. They resolutely refused to provide an army or a navy, or to give the Central Government the power necessary for waging war. They were quite right in their feeling of hostility to England, and one of the fundamental and fatal weaknesses of the Federalists was the Federalist willingness to submit to England's aggressions without retaliation; but the Jeffersonians had no gift for government, and were singularly deficient in masterful statesmen of the kind imperatively needed by any nation which wishes to hold an honorable place among other nations.

They showed their governmental inaptitude clearly enough later on when they came into power, for they at once stopped building the fleet which the Federalists had begun, and allowed the military forces of the nation to fall into utter disorganization, with, as a consequence, the shameful humiliations of the War of 1812. This war was in itself eminently necessary and proper, and was excellent in its results, but it was attended by incidents of shame and disgrace to America for which Jefferson and Madison and their political friends and supporters among the politicians and the people have never received a sufficiently severe condemnation.

Jay's treaty was signed late in 1794 and was ratified in 1795. The indignation of the Kentuckians almost amounted to mania. They denounced the treaty with frantic intemperance, and even threatened violence to those of their own number, headed by Humphrey Marshall, who supported it; yet they benefited much by it, for it got them what they would have been absolutely powerless to obtain for themselves, that is, the possession of the British posts on the Lakes. In 1796 the Americans took formal possession of these posts, and the boundary line in the Northwest as nominally established by the treaty of Versailles became in fact the actual line of demarcation between the American and the British possessions.

The work of Jay capped the work of Wayne. Federal garrisons were established at Detroit and elsewhere, and the Indians, who had already entered into the treaty of Greeneville, were prevented from breaking it by this intervention of the American military posts between themselves and their British allies. Peace was firmly established for the time being in the Northwest, and our boundaries in that direction took the fixed form they still retain.

In dealing with the British the Americans sometimes had to encounter bad faith, but more often a mere rough disregard for the rights of others, of which they could themselves scarcely complain with a good grace, as they showed precisely the same quality in their own actions. In dealing with the Spaniards, on the other hand, they had to encounter deliberate and systematic treachery and intrigue. The open negotiations between the two governments over the boundary ran side by side with a current of muddy intrigue between the Spanish Government on the one hand, and certain traitorous Americans on the other; the leader of these traitors being, as usual, the arch scoundrel, Wilkinson.

The Spaniards trusted almost as much to Indian intrigue as to bribery of American leaders; indeed they trusted to it more for momentary effect, though the far-sighted among them realized that in the long run the safety of the Spanish possessions depended upon the growth of divisional jealousies among the Americans themselves. The Spanish forts were built as much to keep the Indians under command as to check the Americans. The Governor of Natchez, De Lemos, had already established a fort at the Chickasaw Bluffs, where there was danger of armed collision between the Spaniards and either the Cumberland settlers under Robertson or the Federal troops. Among the latter, by the way, the officer for whose ability the Spaniards seemed to feel an especial respect was Lieutenant William Clark.

The Chickasaws were nearly drawn into a war with the Spaniards, who were intensely irritated over their antagonism to the Creeks, for which the Spaniards insisted that the Americans were responsible. 29 The Americans, however, were able to prove conclusively that the struggle was due, not to their advice, but to the outrages of marauders from the villages of the Muscogee confederacy. They showed by the letter of the Chickasaw chief, James Colbert, that the Creeks had themselves begun hostilities early in 1792 by killing a Chickasaw, and that the Chickasaws, because of this spilling of blood, made war on the Creeks, and sent word to the Americans to join in the war.

The letter ran: "I hope you will exert yourselves and join us so that we might give the lads a Drubbeen for they have encroached on us this great while not us alone you likewise for you have suffered a good dale by them I hope you will think of your wounds." 30 The Americans had "thought of their wounds" and had aided the Chickasaws in every way, as was proper; but the original aggressors were the Creeks. The Chickasaws had entered into what was a mere war of retaliation; though when once in they had fought hard, under the lead of Opiamingo, their most noted war chief, who was always friendly to the Americans and hostile to the Spaniards.

At the Chickasaw Bluffs, and at Natchez, there was always danger of a clash; for at these places the Spanish soldiers were in direct contact with the foremost of the restless backwoods host, and with the Indians who were most friendly or hostile to them. Open collision was averted, but the Spaniards were kept uneasy and alert. There were plenty of American settlers around Natchez, who were naturally friendly to the American Government; and an agent from the State of Georgia, to the horror of the Spaniards, came out to the country with the especial purpose of looking over the Yazoo lands, at the time when Georgia was about to grant them to the various land companies. What with the land speculators, the frontiersmen, and the Federal troops, the situation grew steadily more harassing for the Spaniards; and Carondelet kept the advisors of the Spanish Crown well informed of the growing stress.

The Spanish Government knew it would be beaten if the issue once came to open war, and, true to the instincts of a weak and corrupt power, it chose as its weapons delay, treachery, and intrigue. To individual Americans the Spaniards often behaved with arrogance and brutality; but they feared to give too serious offence to the American people as a whole. Like all other enemies of the American Republic, from the days of the Revolution to those of the Civil War, they saw clearly that their best allies were the separatists, the disunionists, and they sought to encourage in every way the party which, in a spirit of sectionalism, wished to bring about a secession of one part of the country and the erection of a separate government.

The secessionists then, as always, played into the hands of the men who wished the new republic ill. In the last decade of the eighteenth century the acute friction was not between North and South, but between East and West. The men who, from various motives, wished to see a new republic created, hoped that this republic would take in all the people of the western waters. These men never actually succeeded in carrying the West with them. At the pinch the majority of the Westerners remained loyal to the idea of national unity; but there was a very strong separatist party, and there were very many men who, though not separatists, were disposed to grumble loudly about the shortcomings of the Federal government.

These men were especially numerous and powerful in Kentucky, and they had as their organ the sole newspaper of the State, the Kentucky Gazette. It was filled with fierce attacks, not only upon the General Government, but upon Washington himself. Sometimes these attacks were made on the authority of the Gazette; at other times they appeared in the form of letters from outsiders, or of resolutions by the various Democratic societies and political clubs. They were written with a violence which, in striving after forcefulness, became feeble. They described the people of Kentucky as having been "dgraded and insulted," and as having borne these insults with "submissive patience." The writers insisted that Kentucky had nothing to hope from the Federal Government, and that it was nonsense to chatter about the infraction of treaties, for it was necessary, at any cost, to take Louisiana, which was "groaning under tyranny." They threatened the United States with what the Kentuckians would do if their wishes were not granted, announcing that they would make the conquest of Louisiana an ultimatum, and warning the Government that they owed no eternal allegiance to it and might have to separate, and that if they did there would be. small reason to deplore the separation.

The separatist agitators failed to see that they could obtain the objects they sought, the opening of the Mississippi and the acquisition of Louisiana, only through the Federal Government, and only by giving that Government full powers. Standing alone the Kentuckians would have been laughed to scorn not only by England and France, but even by Spain. Yet with silly fatuity they vigorously opposed every effort to make the Government stronger or to increase national feeling, railing even at the attempt to erect a great Federal city as "unwise, impolitic, unjust," and "a monument to American folly." The men who wrote these articles, and the leaders of the societies and clubs which inspired them, certainly made a pitiable showing; they proved that they themselves were only learning, and had not yet completely mastered, the difficult art of self government.

It was the existence of these Western separatists nominally the fiercest foes of Spain, that in reality gave Spain the one real hope of staying the western advance. In 1794 the American agents in Spain were carrying on an interminable correspondence with the Spanish Court in the effort to come to some understanding about the boundaries. The Spanish authorities were solemnly corresponding with the American envoys, as if they meant peace; yet at the same time they had authorized Carondelet to do his best to treat directly with the American States of the West so as to bring about their separation from the Union. In 1794 Wilkinson, who was quite incapable. of understanding that his infamy was heightened by the fact that he wore the uniform of a Brigadier General of the United States, entered into negotiations for a treaty, the base of which should be the separation of the Western States from the Atlantic States. He had sent two confidential envoys to Carondelet.

Carondelet jumped at the chance of once more trying to separate the west from the east; and under Wilkinson's directions he renewed his efforts to try by purchase and pension to attach some of the leading Kentuckians to Spain. As a beginning he decided to grant Wilkinson's request and send him twelve thousand dollars for himself. De Lemos was sent to New Madrid in October to begin the direct negotiations with Wilkinson and his allies. The funds to further the treasonable conspiracy were also forwarded, as the need arose.

Carondelet was much encouraged as to the outcome by the fact that De Lemos had not been dispossessed by force from the Chickasaw Bluffs. This shows conclusively that Washington's administration was in error in not acting with greater decision about the Spanish posts. Wayne should have been ordered to use the sword, and to dispossess the Spaniards from the east bank of the Mississippi. As so often in our history, we erred, not through a spirit of over-aggressiveness, but through a willingness to trust to peaceful measures instead of proceeding to assert our rights by force.

The first active step taken by Carondelet and De Lemos was to send the twelve thousand dollars to Wilkinson, as the foundation and earnest of the bribery fund. But the effort miscarried. The money was sent by two men, Collins and Owen, each of whom bore cipher letters to Wilkinson, including some that were sewed into the collars of their coats. Collins reached Wilkinson in safety, but Owen was murdered, for the sake of the money he bore, by his boat's crew while on the Ohio river. The murderers were arrested and were brought before the Federal judge, Harry Innes. Owen was a friend of Innes, and had been by him recommended to Wilkinson as a trustworthy man for any secret and perilous service. Nevertheless, although it was his own friend who had been murdered, Innes refused to try the murderers, on the ground that they were Spanish subjects; a reason which was simply nonsensical. He forwarded them to Wilkinson at Fort Warren. The latter sent them back to New Madrid.

On their way they were stopped by the officer at Fort Massac, a thoroughly loyal man, who had not been engaged in the intrigues of Wilkinson and Innes. He sent to the Spanish commander at New Madrid for an interpreter to interrogate the men. Of course the Spaniards were as reluctant as Wilkinson and Innes that the facts as to the relations between Carondelet and Wilkinson should be developed, and, like Wilkinson and Innes, they preferred that the murderers should escape rather than that these facts should come to light. Accordingly the interpreter did not divulge the confession of the villains, all evidence as to their guilt was withheld, and they were finally discharged. The Spaniards were very nervous about the affair, and were even afraid lest travellers might dig up Owen's body and find the dispatches hidden in his collar; which, said De Lemos, they might send to the President of the United States, who would of course take measures to find out what the money and the ciphers meant.

Wilkinson's motives in acting as he did were of course simple. He could not afford to have the murderers of his friend and agent tried lest they should disclose his own black infamy. The conduct of Judge Innes is difficult to explain on any ground consistent with his integrity and with the official propriety of his actions. He may not have been a party to Wilkinson's conspiracy, but he must certainly have known that Wilkinson was engaged in negotiations with the Spaniards so corrupt that they would not bear the light of exposure, or else he would never have behaved toward the murderers in the way that he did behave.

Carondelet, through De Lemos, entered into correspondence with Wayne about the fort built by his orders at the Chickasaw Bluffs. He refused to give up this fort; and as Wayne became more urgent in his demands, he continually responded with new excuses for delay. He was enabled to tell exactly what Wayne was doing, as Wilkinson, who was serving under Wayne. Even recently defenders of Wilkinson and Innes have asserted, in accordance with Wilkinson's explanations, that the money forwarded him was due him from tobacco contracts entered into some years previously with Miro. Carondelet in his letters above quoted, however, declares outright that the money was advanced to begin negotiations in Kentucky, through Wilkinson and others, for the pensioning of Kentuckians in the interests of Spain and the severance of the Western States from the Union.

Carondelet saw that the fate of the Spanish-American province which he ruled, hung on the separation of the Western States from the Union. As long as he thought it possible to bring about the separation, he refused to pay heed even to the orders of the Court of Spain, or to the treaty engagements by which he was nominally bound. He was forced to make constant demands upon the Spanish Court for money to be used in the negotiations; that is, to bribe Wilkinson and his fellows in Kentucky. He succeeded in placating the Chickasaws, and got from them a formal cession of the Chickasaw Bluffs, which was a direct blow at the American pretensions. As with all Indian tribes, the Chickasaws were not capable of any settled policy, and were not under any responsible authority. While some of them were in close alliance with the Americans and were warring on the Creeks, the others formed a treaty with the Spaniards and gave them the territory they so earnestly wished. However, neither Carondelet's energy and devotion to the Spanish government nor his unscrupulous intrigues were able for long to defer the fate which hung over the Spanish possessions.

In 1795 Washington nominated as Minister to Spain Thomas Pinckney, a member of a distinguished family of South Carolina statesmen, and a man of the utmost energy and intelligence. Pinckney finally wrung from the Spaniards a treaty which was as beneficial to the West as Jay's treaty, and was attended by none of the drawbacks which marred Jay's work. The Spaniards at the outset met his demands by a policy of delay and evasion. Finally, he determined to stand this no longer, and, on October 24, 1795, demanded his passports, in a letter to Godoy, the "Prince of Peace." The demand came at an opportune moment; for Godoy had just heard of Jay's treaty. He misunderstood the way in which this was looked at in the United States, and feared lest, if not counteracted, it might throw the Americans into the arms of Great Britain, with which country Spain was on the verge of war. It is not a little singular that Jay should have thus rendered an involuntary but important additional service to the Westerners who so hated him.

The Spaniards now promptly came to terms. They were in no condition to fight the Americans; they knew that war would be the result if the conflicting claims of the two peoples were not at once definitely settled, one way or the other; and they concluded the treaty forthwith. Its two most important provisions were the settlement of the southern boundary on the lines claimed by the United States, and the granting of the right of deposit to the Westerners. The boundary followed the thirty-first degree of latitude from the Mississippi to the Chattahoochee, down it to the Flint, thence to the head of the St. Mary's, and down it to the ocean. The Spanish troops were to be withdrawn from this territory within the space of six months. The Westerners were granted for three years the right of deposit at New Orleans; after three years, either the right was to be continued, or another equivalent port of deposit was to be granted somewhere on the banks of the Mississippi. The right of deposit carried with it the right to export goods from the place of deposit free from any but an inconsiderable duty.

The treaty was ratified in 1796, but with astonishing bad faith the Spaniards refused to carry out its provisions. At this time Carondelet was in the midst of his negotiations with Wilkinson for the secession of the West, and had high hopes that he could bring it about. He had chosen as his agent an Englishman, named Thomas Power, who was a naturalized Spanish subject, and very zealous in the service of Spain.

Power went to Kentucky, where he communicated with Wilkinson, Sebastian, Innes, and one or two others, and submitted to them a letter from Carondelet. This letter proposed a treaty, of which the first article was that Wilkinson and his associates should exert themselves to bring about a separation of the Western country and its formation into an independent government wholly unconnected with that of the Atlantic States; and Carondelet in his letter assured the men to whom he was writing, that, because of what had occurred in Europe since Spain had ratified the treaty of October 27th, the treaty would not be executed by his Catholic Majesty. Promises of favor to the Western people were held out, and Wilkinson was given a more substantial bribe, in the shape of ten thousand dollars, by Power. Sebastian, Innes, and their friends were also promised a hundred thousand dollars for their good offices; and Carondelet, who had no more hesitation in betraying red men than white, also offered to help the Westerners subdue their Indian foes; these Indian foes being at the moment the devoted allies of Spain.

The time had gone by, however, when it was possible to hope for success in such an intrigue. The treaty with Spain had caused much satisfaction in the West, and the Kentuckians generally were growing more and more loyal to the Central Government. Innes and his friends, in a written communication, rejected the offer of Carondelet. They declared that they were devoted to the Union and would not consent to break it up; but they betrayed curiously little surprise or indignation at the offer, nor did they in rejecting it use the vigorous language which beseemed men who, while holding the commissions of a government, were proffered a hundred thousand dollars to betray that government. Power, at the close of 1797, reported to his superiors that nothing could be done.

Meanwhile Carondelet and De Lemos had persisted in declining to surrender the posts at the Chickasaw Bluffs and Natchez, on pretexts which were utterly frivolous. 45 At this time the Spanish Court was completely subservient to France, which was hostile to the United States; and the Spaniards would not carry out the treaty they had made until they had exhausted every device of delay and evasion. Andrew Ellicott was appointed by Washington Surveyor-General to run the boundary; but when, early in 1797, he reached Natchez, the Spanish representative refused point blank to run the boundary or evacuate the territory. Meanwhile the report of Timothy Pickering, Spanish Minister at Philadelphia, Yrujo, in his correspondence with the Secretary of State, was pursuing precisely the same course of subterfuge and delay. But these tactics could only avail for a time. Neither the Government of the United States, nor the Western people would consent to be balked much longer.

The negotiations with Wilkinson and his associates had come to nothing. A detachment of American regular soldiers came down the river to support Ellicott. The settlers around Natchez arose in revolt against the Spaniards and established a Committee of Safety, under protection of the Americans. The population of Mississippi was very mixed, including criminals fleeing from justice, land speculators, old settlers, well-to-do planters, small pioneer farmers, and adventurers of every kind; and, thanks to the large Tory element, there was a British, and a smaller Spanish party; but the general feeling was overwhelmingly for the United States. The Spanish Government made a virtue of necessity and withdrew its garrison, after for some time preserving a kind of joint occupancy with the Americans. 46 Captain Isaac Guyon, with a body of United States troops, took formal possession of both the Chickasaw Bluffs and Natchez.

The Spanish Minister at Philadelphia, Yrujo, in his correspondence with the Secretary of State, was pursuing precisely the same course of subterfuge and delay. But these tactics could only avail for a time. Neither the Government of the United States, nor the Western people would consent to be balked much longer. The negotiations with Wilkinson and his associates had come to nothing. A detachment of American regular soldiers came down the river to support Ellicott. The settlers around Natchez arose in revolt against the Spaniards and established a Committee of Safety, under protection of the Americans. The population of Mississippi was very mixed, including criminals fleeing from justice, land speculators, old settlers, well-to-do planters, small pioneer farmers, and adventurers of every kind; and, thanks to the large tory element, there was a British, and a smaller Spanish party; but the general feeling was overwhelmingly for the United States. The Spanish Government made a virtue of necessity and withdrew its garrison, after for some time preserving a kind of joint occupancy with the Americans.

Captain Isaac Guyon, with a body of United States troops, took formal possession of both the Chickasaw Bluffs and Natchez in 1797. In 1798 the Spaniards finally evacuated the country 47 their course being due neither to the wisdom nor the good faith of their rulers, but to the fear and worry caused by the unceasing pressure of the Americans. Spain yielded, because she felt that not to do so would involve the loss of all Louisiana. 48 The country was organized as the Mississippi Territory in June, 1798.

There was one incident, curious rather than important, but characteristic in its way, which marked the close of the transactions of the Western Americans with Spain at this time. During the very years when Carondelet, under the orders of his Government, was seeking to delay the execution of the boundary treaty, and to seduce the Westerners from their allegiance to the United States, a Senator of the United States, entirely without the knowledge of his Government, was engaged in an intrigue for the conquest of a part of the Spanish dominion. This Senator was no less a person than William Blount. Enterprising and ambitious, he was even more deeply engaged in land speculations than were the other prominent men of his time. 50 He felt that he had not been well treated by the United States authorities, and, like all other Westerners, he also felt that the misconduct of the Spaniards had been so great that they were not entitled to the slightest consideration. Moreover, he feared lest the territory should be transferred to France, which would be a much more dangerous neighbor than Spain; and he had a strong liking for Great Britain. If he could not see the territory taken by the Americans under the flag of the United States, then he wished to see them enter into possession of it under the standard of the British King.

In 1797 he entered into a scheme which was in part one of land speculation and in part one of armed aggression against Spain. He tried to organize an association with the purpose of seizing the Spanish territory west of the Mississippi, and putting it under the control of Great Britain, in the interests of the seizers. The scheme came to nothing. No definite steps were taken, and the British Government refused to take any share in the movement. Finally the plot was discovered by the President, who brought it to the attention of the Senate, and Blount was properly expelled from the Upper House for entering into a conspiracy to conquer the lands of one neighboring power in the interest of another. The Tennesseans, however, who cared little for the niceties of international law, and sympathized warmly with any act of territorial aggression against the Spaniards, were not in the least affected by his expulsion. They greeted him with enthusiasm, and elected him to high office, and he lived among them the remainder of his days, honored and respected. 51 Nevertheless, his conduct in this instance was indefensible. It was an unfortunate interlude in an otherwise honorable and useful public career.