coming leaders, like Gallio, who "cared for none of these things," would have done with "peaceful wars," commercial weapons, interminable discussions of national rights and national honor, and meek endurance of multiplied affronts by European belligerents.

VOL. XIII.-4

CHAPTER II

PROBLEMS OF THE SOUTHWEST AND NORTH

THE

WEST

(1810-1812)

HE persistent desire of the United States to possess the Floridas, between 1801 and 1819, amounted almost to a disease, corrupting the moral sense of each succeeding administration. Jefferson's instructions to Monroe and Livingston in 1803, when they were sent to purchase control of the mouth of the Mississippi, explicitly stated that "a cession of the Floridas is particularly desired as obviating serious controversies." Under the terms of the Louisiana treaty the United States, without any real right, chose to assume that West Florida was a part of Louisiana as ceded by Spain to France and by France to the United States. Spain knew well and asserted vehemently that the United States was wrong, and the repeated attempt of Jefferson to quiet the issue by bribing or coercing Spain into yielding at least West Florida, added to her sense of outrage. The weak Spanish government in the Floridas, the presence of a mixed and turbulent population including many Americans in West Florida, and the spread of

revolutionary spirit in Spanish America, combined to produce a crisis in 1810, when an insurrection against Spanish authority took place in West Florida. During the summer a convention was held for the purpose of securing a settled government. A quarrel with the governor, an assault on Baton Rouge, and the killing of the young commandant of that post, which followed, were mere incidents in that larger revolutionary struggle which was going on in Buenos Ayres, Caracas, and Mexico, for liberty and separation from Spain. The United States and Great Britain were alike interested politically and commercially in the outcome of these insurrections, the former in the Floridas and in Mexico, the latter in South America.1

After the capture of Baton Rouge the revolutionists, whose leaders were chiefly English and Irish, in convention assembled declared themselves the representatives of the people of West Florida and proclaimed that territory a free and independent state. Hardly was this done when the convention urged upon the secretary of state at Washington the annexation of the province to the United States. Madison knew all the ins and outs of the scheming, haggling, and negotiating of the previous seven years, looking to the acquisition of the territory; he knew the increasing importance of controlling the Gulf outlets of the rivers of the Alabama and Mississippi country; he saw also the numerous and seemingly

1 Am. State Paps., Foreign, II., 511, 541, 636; III., 394.

insuperable obstacles in the way of recognition of the independence of West Florida. In a letter to Jefferson, in October, 1810, he revealed his mind: "The crisis of West Florida, as you will see, has come home to our feelings and our interests. . . . There is great weight in the considerations that the country to the Perdido, being our own, may be fairly taken possession of, if it can be done without violence: above all if there be danger of it passing to a third and dangerous party." Here was the whole thing in a nutshell-a desirable province, a convenient claim under the ambiguous Louisiana treaty, a weak and troubled opponent, and a shadowy "third party" eager to snatch the prize away.1

The solution was Madison's remarkable proclamation of October 27, 1810, which declares that the United States has acquiesced in the temporary continuance of Spanish authority over West Florida; that complete adjustment of conflicting claims has been too long delayed, through no fault of the United States; that further failure to possess themselves of the territory might be construed to the detriment of the claim of the United States; "that in the hands of the United States it will not cease to be a subject of fair and friendly negotiation and adjustment "; and, finally, that Governor W. C. C. Claiborne, of the Orleans territory, has been directed to take possession of all the territory from the Mississippi to the

'Am. State Paps., Foreign, III., 396; Madison, Works (Congress ed.), II., 484.

Perdido, and to govern it as an integral part of his own territory. The chief restriction upon Claiborne was that he should not proceed to employ force in the seizure of territory belonging to a just and friendly power. Jefferson had acquired Louisiana by regular and proper negotiation, swallowing his doubts as to the unconstitutionality of his proceedings. His successor in the Republican presidency, without the formality of negotiation, with scarcely a compunction at the disregard of international usages, with a speciousness bordering on recklessness, asserted jurisdiction over the province of West Florida, still the subject of fair and friendly negotiations.1

2

Small wonder that Morier, Great Britain's chargé d'affaires, wrote a vigorous protest to the secretary of state. But under the circumstances the good or ill opinion of a British diplomatic officer mattered little to the administration. Congress promptly took up the question of organizing the new territory, and there was much reference back to the acts of 1803-1804, authorizing the occupation, and directing the organization of the Louisiana cession. Senator Giles went so far as to propose a bill for the extension of the territory of Orleans to the Perdido River, but even the wisest men were not ready to assert quite so dogmatically that West Florida belonged to Louisiana. In the end, part of the district

'Richardson, Messages and Papers, I., 480; Am. State Paps., Foreign, III., 397.

Am. State Paps., Foreign, III., 399 (Morier to Smith).