While England nursed the fancy that fortune might throw a part of the northwest into her hands, Spain had similar hopes as to the interior. Louisiana, she had received from France in 1763, and Florida had been receded to her by England in 1783. She denied the validity of the secret article in the treaty between England and the United States in 1782, by which England agreed that if Florida returned to Spain, the northern boundary should be the thirty-first degree of latitude.
During the war, Spain seized Natchez, the only fortified point in the disputed territory, and claimed that England had no right to cede the region, because she did not then possess it. England replied that if the seizure could be understood as an occupation of the whole province, it did not transfer ownership unless it was so stipulated in the treaty which closed the war. The question was a pretty one, and gave promise of a lengthy entanglement between the oldest and the youngest powers then on the continent. England would, perhaps, have been glad to see them fighting lustily over the matter.
But Spain held tenaciously to the navigation of the Mississippi. Holding each bank for two hundred miles from its mouth, she was in a position to enforce her claim to the sole right of navigating it to the Gulf. To the Americans she would give an equal privilege on the river, or commercial concessions in South America, but she would not yield both favors. Jay's celebrated treaty of 1786 gave up the former and held to the latter. Its defeat in the old Congress did not remove from the minds of the western people the notion that they might be sacrificed to the interests of the east. Kentucky and other frontier regions were deeply dissatisfied, and undisguised plans for a separation from the east were considered.
Spain watched from New Orleans with keen interest as this feeling developed. She hoped that it might be so turned that it would deliver these rich young communities into her own hands. She did not lack means and agents to carry her purposes into effect. Skilful agitators were subsidized to scatter favorable ideas, directly or indirectly, among the people. Of all these, the chief was James Wilkinson. He was long in the pay of the Spanish governor, furnishing information and manipulating public sentiment in the west in behalf of his employer; and he did not scruple to keep this up after he had become a high officer in the American army.
In November, 1788, a convention was held in Kentucky to consider the interests of that region. Wilkinson got himself elected a member of it: he appeared with his hands full of Spanish gold, and sought to put the community in such a position that Congress would take some rash step which would justify an appeal to force on the part of Kentucky. His efforts were futile: instead of the passionate resolutions he favored, the convention made a temperate address to the Virginia assembly asking for separation.
In Tennessee there was discontent also. Sevier, disappointed in the fall of the state of Franklin, was opening negotiations with Spanish authorities. Robertson, the father of the Cumberland settlements, was so well disposed to the same power that he called the new area in which his settlers were planted the District of Mero, after the governor of New Orleans.
Fortunately, the threatened dangers were avoided. Virginia gave Kentucky the freedom which she desired, and North Carolina transferred Tennessee to the federal government in 1790. A territorial government was created for the region south of the Ohio, but this was a short-lived arrangement. In 1792, Kentucky was admitted into the Union. Tennessee was continued under territorial government till it became a state in 1796. The sentiment in favor of separation did not disappear at once, but it had passed its climax.
The centre of plotting next shifted to the disputed region north of the thirty-first parallel. In December, 1789, the Georgia legislature granted large tracts of land here to three companies, known as the South Carolina, the Virginia, and the Tennessee companies. These grants lay along the Mississippi in order from north to south. To that part of this region which was claimed by Spain, Georgia had no clear title, for whatever right the Americans had to it was derived from England through the treaty of 1782; but the Georgians did not abide by this view of the case, claiming that, as this had been a part of their territory under their colonial government, before the crown had set it up as a part of West Florida, it was now the duty of the United States to hand it over to them again. The collapse of the schemes now launched prevented the development of a dispute between state and nation, but it was to appear in a more perplexing form nearly a decade later.
The Tennessee Company actually sent settlers into what is now north Alabama, near the Muscle Shoals; but the federal authorities did not offer protection, and the Cherokees broke up the settlement. The Virginia Company did not attempt to plant a settlement.
The South Carolina Company, however, went further, under Dr. James O'Fallon, who really acted for Wilkinson. He opened negotiations with the governor of New Orleans, and announced that he would soon have ten thousand men in the region in question, and was prepared to plant a community which should recognize the Spanish authority. To the people of Kentucky he declared that his enterprise was to plant a province which should become independent of Spain and join the Union as a state. Wilkinson assured the governor of New Orleans that the affair was in Spanish interest. By this double dealing it was without doubt the purpose of the projectors to get immunity from Spanish attacks and assistance from the Kentucky settlers, trusting to future developments to give the project whatever course future expediency should indicate.
Washington gave the enterprise a death-blow when the news of it was carried to him. It was really an invasion of the national domain; it would be a dangerous interference with our relations with the Indians, and it would violate the neutrality which we were bound to observe towards Spain. He accordingly issued a proclamation warning the western people to have nothing to do with it. For this reason the enterprise failed in the beginning. The charter was repealed by Georgia.
From the Spanish intrigues with the whites the story turns to their intrigues with the Indians. Near the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, and from there far up to the Georgia line, lived the Creeks, a nation which could muster more than three thousand warriors; in the southern part of what is now Mississippi lived the Choctaws with more than four thousand warriors; around the head-waters of the Tombigbee lived the Chickasaws, a very active tribe, although it had only about two hundred and fifty warriors; and in the mountains of Georgia and the Carolinas lived the Cherokees with two thousand five hundred warriors. Altogether they had about ten thousand fighting men. To unite these Indians in opposition to the extension of the American power was one of the dreams of Spain. Over them she had long exercised a strong influence through commerce and through the fact that she did not plant outlying agricultural communities. Wherever she went among the savages, trading-posts and European goods followed; but in the wake of the man from the northward farms, roads and fortified places sprang up. To the Indian the difference was essential.
In her relations with the Creeks — for her schemes, the most important of all the tribes — Spain found a valuable agent in Alexander McGillivray. He was an able and unscrupulous half-breed who had a great influence over the Creeks; a man of rare powers, which he used in intrigues. He was a Tory during the Revolution, and, some of his property having been confiscated by the Whigs, he became an inveterate enemy of the American cause. A powerful trading-house in Florida paid him well for his influence with the Indians, and the government of the province made him a commissary, with a good salary attached. We shall see that he became also an American officer and received a large compensation.
In 1784 the Spaniards made a treaty with the Creeks. They took these Indians under their protection, and received the assurance that no white man should come among the savages without a Spanish permit, and that efforts should be made to establish permanent peace with the other three great tribes.
Soon after this the settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee began to be harried by Indian attacks. There is good evidence that Spain set these on foot in order to make life so dangerous for the frontiersmen that they would be glad to put themselves under her power so as to stop the massacres. The new government was no sooner organized than complaints came thick from these people: they asked for protection; they showed that the Indians operated from Spanish territory; and they made it clear that something must be done or there would be a war which might involve Spain itself.
To avoid this, Washington resorted to diplomacy. A messenger was sent to the Creeks inviting them to a great council in New York in order to make a treaty of peace. McGillivray was not loath to accept any chance in which his greedy eyes saw personal advantage. He accepted the invitation and wrote to the Spanish governor saying that whatever treaty he might make he would not forsake Spain. In New York he was received with eclat. The government began by allowing him one hundred thousand dollars for the goods which the Whigs had confiscated. They gave him the sole control of the trade among the Creeks; they made him a brigadier-general with a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year, and ceded back to the Creeks certain lands which Georgia had purchased from them. In return the Indians agreed to keep the peace. McGillivray pocketed his gain and turned his feet homeward. He was hardly back on the Alabama before his scalping-parties were again marching against the settlers. In the art of double-dealing he was equalled by no one but the false Wilkinson himself. He claimed that he could not restrain his people from outrages, but that was only a subterfuge. Till his death in February, 1793, he maintained his position of pretended friend and secret enemy.
The people of the frontier were anxious to take into their own hands the task of protecting themselves; but the government was then conducting the long and unprofitable negotiation of Carmichael and Short, and gave strict orders that no movements should be made except for defence. To this the people replied that the only defence for the frontier was hard blows in the enemy's country. Blount, the governor of Tennessee, enforced his instructions, and the time wore on. At last the people would submit no longer. In 1793, Sevier gathered a band of men in east Tennessee, and marched against the Cherokees as far as the present Rome, Georgia, defeating them in two sharp engagements and destroying towns and property. The effect was salutary so far as that part of the frontier was concerned. In 1794 the people on the Cumberland rose under Robertson and Major Ore and carried war into the towns of the Chickamaugas. These fierce and wily savages were surprised in their strongholds and slain without mercy. Such a blow was given that they were no longer a factor in the history of that region. Among their effects were found a Spanish commission made out to an Indian warrior, and other evidences of Spanish com plicity in the recent outrages. These two expeditions gave peace to the southwestern frontier.
Let us now turn to the diplomatic side of the question. Washington had been deeply impressed by the state of public opinion in the west in regard to the Jay-Gardoqui treaty. Although he thought that the westerners ought to wait patiently till they were so strong that their demand could not be refused, he realized that the situation was difficult. Jefferson more than he was in sympathy with the position of the west. He was, in fact, one of the first of our public men to realize the possibilities of this great section. He quickly caught at the opportunity which the Nootka Sound incident gave him to turn Spain towards a treaty. He sought to get the good offices of France in our behalf, with the object of acquiring Florida, as well as the navigation of the Mississippi, and in return proposed to guarantee the west bank of that river to Spain. The sudden settlement of the difficulties between Spain and England rendered all this useless.
Jefferson then had recourse to ordinary methods of diplomacy. In 1791 he received an intimation from Spain that negotiations for a treaty would be revived. Short, who had been our charge in Paris, was sent to join Carmichael, who held the same position in Madrid; and the two were constituted commissioners to negotiate a treaty. They were to treat concerning commerce, the navigation of the Mississippi, the Florida boundary, and the return of fugitives. After much of the usual Spanish delay, Gardoqui was appointed to negotiate in behalf of his country, and this boded no good. He took a blustering tone and began by offering to make a treaty essentially like that proposed in 1786; and from this position he would not budge. All through the year 1793 a fruitless exchange of views which could not be reconciled went on between the two sides. Finally, in January, 1794, Carmichael gave up the task and returned home, and this dissolved the commission.
It was while these negotiations were going on that Genet appeared in the United States. France was then at war with Spain, and one of his instructions was to endeavor to seize Louisiana and Florida from the frontiers of the United States. He planned three expeditions — one against East Florida from the Georgia border; one against Louisiana from the Carolina frontier; and one from Kentucky down the river to New Orleans. All of these were to be composed of adventurers from the states. To serve in the first and second expeditions more than three thousand men are said to have been recruited. The authorities of South Carolina and Georgia were more or less cognizant of what was going on, but they made no effort to put a stop to it. These attempts languished when Genet failed to furnish the money he had promised. They collapsed utterly when he was discredited by his government.
The third expedition was more promising still. George Rogers Clark, the hero of the northwest in Revolutionary days, was filled with the hope of making another great stroke into hostile territory ere he closed his earthly career. He dreamed of opening the Mississippi, and had submitted plans to that effect to the French government as early as Christmas, 1792. To Genet he accordingly offered his services for an attack on New Orleans. The offer was promptly accepted, Clark was made an officer in the French army, and he was authorized to command an Independent and Revolutionary Legion to be raised in the western region. Commissions were sent to Kentucky, as well for the whites who would serve in the proposed legion as for the Indians who were to be auxiliaries. Genet proposed to appoint Michaux, the botanist, who was then in America, a French consul in Kentucky; but Jefferson refused to recognize such an officer. The secretary, however, gave Michaux a letter of introduction to the governor of Kentucky, and the botanist proceeded to negotiate covertly in the interest of the French. Jefferson reminded Genet that we were then conducting negotiations with Spain, and he caused the Frenchman to understand that a little explosion on the Mississippi might be welcomed by the Americans as tending to convince Spain that it would be wise to make a treaty.
In the west, French influence ran high. Democratic societies were organized in many parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, and French ideas took such a deep root that in the latter state as late as 1798 the first governor of the state was officially described as "Citizen Sevier." Clark's preparations were not secret, and finally his purposes were boldly announced in a Cincinnati paper. Washington had before this become alarmed at the prospect of having a breach of neutrality; he now determined to try to avert the threatened danger. Letters were sent to the governor of Kentucky to stop the proposed expedition. That dignitary moved slowly and to little purpose. The people saw in the juncture of circumstances an opportunity to settle for themselves the question of the use of the great river. What they would have done does not appear; for the arrival of a new minister in February, 1794, brought a reversal of French policy in this respect.
But the incident had its effect. The United States had come to see how much the west was being alienated, and Spain was realizing what a complete overthrow of her power would follow a serious attempt of the frontiersmen to right their own wrongs. Our own government was, therefore, stimulated to renewed negotiations, and Spain was brought to accept the wisdom of meeting us in a friendly spirit. The upshot of the matter was that Thomas Pinckney, our minister to England, was shifted in November, 1794, to Madrid and instructed to make a treaty if possible. He was directed to limit his negotiations to boundaries and the navigation of the river. At the head of the Spanish ministry was Godoy, a progressive statesman, who, from having just concluded a satisfactory peace with France, had been hailed as "the Prince of Peace." He was willing to prove himself further worthy of the title by settling the long -debated question with the United States. The fact that in the Jay treaty, which was about to be definitely ratified, we had made a long step towards friendship with England, had also a strong influence on his mind. Pinckney's negotiations went on with smoothness for a time. At last, however, it seemed that the old spirit had taken possession of the Spaniards. He could make no progress in his diplomacy. In disgust he gave fair warning that he should be compelled to break off the business and return to his country empty-handed. At this his opponents became reasonable; the threads of diplomacy were taken up again, and on October 27, 1795, a satisfactory treaty was signed in Madrid. It settled the boundary of West Florida at the thirty-first degree of latitude, from the Mississippi to the Appalachicola; it gave the Americans the right to use the river; and it allowed them the right of deposit for their products in the city of New Orleans, This was all that the western people had ever demanded. They now saw the door to the markets of the world opened to them. With the acquisition of that privilege all danger from Spanish intrigue and western treason passed away.