resolution was taken in council on Saturday. I think, from every appearance, that war is very near at hand; and, under these circumstances, I have endeavored to impress the Government that not a moment should be lost, lest Britain should anticipate us. Monroe arrived on the 1st at Havre.” Mr. Mr. Livingston, min. to France, to Mr. Madison, Sec. of State, April 11, 1803, "This day Mr. Monroe passed with me in examining my papers; and while he and several other gentlemen were at dinner with me, I observed the Minister of the Treasury [M. Marbois] walking in my garden. He told me that he wished me to repeat what I had said relative to M. Talleyrand's requesting a proposition from me as to the purchase of Louisiana. He said, that what I had told him led him to think that what the Consul had said to him on Sunday, at St. Cloud, .. had more of earnest than he thought at the time; that the consul had asked him what news from England? As he knew he read the papers attentively, he told him that he had seen in the London papers the proposition for raising fifty thousand men to take New Orleans. The Consul said he had seen it, too, and had also seen that something was said about two millions of dollars being disposed of among the people about him, to bribe them, etc.; and then left him. That afterwards, when walking in the garden, the Consul came again to him, and spoke to him about the troubles that were excited in America, He [Marbois] then took occasion to mention his sorrow that any cause of difference should exist between our countries. The Consul told him, in reply, 'Well, you have the charge of the Treasury; let them give you one hundred millions of francs, and pay their own claims, and take the whole country.' Seeing, by my looks, that I was surprised at so extravagant a demand, he added that he considered the demand as exorbitant, and had told the First Consul that the thing was impossible; that we had not the means of raising that. The Consul told him we might borrow it. He then pressed me to name the sum. no sort of authority to go to a sum that bore any proportion to what he mentioned; but that, as he himself considered the demand as too high, he would oblige me by telling me what he thought would be reasonable. He replied that, if we would name sixty millions, and take upon us the American claims, to the amount of twenty more, he would try how far this could be accepted. I told him that it was vain to ask anything that was so greatly beyond our means; ." I told him that we had Mr. Livingston, min. to France, to Mr. Madison, Sec. of State, Apr. 13, 1803, 66 States, and I have just given to England a maritime rival who sooner or later will humble her pride.' (Davis, Notes, Treaty Volume (1776– 1887), 1307, citing Garden, Traités de Paix, VIII. 88. See, also, Adams' History of the United States, II. 17, 26–42.) 'Congress witnessed, at their last session, the extraordinary agitation produced in the public mind by the suspension of our right of deposit at the port of New Orleans, no assignment of another place having been made according to treaty. They were sensible that the continuance of that privation would be more injurious to our nation than any consequences which could flow from any mode of redress, but reposing just confidence in the good faith of the Government whose officer had committed the wrong, friendly and reasonable representations were resorted to, and the right of deposit was restored. "Previous, however, to this period, we had not been unaware of the danger to which our peace would be perpetually exposed while so important a key to the commerce of the Western country remained under foreign power. Difficulties, too, were presenting themselves as to the navigation of other streams, which, arising within our territories, pass through those adjacent. Propositions had, therefore, been authorized for obtaining on fair conditions the sovereignty of New Orleans, and of other possessions in that quarter interesting to our quiet, to such extent as was deemed practicable; and the provisional appropriation of two millions of dollars, to be applied and accounted for by the President of the United States, intended as part of the price, was considered as conveying the sanction of Congress to the acquisition proposed. The enlightened Government of France saw, with just discernment, the importance to both nations of such liberal arrangements as might best and permanently promote the peace, friendship, and interests of both; and the property and sovereignty of all Louisiana, which had been restored to them, have on certain conditions been transferred to the United States by instruments bearing date the 30th of April last. When these shall have received the constitutional sanction of the Senate, they will without delay be communicated to the Representatives also for the exercise of their functions as to those conditions which are within the powers vested by the Constitution in Congress. While the property and sovereignty of the Mississippi and its waters secure an independent outlet for the produce of the Western States, and an uncontrolled navigation through their whole course, free from collision with other powers and the dangers to our peace from that source, the fertility of that country, its climate and extent, promise in due season important aids to our Treasury, an ample provision for our posterity and a wide-spread field for the blessings of freedom and equal laws." President Jefferson, Third Annual Message, Oct. 17, 1803. For the approval of the Louisiana purchase by John Adams, see Works, IX. 631, 632. As to the boundaries of Louisiana, see Adams, Hist. of the United States, II. For debates in the Senate and the House on the treaty, see Annals of Congress, 8 Cong. 1 sess., 1803-4, pp. 45–70, 434–514, 545, 546. See acts of Oct. 31, 1803, and March 19, 1804, 2 Stat. 245, 272. As to trial by jury in Louisiana, see State v. Fuentes, 5 La. Ann. 427. 3. THE FLORIDAS, $ 102. By the treaty signed at San Lorenzo el Real, October 27, 1795, the boundary between the United States and the Spanish colonies of East and West Florida was agreed upon in conformity with what had been stipulated in the treaty between Great Britain and the United States of 1782. The United States subsequently laid claim to West Florida as part of the Louisiana cession. A long negotiation, embracing the subject of spoliations, of the right of deposit at New Orleans, and the limits of Louisiana, as well as the purchase of the Floridas, ended in failure, and in 1808, in consequence of the political condition of Spain, diplomatic relations between the two countries were suspended. At the close of the war in Europe diplomatic relations were restored, but a new source of complaints had then come into existence in the revolt of the Spanish colonies in America. A negotiation, conducted sometimes at Washington and sometimes at Madrid, was entered upon for the settlement of all differences. Little progress, however, was made in it till 1818. On January 16 in that year the United States put forward a proposal under which Spain was, for various considerations, to cede all claims to territory eastward of the Mississippi, and either to accept for the western boundary the Rio Colorado from its mouth to its source, and a line thence to the northern limits of Louisiana, or to leave that boundary unsettled. The Spanish minister offered to cede the Floridas, the United States agreeing to establish as the boundary between Louisiana and the Spanish possessions one of the branches of the Mississippi, either that of Lafourche or of the Atchafalaya, or else to adopt as the basis of settlement the uti possidetis of 1763. On these proposals and counter proposals a long discussion as to limits ensued. October 24, 1818, the Spanish minister submitted a1 Op. 108, Lincoln, 1802. Int. Arbitrations, V. 4519; Am. State Papers, For. Rel. I. 63; II. 564; III. 394– 400, 539; Adams's History of the United States, V. 305-315; 2 Stats. 254. c Int. Arbitrations, V. 4492-4493; Am. State Papers, II. 469, 596, 613, 615, 626, 635, 667; Adams's Hist. of the U. S., II. 3. d Int. Arbitrations, V. 4494; Am. State Papers, For. Rel. III. 293. • Mr. Adams, Sec. of State, to Chev. de Onis, Jan. 16, 1818, Am. State Papers, For. Rel. IV. 422. certain propositions, which embraced the cession of the Floridas and the mutual renunciation of claims. Mr. Adams replied on the 31st of October, and brought the formal discussions practically to a close." February 22, 1819, there was concluded a treaty which, besides defining the boundary between the Louisiana territory and the territories which were still to remain to Spain, conveyed to the United States not only the Floridas, but also all the Spanish titles north of the 42nd parallel of north latitude, from the source of the Arkansas River to the Pacific Ocean; the United States in return assuming the payment of claims of its citizens against Spain to an amount not exceeding 5,000,000 dollars, and engaging to cause satisfaction to be made for certain injuries suffered by the Spanish inhabitants of the Floridas at the hands of American forces, besides extending to Spanish commerce in the ceded territories, for the term of twelve years, privileges which were not to be allowed to any other nation.' "The United States having proposed in 1816 to accept a cession of Florida as a basis of the release of the claims held by citizens of the United States against Spain, offered at the same time, by way of further compromise, to take the Colorado River as the western boundary of the Louisiana purchase, although that purchase had been previously maintained to extend as far as the Rio Grande. The Spanish minister, Onis, whose intrigues and turbulence had been a constant source of difficulty at Washington, insisted, in the first place, upon the restoration to Spain of that section of what was called West Florida which included Mobile and the adjacent country. He also presented as a set-off losses to Spain from depredations by expeditions which he alleged had been fitted out at New Orleans for the purpose of assisting the insurgents in Texas and Mexico; and he also claimed that vessels from the insurgent Spanish colonies should be excluded from the ports of the United States. In order to meet the latter complaints so far as they were reasonable, a statute was passed on March 3, 1816, which imposed a fine of ten thousand dollars, forfeiture of the vessels employed, and an imprisonment not exceeding ten years, on all persons engaged in fitting out vessels to cruise against powers with which the United States was at peace." "The defiant patriotism of Mr. Adams was never more conspicuously shown than during his negotiations with Spain in respect to the purchase of the Floridas, and in no part of his public life were his faults of temper, and his antagonism to anyone by whom his personal a Am. State Papers, For. Rel. IV. 530; Int. Arbitrations, V. 4496. Int. Arbitrations, V. 4496-4497, 4519 et seq. The date of the act was March 3, 1817. It provided that the fine should in no case exceed $10,000, but left it to the discretion of the court to impose a lower penalty. (3 Stats. 370.) The representations of the Spanish minister may be found in Am. State Papers, For. Rel. IV. 184-189. Similar representations were also made by the Portuguese minister. (Case of the United States at Geneva, 138-140; Bemis' American Neutrality, 54 et seq.) ambition was thwarted, less manifest. In Congress, the policy of the Administration in respect to the Floridas was at first looked upon coldly by the rising statesmen, among whom Mr. Clay took the lead, whose primary object was early recognition of South American independence. Florida would be valuable, but it would, in any view, be one of the prizes of a war with Spain which they expected as a necessary and not undesirable consequence of the interposition in South America they proposed. In support of the Administration, in delaying the recognition of the South American insurgents, were rallied several powerful agencies: (1) The commercial interests of the North, which deprecated a war which would expose their ships to Spanish privateers; (2) the Southeastern Atlantic States, of whom Mr. Forsyth was the leading spokesman in Congress, who desired to be relieved from border collisions by purchasing the Floridas at once; and (3), General Jackson, who here displayed that rare sagacity which afterwards so singularly came to his aid in mastering not only the opposition of others, but the impulse of his own passions. His personal instincts were for a Spanish war, and so his private unpublished letters, on file in the Department of State, show. He burned with resentment at what he considered Spanish atrocities which he thought were all the more injurious from the feebleness of the power by which they were upheld. He was ready to seize and occupy Pensacola and other posts which he thought harbored border Indians or hostile raiders. But while thus making the United States as uncomfortable a neighbor to Spain as he could, underneath all his correspondence with the Spanish authorities, lurked the suggestion, 'how much better for you to sell out.' And purchasing he urged on the Administration as far wiser, surer, and cheaper than conquering. "Mr. Adams's diary explains the annoying vicissitudes to which the negotiation was subjected. It is due to him to say that in no portion of his diplomatic correspondence by which the archives of the Department of State is enriched, did he display more vigor and at the same time less impatience and harshness of expression, than in the remarkable papers which issued from him during this protracted negotiation with Spain. Of Onis, the Spanish minister at Washington, it is sufficient here to say that looking upon the United States with a jealousy and dislike which he was so little able to repress that for some time his reception by the Government was refused, his diplomatic subtlety made him, when he entered at last on the negotiation, a fit instrument of the procrastination his instructions advised. " a De Onis was thus described by Mr. Adams: "Cold, calculating, wily, always commanding his own temper, proud because he is a Spaniard, but supple and cunning, accommodating the tone of his pretensions precisely to the degree of endurance of his opponent, bold and overbearing to the utmost extent to which it is tolerated, careless of what he asserts or how grossly it is proved to be unfounded, his morality appears to be that of the Jesuits as exposed by Pascal. He is laborious, vigilant, and ever attentive to his duties; a man of business and of the world." (Morse, Life of J. Q. Adams, 112.) |