raltar in exchange for something. No agreement had been possible.18 The Court accepted Gardoqui's advice. Jaudenes and Viar, the young attachés1o whom Gardoqui had left to represent Spanish interests at Philadelphia after his own departure, informed the Secretary of State in December, 1791, that Spain would be glad to resume the suspended negotiation at Madrid. 20 They reported that Jefferson welcomed this news with indescribable satisfaction. He explained that the American overture had been made through France instead of directly to Spain because of the difficulty in securing prompt correspondence from Carmichael, from whom only one letter had been received in two years. He spoke of the difficult task of keeping Kentucky quiet, of his fear 18 Gardoqui to Floridablanca, Madrid, August 22, 1791, "Dictamen que dió Don Diego de Gardoqui del papel de D. Augustin de Urtovise, sobre la libre navegacion del Misispipi y otros asuntos." A. H. N., Est., Leg. 3889 bis, Expdte. No. 4. Urtovise was the French chargé at Madrid. See also in this same expediente, Gardoqui to Floridablanca, Sept. 7 & 9, 1791. Great Britain might have accepted the Floridas for Gibraltar, if accompanied by an offensive and defensive alliance with Spain. This would have meant, of course, the disruption of the Bourbon Family Alliance before the Nootka Crisis destroyed it. Conversations on this took place very secretly at various times between 1783 and 1786. See Archivo General de Simancas, Legajo 2617, moderno (L. C. transcripts). 19 These men technically had no diplomatic rank. They are however referred to in the Spanish documents as chargés (encargados). 20 Carmichael was also informed at Madrid, but no word of this ever reached Jefferson from him. Carmichael to Floridablanca, No. 7, 1791, A. H. N., Est., Leg., 3889 bis, expdte, No. 4. that the people there could not be restrained if the federal government did not get for them their desired navigation. He assured Jaudenes that "if the King should come to it, [i. e., a recognition of that navigation] the United States not only would not desire an inch of territory which actually belonged to His Majesty, but that rather they would end by becoming guarantors of the integrity of all his possessions in America." (sino que antes bien le saldrán garántes por la conservacion de todas sus posesiones en América.) Jefferson did not doubt that the President would send immediately the proper powers to Carmichael. He asked if the latter would be acceptable for such a negotiation. On this point Jaudenes did not commit himself, having no instructions. Later, recollecting that Floridablanca had once expressed to Gardoqui, several years before, dissatisfaction with Carmichael as a representative of the United States, he suggested to Senator Butler, of South Carolina, whose intimacy he had cultivated, that some one else than Carmichael was probably desired.21 As a result of the Spanish statement, President Washington adopted Jefferson's recommendation to send William Short, former chargé at Paris and recently appointed minister resident at the Hague, to Madrid, to act with Carmichael, the regular chargé 21 Jaudenes and Viar to Floridablanca, No. 61, Phila., Dec. 18, 1791, Α. Η. N., Est., Leg. 3894. Writings, V, 403, 404. See also letters exchanged between Jefferson, and Jaudenes and Viar, Jan. 25, 26 and 27, in ibid., 431 and 432, and State Dept., Notes, Spain, I, (for Jaudenes and Viar's note of Jan. 25). There is there, as a joint commissioner plenipotentiary for the purpose of negotiating a treaty of boundaries and navigation. Short arrived in Madrid armed with joint powers and with a lengthy state paper in which Jefferson, the future leader of the crystallizing republicandemocratic party in American politics, marshalled all his subtle skill and ingenious arguments to support the claims of the United States and to display them in such a way as to demonstrate to voters on the western waters the assiduity of the Secretary of State personally, as well as of the federal government generally, in supporting their one most vital interest.22 also in the Archivo Histórico Nacional at Madrid a memorandum by Carmichael dated November 7, 1791, which repeats the substance of a conversation with Floridablanca at the latter's request. It attests that Floridablanca had indicated his intention of sending a plenipotentiary to America to adjust matters with the United States upon the basis of the free navigation of the Mississippi and the boundary as fixed by the treaty between the United States and Great Britain. A. H. N., Est., Leg. 3890. 22 Report on Negotiations with Spain, March 18, 1792, Writings, V, 461-481. See note by the editor, P. L. Ford, p. 461. CHAPTER IX MORE PATIENCE and MORE PERSUASION I When Floridablanca in September, 1791, had decided to invite an American negotiation at Madrid, the decision was dictated by fear that the despatch of a British minister to the United States and the rumored decision of Great Britain to evacuate the northern frontier posts betokened a rapprochement between those two governments. Between that time and Short's arrival in Madrid, eighteen months elapsed. A year and a half in 1791-1792 meant staggering transformations in the politics of Europe, changes utterly beyond the comprehension of even Thomas Jefferson and his trust in European instability. The flight of Louis XVI to Varennes occurred just after Short presented his note to Montmorin. The capture and return to Paris of the King, his sham adherence to the Constitution of 1791, the Declaration of Pilnitz, the invasion of France by the allied monarchs of Austria and Prussia, the Manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick, the Jacobin revolution, the Terror of August and September, 1792, the proclamation of the Republic, French occupation of the Austrian Netherlands, the trial and execution of the King, all this cycle of cataclysmic events had intervened while the despatches and instructions of American diplomatists were being buffeted slowly to and fro across the Atlantic Ocean. As Louis XVI's head dropped from the guillotine a thrill of horror and genuine dread electrified the monarchs of continental Europe. But the French in Belgium and at the mouth of the Scheldt was an even more effective alarm to England than the decapitation of his royal cousin was to Carlos IV of Spain. William Short, concerning whom we shall have much to say from now on, was a young Virginian who had left the United States with Jefferson in 1783 to complete his education by travel in Europe and study in France. Then but twenty-four years of age he was already a man of much perspicacity and great promise. A graduate of William and Mary College he was one of the charter members of Phi Beta Kappa, of which society he had been president for three years. In 1783 before leaving for France he served with credit a term as a member of the Virginia Executive Council. Jefferson was early attracted to him because of his "peculiar talent for prying into facts." He describes him at that time as young, with little experience in business, but well prepared for it. The friendship which developed between these two men was an important feature of Short's life as long as Jefferson lived. Short was fortunate to begin his career as a protegé of Jefferson. In 1785 he became the latter's private secretary. Upon Jefferson's departure from Paris, Short remained in charge of the legation, and in 1789 upon Jefferson's |