the United States.23 Numerous good excuses were found to delay further the evacuation of the remaining posts on the east side of the Mississippi; Nogales and Natchez, while the protests against alleged American violation of the treaty were being presented at Philadelphia by the new minister, Yrujo. The Blount intrigue in Tennessee in 1797, by which British agents conceived the possibility of duplicating, with more success, Genêt's old project of recruiting western frontiersmen to attack Spanish provinces-for Great Britain was now the enemy of Spain and France-presented a valid reason for holding the river posts as necessary defenses against a British invasion from Canada across American soil by force majeure, with or without the assistance of lawless American western citizens.24 23 For Spanish correspondence relating to this, see confidential despatches of Morales, Intendant at New Orleans, to Department of Finance, Dec. 31, 1796, to May 4, 1797, containing despatches and enclosures explaining evacuation of the upper points and cessation of the movement at Nogales and Natchez, because of the Blount affair and fear of a British attack from Canada. This is in the expediente entitled “Correspondence of Spanish Governors and Officials in Louisiana relating to the Disputed Boundary, 1789-1799," A. H. N., Est., Leg. 3902. See also, for American correspondence, Seventh Annual Report of the Director of the Department of Archives of the State of Mississippi, and Journal of Andrew Ellicott, the United States official surveyor. For account of Sir William Dunbar, official Spanish surveyor, see Publications of Miss. Hist. Soc., III, 185–207. 24 We recall that at the time of the Nootka Crisis of 1790, the deliberations of Washington's Cabinet show that the United States would not have attempted by force to prevent a passage of British troops from Canada across American soil against Despite dissatisfaction with the hastily concluded treaty of 1795 and good excuses for refusing to execute it, Spain was induced to do so by circumstances of a European nature. In 1797 relations between the United States arising out of the consequences of Jay's Treaty became so strained as to make war likely. France now proposed to Spain joint diplomatic protests to the United States against Jay's Treaty. 25 Before this could be done, diplomatic relations between the two republics had been ruptured. The Prince of the Peace feared that Spain might become involved, as France's new ally, in a war with the United States. In such a conflict Spain had Louisiana and perhaps more to lose, France nothing in America. 26 This was the reason for the ultimate, full execution of the treaty of 1795. Again the wars of Europe had come to the aid of the United States. A royal order for the evacuation of the forts north of the new American boundary was issued September 22, 1797. Nogales, Natchez and St. Stevens were given up in 1798.27 A fine irony of fate caused Louisiana in case of war between Great Britain and Spain. For documents relating to the Blount affair, published by Prof. F. J. Turner, see A. H. R., X, 574. 25 See endorsements on Yrujo's despatch, no. 4, of Sept. 8, 1796, and documents associated with no. 4, relating to French proposals for joint diplomatic action, A. H. N., Est., Leg. 3896 bis. 26 Prince of the Peace to Yrujo, Jan. 27, Aug. 14, Dec. 31, 1796, Spanish Legation, Vol. 205. 27 For details of the final evacuation, see Serrano y Sanz, op. cit., 76-77; Seventh Annual Report of Director of Archives of Mississippi, op. cit., and Journal of Andrew Ellicott. A great deal of attention has been devoted to the history of these years of them to be delivered to subalterns of Brigadier-General James Wilkinson, at the time commander of the army of the United States! The joint survey of the boundary was commenced. Scarcely had it been completed, in 1800, before Louisiana was secretly ceded by Spain to France, and that chapter of American expansion which led to the Louisiana purchase, a chapter made so familiar and so vivid to readers of American history by the genius and the pen of the late Henry Adams, had already begun. It was to end with the Florida purchase, the carrying of the boundary between the United States and Spain to the Pacific Ocean, and presently thereafter by the disappearance forever, in the contemporaneous revolutions of the South American colonies, of the sovereignty of Spain from the American continents. Those revolutions, let it be noted, were themselves the result of the Napoleonic wars which followed the French Revolution, and which were so profoundly consequential in American diplomatic history. The procession of events which resulted in all this is bound up inseparable with the European balance of power and the wars of the French Revolution. Thomas Jefferson's reliance on the quarrels of Europe to solve the predicaments of American diplomacy after all had justified itself. The treaty to which border bickering and delay in the execution of the treaty. See B. A. Hinsdale, Establishment of the First Southern Boundary of the United States, Am. Hist. Assoc., Ann. Rept., 1893, 331365; F. R. Riley, Spanish Policy in Mississippi after the Treaty of San Lorenzo, Ibid., 1897, 177-182; I. J. Cox, West Florida Controversy. Thomas Pickney succeeded in affixing Godoy's signature at a psychological moment was one of the greatest successes in American diplomacy. From it flowed almost immeasurable consequences for the future territorial expansion of the United States. Issues arising over this document led to the negotiations which brought, at the profit of European imbroglios imper- | fectly understood across the Atlantic, the extension of American territory to the Gulf of Mexico and to the Pacific Ocean. If it had not been for the right of deposit and the necessity of protecting it, it is extremely unlikely that President Jefferson's diplomatists in 1803 would have been suing at the Court of Napoleon for the purchase of the island of New Orleans at the very time when larger issues, unbeknownst to Jefferson, constrained that despot to sell all of Louisiana. What then would have been the destiny of that great region? A second Canada ?28 Spanish historians condemn Godoy and the treaty as the beginning of the end of Spain's vast colonial empire in America. So it was. It was due to no particular merit or deserved victory of American diplomacy. Godoy capitulated, perhaps unnecessarily, to circumstances in Europe which argued to him the necessity above all of protecting Spain at home, of sacrificing a small portion of expansive overseas dominions and rights for the better security of the remainder. That it would have been wiser for Spain under Godoy's guid 28 For some highly stimulating conjectures on this, see Channing, Hist. U. S., IV, 334. ance to have maintained after 1795 her neutrality in the great European cataclysm which ended by destroying her empire, does not concern us here. The French Revolution had engulfed Europe in a series of mighty conflicts which already had impelled Great Britain, in order to keep her badly-needed navy nearer home and to preserve her best customer at a time when money was needed to finance a great war, to sign Jay's Treaty with the United States. Godoy, fearful of the dominance of England after the destruction of French seapower, and of an Anglo-American coöperation, and threatened by the invasion of French armies, signed a separate peace with France. The youthful Prince of the Peace allowed himself to be overawed by the anticipated wrath of a disappointed ally. Here his nervous imagination ran away with him. When Spain deserted the alliance England did not declare war. At a time when his other allies were dropping away from him, Pitt had enough to confront the French problem without adding to his difficulties. But Godoy feared England. Jay's Treaty, with the subsequent failure at the Basle negotiations to secure a French alliance and even the hoped-for triple alliance with the United States, convinced the Prince that it was indispensably necessary to sign with Pinckney in order that British wrath be not strengthened by an American alliance which would snatch away from Spain her American colonies then and there. This was Godoy's first mistake. The next, and the greatest, the collosal mistake of all Spanish diplomacy, was his renewal of the |
