Above the line of 31° on the east bank of the Mississippi in what was known as the Natchez District were some straggling British settlements. During the few weeks between the Peace of Paris and the Proclamation of 1763 it would be difficult to say to what British colony they belonged, for they lay within the western confines of the strip of Carolina which had been separated off from the main province by the creation of Georgia in 1732. After the Proclamation of October 7, 1763, however, they were geographically within Georgia, the limits of which were extended south to 31°, but they had no contact directly or indirectly with the government of that province. In order to include them, the boundaries of West Florida were extended north to an east-and-west line between the mouth of the Yazoo River (present Vicksburg, Miss.) and the Chattahoochee, which last stream then became the eastern boundary of the province. It is important to notice at this point that the boundary line of West Florida was moved north in 1764 by royal prerogative, and the Georgia boundary proportionately restricted in that region, just as previously the boundaries of Carolina had been cut down to give way to Georgia, and as the trans-Mississippi claims of several of the British colonies had been amputated by the Peace of Paris. The right of the crown to do this was unquestioned. The Proclamation of October 7, 1763, also set off as an Indian reserve the territory to the west of the watershed between the Mississippi Basin and the Atlantic-flowing streams. Careful study of British policy in the Mississippi Valley has shown that this new western reserve was regarded by the Ministry at Whitehall as a temporary expedient for the government of the country pending the formulation of a more comprehensive policy of administration. On the eve of the American Revolution, British policy was working toward the chartering, in the interior of North America, of separate new colonies, like the original ones on the Atlantic coast. This policy was interrupted by the coercive acts of 1774, including particularly the Quebec Act. Following the outbreak of war the old colonies, after declaring their independence, asserted claims to their original charter grants, at least as far west as the Mississippi. Georgia affirmed that her territory extended that far west, and south to the line of 31°. Without attempting here to solve the moot constitutional question of whether the Proclamation of 1763 could annihilate forever the ancient charter grants of colonies to territory west of the proclamation line, it is enough to point out that the West Florida boundary proclamation of 1764 certainly did withdraw from Georgia a portion of her recently acquired territoryprecisely that portion which was included in the northern extension of West Florida to the line of the Yazoo. To make this point absolutely clear I shall quote a document which has not been previously noted in reference to the West Florida boundary question. In 1773 Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the C. W. Alvord, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, passim. Colonies, sent out from London a circular letter to the several governors of all the British colonies, asking them to send in descriptions of the boundaries of their respective provinces, with any comments on boundary disputes in existence or which might possibly arise in the future. In reply the Governor of West Florida gave this official description of the boundaries of that province: "Question. What are the reputed Boundaries of the Province, and are any parts thereof disputed, what parts, and by whom? "Answer. The Province of West Florida, the only Frontier of the British Dominions in America according to the Governors Commission, is bounded 'to the Southward by the Gulph of Mexico, including all Islands within six Leagues of the Coast, from the River Apalachicola to Lake Ponchartrain; to the Westward, by the said Lake, the Lake Maurepas and the River Mississippi; to the Northward by a line drawn due East, from the mouth of the River Yasous where it unites with the Mississippi, to the River Apalachicola or Chatahouchee; and to the Eastward by the same River.' At this point the Governor introduced a marginal note which said: "Note, this is evidently a mistake in the Geography, for both these Lakes are situated upon the south side of the Province of West Florida, as well as the River Iberville. It is very remarkable that neither in the Royal Proclamation of the 7th October, 1763 (by which the Province of West Florida was to extend northward only to the latitude of Thirty-one Degrees) nor in any of the Governors Commissions, is there mention made of the River Iberville as a Boundary of this Province; tho' it must undoubtedly have been intended as such. But there is evidently a very considerable Chasm in this part of the Boundaries, for the Lake Maurepas is not Contiguous to the Mississippi by a great many Leagues." "Concerning these Boundaries the only Dispute which possibly could happen, must either be with East Florida concerning a few Islands which lie between and near to the Entrances of the River Apalachicola; or with Spain concerning several other Islands some of which are situated in the Mississippi, and others upon the Coast of the Island of New Orleans."8 Nothing could be clearer. The only possibilities of dispute foreseen by the Governor were with East Florida or with Spain, over certain islands along the coast. Not the slightest hint of a doubt about the northern boundary is mentioned, nothing whatsoever about any dispute with Georgia. British land grants were made in the Natchez District by the Governor of West Florida after 1764, and do not appear to have been questioned. At the beginning of the American Revolution, then, the boundary of West Florida had been recognized as that of the line of the mouth of the Yazoo due east to the Chattahoochee. II The American Revolution immediately raised new problems for diplomacy in both the old and the new world, and in some of these the Question of the Mis • This report is now in the possession of the William L. Clements Library of the University of Michigan, where it was called to my attention by the librarian, Dr. Randolph G. Adams. It got into the hands of the Undersecretary of the Colonial Office, Henry Strachey, from whose descendents it was purchased by Mr. Clements. C. E. Carter, British Administration in West Florida, Miss. Vall. Hist. Rev., I, 364-375. sissippi assumed increasing significance. The problems which will concern us here relate to the efforts of France and the United States to bring Spain into the war against Great Britain, if possible as the ally of the United States; the policy of Spain toward the United States following her actual intervention, in 1779, as the ally of France alone; and those issues pertaining to the Mississippi and the western and southern boundary of the United States which arose during the peace settlement at Paris in 1782 when it was the effort of French diplomacy to reconcile the diverging interests of Louis XVI's two separate allies. The outbreak of hostilities between the American colonies and the mother country presented the opportunity for which many astute Frenchmen had been waiting ever since the humiliating Peace of Paris, of splitting apart the British Empire and of raising the power of France in the European scale proportionately to the abasement of Britain. The political religiosity of French public opinion toward the end of the eighteenth century beheld in American republican institutions the avatar of its own dreams and made it possible for French statesmen to direct their King and nation into the war against Great Britain as the ally of the United States with an enthusiastic popular support behind them. 10 But at first, while the chances of ultimate success of the United States were so uncertain, the Count de Vergennes, able French Minister for For 10 B. Faÿ, L'Esprit revolutionaire en France et aux Etats-Unis a la fin du XVIII siècle, 1-105. |