Relations with Spain. men, whom he took with him to accompany him to Quebec. We departed on the same day-he for Canada, and I for the Illinois." Tonti accordingly finished the fort, round which a regular and rapid settlement was formed; and a new Governor in Canada having displaced him in the command of the fort, he was restored to it through the influence of La Salle. by a regular commission from the King, Louis XIV. So much for the settlement at the Illinois. You have seen that when La Salle, in 1683, returned to France, to fit out the new expedition for the mouth of the Mississippi, he ordered Tonti, at the proper time, to go down from Fort St. Louis and meet him there. In the autumn of 1684 Tonti was informed by the Governor of Canada that La Salle had sailed from La Rochelle with four ships for the Gulf of Mexico. He therefore took with him forty men from Fort St. Louis, and went down the river to the gulf, where he waited until Easter Monday, 1685, for La Salle's arrival. He was obliged to go back disappointed, and, on his way upwards, when he came to the Arkansas, he says: "My French companions, delighted with the beauty of the climate, asked my permission to settle there. As our intention was only to humanize and civilize the savages, by associating with them, I readily gave my consent. I formed the plan of a house for myself at the Arkansas. I left ten Frenchmen of my company there, with four Iudians, to proceed with the building, and I gave them leave to lodge there themselves, and to cultivate as much of the land as they could clear. This little colony has since then so much increased and multiplied that it has become a resting place for the Frenchmen who travel in that country." I trust, sir, we shall hear no more of the independent and unconnected Indian colonies of the Illinois and the Arkansas, nor of the pretended settlement of the French there. You consider the charter of Louis XIV. to Crozat as a solitary document, warranted by nothing that had preceded, and supported by nothing that followed it; and you appear to believe that the first expedition to Louisiana was that of 1699 and 1700. I have shown you, sir, that that expedition was fitted out, as it is represented in the grant to Crozat, merely to carry into execution the project originally formed by La Salle. The Mississippi, from near its source to the ocean, had been discovered by him in an expedition meditated by him for many years before, for which he obtained the authority from Louis XIV., through the influence and patronage of Colbert. The expedition of Joliet, in 1673, Hennepin says, was only an envious rival attempt to forestall the great design which was even then known to be intended by La Salle, and for which he had already been making laborious and expensive preparations. Joliet reached the Mississippi, and returned without making any other discovery or any settlement; but La Salle's undertaking has every characteristic of sublime genius, magnanimous enterprise, and heroic execution. To him, and to him alone, the people of this continent are indebted for the discovery from its source to the ocean, of the Mississippi, the father of the floods; and of the numberless millions of freemen destined in this and future ages to sail on his bosom, and dwell along his banks, and those of his tributary streams, there is not one but will be deeply indebted for a large portion of the comforts and enjoyments of life to the genius and energy of La Salle. It was in the order of Providence that he should not live to accomplish the whole of his undertaking, but that he should so nearly accomplish it as to place it beyond the power of events that it should perish with him. His project was revived immediately after the peace of Ryswick, and settlements were effected by D'Iberville and his brother, near the mouth of the Mississippi, upon the Gulf of Mexico. They languished, as they naturally must, during the war of the Spanish succession. The grant to Crozat, after a very few years, was transferred to the Mississippi Company, and soon after the peace of Utrecht the city of New Orleans was founded. There is no doubt that, if the Viceroy of Mexico could have exterminated D'Iberville and his expedition, no French settlement on the gulf would have been made. The Spanish establishment at Pensacola had been made only one month before he arrived there, and, solely for the purpose of preventing him, the Spaniards protested even against his entering the Mississippi. So it was afterwards; when the French settle. ment was made at Natchitoches, immediately afterwards was founded the post at Adaes.Wherever a Frenchman took a seat, there appeared a Spaniard from Mexico to dispute his right to it; but the original usurpation, which vitiated all those that followed, was the founda tion of the presidio of Texas, after extirpating the settlement of La Salle at the Bay of St. Bernard. And so far was France from renouncing or abdicating any part of the right asserted in the charter to Crozat, that, under the Mississippi Company, M. de Bourmon was appointed, with a salary, as commandant on the Missouri, and Bernard la Harpe commandant for the Bay of St. Bernard. In August, 1721, he went there, and left a new impression of the arms of France, as a continued assertion of the title. A vessel, commanded by Berenger, had been sent there, and had left a sergeant and three men the year before. The correspondence between De la Harpe and D'Alarconne shows the respective claims both of France and Spain at that time; nor do they appear to have been, nor have you exhibited any document to show that they had been, in any manner varied, until the cession of the province to Spain, in November, 1762. You affirm that, from the year 1693, the province of Texas has continued in perfect tranquillity under the Spanish Government, and no further attempts were made by the French to penetrate into any part of it." The letter of M. de la Harpe to Don Martin D'Alarconne, of 8th July, 1719, is sufficient to refute this assertion. You assert that the French settlements of Nat Relations with Spain. chez and Natchitoches were made only through the sufferance or permission of the Spanish Governors, for the sole purpose of trading with the Indians. We say that you have not a particle of evidence to support this assertion, and that the whole tenor of the historical evidence is to the contrary; that the post of Natchitoches, particularly, was established with the deliberate purpose of preventing a Spanish establishment there, and that the mission of St. Michael at the Adaes was founded after it, and in opposition to it. You admit, yourself, that although positive orders were issued by the Spanish Governors to drive the French from the whole district, and to destroy both the posts of Natchez and Natchitoches, yet the officer charged with the execution of the orders, after advancing with a sufficient force for that purpose, acceded to the proposals of the French at Natchitoches, that Arroyo Hondo, midway between Natchitoches and Adaes, should be considered as the dividing line until the detertermination of the two Courts; which state of things, you say, continued until the cession of Louisiana to Spain, in 1762. What clearer proof could be required that the French never renounced their claim to the countries watered by the Mississippi and its branches; and that Spain has nothing to oppose to that claim, which she might not with as much force oppose to the right of France to every other part of the colony of Louisiana ? You allege that, upon the cession of Louisiana to Spain, a memoir of its proper extent and limits was drawn up by Mr. Kerlet, who had been many years Governor of the province, and delivered by the Duke de Choiseul to the Spanish Ambassador at Paris, as a supplement to the act of cession; that this memoir contained a description of its proper extent and limits, and agreed substantially with your assertions. Permit me to observe, that, had you produced the memoir itself, it might be a subject of reply or of remark; that, not having produced it, you cannot expect it should be considered as possibly differing in substance from the charter of Louis XIV., by which alone Louisiana had been held, or from the subsequent memoir of the Count de Vergennes; and that the rights of the United States can as little be affected by secret memoirs as by imaginary treaties or exterminating royal orders of Philip II. With regard to your offer of further demonstrations of the Spanish title, if they are of the like description with these, you will do well to spare yourself and me the waste of time which it would take to produce and to notice them. You have the goodness to inform me, in the name of the King, your master, that Spain has an indisputable right to all the right bank of the Mississippi, but that His Majesty has resolved to claim it solely with a view to adhere to the uti possidetis of 1764. If, sir, you will exhibit any evidence of right in Spain to the right bank of the Mississippi, it will be considered by the Government of the United States with all the attention to which it can be entitled. In the meantime, you cannot but perceive that this pre tension is utterly incompatible both with that advanced in another part of your note, of a right in Spain to the whole circumference of the Gulf of Mexico, and with that of the uti possidetis of 1764. The question of disputed boundaries between European settlements in America is not new. From the nature of those settlements, the imperfect geographical knowledge possessed by all the parties to them of the countries where they formed their establishments, and the grasping spirit by which they were all more or less animated in forming them, it was inevitable that disputed boundaries should be an appendage to them all. Of this spirit of boundless ambition Spain gave the most memorable example by the original pretension of engrossing to herself the whole American hemisphere. The common sense and common feeling of mankind could not, and did not, long tolerate this assumption. With what lingering reluctance, and by what ungracious gradations, Spain was compelled to recede from it, is notorious in the annals of the last three centuries; but it is among the most curious characteristics of your notes to show that she clings to these long-exploded pretensions still. You have not scrupled, even at this day, to style the most ancient settlements of other European nations in America "attempts to disturb the Spaniards in their possessions in the new world." You recall to mind, with exultation, as if pointing to the most splendid monuments of Spanish glory, the ferociousness with which they attacked, and made prisoners, and put to death, and overthrew, dissipated, and destroyed the forts and settlements of Francis Ribaut, and Réné de Laudonnière, the companion of Coligny. You recite with triumph the expedition of Alonzo de Leon to scour the country and hunt out the wretched remnant of the brave and enterprising but unfortunate La Salle's establishment. You record, as one of your proudest title-deeds, the rigorous execution of the sentence of a court martial upon the Spanish Governor of Adaes, Sandoval, for yielding a musket-shot's length of ground to the French Governor of Natchitoches, suffering under the calamity of an inundation. You call the whole colony of Louisiana an intrusive establishment; style the authentic charter of Louis XIV. the absurd and despicable act of a disordered imagination; assert more than once a right of Spain to the whole circumference of the Gulf of Mexico; and talk of the territory and dominions of the Crown of Spain as if we were living in the age of Ferdinand the Catholic, or of Charles the Fifth. To all such pretensions on the part of Spain, I am directed to inform you that the United States can never accede. The President is willing to hope that the time will come when your Government will become sensible of the uselessness of resorting to them. From the time when the establishments of European nations on these continents became common, and their respective claims of territory under the charters of their Sovereigns were Relations with Spain. found to interfere with one another, reason, jus- 12th May, with the statement then made by tice, and necessity, concurred in pointing out them of French captures of American vessels to them certain rules and principles for the ad- carried into the ports of Spain, and the demonjustment of their conflicting claims. By these stration that no indemnity for any one of those rules and principles we are willing that the ques-cases had even been demanded by the American tion of the western boundary of Louisiana may Government of France, much less provided for be decided. Till Spain, who has repeatedly ac- in the conventions between the United States ceded to them heretofore, shall be prepared to and France of 1800 and 1803. When you say abide by them on this occasion, it will be of little that "no reply was made, on the part of the avail to pursue a discussion upon which the prin- United States, weakening in the least the force ciples of the parties are utterly irreconcileable of the principles and the truth of the facts on together. which the opposition of Spain to a responsibility With regard to the third of the subjects of for those damages and injuries was founded," it difference between Spain and the United States is impossible to account for your assertion but that remain to be adjusted, the claims of indem- by supposing you have not been furnished by nification for injuries, losses, and damages, suf- your Government with a copy of the above-menfered by American citizens from Spanish author- tioned statement. I therefore now enclose (E. ities and subjects, and within Spanish jurisdic- No. 5) a copy of it, in which you will find how tion, I flatter myself, from the tenor of your grossly mistaken, with regard to the facts, are note, devoted particularly to the consideration of all the allegations in the letter of the French this point, that it is not absolutely unsusceptible Minister of Foreign Relations to Admiral Graof being brought to a favorable issue. You ex- vina, of 27th July, 1804, of which you have inpress the willingness of your Government to re- serted in your note an entire copy, and of which sume the unratified convention of 1802, and to Mr. Cevallos had already favored Messrs. Pinckextend its stipulations to the cases of complaintney and Monroe with an extract. of a similar character to those provided for in it, which have since that time accrued. It is undoubtedly the intention of this Government that its engagements should be reciprocal; and if this was not expressly declared in my note of the 16th of January, it was merely because the President was not aware that any such claims of Spanish subjects for indemnities from the American Government were in existence. I am authorized to assure you that there will be no difficulty in including any such as may exist in the convention, and in making the United States answerable for all indemnities which may be justly due by them. As you have also been empowered to include the cases of injuries and losses of the citizens of the United States, in consequence of the suppression by the Spanish intendant of the deposite at New Orleans, as stipulated by the treaty of 27th of October, 1795, it cannot be necessary for me to reply to your objections against the admission of those claims. I the more readily pass over that argument, because, as it is merely a repetition of what was urged on the same point by Mr. Cevallos in 1805, it may suffice to refer you, for a full and complete refutation of it, to the letter from Messrs. Pinckney and Monroe to him of the 26th of February of that year. But even upon this branch of the negotiation, it is with regret that the President perceives a persevering determination of your Government to exclude from the consideration of the commissioners for settling indemnities the cases of American sufferers by French spoliations committed within the jurisdiction of Spain. In answer to your reference to the arguments of Mr. Cevallos on this point, in his notes to Messrs. Pinckney and Monroe of February 10 and March 5, [4,] 1805, it will be sufficient for me to refer you to their letters to him of 28th January, 12th and 26th February, 8th March, 9th April, and It may be proper here to present some obvious remarks upon the frequent appeals to the opinions and assertions of France, (under the government of Napoleon,) in reference to the controversy between the United States and Spain, which were made by Mr. Cevallos at Aranjuez, in 1805, and which are now repeated by you with as much confidence as if you considered France, as then governed, the most impartial of umpires, and the most disinterested of friends. At that time, when these opinions and representations of France were alleged by Mr. Cevallos, they were answered by the American Ministers with the firmness which became the representatives of a great and independent nation, and with the sentiment at once of their country's dignity, and of the respect due to the Government of France, with which the United States were in amity. With regard to the eastern limits of Louisiana, they observed that, the question depending upon the construction of a treaty to which the United States were a party, the opinion of France concerning it could be of no more weight in itself than that of the United States; that, in adopting the phraseology of the Treaty of St. Ildefonso, when France declined substituting a more specific definition of boundaries, the United States could not be supposed to have subjected themselves to the subsequent explanatory restriction by France of that which she then chose to leave standing upon the force of the terms themselves; and that, the delivery of the province by the commissioner of France to the United States having been without any limitation, it was obvious that he had received it alike without limitation. With respect to the French spoliations within Spanish jurisdiction, while the interest of France was so immediate and direct as to take from her opinion all right to the consideration due to an impartial arbitrator, it was supposed that the Relations with Spain. proper view of the subject had not been presented to the Emperor; and the most unequivocal demonstration was given that no indemnity or satisfaction had been received, or even demanded, from France by the United States for this description of injuries. United States and Spain, the further and solemn sanction of an express stipulation by treaty. In violation both of the common usage of na. tions and of the express promise of Spain in the treaty, nearly two hundred vessels and their cargoes, belonging to citizens of the United States, were seized, many of them within the territorial limits of Spain, and under the cannon of her fortresses, by French cruisers; and all of them were condemned within Spanish juris At this day your Government must be aware that the umpirage, and even the opinions, of France upon these questions, was liable to other and still more decisive objections. Of the use which France was already making, and was fur-diction. ther contemplating to make, of Spain, of her revenues and possessions, not only in Europe, but in every other quarter of the globe, little needs to be said. That she was converting to purposes of her own all the resources of Spain, has been, since then, too signally manifested to the world to require further elucidation. It was impossible for her to recognise that Spain was bound to indemnify the United States for the spoliations of French cruisers within Spanish jurisdiction, without acknowledging herself the debtor of Spain to the same amount. To call for her testimony, therefore, was to claim her as a witness in her own cause; to appeal to her opinions, was to make her the judge of her own delinquencies. By countenancing Spain in the denial of justice to others, she did but reserve her as a richer spoil for herself; nor can it be dissembled that the recourse of Spain, on that occasion, was rather to the predominating power than to the justice of France. These observations are made, not with the view of reproaching Spain now for the compliances with which she then sought and obtained the declarations of France in her favor upon her controversies with the United States, but to show the solid and irrefragable grounds upon which the United States may refuse all deference for the opinions, and disclaim all credit to the statements of France. You allege, first, that Spain has, in the cases to which reference is now made, actually carried into effect the obligations contracted by treaty ; that she has used all her efforts for the defence and protection of this property. But in what have these efforts consisted? These were not cases of vessels seized by sudden violence, and carried away beyond her jurisdiction, before the officers appointed for the execution of her laws could be apprized of the wrong, and summoned to the performance of their duties. They are not cases of clandestine depredations, eluding the vigilance of the magistrates; they are cases of friendly merchants and navigators, frequenting the ports of Spain upon the faith of treaties, and for purposes of a mutual beneficial intercourse-seized, some of them, in the very harbors of Spain, by foreign cruisers, dragged on Spanish ground before a foreign Consul, and there plundered of their property before the face of all the lawful authorities of Spain, who neither raise a voice nor lift an arm for their defence. What, then, have been all the efforts of Spain for the protection of this property, conformably to the treaty ? You say, secondly, that Spain was not respon sible for these depredations, because they were made by a nation with which the United States were not at war; and this you say immediately At the time when France had ceded Louisiana after quoting the words of the sixth article of to the United States, her good offices with Spain the treaty, expressly stipulating protection and to secure the acquisition of Florida to the United defence in the ports of Spain to the vessels and States had been explicitly promised. The letter other effects of citizens of the United States, of Mr. Monroe to Mr. Talleyrand, of 8th No-"whether they are at war or not with the Power vember, 1804, in reminding him of that engage- whose subjects have taken possession of the said ment, had sufficiently shown that the Govern- effects." ment of the United States, in calling upon France for the performance of her promise, had no intention of admitting her to arbitrate upon the extent of the concession which had been made by herself. True it is that she not only espoused the side of Spain, as considering it her own, but she even stimulated Spain to the denial of justice to the United States. As her motives, if Spain could be doubtful of them then, must be abundantly notorious now, it could scarcely have been expected that Spain should still recur to them as entitled to the slightest consideration or credit. There is no principle of the law of nations more firmly established than that which entitles the property of strangers within the jurisdiction of a country in friendship with their own to the protection of its Sovereign by all the efforts in his power. This common rule of intercourse between all civilized nations has, between the You observe, thirdly, that France and Spain were then allies in a war against England, and that Spain could not prevent the privateers of her ally from entering her ports. But it is not that the French privateers were allowed to enter the ports of Spain of which the United States complain, but that they were suffered to make prizes, and the French Consuls to condemn them within the territorial jurisdiction of Spain. You refer to the decision of a subordinate British court of admiralty that the prizes of a bellige rent may be carried into the ports of an ally, and there lawfully condemned; but surely you do not mean to contend that the decisions of an admiralty court of one nation constitute the law of nations, or can even be adduced as authority for others. Of this principle, at least, there can be no doubt, that an alliance between two nations cannot absolve either of them from the obliga Relations with Spain. tions of previous treaties. Now, the treaty between Spain and the United States, by which Spain was bound to protect the property of American citizens within her jurisdiction, was concluded before the alliance between Spain and France had been contracted; and the alliance could in nowise impair the rights of the citizens of the United States to the protection of their property, stipulated in their favor by the antecedent engagement of Spain. Your fourth and last expedient for relieving Spain from responsibility for these losses and injuries, suffered by American citizens upon her territory, is the positive assertion that satisfaction has already been made for them by France; your only voucher for which is the letter of 27th July, 1804, from Mr. Talleyrand to Admiral Gravina. The assertions of that letter I have shown, by reference to indisputable documents, are utterly without foundation. here I had the honor to assure your Majesty of the high consideration of my Government for your Majesty's person and Government. I then hoped to have had the honor to conclude the special mission with which I was charged, in conjunction with the Minister Plenipotentiary near your Majesty, to the advantage and satisfaction of both parties; but, being disappointed in this respect, all our propositions having been rejected, and none others ever offered on the part of your Majesty's Government, though often invited, it is my duty to return to my station at London." This assertion, made to the King of Spain in person, at the close of that mission, was fully warranted by the transactions under it. Every one of the topics now included in your four notes, as embracing all the subjects of difference between the two countries, was discussed at great length, much in the same manner which you have now insisted upon repeating. The questions of indemnities for Your subsequent offer of the good offices of spoliations, Spanish and French, and for the supyour Government near that of the present Court pression of the deposite at New Orleans, of the of France to obtain indemnities for American citi-eastern and of the western boundary of Louisizens for French depredations committed within ana, were descanted upon with pertinacity as inSpanish jurisdiction, by virtue of an alliance be- defatigably by Don Pedro Cevallos as by yourtween Spain and Napoleon, you doubtless did self. He bestowed as many pages upon the terms not expect to be accepted. It is to Spain alone, retrocede and retrocession as you have done. He sir, that the United States still look, and will appealed with equal confidence and alacrity to continue to look, as they always have looked, for the opinions, and cited with equal complacency those indemnities for which Spain alone is re- the testimonials of the Ministers of Napoleon, sponsible to them. I am instructed to renew to and reminded Messrs. Monroe and Pinckney, you the declaration repeatedly made by the Min- with a satisfaction not inferior to your own, of ister of the United States to your Government the "very pointed" manner in which the French at Aranjuez, in 1805, that no satisfactory arrange- Minister of Foreign Relations, Mr. Talleyrand, ment can be made of the differences between the announcing the sentiments of His Imperial Matwo countries which shall not include the adjust-jesty, observed, that "to make known the rights ment of these injuries. which France had acquired, was to indicate the Before bringing this reply to your four succes-extent and the limits of those which she transsive notes to a close, it is necessary to advert to several incidental assertions and remarks, which you have made in relation to the negotiation at Aranjuez, equally destitute of foundation with the claims and pretensions to which this letter has already replied. mitted to the Federal Government." To everything that had the semblance of reason and argument, adduced in the successive notes of Mr. Cevallos, the American Ministers temperately and patiently replied; they unfolded, with a clear ness and precision to which nothing can now be added, the claims of the United States, and the facts and principles by which they were supported. They proposed, at the commencement of the negotiation, a projet of a convention for the adjustment of all the interests in dispute. After all the subjects had been thoroughly dis cussed they presented a second projet, modified in the most conciliatory spirit of accommodation to Spain. They invited, and reiterated, almost to importunity, the invitation to a counter-projet, or proposals on the part of the Spanish Govern In your note of the 29th December, you affirm that the negotiation at Aranjuez was early interrupted;" and in that of the 24th January, to confirm the assertion, that, if all the differences between the two countries have not long since been adjusted, it has not depended upon the Government of Spain, you say that this is "evident, beyond the possibility of denial, from the official correspondence between His Catholic Majesty's Minister of State and the Plenipetentiaries of the American Government, who suspended and gave up the negotiation at Aranjuez, after having|ment. obstinately refused to accept the modifications, founded on strict justice, which were proposed by the Spanish Government." The negotiation of the special mission of the United States at Aranjuez, in 1805, occupied a period of nearly five months, from the beginning of January, when Mr. Monroe arrived at Madrid, to the 22d of May, when he took leave of the King to return to London. In his address to the King on that occasion, he said: "On my arrival These unwearied efforts were met by a constant, invariable, inflexible refusal, either to accept their proposals, or to make to them any whatsoever in return. You speak of the titles, dates, documents, and arguments, produced on the "part of Spain, at that negotiation, incontestably proving, by abundant and irresistible evidence, the rights of the Spanish monarchy to the territory in question." If such had been the facts, where would be the pretence that the American Ministers had pre |
