LETTERS OF LEE AND WASHINGTON.

right for twenty-five or thirty years, and conclude a commercial treaty at once. Writing to Washington, Henry Lee, then in Congress, said:

"We are very solicitous to form a treaty with Spain for commercial purposes. Indeed, no nation in Europe can give us conditions so advan geous to our trade as that kingdom. The carrying business they are like ourselves in, and this common source of difficulty in adjusting commercial treaties between other nations does not apply to America and Spain. But, my dear General, I do not think you go far enough. Rather than defer longer a free and liberal system of trade with Spain, why not agree to the exclusion of the Mississippi? This exclusion will not, cannot, exist longer than the infancy of the western emigrants. Therefore, to these people, what is now done cannot be important. To the Atlantic States it is highly important; for we have no prospect of bringing to a conclusion our negotiations with the court of Madrid, but by yielding the navigation of the Mississippi. The minister here is under positive instructions on that point. In all other arrangements the Spanish monarch will give to the states testimonies of his regard and friendship. And I verily believe that, if the above difficulty should be removed, we should soon experience the advantages which would flow from a connection with Spain."*

In reply to Lee, Washington said: "The advantages with which the inland navigation of the rivers Potomac and James is preg nant must strike every mind that reasons upon the subject; but there is, I perceive, a diversity of sentiment respecting the benefits and consequences which may flow from the free and

put. If ever they thought wrong about it, I trust they have got to rights. I should think it proper for the Western country to defer pushing their right to that navigation to extremity as long as they can do without it tolerably; but that the moment it becomes absolutely necessary for them, it will become the duty of the maritime states to push it to every extremity to which they would their own right of navigating the Chesapeake, the Delaware, the Hudson, or any other water."- Ford's ed. of Jefferson's Writings, vol. v., p. 17.

377

immediate use of the Mississippi. My opinion of this matter has been uniformly the same; and no light in which I have been able to consider the subject is likely to change it. It is, neither to relinquish nor to push our claim to this navigation, but in the meanwhile to open all the coinmunications which nature has afforded between the Atlantic States and the Western territory and to encourage the use of them to the utmost. In my judgment, it is a matter of very serious concern to the well-being of the former to make it the interest of the latter to trade with them; without which, the ties of consanguinity, which are weakening every day, will soon be no bond, and we shall be no more, a few years hence, to the inhabitants of that country, than the British and Spaniards are at this day; not so much, indeed, because commercial connections, it is well known, lead to others, and, united, are difficult to be broken. These must take place with the Spaniards if the navigation of the Mississippi is open. Clear I am that it would be for the interest of the western settlers, as low down the Ohio as the Big Kenhawa, and back to the Lakes, to bring their produce through one of the channels I have named; but the way must be cleared, and made easy and obvious to them, or else the ease with which people glide down stream will give a different bias to their thinking and acting. Whenever the new states become so populous and so extended to the westward as really to need it, there will be no power which can deprive them of the use of the Mississippi. Why, then, should we prematurely urge a matter which is displeasing and may produce disagreeable consequences, if it is our interest to let it sleep? It may require some management to quiet the restless and impetuous spirits of Kentucky, of whose conduct I am more apprehensive in this business than I am of all the opposition that will be given by the Spaniards."

The New England States clamored for the conclusion of the treaty, as much of the western trade would then come through her ports, but the South would not throw away the affections of her Western colonies by thus abandoning them, while the Middle States

Sparks' ed. of Washington's Writings, vol. ix., pp. 172-173. For similar expressions, see also pp. 180, 205, 261.

378 WRATH OF THE SOUTH; EMIGRATION TO THE WEST.

leaned toward New England. * Accordingly, on August 29, 1786, after heated debates in Congress, Jay's instructions of August 25, 1785, not to yield on this point, were rescinded by a vote of seven States against five.† An agreement was then entered into with the Spanish minister, suspending the use of the Mississippi, without relinquishing the right asserted by the United States. ‡

Some of the Southerners admitted that there was no need for haste in the matter. Washington, as previously quoted, had said: "There is nothing which binds one country or one State to another but interest. Without this consent, the Western inhabitants, who more than probably will be composed in a great degree of foreigners, can have no predilection for us, and a commercial connexion is the only tie we can have upon them." But the majority of

* McMaster, United States, vol. i., p. 378. See also Sparks' ed. of Washington's Writings, vol. ix., pp. 205-206, note; Ogg, Opening of the Mississippi, pp. 428-429; Gay, Life of Madison, p. 80 et seq.

McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Constitution, p. 98; Pellew, John Jay, p. 239; Secret Journals of Congress, vol. iv., pp. 109–110, and for the various motions and proposals, pp. 81–127. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey voted in the affirmative, while Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina voted in the negative. See Ogg, Opening of the Mississippi, p. 432.

See Jay's communication to Congress, October 6, 1786, Secret Journals of Congress, vol. iv., pp. 297–301. In this connection, see Monroe's letter to Patrick Henry, in Henry, Life of Patrick Henry, vol. ii., p. 291 et seq.

|| Ford's ed. of Washington's Writings, vol. x.,

p. 488.

the Virginians were wrathy that the North should take advantage of a commercial treaty and barter away the rights of the South. Madison thought that delay was useless and would probably precipitate strife. He thought the matter might just as well be settled at once for all time as to allow it to drag along for years, for, as he said in a letter to Jefferson, August 20, 1784, Spain" can no more finally stop the current of trade down the river than she can that of the river itself."*

With

Meanwhile the Mississippi Valley particularly Kentucky,† was filling "with up a degree of rapidity hitherto unknown in this country." As Lyman says: "While Congress was discussing the points of a treaty a nation was created there." patient endurance and marvellous disregard of personal danger and hardship, the pioneers were following Boone's old trail through eastern Tennessee, or floating down the Ohio to establish homes in Kentucky, until in 1785 Kentucky was supposed to contain about 20,000 inhabitants and was increasing rapidly. Laboring under the apprehension that their interests would be sacrificed to the commercial policy of the Atlantic States, the people of the West became

Hunt, Life of Madison, p. 59; Madison's Works (Congress ed.), vol. i., p. 93.

See Jay's letter to LaFayette, in Jay, Correspondence and Public Papers (Johnston's ed.), vol. iii., p. 138.

Lyman, Diplomacy of the United States, vol. i., p. 285.

ALARM IN THE WEST,

380

RETALIATION; MADISON'S COMPROMISE.

Rogers Clark formed a body of militia, which was enlisted for a year, and took post at Vincennes, where he retaliated against the Spanish by seizing some merchandise belonging to a Spanish storekeeper.* The Kentuckian members of the Virginia Assembly now drafted a petition to that body in the form of a protest against the proposed Jay treaty, and boldly asserted the right of the

ment of our public debts, and the chaining those debts on our own necks, in perpetuam. I have the utmost confidence in the honest intentions

of those who concur in this measure; but I lament, their want of acquaintance with the character and physical advantages of the people, who, right or wrong, will suppose their interests sacrificed on this occasion to the contrary interests of that part of the Confederacy in possession of the present power. If they declare themselves a separate people, we are incapable of a single effort to retain them. Our citizens can never be induced, either as militia or as soldiers, to go there to cut the throats of their own brothers and sons, or, rather, to be themselves the subjects instead of the perpetrators of the parricide. Nor would that country quit the cost of being retained against the will of its inhabitants, could it be done. But it cannot be done. They are able al

*

United States to use the Mississippi. Madison promised to aid the Kentuckians if they would reciprocate by voting to send a delegation to the Federal Convention, which proposition was then before the Virginia Legislature, in accordance with the report of the Annapolis convention.† On November 3, 1786, the latter subject came up for consideration, and it was decided that a law in conformity with the report of the Annapolis Convention ought to be enacted. A bill was drafted, reported on November 7, and unanimously passed November 9. On November 29 Madison performed his part of the compact by securing the passage of a set of resolutions, couched in language similar to that of the Kentucky petition. A resolution asserting the right to navigate the Mississippi was also passed in the North Carolina Legislature and sent to Congress.

On April 11, 1787, Jay reported to Congress the state of the negotia

ready to rescue the navigation of the Mississippi tions,§ and on the following day sub

out of the hands of Spain, and to add New Orleans to their own territory. They will be joined by the inhabitants of Louisiana. This will bring on a war betwen them and Spain, and that will produce the question with us, whether it will not be worth our while to become parties with them in the war, in order to reunite them with us, and thus correct our error. And were I to permit my forebodings to go one step further, I should predict that the inhabitants of the United States would force their rulers to take the affirmative of that question."

See the letter quoted in Dunn, Indiana, p. 168. See also Jay's report on Clark's reprisal, in Secret Journals of Congress, vol. iv., p. 301 et seq.; Roosevelt, Winning of the West, vol. iii., pp. 118; McMaster, vol. i., pp. 379-380; Secret Journals of Congress, vol. iv., pp. 311-313.

117

Journal of the [Virginia] House of Delegates, 1786, p. 46.

Phelps, Louisiana, p. 151. Gay, however, (Life of Madison, p. 85), says that a bargain "implies an exchange of one thing for another, and Madison had no convictions in favor of closing the Mississippi to exchange for a service rendered on behalf of a measure for which he wished to secure votes. Moreover, no bargain was necessary."

McMaster, pp. 381-382; Journal of the [Virginia] House of Delegates, 1786, p. 46.

||Journal of the House of Delegates, 1786, pp. 66-67. See also the Secret Journals of Congress, vol. iv., pp. 305-328; Rives, Life of Madison, vol. ii., p. 159 et seq.; Hunt, Life of Madison, p. 62.

§ See Jay, Correspondence and Public Papers,

DEBATE IN CONGRESS; THE BARBARY POWERS.