"It is probable," said he, "that the inhabitants of Louisiana on the left bank of the Mississippi and inland eastwardly to a considerable extent will very soon be received under our jurisdiction, and that this end of West Florida will thus be peaceably gotten possession of. For Mobile and the eastern end, we must await favorable conjunctures."
Never was prophecy more accurately fulfilled. Spanish power in the New World disintegrated rapidly after Napoleon dispossessed King Ferdinand. Americans settled with impunity between the Pearl and the Mississippi south of the line of thirty-one, which had been agreed upon in 1795 as the boundary between the United States and the Spanish Floridas. Soon the invaders were in dispute with the Spanish commandant at Baton Rouge over smuggling and the runaway slaves. Complaints reached Congress that the commandant at Mobile was collecting toll and harassing American vessels carrying goods to and from the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers north of the boundary. The old controversy over the navigation of the Mississippi had come again on Mobile Bay. In 1810, the American settlers west of the Pearl set up an independent government at Buhler's Plains with John Mills and Dr. Steele as officials. The Spanish commandant and governor were soon after driven out, a petition sent to Congress, and by proclamation of October 27, 1810, President Madison extended the authority of the United States over the indefinite region known as West Florida. The action was based on the Louisiana claim, which had not been relinquished since the purchase, and on the danger to the adjacent parts of the United States in the present crisis.
A secret resolution of Congress at the same time authorised the President to take possession of the remaining Floridas, if England showed a disposition to seize the land as an aggressive act. Since Spain had come under the control of France, this action was not an improbability. But aside from temporarily occupying Pensacola, the British made no attempt to take the Floridas during the War of 1812, although rumours of that kind were frequent. Simultaneous with the end of the war came the restoration of Spanish authority in the Old World and its threatened restoration in the New. In this chaotic condition of Spanish affairs, President Monroe ordered a band of freebooters to be driven out of Amelia Island, in East Florida, at the mouth of the St. Mary's River, near the Georgia boundary. The troops employed in this work remained on the island, notwithstanding Spanish protest. General Jackson, being ordered to subdue the Seminole Indians in Florida, who were harbouring fugitive slaves, invaded the Spanish territory, cleaned it up in the true Jacksonian manner, hanged two Englishmen, and "omitted nothing that characterises a haughty conqueror," as Onis, the Spanish Minister at Washington, protested. The embarrassed Administration, through its spokesman, John Quincy Adams, explained that Jackson intended only to restore order where Spanish authority had failed. At the same time Adams reopened negotiations by which Spain eventually ceded the troublesome Floridas to the United States for a money consideration.
The additions of territory to the national domain, strong Union-making elements as they are, have had a curious connection one with another. The navigation of the Mississippi, left unsettled with Spain from the Peace of 1783, led directly to the attempt to purchase the "island" of New Orleans, and consequently to the Louisiana acquisition. The uncertain boundary of Louisiana caused the annexation of West Florida, and that success made a final settlement of East Florida easier. The readiness with which the Americans could invade her territory, unchecked by other powers, made Spain, in her helplessness, consent to this treaty of 1819, by which the entire Gulf territory from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mexican province of Texas became American soil. The ethics of the entire transaction may be questionable. It smacks of invasion, stretching of claims, a show of force, and soothing balm of gold. What territorial conquest in the history of the world has been entirely free from criticism? However, the increase of national prestige and the stimulation of national pride which resulted are the factors to be considered in the story of the United States.
The Florida Purchase was a second instance of bringing national prestige to the Union by the party originally afraid of giving it too much power. The action brought in its train as many embarrassing questions and as many demands for the fostering care of government as did the Louisiana Purchase. Yet precedent made the questions easier to answer in favour of centralisation and made the steps easier to take by the scrupulous Jeffersonians.
It is worthy of notice that the people of the Floridas were promised, in the annexation treaty of 1819, incorporation into the Union "as soon as may be consistent with the principles of the Federal Constitution," no time being specified. The Louisianians had found, as stated heretofore, that the phrase "as soon as possible" in the treaty of 1803 was capable of a very loose interpretation at the hands of their new sovereign. They had to wait nine years before the first portion was admitted to statehood. Perhaps to avoid a deluge of petitions and protests, such as came from the inhabitants of the Louisiana Purchase when given a territorial standing, John Quincy Adams may have invented the new phrase "as soon as consistent." Under this provision, portions of the Florida Purchase were added to adjacent States and the residue compelled to wait twenty-five years before statehood was given to it. The rights of man and citizenship in the State had again been temporarily lost sight of by the party of which these were basic principles.
Having been converted into territories, the additions to domain came directly under the care of the National Government. Bound by national honour as well as by a regard for the sacredness of statehood to bestow upon this public land such protection and such improvements as might encourage migration to it, and thus hasten the time of full rights for its people, the Republicans might yet have pursued a parsimonious policy, if increasing migration to the United States had not impelled them to action to provide homes for the multitude. No such influx from the Old World had been seen as followed the close of the Napoleonic wars. It was small compared with the full tide of migration, which set in about 1845. But it seemed marvellous at the time. Fifteen hundred were counted in some weeks, mostly Irish and English, with a sprinkling of French and German. No record was kept of the number of arrivals until 1820, and statistics are simply approximate.
Viewing the Old World as again under the curse of monarchy, and the new-comers as refugees from oppression, the Republican party found itself ready to arrange for the easiest possible disposal of the public lands. "Let them come," said one writer. "Good and wholesome laws with the avenues to wealth and independence opened to honest industry will tame even Mr. Peel's 'Untamably ferocious' Irishmen! as well as suppress English mobs crying for employment and bread, without the use of the bayonet." Descriptions of the economic unrest in Europe following the close of the Napoleonic wars were fully circulated in American newspapers. The number of bankruptcies, the idle custom-house clerks, the labouring poor applying at the different sessions for certificates to migrate to America, the British vessels anticipating desertions by sailing for the New World with double crews, the steps taken by the British Government to prevent artisans from leaving, the ruse of coming through Canada to escape question and detention—all this was delightful reading for the American public.
Many of the emigrants passed the Allegheny barrier, notwithstanding the hardships of travel, to make homes in the new States and Territories of the West and South-west. Birkbeck and his colony of Englishmen came to southern Illinois. The Rappites planted the community of New Harmony on the Wabash in Indiana. Congress granted land to a colony of refugees in Alabama. Numerous towns were laid out on the upper Mississippi and the Missouri in the Louisiana Purchase. Protecting garrisons were established far up the Missouri River and at the Falls of St. Anthony, near the headwaters of the Mississippi, "two thousand miles from the sea." Buffalo and Erie, names not to be found upon the map before the war, were now busy ports with a thriving lake commerce. Semi-weekly posts were carried to Detroit, Green Bay, and far Michilimackinac.
These evidences of the vast extent of the national domain excited both pride and fear. Unless the distant parts could be more closely cemented, the days of Western unrest and foreign intrigue might come again. The demand for government aid to public improvements sprang up anew. Colonel Johnson, attempting to take a small fleet of steamboats up the Missouri to the Yellowstone in 1819 to open a new route for trade with China by way of the Columbia River, was hindered by sand-bars and snags, or "planters." Various improvements in rivers and the construction of canals undertaken by different States were reported in Congress. Government aid in the shape of subscriptions to stock was contemplated in some cases. Gallatin's report of 1809, recommending the expenditure of twenty million dollars on public works, was reprinted. The Cumberland Road was given over three hundred thousand dollars in a single appropriation. Two and a half million dollars were spent annually on the navy. Various arguments were used to harmonise these expenditures with the economic principles of the Republicans. Twenty ships-of-the-line could be built, it was said, for much less than the cost of drafting the militia and the losses in a single State during one year of the recent war. Ten thousand seamen afloat would be of more service than fifty thousand militia in preventing "a foreign enemy ever again polluting the shores of the United States." The only danger to this policy would be in putting such a power into the hands of the Chief Executive; but this could be averted, it was declared, by the ballot. National feeling ran high, as it usually does following a war, over both national defence and home development.