History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States, Vol. 1 / With Notices of Its Principle Framers

by George Ticknor Curtis

In this posture of affairs, Mr. Jay proposed to Congress a middle course. Believing, as Washington continued to believe,[334] that the navigation of the Mississippi was not at that time very important, and that it would not become so for twenty-five or thirty years, he suggested that the treaty should be limited to that period, and that one of its articles should stipulate, that the United States would forbear to use the navigation of the river below their territories to the ocean. It was supposed that such a forbearance, carrying no surrender of the right, would, at the expiration of the treaty, leave the whole subject in as favorable a position as that in which it now stood. Besides, the only alternative to obtaining such an article from Spain was to make war with her, and enforce the opening of the river. The experiment, at least, it was argued, would do no injury, and might produce much good.[335]

These arguments prevailed, so far as to cause a change in Mr. Jay's instructions, by a vote, which was deemed by him sufficient to confer authority to obtain such an article as he had suggested, but which was clearly unconstitutional. Seven States against five voted to rescind the instructions of August 25, 1785, by which the Secretary had been directed to insist on the right of navigation, and not to conclude or sign any treaty until he had communicated it to Congress.[336] Mr. Jay accordingly agreed with the Spanish Minister on an article which suspended the use of the Mississippi, without relinquishing the right asserted by the United States.[337]

While these proceedings were going on, and before the vote of seven States in Congress had been obtained in favor of the present suspension of this difficult controversy, an occurrence took place at Natchez, which aroused the jealousy of the whole West. A seizure was made there, by the Spanish authorities, of certain American property, which had been carried down the river for shipment or sale at New Orleans.[338] The owner, returning slowly in the autumn to his home, in the western part of North Carolina, by a tedious land journey through Kentucky, detailed everywhere the story of his wrongs and of the loss of his adventure. The news of this seizure, as it circulated up the valley from below, encountered the intelligence coming from the eastward, that Congress proposed to surrender the present use of the Mississippi. Alarm and indignation fired the whole population of the Western settlements. They believed themselves to be on the point of being sacrificed to the commercial policy of the Atlantic States; and, feeling that they stood in the relation of colonists to the rest of the Union, they held language not unlike that which the old colonies had held towards England, in the earlier days of the great controversy.

They surveyed the magnificent region which they were subduing from the dominion of Nature;—the inexhaustible resources of its soil already yielding an abundance, which needed only a free avenue to the ocean to make them rich and prosperous;—and they felt that the mighty river which swept by them, with a volume of waters capable of sustaining the navies of the world, had been destined by Providence as a natural channel through which the productions of their imperial valley should be made to swell the commerce of the globe. But the Spaniard was seated at the outlet of this noble stream, sullenly refusing to them all access to the ocean. To him they must pay tribute. To enrich him, they must till those luxuriant lands, which gave, by an almost spontaneous production, the largest return which American labor had yet reaped under the industry of its own free hands. Their proud spirits, unaccustomed to restraint, and expanding in a liberty unknown in the older sections of the country, could not brook this vassalage. Into the comprehensive schemes of statesmen, who sought to unite them with the East by a great chain of internal improvements, and thus to blend the interests of the West with the commercial prosperity of the whole country, they were too impatient, and too intent upon the engrossing object of their own immediate advantage, to be able to enter.

What, they exclaimed, could have induced the legislature of the United States, which had been applauded for their assertion and defence of the rights and privileges of the country, so soon to endeavor to subject a large part of their dominion to a slavery worse than that to which Great Britain had presumed to subject any part of hers? To give up to the Spaniards the greatest share of the fruits of their toils,—to surrender to them, on their own terms, the produce of that large, rich, and fertile country, and thus to enable them to command the benefits of every foreign market,—was an intolerable thought. What advantage, too, would it be to the Atlantic States, when Spain, from the amazing resources of the Mississippi, could undersell them in every part of the world? Did they think by this course of policy to prevent emigration from a barren country, loaded with taxes and impoverished by debts, to the most luxurious and fertile soil within the limits of the Union? The idea was vain and presumptuous. As well might the fishes of the sea be prevented from gathering on a bank that afforded them ample nourishment. The best and largest part of the United States was not thus to be left uncultivated; a home for savages and wild beasts. Providence had destined it for nobler purposes. It was to be the abode of a great, prosperous, and cultivated people,—of Americans in feeling, in rights, in spirit, incapable of becoming the bondmen of Spain, while the rest of their country remained free. Their own strength could achieve for them what the national power refused or was unable to obtain. Twenty thousand effective men, west of the Alleghanies, were ready to rush to the mouth of the Mississippi, and drive the Spaniards into the sea. Great Britain stood with open arms to receive them. If not countenanced and succored by the federal government, their allegiance would be thrown off, and the United States would find too late that they were as ignorant of the great valley of the Mississippi, as England was of the Atlantic States when the contest for independence began.[339]

Such was the feeling that prevailed in the Western country, as soon as it became known that a treaty was actually pending, by which the right to navigate the Mississippi might be suspended for a quarter of a century. That it should have been accompanied by acts of retaliation and outrage against the property of Spanish subjects, was naturally to have been expected. A certain General Clarke, pretending to authority from the State of Virginia, undertook to enlist men and establish a garrison at Port St. Vincennes, ostensibly for the protection of the district of Kentucky, then under the jurisdiction of Virginia. He made a seizure there of some Spanish property for the purpose of clothing and subsisting his men, and sent an officer to the Illinois, to advise the settlers there of the seizures of American property made at Natchez, and to recommend them to retaliate for any outrages the Spaniards might commit upon their property.[340]

The executive of Virginia disavowed these acts, as soon as officially informed of them; ordered the parties to be brought to punishment; and sent a formal disclaimer, through their delegates in Congress, to the Spanish Minister.[341] Guardoqui was not disturbed. He expected these occurrences, and maintained his ground, refusing to yield the right of navigating the river; and having assented to Mr. Jay's proposal of an article which suspended the use for a period of twenty-five years, he was quite ready to go on and conclude the treaty.

The people of the Western country, however, began to form committees of correspondence, in order to unite their counsels and interests.[342] The inhabitants of Kentucky sent a memorial to the General Assembly of Virginia, which induced them to instruct their delegates in Congress to oppose any attempt to surrender the right of the United States to the free use of the Mississippi, as a dishonorable departure from the comprehensive and benevolent feeling that constituted the vital principle of the Confederation, and as provoking the just resentment and reproaches of the Western people, whose essential rights and interests would be thereby sacrificed. They also instructed their delegates to urge such negotiations with Spain as would obtain her consent to regulations for the mutual and common use of the river.[343] The members from Virginia, with one exception, concurred in the policy of these instructions,[344] and at first addressed themselves to some conciliatory expedient for obviating the effect of the vote of seven States.

They first represented to Guardoqui that it would be extremely impolitic, both for the United States and Spain, to make any treaty which should have the effect of shutting up the Mississippi. They stated to him, that such a treaty could not be enforced; that it would be the means of peopling the Western country with increased rapidity, and would tend to a separation of that country from the rest of the Union; that Great Britain would be able to turn the force that would spring up there against Spanish America; and that the result would be the creation of a power in the valley of the Mississippi hostile both to Spain and the United States. These representations produced no impression. The Spanish Minister remained firm in the position which he had held from the first, that Spain never would concede the claim of the United States to navigate the river. He answered, that the result of what had been urged was, that Congress could make no treaty at all, and consequently that the trade of the United States must remain liable to be excluded from the ports of Spain.[345]