Yrujo acted the part of a true friend to both countries, in trying by such arguments to reconcile his Government to the loss of Louisiana; but there were limits to his good-will. He held that Spain could not afford to part with Florida. Yrujo went to the extreme of concession when he reconciled his Government to the loss of New Orleans, and nothing would reconcile him to the further loss of Mobile and Pensacola. Only on the theory that Spanish America was already ruined by the cession of Louisiana could Yrujo argue in favor of selling Florida.
On receiving Yrujo’s protests of September 4 and 27, Jefferson’s first feeling was of anger. He sent a strong body of troops to Natchez. “The Government of Spain,” he wrote to Dupont de Nemours,[160] “has protested against the right of France to transfer, and it is possible she may refuse possession, and that may bring on acts of force; but against such neighbors as France there and the United States here, what she can expect from so gross a compound of folly and false faith is not to be sought in the book of wisdom.” The folly of such conduct might be clear, but the charge of false faith against Spain for protesting against being deprived of her rights, seemed unjust, especially in the mouth of Jefferson, who meant to claim West Florida under a Franco-Spanish treaty which was acknowledged by all parties to have transferred Louisiana alone.
Only a week before this letter was written, the scheme of seizing West Florida had been publicly avowed by John Randolph on the floor of the House. Randolph’s speech of October 24, in language as offensive to Spain as was possible in the mouth of a responsible leader, asserted, as a fact admitting no doubt, that West Florida belonged to the United States.[161] “We have not only obtained the command of the mouth of the Mississippi, but of the Mobile, with its widely extended branches; and there is not now a single stream of note rising within the United States and falling into the Gulf of Mexico which is not entirely our own, the Appalachicola excepted.” In a second speech the next day, he reiterated the statement even more explicitly and in greater detail.[162] The Republican press echoed the claim. Jefferson and Madison encouraged the manœuvre until they could no longer recede, and pushed inquiries in every direction,[163] without obtaining evidence that West Florida was, or ever had been, a part of the government of Louisiana. They even applied to Laussat,[164] the mortified and angry French commissioner whom Bonaparte had sent to receive possession of New Orleans; and Laussat, to the annoyance of Talleyrand and Godoy, told the truth,—that the Iberville and the Rio Bravo were the boundaries fixed by his instructions, and therefore that West Florida was not a part of the purchase, but that Texas was.
Notwithstanding John Randolph’s official declaration, when the time came for the delivery of Louisiana the Spanish governor, Dec. 20, 1803, peacefully surrendered the province to Laussat; Laussat handed it in due form to Claiborne; and Claiborne received it without asking for West Florida, or even recording a claim for it. That this silence was accidental no one pretended. The acquiescence in Spanish authority was so implicit that Madison three months afterward, at a time when both Executive and Legislature were acting on the theory that West Florida was in Louisiana, found himself obliged to explain the cause of conduct and contradictions so extraordinary. He wrote[165] to Livingston at Paris that the President had for several reasons preferred to make no demand for West Florida,—
“First, because it was foreseen that the demand would not only be rejected by the Spanish authority at New Orleans, which had in an official publication limited the cession westwardly by the Mississippi and the Island of New Orleans, but it was apprehended, as has turned out, that the French commissioner might not be ready to support the demand, and might even be disposed to second the Spanish opposition to it; secondly, because in the latter of these cases a serious check would be given to our title, and in either of them a premature dilemma would result between an overt submission to the refusal and a resort to force; thirdly, because mere silence would be no bar to a plea at any time that a delivery of a part, particularly of the seat of the government, was a virtual delivery of the whole.”
The President’s silence at New Orleans was the more conspicuous because, at the moment when the province of Louisiana was thus delivered with such boundaries as Spain chose to define, Congress was legislating for Florida as an integral part of the Union. John Randolph’s official assertion that Mobile belonged to the United States under the treaty of cession, was made in the last part of October, 1803, soon after Congress met. About a month later, November 30, he introduced a Bill nominally for giving effect to the laws of the United States within the ceded territory. After much debate and disagreement this Bill at length passed both Houses, and Feb. 24, 1804, received the President’s signature. The fourth section directed that the territories ceded to the United States by the treaty, “and also all the navigable waters, rivers, creeks, bays, and inlets lying within the United States, which empty into the Gulf of Mexico east of the River Mississippi, shall be annexed to the Mississippi district, and shall, together with the same, constitute one district, to be called the ‘District of Mississippi.’” This provision was remarkable, because, as every one knew, no creeks, bays, or inlets lying within the United States emptied into the Gulf. The Act by its eleventh section authorized the President, “whenever he shall deem it expedient, to erect the shores, waters, and inlets of the Bay and River of Mobile, and of the other rivers, creeks, inlets, and bays emptying into the Gulf of Mexico east of the said River Mobile, and west thereof to the Pascagoula, inclusive, into a separate district, and to establish such place within the same as he shall deem expedient, to be the port of entry and delivery for such district.” This section gave the President power of peace and war, for had he exercised it, the exercise must have been an act of war; and John Randolph’s previous declarations left no doubt as to the meaning in which he, who reported the Bill, meant it to be understood.
By this time Yrujo was boiling with such wrath as a Spaniard alone could imagine or express. His good-will vanished from the moment he saw that to save Florida he must do battle with President, Secretary of State, Congress, and people. One insult had followed another with startling rapidity. The President’s pêle-mêle, of which the story will be told hereafter, wounded him personally. The cold reception of his protest against the Louisiana cession; the captiousness of Madison’s replies to his remonstrances; the armed seizure of New Orleans with which he was threatened; the sudden disregard of his friendship and great services; the open eagerness of the Government to incite Bonaparte to plunder and dismember Spain; the rejection of the claims convention in March, and its sudden approval by the Senate in January, as though to obtain all the money Spain was willing to give before taking by force territory vital to her empire; and above all, the passage of this law annexing the Floridas without excuse or explanation,—all these causes combined to change Yrujo’s ancient friendship into hatred.
In the midst of the complicated legislation about Louisiana, while the Mobile Act was under discussion, Jefferson sent to the Senate, Dec. 21, 1803, the correspondence about the Spanish claims, and among the rest an adverse opinion which Yrujo had obtained from five prominent American lawyers on an abstract case in regard to the Franco-Spanish spoliations. Madison was particularly annoyed by this legal opinion, and thought it should bring these five gentlemen within the penalties of the law passed Jan. 30, 1799, commonly known as Logan’s Act. Senator Bradley of Vermont moved for a committee, which reported in favor of directing the President to institute proceedings against Jared Ingersoll, William Rawle, J. B. McKean, Peter S. Duponceau, and Edward Livingston,—five lawyers whose legal, social, and political character made a prosecution as unwise in politics as it was doubtful in law. The Senate having at the moment too many prosecutions already on its hands, let Senator Bradley’s Report lie unnoticed, and soon afterward confirmed the claims convention by a vote of eighteen to eight,[166]—barely two thirds, the least factious of the Federalists joining the majority, and by this unpartisan act causing in the end more embarrassment to the party in power than the most ingenious factiousness could have plotted. Madison, in the midst of his measures for pressing the acquisition of Florida, sent the ratified claims convention to Madrid. The period fixed for ratification had long since expired, and the attitude of the United States toward Florida had altered the feelings and interests of Spain; but either Madison was unaware of the change, or he wished to embarrass Godoy. He added in his letter to Pinckney,[167] “It was judged best, on the whole, no longer to deprive that class of our citizens who are comprehended in the convention of the benefit of its provisions;” but although consenting to take what Spain was willing to give, he spoke with contempt of the Spanish argument against the Franco-Spanish claims, and insisted that these should be pressed without relaxation. He even complained that Yrujo, in taking the opinion of American lawyers, had failed in respect to the United States government and his own.[168]
Madison seemed unconscious that Yrujo could have any just cause of complaint, or that his Government could resent the tone and temper of President and Congress. The passage of the Bill which made Mobile a collection district and a part of the Mississippi territory gave Yrujo the chance to retaliate. About a fortnight after the President had signed this law, Yrujo one morning entered the State Department with the printed Act in his hand, and overwhelmed Madison with reproaches, which he immediately afterward supported by a note[169] so severe as to require punishment, and so able as to admit of none. He had at first, he said, regarded as “an atrocious libel” on the United States government the assertion that it had made a law which usurped the rights of Spanish sovereignty; yet such was the case. He gave a short and clear abstract of the evidence which refuted the claim to West Florida, and closed by requesting that the law be annulled.
Madison could neither maintain the law nor annul it; he could not even explain it away. Gallatin told the President six months afterward,[170] that “the public mind is altogether unprepared for a declaration that the terms and object of the Mobile Act had been misunderstood by Spain; for every writer, without a single exception, who has written on the subject seems to have understood the Act as Spain did; it has been justified by our friends on that ground.” Yet Jefferson was not prepared to maintain and defend the Act in its full assertions of authority, after accepting Louisiana without asking for West Florida. Madison wrote a letter of complaint to Livingston at Paris,[171] explaining, as already quoted, the reasons which had induced the President to make no demand for West Florida before ascertaining the views and claiming the interposition of the French government.