In answer, sir, to your private letter of the 10th of last month, I will acknowledge to you that I was under the belief that the Fort of St. Ferdinand was badly constructed, but not to the degree that you point out to me. You must, however, without augmenting the expenses which its evacuation would render useless, put it in a state to maintain yourself there until I receive new instructions from the Court. Should the Court think proper, as may very well happen, not to evacuate our posts on the Mississippi, I will despatch a courier to you in all haste, that you may change the situation of the fort, which ought to be done with all diligence, and so as that it be again sufficiently intrenched to prevent its being surprised or attacked before it is in a state of defence; for this purpose I will send immediate and secret orders to New Madrid and to St. Genevieve, that carpenters, masons, &c., should instantly be sent to you, and you may also count on a reinforcement of troops, which I will send to you by the galley Philapa, which I am causing to be rebuilt without noise; all these dispositions, I repeat to you, ought to be prompt and secret. I expect the answer of the Court in ——.
If His Majesty, on the contrary, should persist in it that the evacuation of the forts must take place, it will be done in the most simple mode, towards the commencement of January. In the mean time you must prepare the minds of the Chickasaws, and of the inhabitants of Kentucky and Tennessee, for one or the other of these events. You ought to make the latter understand that their natural interest leading them to separate at some day (un jour) from the Atlantic States, the occupation of our posts on the Mississippi by the troops of the latter could not but be disastrous to them, since they would cut off all communication between them and us, from whom alone they could, in that case, hope to receive assistance.
Extract of a letter from Daniel Clark to the Secretary of State, dated
New Orleans, March 8, 1803.
As a proof that expectations of assistance from ourselves against our own Government have been always relied on by the Spaniards, and that they have constantly looked to a division of our Western States from the General Government, I now forward you an order to receive from Washington Morton, Esq., of New York, a sealed packet which I left in his possession when I set out for Europe, and which I then mentioned I would show you at my return, not thinking, at that time, that circumstances would occur so soon as to render the disclosure a measure of immediate necessity. Among other papers of less importance in this packet, is a small part of the correspondence of the Baron de Carondelet with the officer commanding Fort St. Ferdinand, at the Chickasaw Bluffs, in which he suffers his plans and views to be clearly perceived, and which were solely aimed at our destruction; the remainder are, as well as I recollect, copies of talks and letters to and from the Chickasaw Indians; and, by the Baron de Carondelet’s letter to the officer, you will perceive that the fact I advised you respecting the annual pension of five hundred dollars to Uguluycabé cannot be disputed.
Should you think these documents of sufficient importance to require my presence in Washington to elucidate any part of them, I shall immediately sacrifice all private business of my own, and hasten there; and, in the mean time, will endeavor to collect, from undoubted sources, such other information relative to this subject as may be acceptable.
Although for four or five years past I had a perfect conviction that the intrigues of the Spaniards with the Western country were not for the time dangerous, on account of the incapacity of the Governors of this province, and their want of pecuniary means, yet, fearful of what might happen in future, should more enlightened and ambitious chiefs preside over it, I could not last year resist the temptation of hinting my suspicions of what had been formerly done in this way to the President at an interview with which he honored me, and I even went so far as to assert that a person supposed to be an agent from the State of Kentucky had been here in the end of 1795 and beginning of 1796, to negotiate on the part of that State, independent of the General Government, for the navigation of the Mississippi, before the result of the Treaty of St. Lorenzo was known, wishing that this hint might induce the President, to cause inquiry to be made into the circumstance, which he could easily find the means of investigating; but as he made no other inquiry of me respecting it than merely in what year the thing happened, it struck me that he must have had other information on the subject, and that he thought it needless to hear any thing more about it. By great accident I have lately learned something which induces me to suppose that any information he may have received respecting the measure alluded to has been incorrect, and given with the view of misleading him, and I request you will mention the subject anew to him, that you may know how far I am right in my suspicions. The information I possessed on the subject, could not, from the way in which it was obtained, be accompanied with what would be proof to convict the person concerned, or I should have openly accused him in the face of the world; but to me it amounts to a moral certainty of his guilt, and my conduct to him showed, on all occasions, how much I detested his object and his person. The same want of proof positive, sufficient to convict him, prevents me at present from naming him; but if inquiry is diligently made about the influential character from Kentucky, who at that period was so long in Natchez, and afterwards here, what his business was, and what was the idea entertained of him, enough will doubtless be discovered to put our Government on its guard against him and others of his stamp, and against all foreign machinations in that quarter in future.
Communicated to the House, April 25, 1808, by Daniel Clark.
Pursuant to the resolution of the House, calling on me for testimony relative to General Wilkinson’s receipt of money from the Spaniards, I now lay before it some original papers, corroborating the statement which I have already given:
No. 1. The first is the translation of a letter, in Spanish, from Thomas Power to D. Thomas Portell, dated at New Madrid, June 27, 1796, and containing the reasons why it was proper for Portell to deliver to Power, without an order in writing from General Wilkinson, a sum of money which had been placed for that purpose in Portell’s hands by the Spanish Government of New Orleans. The original letter is subjoined in the handwriting of Mr. Power, with which I am acquainted.