Volume IV Part 11 (1/2)
19, 1794.]
Gayoso and Carondelet.
It was not the first time that Gayoso's superior knowledge of the Indians and of their American foes had prevented his carrying out the orders of his superior officer. On one occasion Carondelet had directed Gayoso to convene the Southern Indians, and to persuade them to send deputies to the United States authorities with proposals to settle the boundaries in accordance with the wishes of Spain, and to threaten open war as an alternative. Gayoso refused to adopt this policy, and persuaded Carondelet to alter it, showing that it was necessary above all things to temporize, that such a course as the one proposed would provoke immediate hostilities, and that the worst possible line for the Spaniards to follow would be one of open war with the entire power of the United States. [Footnote: _Do.,_ De Leraos to Carondelet, Dec. 6, 1793.]
Pressure of the Westerners on the Spanish Domain.
Of course the action of the American Government in procuring the recall of Genet and putting a stop to Clark's operations lightened for a moment the pressure of the backwoodsmen upon the Spanish dominions; but it was only for a moment. The Westerners were bent on seizing the Spanish territory; and they were certain to persist in their efforts until they were either successful or were definitely beaten in actual war. The acts of aggression were sure to recur; it was only the form that varied. When the chance of armed conquest under the banner of the French Republic vanished, there was an immediate revival of plans for getting possession of some part of the Spanish domain through the instrumentality of the great land companies.
The Land Companies.
These land companies possessed on paper a weight which they did not have in actual history. They occasionally enriched, and more often impoverished, the individual speculators; but in the actual peopling of the waste lands they counted for little in comparison with the steady stream of pioneer farmers who poured in, each to hold and till the ground he in fact occupied. However, the contemporary doc.u.ments of the day were full of details concerning the companies; and they did possess considerable importance at certain times in the settlement of the West, both because they in places stimulated that settlement, and because in other places they r.e.t.a.r.ded it, inasmuch as they kept out actual settlers, who could not pre-empt land which had been purchased at low rates from some legislative body by the speculators. The companies were sometimes formed by men who wished themselves to lead emigrants into the longed-for region, but more often they were purely speculative in character, and those who founded them wished only to dispose of them at an advantage to third parties. Their history is inextricably mixed with the history of the intrigues with and against the Spaniards and British in the West. The men who organized them wished to make money. Their object was to obtain t.i.tle to or possession of the lands, and it was quite a secondary matter with them whether their t.i.tle came from the United States, England, or Spain. They were willing to form colonies on Spanish or British territory, and they were even willing to work for the dismemberment of the Western Territory from the Union, if by so doing they could increase the value of the lands which they sought to acquire.
American adventurers had been in correspondence with Lord Dorchester, the Governor General of Canada, looking to the possibility of securing British aid for those desirous of embarking in great land speculations in the West. These men proposed to try to get the Westerners to join with the British in an attack upon Louisiana, or even to conduct this attack themselves in the British interests, believing that with New Orleans in British hands the entire province would be thrown open to trade with the outside world and to settlement; with the result that the lands would increase enormously in value, and the speculators and organizers of the companies, and of the movements generally, grow rich in consequence. [Footnote: Canadian Archives, Dorchester to Sydney, June 7, 1789; Grenville to Dorchester, May 6, 1790; Dorchester to Beckwith, June 17, 1790; Dorchester to Grenville, Sept. 25, 1790. See Brown's ”Political Beginnings,” 187.] They a.s.sured the British agents that the Western country would speedily separate from the eastern States, and would have to put itself under the protection of some foreign state.
Dorchester considered these plans of sufficient weight to warrant inquiry by his agents, but nothing ever came of them.
The Yazoo Land Companies.
Much the most famous, or, it would be more correct to say, infamous, of these companies were those organized in connection with the Yazoo lands. [Footnote: The best and most thorough account of these is to be found in Charles H. Haskin's ”The Yazoo Land Companies.”] The country in what is now northern Mississippi and Alabama possessed, from its great fertility, peculiar fascinations in the eyes of the adventurous land speculators. It was unoccupied by settlers, because as a matter of fact it was held in adverse possession by the Indians, under Spanish protection. It was claimed by the Georgians, and its cession was sought by the United States Government, so that there was much uncertainty as to the t.i.tle, which could in consequence be cheaply secured. Wilkinson, Brown, Innes, and other Kentuckians, had applied to the Spaniards to be allowed to take these lauds and hold them, in their own interests, but on behalf of Spain, and against the United States. The application had not been granted, and the next effort was of a directly opposite character, the adventurers this time proposing, as they could not hold the territory as armed subjects of Spain, to wrest it from Spain by armed entry after getting t.i.tle from Georgia. In other words, they were going to carry on war as a syndicate, the military operations for the occupation of the ceded territory being part of the business for which the company was organized. Their relations with the Union were doubtless to be determined by the course of events.
The South Carolina Yazoo Company.
This company was the South Carolina Yazoo Company. In 1789 several companies were formed to obtain from the Georgia Legislature grants of the western territory which Georgia a.s.serted to be hers. One, the Virginia Company, had among its incorporators Patrick Henry, and received a grant of nearly 20,000 square miles, but accomplished nothing. Another, the Tennessee Company, received a grant of what is now most of northern Alabama, and organized a body of men under the leaders.h.i.+p of an adventurer named Zachariah c.o.x, who drifted down the Tennessee in flat-boats to take possession, and repeated the attempt more than once. They were, however, stopped, partly by Blount, and partly by the Indians. The South Carolina Yazoo Company made the most serious effort to get possession of the coveted territory. Its grant included about 15,000 square miles in what is now middle Mississippi and Alabama; the nominal price being 67,000 dollars. One of the prime movers in this company was a man named Walsh, who called himself Was.h.i.+ngton, a person of unsavory character, who, a couple of years later, was hung at Charleston for pa.s.sing forged paper money in South Carolina. All these companies had hoped to pay the very small prices they were asked for the lands in the depreciated currency of Georgia; but they never did make the full payments or comply with the conditions of the grants, which therefore lapsed.
Its Abortive Efforts in Kentucky.
Before this occurred the South Carolina Yazoo Company had striven to take possession of its purchase by organizing a military expedition to go down the Mississippi from Kentucky. For commander of this expedition choice was made of a Revolutionary soldier named James O'Fallon, who went to Kentucky, where he married Clark's sister. He entered into relations with Wilkinson, who drew him into the tangled web of Spanish intrigue. He raised soldiers, and drew up a formal contract, entered into between the South Carolina Yazoo Company and their troops of the Yazoo Battalion--over five hundred men in all, cavalry, artillery and infantry. Each private was to receive two hundred and fifty acres of ”stipendiary” lands and the officers in proportion, up to the Lieutenant Colonel, who was to receive six thousand. Commissions were formally issued, and the positions of all the regular officers were filled, so that the invasion was on the point of taking place. [Footnote: American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I., James O'Fallon to the President of the United States, Lexington, Sept. 25, 1790, etc., etc.] However, the Spanish authorities called the matter to the attention of the United States, and the Federal Government put a prompt stop to the movement. [Footnote: Draper MSS., Spanish Doc.u.ments, Carondelet to Alcudia, Jan. 1, 1794, and May 31, 1794.] O'Fallon was himself threatened with arrest by the Federal officers, and had to abandon his project. [Footnote: Draper MSS., Clark and O'Fallon Papers, anonymous letter to James O'Fallon, Lexington, March 30, 1791, etc., etc.] He afterwards re-established his relations with the Government, and became one of Wayne's correspondents; [Footnote: Draper MSS., Wayne to O'Fallon, Sept. 16, 1793.] but he entered heartily into Clark's plans for the expedition under Genet, and, like all the other partic.i.p.ators in that wretched affair, became involved in broils with Clark and every one else. [Footnote: Draper MSS., De Lemos to Carondelet, Dec. 23, 1793.]
Revival of the Companies.
In 1795 the land companies, encouraged by the certainty that the United States would speedily take possession of the Yazoo territory, again sprang into life. In that year four, the Georgia, the Georgia-Mississippi, the Tennessee, and the Upper Mississippi, companies obtained grants from the Georgia Legislature to a territory of over thirty millions of acres, for which they paid but five hundred thousand dollars, or less than two cents an acre. Among the grantees were many men of note, congressmen, senators, even judges. The grants were secured by the grossest corruption, every member of the Legislature who voted for them, with one exception, being a stockholder in some one of the companies, while the procuring of the cessions was undertaken by James Gunn, one of the two Georgia Senators. The outcry against the transaction was so universal throughout the State that at the next session of the Legislature, in 1796, the acts were repealed and the grants rescinded. This caused great confusion, as most of the original grantees had hastily sold out to third parties; the purchases being largely made in South Carolina and Ma.s.sachusetts. Efforts were made by the original South Carolina Yazoo Company to sue Georgia in the Federal Courts, which led to the adoption of the Const.i.tutional provision forbidding such action.
Their Failure.
When in 1802, Georgia ceded the territory in question, including all of what is now middle and northern Alabama and Mississippi, to the United States for the sum of twelve hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the National Government became heir to these Yazoo difficulties. It was not until 1814 that the matter was settled by a compromise, after interminable litigation and legislation. [Footnote: American State Papers, Public Lands, I., pp. 99, 101, 111, 165, 172, 178; Haskin's ”Yazoo Land Companies.” In Congress, Randolph, on behalf of the ultra states'-rights people led the opposition to the claimants, whose special champions were Madison and the northern democrats. Chief Justice Marshall in the case of Fletcher _vs._ Peck, decided that the rescinding act impaired the obligation of contracts, and was therefore in violation of the Const.i.tution of the United States; a decision further amplified in the Dartmouth case, which has determined the national policy in regard to public contracts. This decision was followed by the pa.s.sage of the Compromise Act by Congress in 1814, which distributed a large sum of money obtained from the land sales in the territory, in specified proportions among the various claimants.] The land companies were more important to the speculators than to the actual settlers of the Mississippi; nevertheless, they did stimulate settlement, in certain regions, and therefore increased by just so much the western pressure upon Spain.
Georgian Filibusterers.
Some of the aggressive movements undertaken by the Americans were of so loose a nature that it is hard to know what to call them. This was true of Elijah dark's company of Georgia freebooters in 1794. Accompanied by large bodies of armed men, he on several occasions penetrated into the territory southwest of the Oconee. He a.s.serted at one time that he was acting for Georgia and in defence of her rights to the lands which the Georgians claimed under the various State treaties with the Indians, but which by the treaty of New York had been confirmed to the Creeks by the United States. On another occasion he ent.i.tled his motley force the Sans Culottes, and masqueraded as a major general of the French army, though the French Consul denied having any connection with him. He established for the time being a little independent government, with blockhouses and small wooden towns, in the middle of the unceded hunting grounds, and caused great alarm to the Spaniards. The frontiersmen sympathized with him, and when he was arrested in Wilkes County the Grand Jury of the county ordered his discharge, and solemnly declared that the treaty of New York was inoperative and the proclamation of the Governor of Georgia against Clark, illegal. This was too much for the patience of the Governor. He ordered out the State troops to co-operate with the small Federal force, and Clark and his men were ignominiously expelled from their new government and forced to return to Georgia. [Footnote: Steven's ”Georgia,” II., 401.]
Benefit of Was.h.i.+ngton's Administration to the West.
In such a welter of intrigue, of land speculation, and of more or less piratical aggression, there was immanent danger that the West would relapse into anarchy unless a firm government were established, and unless the boundaries with England and Spain were definitely established. As Was.h.i.+ngton's administration grew steadily in strength and in the confidence of the people the first condition was met. The necessary fixity of boundary was finally obtained by the treaties negotiated through John Jay with England, and through Thomas Pinckney with Spain.
Jay's Treaty.
Jay's treaty aroused a perfect torrent of wrath throughout the country, and nowhere more than in the West. A few of the coolest and most intelligent men approved it, and rugged old Humphrey Marshall, the Federalist Senator from Kentucky, voted for its ratification; but the general feeling against it was intense. Even Blount, who by this time was pretty well disgusted with the way he had been treated by the Central Government, denounced it, and expressed his belief that Was.h.i.+ngton would have hard work to explain his conduct in procuring its ratification. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Blount to Smith, Aug. 24, 1795.]
Folly of the Westerners.
Yet the Westerners were the very people who had no cause whatever to complain of the treaty. It was not an entirely satisfactory treaty; perhaps a man like Hamilton might have procured rather better terms; but, taken as a whole, it worked an immense improvement upon the condition of things already existing. Was.h.i.+ngton's position was undoubtedly right. He would have preferred a better treaty, but he regarded the Jay treaty as very much better than none at all. Moreover, the last people who had a right to complain of it were those who were most vociferous in their opposition. The anti-Federalist party was on the whole the party of weakness and disorder, the party that was clamorous and unruly, but ineffective in carrying out a sustained policy, whether of offense or of defence, in foreign affairs. The people who afterwards became known as Jeffersonian Republicans numbered in their ranks the extremists who had been active as the founders of Democratic societies in the French interest, and they were ferocious in their wordy hostility to Great Britain; but they were not dangerous foes to any foreign government which did not fear words. Had they possessed the foresight and intelligence to strengthen the Federal Government the Jay treaty would not have been necessary.
Futility of the State's-Rights Men in Foreign Affairs.