p15  Chapter II
Protagonists and Field of Action

Whale or shark

Henry Adams's Gothic trope in which he likens the Spanish empire at the end of the eighteenth century to a whale, huge, helpless, and charming to its captors,​1 was never struck off as an image of the Spain of our period. The figure is misleading if we apply it — as Adams never intended it to be applied — to the Spain of 1785 or 1790 as seen through Yankee eyes. To the United States Spain may have taken on the aspect of that charming monster as the century drew towards its close, but before the wars of the French Revolution helpless whale it never was. Down to the battle of Trafalgar (1805) Spain was one of the chief maritime powers of Europe, while the United States, though it possessed a magnificent merchant marine, had no navy at all until the very end of the century. Americans were painfully conscious of this fact, for Spain's sea power would render futile the conquest of New Orleans by land forces descending the Mississippi, and would in case of a rupture wipe out the growing trade of the United States in the Mediterranean. Nothing but the neutralization of Spain's sea power could give the United States the upper hand. Consequently the chief anxiety of Spanish ministers in our period was lest the United States should secure England's alliance and England's navy, and the hope of the Americans lay in the expectation of a European crisis that would array England, or perhaps France, against Spain. The situation was complicated by France's alliance with both Spain and the United States. In 1783 the realization  p16 of either the Americans' hope or the Spaniards' fear seemed remote, and to American eyes the Spanish whale looked very like a shark.2

A less invidious and perhaps more faithful figure would be the description of Spain as the sick man of America, a patient whose condition permitted one to hope for the worst and yet gave discouragingly persistent indications of recovery. Austrian jealousy of Russian designs on Turkish Constantinople and the Straits is matched by the agitation of Washington's government whenever it was rumored that England or France might acquire New Orleans. In its dealings with Spain throughout these dozen years the United States observed a perfect bedside manner. Its attitude was one of watchful waiting. So much is said of the dilatory Spaniard that one is inclined to think that the fault is Spain's if delay occurs in a negotiation in which Spain is concerned. Those who read the following pages will see that the long delay in the settlement of the controversy was caused by the United States even more than by Spain. Delay was the essence of the American policy in this dispute. Afraid to risk an open break, Jefferson, Jay and Washington believed that time would give the United States an overwhelming superiority in numbers in the Mississippi Valley, and that time would also bring a European diplomatic crisis favorable to their designs.​3 Far from seeking, they avoided a settlement of the controversy, hoping that changed circumstances would force Spain to make a complete surrender.

This time factor was one of the most important of the conditions of the conflict. A kind of organic law seemed to decree the continued growth of the United States and the continued decline of Spain. Spanish  p17 ministers as well as those of the United States were aware of the former tendency and made a valiant effort to turn it to their own advantage. They accepted, after a brief resistance, the inevitable development of the next natural field of American expansion, the Mississippi Valley, entering into competition with the United States for colonists and opening a political intrigue with the Western Americans. The success of either of these two measures would have neutralized or reversed the operation of the time factor so far as the frontier phase of the struggle was concerned.

Forms of government

In regard to political organization, neither country had an appreciable advantage over the other, for it happened that each government was adapted to the execution of its designs. The Spanish government regarded Louisiana and the Floridas as a barrier for the protection of its other possessions in America. To render them responsive to imperial needs, their control must be highly centralized. This requirement was met by the existing Spanish system. Every village and town in Louisiana and West Florida was under the command of an army officer responsible to the governor of Louisiana, who was fortified with the double authority of the civil and military command of the provinces. He in turn was responsible to the governor of Havana, who was captain-general of Louisiana and the Floridas and directly under the control of the king's ministers.4

The administration of colonial affairs in Spain was twice altered during the period under consideration. At the outset, there was a colonial secretary, José de Gálvez, ennobled as the Marqués de Sonora, who had general control of all colonial affairs. On his death in  p18 1787 the business of the colonial office was divided between two ministers.​5 In 1790, the colonial office was suppressed and colonial affairs were distributed among the appropriate ministries.​6 Another important change was effected by an order which directed that the governors of Louisiana and West Florida and of East Florida, who were required in general to communicate with the court through the captain-general at Havana, should correspond directly with the secretary of state about all matters relating to Indian affairs and the American frontier.​7 In our period this was as far as the court would go towards increasing the powers of its frontier governors, though in August, 1795, the king authorized the secretary of state to erect Louisiana into a captaincy-general in order to facilitate resistance to the sinister designs of the United States.​8 Even the limited concessions of direct correspondence produced important results, for it gave unity and coherence to Spain's policy towards the United States. It was Floridablanca who guided Gardoqui's negotiation in New York with Jay, and it was also Floridablanca who shaped Spain's immigration policy in Louisiana and the Floridas and who directed the intrigue with the frontier Americans. Godoy, Floridablanca's successor after Aranda's brief ministry, continued to coördinate Spain's frontier and diplomatic policies.

Moreover, under this system the affairs of Louisiana and the Floridas received a more expeditious handling than is generally supposed. Even Spanish historians have exaggerated the dilatoriness of their government in the eighteenth century. On the whole, the Spanish governmental system worked with as much despatch as could be expected in an age when transportation facilities and business methods were in such a rudimentary  p19 stage of development. It was well adapted to the requirements of the situation in so far as coördination and action on a large scale could be effective. In the suppression of disorder, in the management of the Indian trade, in intrigue, in the extension of the military frontier, Spain excelled. The very virtues of her militaristic system, however, became vices in the competition for colonists. The legendary despotism of Spain was reproduced in the petty tyranny of its post commanders, a tyranny brought out in striking relief by the proximity of turbulently free American settlements. If we add the restrictions placed on land grants and on the commerce of the Floridas and Louisiana, which will be discussed in their place, we can begin to understand the utter failure of the Spanish immigration policy. This failure was fatal to the Spanish cause.

The government of the United States was well adapted to its needs in the conflict with Spain. Its very weakness was a source of strength.​9 In the first place, it was the turbulence, the lawlessness, the violence of the American frontiersmen and land speculators, and not the feeble threats of the federal government, that alarmed Spain. Had the dominant majority in the United States government had its way, there would have been no demonstrations of frontier turbulence, no Yazoo companies, no French legion on the Ohio. In the second place, the majority in Congress would probably have submitted to the closing of the Mississippi but for the fear that such action would bring about the secession of the West. In other words, the contest with Spain would have been ended by surrender in 1786 but for the realization of the majority that the United States government could not enforce its will upon the  p20 Mississippi Valley settlements.​10 The United States escaped a premature surrender and gained an ultimate victory in this conflict because the people were stronger than their government.

The relative efficiency of the Spanish and American systems of colonial government can be determined only by observing them in operation. We may anticipate in order to call attention to the interesting contrast between the simultaneous administrations of Carondelet in Louisiana (1792‑97) and William Blount in the Southwest Territory (1790‑96). Without the slightest knowledge of conditions in the province, Carondelet was sent to Louisiana apparently because of his influential connections and because his rank and service entitled him to promotion at the time when the governor­ship of Louisiana fell vacant. Appointed for five years, his further promotion depended partly upon his rendering some signal service to the crown, and one gets the impression from his whole administration that the interests of the colony were sacrificed, unconsciously perhaps, to his desire to distinguish himself. Neither king nor colony was well served by such a system, although, as we have seen, it possessed many excellent qualities. Blunt, on the other hand, was no doubt chosen by Washington because of his long intimacy with the people and the affairs of the Southwest Territory. Without hope of promotion in the service of the federal government, but bound to it by his oath of office and his salary, he saw the situation in the Southwest from both the national and local points of view, rendered an important service by interpreting each to the other, and was a tower of federal strength on the Spanish frontier.

In point of population as well as of sea power Spain  p21 had an advantage over the United States, for the kingdom alone, without including its dependencies, had about ten million inhabitants in 1790 as against some three millions in the United States. This advantage, however, was offset by the diffusion of Spain's energy throughout the four quarters of the globe, in Europe, Africa, North and South America and the Philippines, and by its remoteness from the scene of conflict.

The Spanish frontier

Of the two competing frontiers, the American was far stronger than the Spanish. Spain's frontier settlements extended in a thin, L‑shaped line about the southern and western extremities of the United States. St. Augustine, Pensacola, Mobile and New Orleans carried the line westward from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. North of New Orleans the only Spanish posts of any consideration in 1783 were Natchez, Arkansas and St. Louis, and Natchez was in the territory claimed by the United States. Altogether a dozen ruinous forts and palisaded blockhouses, garrisoned by an incomplete and ill-equipped regiment of the worst troops in the Spanish army, were the sole support of Spanish authority in all Louisiana and West Florida. In East Florida the only post of any consequence was the capital itself, St. Augustine.

There was little to be expected from the support of the handful of colonists in this vast territory. In 1786 the total population of East Florida was less than 1500. Some of these were negro slaves, and most of the rest were British, Greek and Maiorcan.​11 West Florida's population was probably somewhat larger. In Louisiana there were some 20,000 inhabitants, nearly half of whom were slaves.​12 Of the white inhabitants of these two  p22 provinces the majority were French, although, after the conquest of West Florida, there were several hundred Anglo-American Protestants permitted to remain on sufferance. Besides the colonial officials and the army, there was hardly a Spaniard to be found in the whole length and breadth of Louisiana and the Floridas. If Spain might perhaps count on the French colonists to defend New Orleans against an attack by the United States, as they had aided in the conquest of British West Florida, there was no certainty as to the course the Anglo-Americans at Natchez might follow in such an event. On the other hand, when the French Revolution arrayed Spain against France in 1793 and the Natchez planters were ready to support the colonial government against the Jacobins, the French of lower Louisiana threatened rebellion and became a serious liability.

Economically and financially these provinces were unprofitable to Spain. Their principal products were furs and hides, indigo, rice, lumber and tobacco. None of these commodities had a market in Spain, except for a time tobacco, nor could Spanish merchants supply the wants of the colonists with Spanish goods. The wine of Bordeaux, the guns of St. Etienne, the silks of Lyon for the masters, British linseys and osnaburgs for the slaves: such were the goods required by the colonial market, in which, moreover, American flour undersold flour from Spanish sources whenever a pretext could be found for its importation. From Spain hardly anything was taken but inconsiderable quantities of olive oil and sausage. The one Spanish merchant who invaded the field with a full stock lost heavily and never repeated the venture.13

The expenditures of the Spanish government in Louisiana exceeded its revenues there. About $500,000  p23 was sent to New Orleans in 1785 for the support of the colonial government, civil and military, and the amount had to be increased each succeeding year. Most of this represented a dead loss to the government, for the revenue from customs duties, the principal source of income, amounted to about $50,000 a year. In other words, Louisiana represented a net loss of about half a million dollars every year to the home government. This amount passed into circulation in the colony, some of it into the hands of merchants who, violating the law against exportation of specie, used it to settle the unfavorable balance of their illicit trade with England and the United States. And so in effect the Spanish government found itself paying for the maintenance of law and order in a colony disaffected and economically unprofitable to the Spanish nation. The continuance of such a state of affairs was intolerable to Spanish pride and irreconcilable with its interests, and yet to cut off foreign commerce entirely would put an end to the prosperity of the colony and might well cause a revolution, besides offending France.14

We shall see how in the regulation of commerce, as well as in local government, the Indian trade, and even religion, the Spanish government made a valiant effort to adapt its colonial system to the needs of alien colonies and the frontier conflict with the United States, but was fettered by tradition and prejudice. The consequent half-measures and inconsistency tantalized the colonists and, together with persistent rumors of the cession of the Floridas to England and Louisiana to France, created a feeling of uncertainty, of insecurity, that discouraged the immigration of capital and labor into these provinces.

 p24  Headmen and warriors

Between the thin line of Spanish posts and the clusters of American frontier settlements lay four formidable Indian tribes far more numerous than the Spanish colonists and almost equal in numbers to the American frontiersmen. In the Creek towns were some 6000 warriors; in the Cherokee, 2000; in the Chickasaw, 500; in the Choctaw, 5000. In all, their braves numbered about 13,500, and their total population was about 45,000.​15 More numerous than Cornwallis's army of Yorktown and hardened by a life of incessant warfare, what part would these tribesmen play in the Spanish-American conflict? The Creek and Cherokee could hardly be otherwise than hostile to the Americans, for the occupation of the Southern piedmont and the beginning of the trans-Appalachian movement had for a full generation before the Revolution kept up constant strife between them and the "Virginians," as they called all their backwoods neighbors indiscriminately. Neither French nor British nor Spanish instigation was necessary, in all the years from 1740 to the end of the century, to set these Indians against the "Virginians." The disappearance of game, which in reality was largely due to the demands of the fur traders upon the short-sighted and compliant Indians, was attributed by the latter to the advance of the American settlements. In the face of the flight of this means of livelihood, the Indians had recourse to three remedies: They might take to farming, or they might permit the white men to pauperize them, or they might move westward across the Mississippi. All three of these things they had already begun in some measure to do, the last least of all. By the beginning of our period, they had all  p25 passed out of the nomadic stage. Their corn-fields were extensive, stock-raising was not uncommon, their villages were seldom moved except in response to external pressure, and they bitterly resented the expropriation of their lands, vaguely though their several territorial claims were defined.

The fur trade was still an important factor in the control of these Indians, although fifteen years had passed since the British superintendent of Indian affairs, John Stuart, had declared it incapable of further extension.​16 About 1785 it still required $80,000 worth of goods a year to supply the Indians whose trade was carried on through Mobile and Pensacola, and $20,000 worth for the trade of St. Augustine,​17 not to mention that which was in the hands of Americans in Georgia and on the Holston and Cumberland Rivers, and of interlopers on the Yazoo and Tennessee Rivers, whose value it is difficult to estimate. The situation in 1783 was favorable to Spain's supremacy in this commerce, for the Creek and Cherokee had been involved in the recent war against the United States, the Choctaw were too remote to be brought easily under American influence, and the Chickasaw tribe, though friendly to the United States, was so small that its trade was of no great value. Moreover, it was already clear before the Revolution that the control of the fur trade was shifting from Georgia to Mobile and Pensacola. This tendency was strengthened by the fact that most of the British Indian agents and traders were loyalists during the Revolution and that many of them took refuge in East and West Florida.​18 American traders from Georgia, the Holston and Cumberland were active among the Creek, Cherokee and Chickasaw respectively, but throughout our period Spanish control was substantially maintained  p26 by trading houses at St. Augustine, St. Mark's, Pensacola, Mobile, and San Fernando (Chickasaw Bluffs).

Economically the Southern fur trade was of doubtful value, for it was highly speculative, and while the profits were often large the risk was always great. Politically their trade was of dubious utility, contrary to the common assumption of their white neighbors, for the Indians could not be thrown into the fray and withdrawn at the convenience of their white instigators. A present was easily forgotten by them, but not the shedding of blood. In fact, neither the Americans nor the Spaniards knew enough of their customs or mental processes to understand them. The Americans solved the problem by declaring flatly that the Indians were not human beings, and by acting accordingly. The misunderstanding was mutual, for the Indians comprehended little or nothing of treaties, kings or private property in land.

The American frontier

The frontier communities of the United States present a very different picture from the one that we have sketched of the Floridas and Louisiana. These communities were four in number: Georgia, Holston, Cumberland and Kentucky. Their population in 1785 may be estimated at not more than 75,000, or about three times that of the neighboring Spanish provinces. Of these 75,000 frontiersmen, somewhat less than 30,000 were in Kentucky, somewhat more than that number in Georgia, about 10,000 on the Holston and its tributaries, and about 4000 in Cumberland.​19 For military purposes, however, this advantage must be considerably discounted. The points of strategic importance  p27 in the Spanish colonies were Natchez and New Orleans, and the Georgians were too remote to be very dangerous, even had the Southern tribes not intervened. The remaining 45,000 frontiersmen living on the waters of the Mississippi had almost as formidable obstacles to overcome before they could hope to conquer lower Louisiana. The Mississippi afforded them at once a highway and the motive power to traverse it, and, up to the beginning of the Wilkinson intrigue with Spain (1787), their preparations could be completed without the knowledge of the Spanish government, whose first information service in Kentucky was established in the person of Wilkinson himself. Here the advantages of the frontiersmen ended. Louisville and Nashville, the logical points of concentration for expeditions against Louisiana, were a thousand miles distant from New Orleans. The maintenance of a service of supply would be extremely difficult. There were no settlements of any consequence on the Mississippi except those of Spanish subjects, and even these were few above the fortified post of Natchez. To support a large body of troops by hunting was out of the question. Only an immediate and overwhelming victory would solve the problem of supply, and such a victory was extremely doubtful. There was little or no artillery in the American settlements with which to silence the numerous six and twelve pound guns at Natchez and New Orleans. Behind these garrisons were Cuba and Mexico, from which Spain would certainly send reinforcements. The frontiersmen, on the other hand, could expect nothing but opposition from their own unwarlike government. The uncertainty as to the attitude of the neighboring Indians made the outcome of an invasion still more dubious; and there was always in the background  p28 the inescapable fact, which we have already noted, that Spain's navy, the third largest in Europe, would still control the Gulf and render useless the conquest of the Mississippi.

These were the most formidable of the many obstacles to an invasion of Louisiana. It is only by keeping them in mind that we can understand why the frontiersmen never carried out their windy threats against that province, although they boasted that success was certain, although they were in need of the free navigation of the Mississippi and although they boiled with indignation at its closure by Spain. As the most discerning Spaniards saw, the only immediate danger to Louisiana lay in the greed of freebooters who would be content with plunder and had no larger end in view.​20 Without the support of Congress the frontiersmen had little power to inflict a real injury upon Spain, and Congress without a navy was hardly more dangerous. The real danger to Spain lay in an alliance between the United States and England, or simply between the American frontiersmen and England.

The economic situation of the backwoodsmen furnished an added reason for the cultivation of friendly relations with Spain. As settlement progressed and the fur trade declined, their exports became bulkier and their imports more numerous and expensive. Cheap transportation became a matter of increasing importance to them, and the Mississippi seemed to offer the only cheap means of transportation. Since the merchants of Philadelphia could undersell those of New Orleans in Kentucky, and since the bulky exports of Kentucky could not be returned with profit over the mountains to Philadelphia, the frontiersmen'sº chief hope of prosperity lay in the development of a triangular trade, hisº imports  p29 coming from the Atlantic states and his returns being made by way of New Orleans and the French West Indies to Philadelphia or Baltimore.

There was another possibility. Even in the Atlantic States gold and silver coin were scarce. Spanish milled dollars were highly prized, and the merchants, Robert Morris among them, were eager to cultivate trade with Spain as a means of increasing the gold and silver supply of the United States. In the West, where the scarcity of gold and silver coin was much greater than on the Atlantic coast, the desire for Spanish gold was even keener. The navigation of the Mississippi only so far south as Natchez or New Orleans would be of great value to the Kentuckians, despite the danger of the return trip up the Mississippi, if only they could exchange their flour, salt pork and tobacco for pesos. Such commercial ambitions were capitalized by James Wilkinson and formed the substantial basis of the Spanish intrigue.

Georgia stood somewhat apart from the rest of these frontier communities. Since all its inhabitants lived on the Savannah and Ogeechee Rivers, it was merely an extension of the contiguous South Carolina settlements, and as much an Atlantic state as New York or Massachusetts; and since it already possessed statehood it lacked one of the chief grievances of the other frontier communities of that day. As an expanding society, however, it was keenly interested in the chief concerns of the American Southwest. Its advancing frontier brought it into conflict with the Creek Indians, and its territorial claims, extending westward to the Mississippi and embracing most of the other tribes of Southern Indians, made it a paradise of land speculators, a claimant to the Natchez district and the navigation  p30 of the Mississippi River, and a determined foe of Spain, which added fuel to the flames by harboring fugitive slaves in the Floridas. Finally, while tobacco planters were beginning to settle in large numbers in upper Georgia, Augusta still hoped at the close of the Revolution to regain its former preëminence in the Southern fur trade.

Kentucky, Cumberland, and Holston were purely frontier communities, and were more completely isolated than any founded since the settlement of Jamestown. Indian relations, land speculation and the navigation of the Mississippi and Mobile Rivers were matters of common interest among them, and all three aspired to political autonomy. Established without the aid or in spite of the opposition of the colonial and state governments, and separated from the Atlantic States by the Appalachian ranges, they seemed to many observers destined by nature to secession from the United States and to union with Spain. This belief was based on current conceptions regarding natural frontiers and geographical influence on political institutions, and on an economic interpretation of politics. Men of sound judgment in the East, such as George Washington and Rufus King,​21 expressed the fear that the opening of the Mississippi to the United States would create an economic bond between its Western inhabitants and Spain that would in the end disrupt the Union. A better knowledge of Louisiana would have shown how little ground there was for this fear, for, as we have seen, the trade of New Orleans was in the hands not of Spaniards but of frontiersmen, and was in constant conflict with Spanish interests and Spanish law. Furthermore, even if Spanish officials could fit the American frontier settlements into Spain's colonial  p31 system or its system of alliances, the frontiersmen were by no means certain to be docile subjects or tractable allies. Most of them were Protestant, if they professed any religion at all. Few if any of them spoke Spanish. Even James Wilkinson, with all his long and intimate intercourse with Spanish officials, seems never to have learned the language. There was no spiritual affinity between the American frontiersman and the Spaniard. Still, while the incorporation of these communities into the Spanish empire might be extremely difficult, it was not at all impossible that Spanish intrigue might secure their erection into an independent power which could be played off against the republic on the Atlantic coast.

In reality the American frontier was more securely bound to the United States than were Louisiana and Florida to Spain. At first glance this does not seem to be the case, for, while every village in the Spanish colonies had its Spanish garrison and its Spanish flag, there was nowhere in Kentucky, Holston or Cumberland in 1784 any material evidence of the authority of the United States government. Yet, while evidences of royal authority in its frontier provinces were abundant, Spain's grip on them was not strong, since it depended upon inadequate military force in the midst of an alien population. In the American frontier settlements the population was certainly heterogeneous enough, but it was drawn largely from the Southern and Middle States, and the overwhelming majority spoke the same language, which was the language of their government.

The Spanish colonial system was cast in an imperial mould, and, despite the efforts of the ministry, could not be adapted to the requirements of these provinces on the Gulf and the Mississippi. The American system  p32 of local government, of land-ownership, of commerce had been evolved from an English basis by the older colonies when they were frontier communities, and were admirably adapted to the needs of the new frontier communities across the mountains. It is remarkable how little the law and constitutions of Kentucky and Tennessee differ from those of Virginia and North Carolina, how few changes the frontiersmen had to make. It is still more remarkable how little they desired to change. The explanation is no doubt that they were not given to speculation, that they came westward not because of discontent with the older societies but because of discontent with their own place therein. Their purpose was not creative but reproductive. They were indeed state-builders, but they found their plans and specifications ready made.

The most lasting impression that one gets from contemplating their words and deeds is that of an intense materialism shot through with mystic exaltation. Grimly they drove the Indians out before them, and exploited natural resources, slaves and public office, trampling down with pitiless determination every obstacle to prosperity. In these same men were perceived an equally intense devotion to the republican faith, a mystic sense of union with the deity of republicanism, and a conviction that their god would let none but the faithful prosper. They had their rainbow, and at its end was a pot of gold. This strange dual ideal, communicated by common language and strengthened by common institutions, maintained the unity of the new republic despite all the dissolvent forces of the times, and gave the United States what Spain lacked, a living idea.

---

The Author's Notes:

 p224  1 H. Adams, History of the United States in the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison, I.340.

2 Secret Journals of Congress, Foreign Affairs, IV.45 et seq.; A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 337, and The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence, 116, 125, 126; A. S. P., F. R., I.261‑63.

 p225  3 AMAE, CP, E‑U, vol. 32, Otto to Montmorin, Dec. 15, 1787, No. 107 (transcript in LC); Secret Journals of Congress, Foreign Affairs, IV.44‑63; Bemis, 170‑72.

4 AI, 86‑6‑7, El Conde de Gálvez to José de Gálvez, Jan. 26, 1784, and draft of (José de Gálvez) to Zéspedes, Jan. 23, 1784.

5 AI, PC, l. 4, Miró to Grand-Pré, Oct. 30, 1787, No. 283, and enclosed impreso.

6 AHN, E, AJE, April 26, 1790.

7 AI, PC, l. 177, Floridablanca to the Governor of Louisiana, Oct. (no day), 1791.

8 AHN, E, ACE, Aug. 14, 1795.

9 For a different view, see Roosevelt, III.127.

10 See below, chs. V and VIII.

11 AI, 87‑3‑22, Zéspedes to Antonio Porlier, Sept. 8, 1789, No. 12.

12 Navarro's "Political Reflections," in J. A. Robertson, ed., Louisiana under Spain, etc., I, 237 et seq.

13 AI, 87‑3‑19, contains a valuable expediente on the commerce of Louisiana and the Floridas at this period.

14 Financial reports for Louisiana have been published by C. H. Cunningham in MVHR, VI.391.

15 Cf. J. R. Swanton, Early History of the Creek Indians and their Neighbors, 437‑49; A. S. P., I. A., I, 38, 39.

16 "Observations of John Stuart," in AHR, XX, 818‑20.

17 These figures are only approximate. Gayarré (cf. note 1, ch. III), 172‑75; AI, PC, l. 199, Panton to O'Neill, March 15, 1786.

18 P. J. Hamilton, Colonial Mobile, 246; cf. note 16, above.

19 Roosevelt, III, 16; S. C. Williams, The Lost State of Franklin; reference in note 10, ch. IV.

20 AHN, E, l. 3899, Campo de Alange to the Prince of the Peace, Dec. 2, 1795, reporting the dictámen of the Junta de Generales on Louisiana.

21 Washington, Writings (ed. W. C. Ford), XI, 41‑42, 78, and note to p43; Rufus King Papers (MSS., N. Y. Hist. Soc.), R. King to E. Gerry, June 4, 1786.

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