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If it was proper to rely on amicable negotiation for an indemnity for losses, it would not have been so to have permitted the inability of Spain to fulfill her engagements and to sustain her authority in the Floridas to be perverted by foreign adventurers and savages to purposes so destructive to the lives of our fellow citizens and the highest interests of the United States.
He rapidly abated his demands, and the cession was finally made for fifteen millions of dollars. The Boundaries Undecided. The treaty was signed in May, 1805. The definition of the exact boundaries of the ceded territory was purposely left very loose by Napoleon. On the east, the Spanish Government of the Floridas still kept possession of what are now several parishes in the State of Louisiana.
By this great achievement, the whole extent of North America, from Nova Scotia to the Floridas, was rendered one entire dependency upon the British crown.
The Havanna was exchanged with Spain for the Floridas. By establishing these great natural boundaries to the British empire in North America, all causes of future contest respecting that continent, with any potentate of Europe, were supposed to be removed.
Madison wrote at once that in view of these developments no proposal to exchange Louisiana for the Floridas should be entertained; the President declared himself satisfied that "our right to the Perdido is substantial and can be opposed by a quibble on form only"; and John Randolph, duly coached by the Administration, flatly declared in the House of Representatives that "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."
This consideration seems to have occurred even to Charles IV.; he refused to barter the Floridas against Parma. The re-establishment of his son-in-law in his paternal domains was doubtless desirable, but not at the cost of so exacting a heriot as East and West Florida. From out this maze of sordid intrigues two or three facts challenge our attention.
He was well aware that Bonaparte had failed to persuade Don Carlos to include the Floridas in the retrocession; he had tried to insert in the treaty an article pledging the First Consul to use his good offices to obtain the Floridas for the United States; and in his midnight dispatch to Madison, with the prospect of acquiring Louisiana before him, he had urged the advisability of exchanging this province for the more desirable Floridas.
When we consider the persons engaged in it, being adventurers from different countries, with very few, if any, of the native inhabitants of the Spanish colonies; the territory on which the establishments were made one on a portion of that claimed by the United States westward of the Mississippi, the other on a part of East Florida, a Province in negotiation between the United States and Spain; the claim of their leader as announced by his proclamation on taking possession of Amelia Island, comprising the whole of both the Floridas, without excepting that part of West Florida which is incorporated into the State of Louisiana; their conduct while in the possession of the island making it instrumental to every species of contraband, and, in regard to slaves, of the most odious and dangerous character, it may fairly be concluded that if the enterprise had succeeded on the scale on which it was formed much annoyance and injury would have resulted from it to the United States.
"I feel anxious," he concluded, "not only to add the Floridas to the South, but the Canadas to the North of this Empire." Others, like Calhoun, who now made his entrance as a debater, refused to entertain these mercenary calculations.
He had fitted out ships, and he intended also to levy armies. With this end in view he had sent his agents through the south and west to raise men in order to invade the Floridas on the one hand and seize New Orleans on the other.
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