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Updated: June 16, 2025
James Robertson and Anthony Bledsoe had but recently availed themselves of the good offices of Governor Johnston of North Carolina in the effort to influence Gardoqui to quiet the Creek Indians.
In the course of his negotiations with Jay concerning the right of navigation of the Mississippi River, which Spain denied to the Americans, Gardoqui was not long in discovering the violent resentment of the Western frontiersmen, provoked by Jay's crass blunder in proposing that the American republic, in return for reciprocal foreign advantages offered by Spain, should waive for twenty-five years her right to navigate the Mississippi.
While Miro was corresponding with Wilkinson and arranging for pensioning both him and Sebastian, Gardoqui was busy at New York. Gardoqui was an over-hopeful man, accustomed to that diplomacy which acts on the supposition that every one has his price. He was sure that they could all be reached by underhand and corrupt influences of some kind, if he could only find out where to put on the pressure.
The western people were wrought up to the determination to take matters into their own hands, if necessary, to procure an outlet to Europe for their goods. The rumour that Jay, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, had approved to Congress the suggestion of Gardoqui, that the river be closed for ten years as the price of a commercial treaty, drove them to the point of forcible resistance.
On the 3d of August, 1786, John Jay, as secretary for foreign affairs, presented to Congress some results of his negotiations with the Spanish envoy, Gardoqui, respecting a treaty with Spain; and he then urged that Congress, in view of certain vast advantages to our foreign commerce, should consent to surrender the navigation of the Mississippi for twenty-five or thirty years, a proposal which, very naturally, seemed to the six Southern States as nothing less than a cool invitation to them to sacrifice their own most important interests for the next quarter of a century, in order to build up during that period the interests of the seven States of the North.
But no heed was paid to their requests, and when they ventured to relax the severity of the regulations, as regards both the trade down the Mississippi and the sea-trade to Philadelphia, they were reprimanded and forced to reverse their policy. This was done at the instance of Gardoqui, who was jealous of the Louisiana authorities, and showed a spirit of rivalry towards them.
The Spanish envoy, Gardoqui, arrived in the summer of 1784, and had many interviews with Jay, who was then secretary for foreign affairs. Gardoqui set forth that his royal master was graciously pleased to deal leniently with the Americans, and would confer one favour upon them, but could not confer two.
Later, when he was one of the Commissioners to treat for peace, they practically repeated the blunder by instructing Jay and his colleagues to assent to whatever France proposed. With rare wisdom and courage Jay repudiated these instructions. Another Kentuckian, Mr. Jay and Gardoqui.
The delegates from the northern States assented to Jay's views; those from the southern States strongly opposed them. In 1787, after a series of conferences between Jay and Gardoqui, which came to naught, the Spaniard definitely refused to entertain Jay's proposition.
Gardoqui had arrived at the seat of government in 1785 as the first representative of the Spanish King. He was determined, as he said, to make the lower Mississippi a "bone of contention" in negotiating the long-delayed treaty with the United States. Not much agitation on his part was necessary.
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