A Wilderness So Immense Read online

  “It is said,” Pinckney laughed, “that Mr. Gardoqui is not personally averse to our going to the Philippines.” But he also admits that the “invariable maxim of Spanish politics [is] to exclude all mankind from trading with their colonies and islands.” Trade to the distant Philippines was a fantasy, Pinckney warned, “a ministerial finesse … to which his instructions do not, nor ever will reach.” Commerce with Spain’s nearby Caribbean islands was denied.

  The American states had varied trading interests. The European trade of Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Rhode Island was “inconsiderable.” New England enjoyed “a beneficial trade with Spain, in the export of their fish, lumber, and other articles,” but since “Spain in her treaty proposes no advantages that we do not now enjoy,” Pinckney could not see “any particular benefit that will result even to the New-England States.” New York and Pennsylvania exported wheat, barrel staves, and some other articles that Spain valued “in proportion to the scarcity, and failure of [her] crops, and … under the treaty nothing more is proposed to them.” As to his own state’s export commodities, the Spanish had indigo from their islands and colonies “in much greater quantities than they can consume, and of a superior quality,” and Pinckney knew that South Carolina’s rice was “in such demand in Europe, that it wants not the aid of a treaty.” Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia exported some wheat and lumber to Spain, but “their great staple tobacco is expressly prohibited.” Virginia, Pinckney said, stood to “be more injured than any State in the union” by the cession of the Mississippi and of all the states “the least benefitted under the treaty.” In every instance, Pinckney contended, Spain’s commercial proposals offered “nothing more than she will always be willing to grant you without a treaty, and nothing which can be termed an equivalent for the forbearance she demands.”

  And what of the Mississippi? Jay’s argument had three parts. First, “that the navigation is unimportant, and that a forbearance will be no sacrifice.” Second, that while it was “disgraceful” to assert a legal claim without enforcing it, war was “inexpedient.” Third, therefore, the best way to prove America’s claim was by inference, by “consenting] to suspend the claim for a certain time.” This was an argument only a lawyer could love, Pinckney said, for “the right of the United States to navigate the Mississippi has been so often asserted, and so fully stated by Congress.”

  Pinckney implored his colleagues to look forward in time. The western settlers “must either be the future friends or enemies of the Atlantic states.” If Congress surrendered the Mississippi to Spain, “can they be blamed for immediately throwing themselves into her arms for that protection and support which you have denied them”? By dividing “the inhabitants of the western country entirely from us,” Spain would render them “subservient to her own purposes.”

  Finally, what of the existing union? “Our government is so feeble and unoperative that unless a new portion of strength is infused it must in all probability soon dissolve,” he admitted—but reform of the Articles of Confederation required the unanimous consent of all thirteen states. The proposed treaty was “calculated to promote the interests of one part of the union at the expence of the other” and dash all hopes for national reform. Thoughtful men everywhere, Pinckney warned, would recognize “the impropriety of vesting [Congress] with farther powers” when it has “so recently abused those they already possess.” Adopt Jay’s course, Pinckney warned, and the sovereign states will refuse “to grant us those additional powers of government, without which we cannot exist as a nation”—all for a treaty that offered “no real advantage that we do not at present enjoy.” “Let me hope,” Pinckney concluded, that “the general welfare of the United States will be suffered to prevail, and that the house will on no account consent to alter Mr. Jay’s instructions.”

  While it clearly articulated the southern critique of the Jay-Gardoqui negotiations, Charles Pinckney’s speech did not change anyone’s mind. President Gorham had scarcely settled back into his chair when William Grayson, of Virginia, took the floor. Seconded by Timothy Bloodworth, of North Carolina, Grayson demanded that John Jay immediately supply Congress with documentation “respecting the sentiments of the court of France touching our right of Navigating the Mississippi,” and “that he state to Congress the territorial claims of Spain on the east side of the Mississippi.” The New Englanders were nearly as quick and more to the point. Massachusetts delegate Rufus King bluntly moved to lift the restrictions in Jay’s instructions. Theodore Sedgwick seconded King’s motion. When the resolution passed a few weeks later, the stipulation that Jay insist upon “the free navigation of the Mississippi, from the Source to the Ocean” in his negotiations with Spain was “repealed and made void” by a seven-to-five vote of the twelve states (Rhode Island being habitually absent).27

  As he listened to Charles Pinckney’s speech in August 1786, after almost three years in Congress, James Monroe’s personal stake in the future of the republic was greater than it had been when Sarah Vaughan wondered whether the dimple on his chin constituted beauty. In February, two weeks shy of his twenty-eighth birthday, Monroe had married Elizabeth Kortright, the seventeen-year-old daughter of New York merchant Lawrence Kortright, and the “next morning decamp[e]d for Long Island with the little smiling Venus in his Arms, where they have taken house, to avoid fulsome Complements during the first Transports.”28 Their daughter, Eliza, was born that December.

  The Monroes were not the year’s only congressional newlyweds. A colleague compared Congress in 1786 to “Calypso’s Island,” with the charming daughters of New York City merchants in the role of Calypso, the sea nymph who seduced Odysseus. At Trinity Episcopal Church in January, Monroe had stood as best man for Massachusetts congressman Elbridge Gerry, forty-one, when he married twenty-year-old Ann Thompson, regarded by some as “the most beautiful woman in the United States” and known to all as the daughter of wealthy New York merchant James Thompson. The Monroes exchanged their vows in February, and March brought the marriage of thirty-one-year-old Rufus King to sixteen-year-old Mary Alsop, the only daughter of the wealthy merchant and former New York congressman John Alsop. Finally, in May, treasury commissioner and former Massachusetts congressman Samuel Osgood, a widower of thirty-eight, married the wealthy New York City widow Maria Bowne Franklin.29

  In five months, the stylish daughters of Gotham had vanquished three Bay State delegates and a Virginian—and gossip in and around Congress held that “other conjunctions copulative are talked of.” These New York City “intermarriages” delighted John Jay because “they tend to assimilate the States, and promote … the people of America [as] one nation in every respect.” Lest anyone at home worry that matrimony might weaken his ties to the Old Dominion, however, Monroe quickly assured his friends that Bitzy “will be adopted a citizen of Virg[ini]a.” Similarly, Rufus King declared his “increasing love for our particular country” and pledged that “Mrs. King will not detach me from Massachusetts.” The need for these reassurances reflected a heightened sense of regional difference and alienation in 1786—as did Elbridge Gerry’s earthy banter in a letter to Monroe (weeks after Ann Thompson Gerry apparently had suffered a miscarriage). “How are your matrimonial prospects?” Gerry smirked,

  fertile, I presume for southern soil is almost spontaneous. Mine are not yet promising for after the loss of one harvest a little time is requisite to prepare another. Does brother King make disposition for a summer crop? or does he propose to put in winter grain: as to Friend Osgood’s field, I somewhat expect it is run out, unless by being unimproved, it is become enriched.30

  Those privy to the raging debate in Congress had no doubt about either James Monroe’s allegiance to Virginia or Rufus King’s love for his “particular country.”31 Monroe spent Saturday, August 12, describing the crisis and reviewing its origins in a long letter to Governor Patrick Henry. Unable to encode his letter because someone in the delegation had misplaced the key to the Virginia cipher, M
onroe sent his letter to Henry unenciphered, for the crisis was “of such high importance to the U.S. and ours in particular” that it warranted the “risque [of] communication without that cover.” Monroe’s three years in Congress were nearly over, and he urged Governor Henry to convene the legislature “sufficiently early” so that Virginia’s new congressmen were on hand to take their seats “precisely on the day that those of the present delegation expire. Aff[ai]rs are in too critical a situation for the State to be unrepresented a day—eminent disadvantage may result from it.”32

  By way of explanation, Monroe reviewed the whole intrigue for Governor Henry (whose formidable opposition to the Constitution two years later is rooted in these discoveries). Back in December, Monroe recalled, he had spoken with John Jay and learned that Jay was talking with Gardoqui about a commercial treaty based on “a forbearance of the use of the Mississippi for 25 or 30 years.” The New Yorker “was desirous of occluding the Mississippi,” Monroe wrote, “and of making what he term’d advantageous terms in the treaty of Commerce the means of effecting it.”

  Monroe had been frankly puzzled by Jay’s candor. “Whether he suppos’d I was of his opinion … or was endeavoring to prevail on me to be so I cannot tell.” Several prominent Virginians envisaged the Potomac, not the Mississippi, as gateway to the west, and perhaps Jay thought Monroe was one of them. Monroe said nothing and kept listening as Jay worried aloud that if he brought his plan “to the view of Congress they wo[ul]d most probably disagree to it… or conduct themselves so indiscreetly as to suffer it to become known to the French and Engl[is]h residents here and thus defeat it.” Jay also told Monroe—months ahead of time—that he was thinking of asking Congress to delegate its authority to a special committee “to controul him in the negotiation [and] to stand to him in the room of Congress.” At this point in their conversation Monroe reminded Jay “of the instructions from our state respecting the Mississippi and of the impossibility of their concuring in any measures of the kind.” Jay immediately realized he had let the rat out of the bag, and his conversations with Monroe “on this subject ended from that time.”

  In February, Monroe continued, when William Grayson returned to Congress after the holidays, the two Virginians had discussed “all these circumstances with my opinions on them.” From that moment on, Monroe and Grayson kept their eyes on Secretary Jay, and saw him “intriguing with the members to carry the point.” On the fateful 29th of May—Governor Henry’s fiftieth birthday—when Jay asked Congress for the special committee, Monroe and Grayson immediately “knew the object was to extricate himself from the instruction respecting the Mississippi.” Monroe assured Henry that “we of course oppos’d it”—and it was soon thereafter that he and Grayson learned that Jay was “engag’d” with the congressmen from “the eastern States in the intrigue especially Massachusetts],” and “that New York, Jersey and Pen[nsylvani]a were in favor of it.”

  “This is one of the most extraordinary transactions I have ever known,” Monroe exclaimed, “a minister negotiating expressly for the purpose of defeating the object of his instructions, and by a long train of intrigue and management seducing the representatives of the States to concur in it.” And there was more. Monroe was certain “that Committees are held in this town of Eastern men and others of this State upon the subject of a dismemberment of the States East the Hudson from the Union and the erection of them into a seperate gov[ernmen]t.” The separatist scheme, Monroe reported, “is talk’d of in Massachusetts] familiarly and is suppos’d to have originated there.” Closing the Mississippi and creating a northern commercial confederacy were linked. Congressmen Nathaniel Gorham, Rufus King, and Theodore Sedgwick were using Jay’s idea of closing the Mississippi “as a step toward” the creation of a separate northern confederacy, and Monroe believed their plan was also “connected with other objects—and perhaps with that upon which the Convention will sit at Annapolis.”

  “The object in the occlusion of the Mississippi on the part of these people,” Monroe warned Henry,

  is to break up … the settlements on the western waters, prevent any in future, and thereby keep the States southw[ar]d as they now are—or … make it the interest of the [western] people to seperate from the confederacy, so as … to throw the weight of population eastward and keep it there, to appreciate the vacant lands of New York and Massachusetts. In short it is a system of policy which has for its object the keeping the weight of gov[ernmen]t and population in this quarter.

  Monroe was appalled at the scheme being “purssued by a sett of men so flagitious, unprincipled and determind in their pursuits, as to satisfy me beyond a doubt they have extended their views to the dismemberment of the gov[ernmen]t.” Finally, to emphasize that his warnings rested on more than inference, Monroe presented Henry with the most damning firsthand evidence for the truth of these serious allegations: “In conversations at which I have been present,” Monroe wrote, “the Eastern people talk of a dismemberment so as to include Pen[nsylvani]a … and sometimes all the states south to the Potowmack.”

  • • •

  On August 20, 1786—two weeks after his first secret meeting with a group of northern congressmen—Diego de Gardoqui sent a follow-up report across the Atlantic in a French diplomatic pouch to Floridablanca and Carlos III. This remarkable document (which has never been published or consulted by American historians) confirms Monroe’s suspicions. “Not finding a better occasion,” Gardoqui wrote, “I take advantage of the French mail to tell you that we are in a critical time. Never in Congress has there been a controversy more combated than that of our Mississippi.”33

  Gardoqui tried to be modest about his accomplishments. “Shy and timid of appearing to show the least self esteem,” he wrote with the self-deprecating pride of an accomplished diplomat,

  [my nature] obliges me to keep secret what I have done and reduces me to say that it has even been [asked of] me … whether I have come to disunite the Confederation. It has come to such an extreme that a general fast is observed … for the preservation of the union.

  While the final outcome of the acrimonious debate in Congress was still uncertain as he wrote, Gardoqui was pleased that men from both north and south “talk with the greatest respect of His Majesty and with approbation of my conduct.”34

  Gardoqui admitted that the prospect of signing a commercial treaty with anyone in America was now bleak. “The opposition is insurmountable, even though they flatter me that I have spoiled more of it than I believe.” More significantly, however, he knew that the success or failure of his commercial negotiations would no longer really matter to Carlos III. (Pinckney, after all, was quite right about Spain’s willingness to buy what it wanted from America, treaty or no.)

  During thirteen months of conversation with John Jay and many other American leaders, Diego de Gardoqui had found his way to a stratagem older than Caesar: divide and conquer. With cigars and promises for the members of Congress, fine wine and lavish dinners for New York society, a stallion for John Jay, presents for Sarah, a strong Spanish jackass for Washington, and gilded visions of prosperity for the merchants of Boston and Salem—Diego de Gardoqui had probed the weak points in the American union, and he had exploited them. Perhaps nothing had changed along the banks of the mighty river during those thirteen months, but Spain’s grip on the Mississippi and Louisiana was stronger in 1786 than it had been before because Congress was deadlocked five states to seven along sectional lines. Spain had gotten “as much as could be hoped,” Gardoqui assured Carlos III and Floridablanca on August 20, 1786, “because I believe without vanity to have squeezed this orange to the last drop.”35 And so he had, leaving John Jay with an empty rind and Congress with a mess of worthless pulp.

  — CHAPTER FIVE —

  The Touch of a Feather

  The Western settlers, (I speak now from my own observation) stand as it were upon a pivot—the touch of a feather, would turn them any way—They have look’d down the Mississippi, until the Spaniards (very
impoliticly I think, for themselves) threw difficulties in their way; and they looked that way for no other reason, than because they could glide gently down the stream; without considering perhaps, the fatigues of the voyage back again.

  —George Washington, October 10, 17841

  BY CONJURING UP visions of maritime prosperity for the merchants and fisherman of the eastern states, Gardoqui had led Rufus King and his New England friends to the brink of separatism during the summer of 1786. Once the question of revoking Jay’s instruction reached the floor of Congress, however, Gardoqui knew that the real prospect of a treaty was over—and that Spain’s best interests required him to act as though everything were still possible. He quietly probed for southern congressmen who might be amenable to persuasion, or cash, and he continued to entice Rufus King and the New Englanders with details about Spanish commercial regulations. Gardoqui did all he could to bolster their conviction that “a Treaty with Spain is at this time a desirable Event,” and to pump up their dream that it would “not be long delayed.”2

  While the August 29 revocation of the Mississippi clause in Jay’s instructions was a victory for the eastern states, the Virginia delegation contested it immediately on the grounds that the Articles of Confederation required the vote of nine states to ratify any treaty. On this procedural question the Virginians were outvoted again, seven to five, but the matter quickly became a moot point. As long as the Congress remained in a seven-to-five deadlock, no treaty could hope to win the required support of nine states. Gardoqui really had squeezed the last drop from this orange, leaving Congress bitterly divided over the future of the Mississippi River and the west.