A Wilderness So Immense Read online

  On Monday, September 17, 1787, thirty-nine members of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed their newly drafted plan of government and recommended it to Congress and the states. By replacing the Confederation Congress with a more vigorous national government, their handiwork eventually contributed to the opening of the Mississippi and the demise of Wilkinson’s Spanish Conspiracy. Two days later, in New Orleans, General James Wilkinson bade farewell to Miró and Navarro and boarded a ship for Charleston. Among his papers was the key to one of Spain’s “most incomprehensible ciphers” so that he could communicate with Miró when he got back to Kentucky. The chosen code happened to be Number 13 in the series of Spanish ciphers, which led to Wilkinson’s designation as Agent 13 in his continued dealings with Spain during the next fifteen years.26

  In forwarding Wilkinson’s lengthy Memorial to the ministry in Spain, Miró and Navarro asked permission to support Wilkinson’s plans to separate Kentucky from the United States and to encourage Americans to settle in Louisiana as subjects of His Most Catholic Majesty. It suited Wilkinson’s purposes to regard both aspects as integral to his plans, but the governor and the intendant had equally good reasons to see them as distinct alternatives. Wilkinson, after all, was not alone in his ability to detect a predominant passion and lay hold of it. He had given Miró and Navarro plenty of reason to suspect that his grand promises cloaked a more selfish and less ambitious short-term interest in monopolizing the riverborne trade out of Kentucky—they suspected that his “grandiose undertakings” were meant to disguise “a means of realizing a profitable commercial speculation.”27

  In letters both to Miró and to Gardoqui, Wilkinson vigorously urged the Spanish to keep the river closed to American trade—despite the outrage that he had expressed and fomented in Kentucky on the eve of his first visit to New Orleans. Ostensibly his goal was “to alienate and eradicate american principles and connexions” among his Kentucky neighbors, but Miró and Navarro were not blind to the fact that by keeping the river closed to others, the value of Wilkinson’s special trading privileges increased. Only time would tell which goal figured more prominently in Wilkinson’s heart. The Spaniards watched him closely, and they soon concluded that Wilkinson was a better informant than agent provocateur.28

  • • •

  Faced with the continued influx of Americans into Kentucky and a suspension of negotiations with John Jay until the new American government was in place, Spanish policy toward the Mississippi River was beginning a slow change that culminated in Pinckney’s Treaty of 1795—a change that also made Wilkinson’s information more useful than his grandiose undertakings. As early as May 24, 1788, José Moñino y Redondo, count of Floridablanca, had informed Diego de Gardoqui that Spain now wished

  to attract to our side the inhabitants of the Ohio and Mississippi, be it by alliance, by placing them under the protection of the King, or through Union with his dominions under treaties which will insure their liberty, thus allowing them to export their products to New Orleans and provide themselves at that town with goods they need from other countries.

  Then on November 20, 1788, the Council of State met to consider Miró’s and Navarro’s recommendations about Wilkinson’s Memorial. The council rejected outright Wilkinson’s request for support of a separatist revolution in Kentucky, and it sidestepped his proposed trading privileges on the Mississippi.29

  Spain simply had too much to lose by venturing into any scheme that might excite a military response from the United States. Until Kentucky established its complete independence, no Spanish official was to advance any promise or payment to aspiring frontier revolutionaries. Nor did the Council of State see any advantage in Wilkinson’s proposals for trade and immigration. Rather than give Wilkinson and his friends control of trade down the Mississippi, Spain decided to open the river to all Americans subject only to a 15 percent export duty that Miró could lower at his discretion to 6 percent in particular cases. In addition, rather than promoting immigration through Wilkinson (or any of a dozen other Americans who had approached Gardoqui or Miró about establishing settlements in Louisiana30) Spain would offer land grants, commercial privileges, and religious toleration to any genuine immigrant willing to settle in Louisiana and swear an oath of loyalty to Carlos IV.31

  The new trade and immigration policies had two principal objectives—both rooted in Louisiana’s strategic role as the northern buffer for Spanish America. First, Spain wanted to placate Americans in the Ohio Valley before angry militiamen decided to challenge the feeble defenses of New Orleans. Second, the council sought to encourage immigration and settlement in Spanish territory to balance the rapid growth of population in the American west. They hoped that the 15 percent export duty would be low enough to appease American farmers, but high enough to encourage them to settle in Spanish territory.32

  In February 1789 the crown’s response to Wilkinson’s Memorial reached Governor Miró. In March he communicated its provisions to a crestfallen James Wilkinson, and on April 20, 1789, Miró proclaimed Spain’s new policy to the inhabitants of the American west.

  1. It will be permitted to every good Inhabitant to come down and settle in the Province of Louisiana either at Natchés or any other place of both Mississippi’s shores. They will not be molested on religious matters, although no other publick worship will be permitted to be publickly exercised than that of [the] Roman Catholic Church. Land shall be granted gratis to them at their arrival in proportion of the hands, or facultys each Family should have … under the condition they shall at the same time take the due oath of allegiance and bound themselves only to take up arms in defense of this Province against Whatsoever enemy who could attempt to invade it.

  2. His most gracious Majesty generously grants the inhabitants of these Districts the trade with this town, and so they will be able to bring down Pelletry tobbacco, flower, provisions, and every other produce of their own country…. This trade carried on by those who should not choose to settle in this Province can not be permitted but under the duty of fifteen percent which is in my power to diminish in favor of men of influence, who should apply to obtain this favor….

  3. Upon the proposal… respecting the wishes of those Districts in order to make a connexion with the Court of Spain, after disevering themselves from the United States it is not in my power to stipulate anything, nor to promote the scheme: because the good understanding subsistent between his most catholic Majesty and the United States prevents it… [but] should it happen that they could obtain their absolute independence from the United States then his Majesty will grant them the favor, succours and other advantages consistent with his royal bounty and agreeable to the situation wherein they should find themselves.33

  In Kentucky things had not gone well for James Wilkinson. From the floor of the most recent of Kentucky’s statehood conventions, the general had read most of his Memorial in a lengthy speech, but the convention had utterly rejected its arguments for independence linked to a Spanish alliance. With considerable reluctance and skepticism, Kentucky leaders resolved to give the new national government a chance. Never one to accept failure as his own, however, Wilkinson fastened upon Spain’s new trade policy and its 15 percent duty as the explanation for the collapse of his separatist plans. Then, with amazing cheek, the general offered Miró an elaborate and expensive plan to promote immigration into Louisiana, for which he would need about $18,000 to send his agents throughout the western settlements. He also asked Miró to buy another two hundred hogsheads of tobacco on the crown’s account. By August Wilkinson was conjuring up visions of a British attack on Louisiana from Canada, for which he needed $500 from Miró to support a sentinel at the Straits of Mackinac to monitor any movement of troops from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan—and another $140 in reimbursement for the messenger and two oarsmen who had carried these offers to New Orleans.34

  The pattern of Wilkinson’s activities had become abundantly clear. He had failed to bring Kentucky out of the union, and he h
ad little to show for his efforts to promote American immigration into Louisiana. Nevertheless, his incriminating oath of allegiance to Spain was tucked safely in Miró’s strongbox, and the general was about $7,000 in debt to Miró’s administration. An ineffectual friend is better than a meddlesome adversary, and for all his limitations as an agent provocateur Wilkinson remained a well-placed informant. “He is always useful even when he does not achieve his object,” Governor Miró told Luis de Las Casas, the captain-general at Havana, “since he serves as well to block those enterprises planned against the Province as to give notice of others he cannot stop.” The charming schemer who once aspired to be the “Washington of the West” had finally proved his real worth. For a pension of just $2,000 a year (applied at first to pay down his debt to Miró’s treasury), Spain bought General James Wilkinson as a stool pigeon and a spoiler. In the years ahead their investment paid for itself many times over.35

  The one risk in the new policy of encouraging American immigration into the borderland buffer of Louisiana—as Governor Miró’s superior in Havana, Captain-General Luis de Las Casas, warned Carlos IV and his ministers—was that the immigrants would retain their native language, customs, religion, and affinity to the United States. By offering farm-sized land grants to individual settlers, instead of large tracts for promoters and speculators, Miró wisely precluded the creation of dangerously independent “republics” within Spanish territory. Nevertheless, oaths of allegiance to Spain were a slender reed on which to base the security of the colony and the empire below it. Las Casas recommended sending immigrants directly from Spain to dilute American strength within the population of the territory, but nothing ever came of his suggestion.36

  In matters of religion, the encouragement of American immigration into Louisiana required a measure of toleration unknown elsewhere in the empire of His Most Catholic Majesty Carlos IV. Protestants were allowed freedom of worship in their homes, and they were exempt from financial support for the established Roman Catholic Church. Catholic mass was the only public worship permitted in the colony, however, and priests were required to officiate at marriage and baptismal ceremonies of Protestants and Catholics alike. Both to accommodate the American-born population and to entice converts to Catholicism, Governor Miró worked with Bishop Andrés of Salamanca to recruit English-speaking Irish priests, educated at the Irish College of the University of Salamanca, for missionary service in Louisiana. The crown gave them $375 for clothing, books, and other supplies, and an annual salary of $480. In addition to preaching and administering the sacraments, like their Protestant counterparts in many areas of the United States, the clergymen of Louisiana also offered classes for youngsters to learn Spanish.37

  The first four Irish priests arrived from Cádiz in 1787, six more priests came from La Coruña in 1792, and two Carmelite friars arrived in 1795. Of the twelve, five were dispatched to the settlements around Natchez, one to Nogales (near Vicksburg), a sixth to Sainte Genevieve and Kaskaskia in the Illinois Country, and a seventh to the Tensaw River settlement above Mobile Bay—the others filled vacancies around New Orleans. Most of these missionaries dispatched by His Most Catholic Majesty into the valley of the Mississippi were able men of good heart, but only four occasioned unusual comment by their contemporaries. The amiable Father Gregorio White, in the Natchez district, became a serious drunk. The Carmelite John Brady, in the same area, was said to be “the best shot, the best rider, and the best judge of horses in the district.”38

  Father William Savage, former vice rector of the University of Salamanca, became renowned for his preaching—filling his new Church of Our Savior of the World in Natchez with Protestants and Catholics alike and astonishing the urbane and genial Governor Manuel Gayoso de Lemos with the number of Protestants who converted to his faith. When death ended his exemplary ministry in April 1793, Father Savage’s successor undid everything he had accomplished. A Capuchin zealot supported by Governor Miró’s successor, Father Francis Lennan never set foot in the pulpit during his first two years in Natchez. He devoted his energies to complaining about the area’s Protestants, and spreading rumors that disturbed the public tranquillity. Gayoso lamented that Lennan “hope[d] to drive from the Province all the Protestants, who are the wealthiest and most numerous class of settlers, and to keep here only a sprinkling of Catholics, who are mainly Irish and not the best people of their nation because almost all of them are turbulent and intriguing spirits.” The stark contrast between the tolerant appeal of Father William Savage and the coercive bigotry of his successor is instructive. Similar things happened at the Government House on St. Louis Street in New Orleans when Esteban Miró returned to Spain on December 30, 1791.39

  — CHAPTER EIGHT —

  Banners of Blood

  The weakness of the [French] government seems to allow anything…. People speak openly in the Palais-Royal of massacring us, our houses are marked out for this murder and my door was marked…. The Court expected, at any minute, to see itself attacked by forty thousand armed brigands who, it was said, were on their way from Paris…. The defection of troops is general and everything announces a great revolution…. The Estates-General of 1789 will be celebrated but by a banner of blood that will be carried to all parts of Europe.

  —Marquis de Ferrieres to Madame de Medel, June 28, 17891

  Let’s string up the aristocrats on the lampposts!

  We will win, we will win, we will win.

  We’ll string up the aristocrats!

  Despotism will die, Liberty will triumph

  We will win, we will win, we will win….

  Equality will reign throughout the world….

  We will win, we will win, we will win.

  —“Ça Ira,” 17902

  SOON AFTER the citizens of New Orleans finished mourning the death of Carlos III and celebrating the accession of his son to the throne of Spain, Governor Esteban Rodríguez Miró received a troubling visit from an often troublesome Capuchin monk. The Reverend Father Francisco Antonio Ildefonso de Sedella—Pére Antoine as he was known with some affection long after the Louisiana Purchase—was born in the Spanish province of Granada. Conquered by the Saracens in the eighth century, the area was ruled by the Moors into the fifteenth century, and the young man who grew up in the shadow of their Alhambra had fervently embraced the religion of the Crusaders. At twenty-three Sedella had joined the Capuchin order in Canada, and a decade later he had come to Louisiana in 1781. Pére Antoine affiliated himself with the priests of St. Louis Church (now Cathedral) on the Place d’Armes in the heart of New Orleans and always wore the cappuccio, or hooded robe, of the Capuchin order.

  At nine o’clock on April 28, 1790, Father Sedella rushed into Governor Miró’s office with all the impatient self-righteousness that fueled his life of recurrent conflict with civil and religious authorities. The Capuchin presented the weary governor with a letter newly arrived from the inquisitor general of Spain reviving his appointment as Louisiana’s commissary of the Holy Office (the official name of the infamous Inquisition) and directing Father Sedella to suppress and confiscate subversive literature in the colony. The Capuchins had begun as a fervent reform movement within the Franciscan order, and their man in New Orleans was ready to embrace his inquisitorial authority with “exact fidelity and zeal.”3

  Deported by Governor Miró in 1790 after he attempted to bring the Inquisition into Louisiana, the Spanish Capuchin Francisco Antonio Ildefonso de Sedella returned to New Orleans and was elected pastor of St. Louis Cathedral on March 14, 1804. Although he was popular with many New Orleanians, Pére Antoine clashed with religious authorities appointed by the new American bishop, Charles Carroll of Baltimore, and caused a schism in the Louisiana Church. Sedella outlived most of his rivals, however, and was widely mourned after his death on January 22, 1829. (Courtesy Louisiana State Museum)

  Father Sedella promised Miró the “utmost secrecy and precaution” in his pursuit of New Orleanians who were sure to possess writings condemned by t
he Church. By 1790 Church censors had compiled a lengthy list of authors and titles they regarded as dangerous. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum had been updated two dozen times since its first publication in 1559, and its definition of immoral and heretical works was sweeping. Theology presented the usual suspects, including liberal Catholics such as Abelard and Erasmus and Protestants from Calvin to Zwingli, but Father Sedella’s new credentials also empowered him to expunge the European Enlightenment from the bookshelves of Louisiana. The Index condemned the political writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau along with Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, Denis Diderot’s Encyclopedia, and the philosophical works of Rene Descartes. Prominent English authors were seen as equally sinister. The puritan poet John Milton’s State Papers were prohibited along with John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the satire and journalism of Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and everything from the materialist pen of Thomas Hobbes. Until the moment that Pére Antoine entered Governor Miró’s office in April 1790, however, the Inquisition had not ventured onto the North American mainland, preferring to apprehend errant residents of Louisiana only when they traveled to Mexico, Cuba, or Spain. The zealous Capuchin was eager to set things right in the colony, and he advised the governor that his mission would require “recourse at any hour of the night to the Corps de Garde from which I may draw the necessary troops to … carry on my operations.”4