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- Herausgeber: Arcadia Press
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
Nathaniel Pitt Langford (1832–1911) was an explorer, businessman, bureaucrat, vigilante and historian from Saint Paul, Minnesota who played an important role in the early years of the Montana gold fields, territorial government and the creation of Yellowstone National Park.Langford was also part of the vigilante movement, the infamous Montana Vigilantes, that dealt with lawlessness in Virginia City and Bannack, Montana during 1863-64.In 1890, Langford wrote Vigilante Days and Ways to chronicle the era of pioneer justice in the American Old West.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Nathaniel Pitt Langford
VIGILANTEDAYS AND WAYS
Copyright © Nathaniel Pitt Langford
Vigilante Days and Ways
(1893)
Arcadia Press 2017
www.arcadiapress.eu
Storewww.arcadiaebookstore.eu
VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS
This book is dedicated to the memory of those unknown pioneers who lost their lives in laying the foundations of the empire of the new great west
VOLUME I.
INTRODUCTION.
IT is stated, on good authority, that soon after the first appearance of Schiller’s drama of “The Robbers” a number of young men, charmed with the character of Charles De Moor, formed a band and went to the forests of Bohemia to engage in brigand life. I have no fear that such will be the influence of this volume. It deals in facts. Robber life as delineated by the vivid fancy of Schiller, and robber life as it existed in our mining regions, were as widely separated as fiction and truth. No one can read this record of events, and escape the conviction that an honest, laborious, and well-meaning life, whether successful or not, is preferable to all the temporary enjoyments of a life of recklessness and crime. The truth of the adage that “Crime carries with it its own punishment” has never received a more powerful vindication than at the tribunals erected by the people of the North-West mines for their own protection. No sadder commentary could have stained our civilization than to permit the numerous and bloody crimes committed in the early history of this portion of our country to go unwhipped of justice. And the fact that they were promptly and thoroughly dealt with stands among the earliest and noblest characteristics of a people which derived their ideas of right and of self-protection from that spirit of the law that flows spontaneously from our free institutions. The people bore with crime until punishment became a duty and neglect a crime. Then, at infinite hazard of failure, they entered upon the work of purgation with a strong hand — and in the briefest possible time established the supremacy of law. The robbers and murderers of the mining regions, so long defiant of the claims of peace and safety, were made to hold the gibbet in greater terror there than in any other portion of our country.
Up to this time, fear of punishment had exercised no restraining influence on the conduct of men who had organized murder and robbery into a steady pursuit. They hesitated at no atrocity necessary to accomplish their guilty designs. Murder with them was resorted to as the most available means of concealing robbery, and the two crimes were generally coincident. The country, filled with canyons, gulches, and mountain passes, was especially adapted to their purposes, and the unpeopled distances between mining camps afforded ample opportunity for carrying them into execution. Pack trains and companies, stage coaches and express messengers, were as much exposed as the solitary traveller, and often selected as objects of attack. Miners, who had spent months of hard labor in the accumulation of a few hundreds of dollars, were never heard of after they left the mines to return to their distant homes. Men were daily and nightly robbed and murdered in the camps. There was no limit to this system of organized brigandage.
When not engaged in robbery, this criminal population followed other disreputable pursuits. Gambling and licentiousness were the most conspicuous features of every mining camp, and both were but other species of robbery. Worthless women taken from the stews of cities plied their vocation in open day, and their bagnios were the lures where many men were entrapped for robbery and slaughter. Dance-houses sprung up as if by enchantment, and every one who sought an evening’s recreation in them was in some way relieved of the money he took there. Many good men who dared to give expression to the feelings of horror and disgust which these exhibitions inspired, were shot down by some member of the gang on the first opportunity. For a long time these acts were unnoticed, for the reason that the friends of law and order supposed the power of evil to be in the ascendant. Encouraged by this impunity the ruffian power increased in audacity, and gave utterance to threats against all that portion of the community which did not belong to its organization. An issue involving the destruction of the good or bad element actually existed at the time that the people entered upon the work of punishment.
I offer these remarks, not in vindication of all the acts of the vigilantes, but of so many of them as were necessary to establish the safety and protection of the people. The reader will find among the later acts of some of the individuals claiming to have exercised the authority of the vigilantes some executions of which he cannot approve. For these persons I can offer no apology. Many of these were worse men than those they executed. Some were hasty and inconsiderate, and while firm in the belief they were doing right, actually committed grievous offences. Unhappily for the vigilantes, the acts of these men have been recalled to justify an opinion abroad, prejudicial to the vigilante organization. Nothing could be more unjust. The early vigilantes were the best and most intelligent men in the mining regions. They saw and felt that, in the absence of all law, they must become a “law unto themselves,” or submit to the bloody code of the banditti by which they were surrounded, and which was increasing in numbers more rapidly than themselves. Every man among them realized from the first the great delicacy and care necessary in the management of a society which assumed the right to condemn to death a fellow-man. And they now refer to the history of all those men who suffered death by their decree as affording ample justification for the severity of their acts. What else could they do? How else were their own lives and property, and the lives and property of the great body of peaceable miners in the placers to be preserved? What other protection was there for a country entirely destitute of law?
Let those who would condemn these men try to realize how they would act under similar circumstances, and they will soon find everything to approve and nothing to condemn in the transactions of the early vigilantes. I have endeavored to narrate nothing but facts, and these will enable every reader to judge correctly of the merits of each case.
I would fain believe that this history, bloody as it is, will prove both interesting and instructive. In all that concerns crime of the blankest dye on the one hand, and love for law and order on the other, it stands without a parallel in the annals of any people. Nowhere else, nor at any former period since men became civilized, have murder and robbery and social vice presented an organized front, and offered an open contest for supremacy to a large civilized community. Their works for centuries have been done by stealth, in darkness, and as far away from society as possible. I cannot now remember the instance, within the past three hundred years, when the history of any country records the fact that the criminal element of an entire community, numbering thousands, was believed to be greater than the peaceful element. Yet it was so here. And when the vigilantes of Montana entered upon their work, they did not know how soon they might have to encounter a force numerically greater than their own.
In my view the moral of this history is a good one. The brave and faithful conduct of the vigilantes furnishes an example of American character, from a point of view entirely new. We know what our countrymen were capable of doing when exposed to Indian massacre. We have read history after history recording the sufferings of early pioneers in the East, South, and West, but what they would do when surrounded by robbers and assassins, who were in all civil aspects like themselves, it has remained for the first settlers of the North Western mines to tell. And that they did their work well, and showed in every act a love for law, order, and for the moral and social virtues in which they had been educated, and a regard for our free institutions, no one can doubt who rightly appreciates the motives which actuated them.
A people who had not been reared to respect law and order, and to regard the privileges which flow from a free government as greater than all others, in the regulation of society, would have been restrained by fear from any such united and thorough effort as that which in Montana actually scourged crime out of existence, and secured to an unorganized community all the immunities and blessings of good government. The terror which popular justice inspired in the criminal population has never been forgotten. To this day crime has been less frequent in occurrence in Montana than in any other of the new territories, and no banded criminals have made that territory an abiding place.
Although not the first exhibition of vigilante justice, the one I here record was the most thorough and severe, and stands as an example for all new settlements that in the future may be similarly afflicted, for it was not until driven to it both by the frequent and unremitting villanies of the ruffians, and by the necessities of a condition for which there was no law in existence, that the people resorted to measures of their own, and made and enforced laws suited to the exigency. But enough! If the history fails to remove the prejudices of my readers, nothing I can say will do so. It speaks for itself, and though there are a few of its later occurrences I would gladly blot, there is nothing in its early transactions, nothing in the design it unfolds, nothing in the results which have followed, that on a similar occasion I would not wish to see reproduced.
CHAPTER I: SPANISH INTRIGUES.
“The Mississippi river,” says Bancroft, “is the guardian and the pledge of the union of the States of America. Had they been confined to the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, there would have been no geographical unity between them; and the thread of connection between lands that merely fringed the Atlantic must soon have been sundered. The father of rivers gathers his waters from all the clouds that break between the Alleghanies and the farthest ranges of the Rocky Mountains. The ridges of the eastern chain bow their heads at the north and the south, so that long before science became the companion of man, Nature herself pointed out to the barbarous races how short portages join his tributary waters to those of the Atlantic coast. At the other side his mightiest arm interlocks with the arms of the Oregon and the Colorado; and, by the conformation of the earth itself, marshals highways to the Pacific. From his remotest springs he refuses to suffer his waters to be divided; but as he bears them all to the bosom of the ocean, the myriads of flags that wave above his head are all the ensigns of one people. States larger than kingdoms flourish where he passes; and beneath his step cities start into being, more marvellous in their reality than the fabled creations of enchantment. His magnificent valley, lying in the best part of the temperate zone, salubrious and wonderfully fertile, is the chosen muster-ground of the various elements of human culture brought together by men, summoned from all the civilized nations of the earth, and joined in the bonds of common citizenship by the strong invincible attraction of republican freedom. Now that science has come to be the household friend of trade and commerce and travel, and that Nature has lent to wealth and intellect the use of her constant forces, the hills, once walls of division, are scaled or pierced or levelled; and the two oceans, between which the republic has unassailably intrenched itself against the outward world, are bound together across the continent by friendly links of iron. From the grandeur of destiny, foretold by the possession of that river and the lands drained by its waters, the Bourbons of Spain, hoping to act in concert with Great Britain as well as France, would have excluded the United States, totally and forever.”
In the early days of our republic the great national artery, so justly eulogized by our leading historian, was the fruitful cause of the most dangerous intrigues, aimed at the perpetuity of our Union. The inhabitants of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, cut off by the Appalachian range from all commercial intercourse with the Atlantic seaboard, were necessarily dependent upon the Mississippi for access to the markets of the world. The mouth of that river was, as to them, the threshold of subsistence. Extensive possessions, richness of soil, and immensity of production, were of little value, without the means which this great channel alone afforded for the establishment of commercial relations with other nations. The most prolific, as well as most unbounded, region of varied agricultural production in the world was comparatively valueless without this single convenience.
At the time whereof I write the mouth of the Mississippi and the country adjacent was owned and controlled by Spain, then a powerful nation, jealous of her possessions in America, and unfriendly to the young republic which had suddenly sprung into existence on the northern borders of her empire. She had assented to the stipulation in the treaty between Great Britain, the United States, and herself in 1783, in which the independence of our country was recognized, that the navigation of the Mississippi from its source to its mouth should be and remain forever free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States. The privilege, sufficient for ordinary purposes in time of peace, was liable at any moment and on almost any pretence, as we shall hereafter see, to be absolutely denied, or to be hampered with oppressive duties, or to be used for purposes dangerous to the very existence of our government.
The first individual to see the evils which might flow from a dependence upon this outlet to the ocean by the people living west of the Alleghanies, was Washington himself. He had carefully noted the flow of the rivers beyond the Alleghanies, and the portages between them and the rivers flowing down their eastern slope, at the time of his first visit into that region before the Revolution, and was only hindered from forming a company, to unite them by an artificial channel, by the occurrence of the Revolution itself. The year after peace was declared he again visited the country bordering the upper waters of the Ohio, and at this time regarded the improvement, not only of immense importance in its commercial aspect to the States of Maryland and Virginia, but as one of the necessities of government. “He had noticed,” says Mr. Irving, “that the flanks and rear of the United States were possessed by foreign and formidable powers, who might lure the Western people into a trade and alliance with them. The Western States, he observed, stood as it were on a pivot, so that the touch of a feather might turn them any way. They had looked down the Mississippi, and been tempted in that direction by the facilities of sending everything down the stream; whereas they had no means of coming to us but by long land transportation and rugged roads. The jealous and untoward disposition of the Spaniard, it was true, almost barred the use of the Mississippi; but they might change their policy and invite trade in that direction. The retention by the British Government, also, of the posts of Detroit, Niagara, and Oswego, though contrary to the spirit of the treaty, shut up the channel of trade in that quarter” [Irving’s Life of Washington, vol. iv. p. 423].
His views were laid before the legislature of Virginia, and received with such favor that he was induced to repair to Richmond to give them his personal support. His suggestions and representations during this visit gave the first impulse to the great system of internal improvements since pursued throughout the United States.
While Washington was urging upon the people of Virginia the importance of a water communication between the head waters of the Potomac and the Ohio, and had succeeded so far as to effect the organization of two companies under the patronage of the Governments of Maryland and Virginia [Irving’s Life of Washington, vol. iv. p. 427], the people of the Western States, dissatisfied with the tax imposed upon them to pay the interest on the debt of the country to France, were many of them abandoning their dwellings and marching towards the Mississippi, “in order to unite with a certain number of disbanded soldiers, who were anxious to possess themselves of a considerable portion of the territory watered by that river.” Their object was to establish the Western Independence and deny the authority of the American Congress, as McGillivray says in a letter to the governor of Pensacola [Gayarre’s “History of the Spanish Domination in Louisiana,” p. 159]. This Alexander McGillivray, the head chief of the Talapo aches, or Creeks, was a half-breed, the son of Lachland McGillivray, a Scotchman, and a Creek woman. He was educated in Scotland. Pickett, the historian of Alabama, calls him the Talleyrand of Alabama; and Gayarre, in an extended eulogy, says of him: “The individual who, Proteus-like, could in turn, — nay more, who could at the same time, be a British colonel, a Spanish and an American general, a polished gentleman, a Greek and Latin scholar, and a wild Indian chief with the frightful tomahawk at his belt and the war paint on his body, a shrewd politician, a keen-sighted merchant, a skilful speculator, the emperor of the Creeks and Seminoles, the able negotiator with Washington in person and other great men, the writer of papers which would challenge the admiration of the most fastidious — he who could be a Mason among the Christians, and a pagan prophet in the woods; he who could have presents, titles, decorations, showered at the same time upon him from England, Spain, and the United States, and who could so long arrest their encroachments against himself and his nation by playing them like puppets against each other, must be allowed to tower far above the common herd of men.” McGillivray died 17th February, 1793. He was buried with Masonic honors, in the garden of William Panton, in Pensacola. His death spread desolation among his people.
Martin Navarro, the Spanish intendant at New Orleans, united with remarkable sagacity and foresight a jealousy of the American population of the Western States, amounting almost to mania. His policy in regulating commercial intercourse with all neighbors was in the largest degree conciliatory and generous. From the hour of its birth, he predicted with singular accuracy the power and growth of the American republic. In 1786, speaking of the commercial relations between the province of Louisiana and the numerous Indian tribes which owned the adjacent territory, he says: —
“Nothing can be more proper than that the goods they want should be sold them at an equitable price, in order to afford them inducements and facilities for their hunting pursuits, and in order to put it within their means to clothe themselves on fair terms. Otherwise they would prefer trading with the Americans, with whom they would in the end form alliances, which cannot but turn out to be fatal to this province.”
The surplus productions of the Western settlements at this time had grown into a very considerable commerce, which, having no other outlet than the Mississippi, was sent down that river to New Orleans, where it was subjected to unjust and oppressive duties. The flatboat-men complained of the seizures, confiscations, extortions, and imprisonments which in almost every instance were visited upon them by the Spanish authorities. Infuriated by the frequency and flagrant character of these outrages, and denying the right of Spain under the treaty of 1783 in any way to restrict the free navigation of the river, the Western people began seriously to contemplate an open invasion of Louisiana, and a forcible seizure of the port of New Orleans. They laid their grievances before Congress and petitioned that body to renew negotiations with Spain, and secure for them such commercial privileges as were necessary to the very existence of their settlements.
Navarro seconded these views, and writing to his Government says: “The powerful enemies we have to fear in this province are not the English, but the Americans, whom we must oppose by active and sufficient measures.” He then, by a variety of reasons, urges that a restriction of commercial franchises will only increase the embarrassment of Spain. “The only way,” he says, “to check them, is with a proportionate population, and it is not by imposing commercial restrictions that this population is to be acquired, but by granting a prudent extension and freedom of trade.”
By granting the Americans special privileges, donating lands to them, and affording them other subsidies, Navarro hoped to lure them from their allegiance to our Government. Very many, yielding to these inducements, moved their families into the Spanish province, and became willing subjects of His Catholic Majesty. The majority of those who remained, owing to the repeated failures and rebuffs they had suffered in their efforts to obtain free commercial privileges, were forced at length to consider the idea of forming a new and independent republic of their own. Their separation by distance and mountain barriers from the Atlantic States rendered all commercial intercourse impracticable between the two portions of the country. They were surrounded by savages, against whose murderous attacks their Government was unable to afford them adequate protection, and their commerce was burdened with oppressive and ruinous duties before it could gain access to the markets of the world. Besides these considerations, they were oppressed with heavy taxation to pay the interest on the great war-debt to France. These reasons, to any one who can identify himself with the period of our history now under review, would certainly seem sufficient to overcome a patriotism which had always been measured by the amount of sacrifice it was capable of making without any return. Our Government, still under the old confederacy, no longer bound by the cohesive elements of the war, was ready to fall to pieces, because of its inherent weakness. The majority of the people, both East and West, had little confidence in its stability. The leading patriots of the Revolution, alarmed at the frequent and threatening demonstrations of revolt made in all parts of the country, were at a loss to know how to avoid a final disruption.
“What, then,” says Washington in a letter to John Jay, “is to be done? Things cannot go on in the same strain forever. It is much to be feared, as you observe, that the better kind of people, being disgusted with the circumstances, will have their minds prepared for any revolution whatever. We are apt to run from one extreme to another. … I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking, then acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous! What a triumph for our enemies to verify their predictions! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious.” [Irving’s Washington, vol. iv. p. 450.]
It was when the country was in this condition that the idea of a separate independence took form among the people west of the Alleghanies. Want of unanimity in the adoption of a basis for the new republic only prevented its organization; for as soon as the question came under serious consideration, no less than five parties appeared, each claiming its plan to be the only one suited to the purposes in view.
“The first was for being independent of the United States, and for the formation of a new republic unconnected with the old one, and resting on a basis of its own, and a close alliance with Spain.
“Another party was willing that the country should become a part of the province of Louisiana, and submit to the admission of the laws of Spain.
“A third desired a war with Spain and the seizure of New Orleans.
“A fourth plan was to prevail on Congress, by a show of preparation for war, to extort from the cabinet of Madrid what it persisted in refusing.
“The last, as unnatural as the second, was to solicit France to procure a retrocession of Louisiana, and to extend her protection to Kentucky.” [Judge Martin’s Hist. of Louisiana, vol. ii. p. 10.]
Encouraged in their designs to lure the Western people into Louisiana, by this public evidence of their disaffection toward their own country, the Spanish authorities from this moment conceived the idea of working a dismemberment of our confederacy and attaching the vast country west of the Alleghanies to the other Hispano-American possessions. Separate plans for effecting this object were formed by Miro, the governor of Louisiana, and Gardoquoi, the Spanish minister at Philadelphia. These officials were jealous of each other, and though partners in design, frequently clashed in their measures.
In June, 1787, General James Wilkinson, an officer of the Revolution, who had emigrated to the West a few months before, descended the Mississippi to New Orleans, with a cargo of flour, tobacco, butter, and bacon. His boat having been seized, Wilkinson, after a protracted interview with Governor Miro, parted from him with an order for its release and permission to sell his cargo free of duty. This arch-intriguer was permitted, during the entire period that his negotiations with Miro were in progress, to enjoy all the privileges of the New Orleans market free of duty. He sold large cargoes of tobacco, flour, and butter to the Spanish authorities on different occasions, and received from Miro very large sums of money at various times, to aid him in the work of dismemberment. We learn that at one time he sought to become a Spanish subject, but was dissuaded by Miro, who, while he loved the treason, hated the traitor. At another time, in the midst of his intrigues, he besought Miro to obtain for him a portion of the country to which he could flee to escape the vengeance which would pursue him, in case his diabolical acts should be discovered by Washington. He remained in New Orleans until September. During that period, at Miro’s request, he furnished him with his views in writing of the political interests of Spain and the Western people. This document strongly advocated the free navigation of the Mississippi, and was sent to Madrid for the perusal of the king. But it was intended simply as a blind, to conceal the inception of an intrigue between Miro and Wilkinson for the separation of the Western settlements from the Union, and their adherence to Spain. It was soon ascertained that, coincident with the submission of this document, Wilkinson presented another to Miro, containing different representations, which was not made public.
In the meantime, Gardoquoi, acting without Miro’s compliance, had invited the people of Kentucky and the region bordering the Cumberland river to establish themselves under the protection of Spain in West Florida, and the Florida district of lower Louisiana, offering as inducements that they might hold slaves, stock, provisions for two years, farming utensils and implements, without paying any duty whatever, and enjoy their own religion. Allured by these promises, many Americans removed to Louisiana and became Spanish subjects. To encourage this work of emigration, Gardoquoi made a concession of a vast tract of land, seventy miles below the mouth of the Ohio, to Col. George Morgan upon his proposition to settle it with a large number of immigrants. In pursuance of this purpose, Morgan afterwards laid the foundations of a city there, which, in compliment to Spain, he called New Madrid.
Gardoquoi, fearful lest his plans might be disturbed by Miro, sent an agent to New Orleans to obtain for them the support of that functionary. Miro was deeply embroiled in the intrigue with Wilkinson — an enterprise, if successful, that would prove vastly more important than that of Gardoquoi. Concealing his purpose from the latter, Miro, on one pretext and another, avoided committing himself to plans which were certain, if prosecuted, to clash with his own. In January, 1788, he wrote to V aides, the minister for the department of the Indies: —
“I have been reflecting for many days whether it would not be proper to communicate to D’Arges (Gardoquoi’s agent) Wilkinson’s plans, and to Wilkinson the mission of D’Arges, in order to unite them and dispose them to work in concert. . . . The delivering up of Kentucky into His Majesty’s hands, which is the main object to which Wilkinson has promised to devote himself entirely, would forever constitute this province a rampart for the protection of New Spain.”
In the course of this intrigue, Gardoquoi’s agent stipulated to lead 1582 Kentucky families into the Natchez district. Miro ordered Grandpre, the governor of Natchez, to make concessions of land to each family on its arrival, and require them to take the following oath: “We the undersigned do swear, on the Holy Evangelists, entire fealty, vassalage, and loyalty to His Catholic Majesty, wishing voluntarily to live under his laws, promising not to act either directly or indirectly against his real interest, and to give immediate information to our commandants of all that may come to our knowledge, of whatever nature it may be, if prejudicial to the welfare of Spain in general and to that of this province in particular, in defence of which we hold ourselves ready to take up arms, on the first summons of our chiefs, and particularly in the defence of this district against whatever forces may come from the upper part of the river Mississippi, or from the interior of the continent.”
“Whilst presenting to them these considerations,” writes Miro, “you will carefully observe the manner in which they shall receive them, and the expression of their faces. Of this you will give me precise information, every time that you send me the original oaths taken.”
In furtherance of his enterprise, Wilkinson spent several months in the Atlantic States, after leaving New Orleans. He wrote to Miro in cipher, on his return to the West, that all his predictions were verifying themselves. “Not a measure,” he says, “is taken on both sides of the mountains which does not conspire to favor ours.” About the same time he wrote to Gardoquoi in order to allay his suspicions. Receiving from Miro no immediate reply to his letter, he sent a cargo of produce down the river in charge of Major Isaac Dunn, whom he accredited to Miro as a fit auxiliary in the execution of their political designs. Dunn assured the Spanish governor that Kentucky would separate entirely from the Federal Union the next year.
While these schemes were in progress, the settlers in the district of Cumberland, reduced to extremities by the frequent and bloody invasions of the Indians south of them, sent delegates to Alexander McGillivray, head chief of the tribes, to declare their willingness to throw themselves into the arms of His Catholic Majesty, as subjects. They said that Congress could neither protect their persons or property, or favor their commerce, and that they were desirous to free themselves from all allegiance to a power incapable of affording the smallest benefit in return.
One of the difficult questions for the Spanish authorities to settle with the people they expected to lure to their embrace was that of religion. Spain was not only Catholic, but she had not abandoned the Inquisition, as a means of torturing the rest of the world into a confession of that faith. Gardoquoi had promised all immigrants into Louisiana freedom of religious opinion. Miro, willing to make some concessions, would not concede entire freedom. Just at the time that a promise had been made of a large emigration from the western settlements, Miro received a letter from the Reverend Capuchin Antonio de Sedella, informing him that he had been appointed commissary of the Inquisition, and that, in order to carry his instructions into perfect execution, he might soon, at some late hour of the night, deem it necessary to require some guards to assist him in his operations. A few hours afterwards, while this inquisitor was reposing, he was roused by an alarm. Starting up, he met an officer and a file of grenadiers, who, he supposed, had come to obey his orders. “My friends,” said he, “I thank you and his excellency for the readiness of this compliance with my request. But I have no use for your services, and you shall be warned in time when you are wanted. Retire, then, with the blessing of God.” The surprise of the Holy Father may be conceived when told that he was under arrest. “What!” he exclaimed, “will you dare lay hands on a commissary of the Holy Inquisition?”
“I dare obey orders,” was the stern reply, — and Father de Sedella was immediately conducted on board a vessel, which sailed the next day for Cadiz.
Miro, writing to one of the members of the cabinet of Madrid, concerning this unceremonious removal, says: “The mere name of the Inquisition, uttered in New Orleans, would be sufficient, not only to check immigration, which is successfully progressing, but would also be capable of driving away those who have recently come, and I even fear that in spite of my having sent out of the country Father Sedella, the most fatal consequences may ensue from the mere suspicion of the cause of his dismissal.” This was the first and last attempt of the Spaniards to plant the Inquisition in North America.
In the midst of these intrigues and schemes, Navarro, the talented intendant, was recalled by his Government, and returned to Spain. The two offices of governor and intendant thus became united in Miro. In his last official despatch, Navarro expressed his views of the province with considerable detail. He depicted the dangers which Spain had to fear from the United States, — predicting that the “new-born giant would not be satisfied until he extended his domains across the continent, and bathed his vigorous young limbs in the placid waters of the Pacific.” A severance of the Union was, in his opinion, the only way this could be prevented. This was not difficult, if the present circumstances were turned to advantage. “Grant,” said he, “every sort of commercial privilege to the masses in the Western region, and shower pensions and honors on the leaders.”
While actively engaged in the prosecution of his intrigue with Miro, we learn from a letter written to that official in February, 1789, that in October of the previous year Wilkinson met with Col. Connelly, a British officer, who, he says, “had travelled through the woods to the mouth of the river Big Miami, from which he came down the Ohio in a boat.” He claimed to be an emissary of Lord Dorchester, the governor-general of Canada. Ignorant of Wilkinson’s secret negotiations with Miro, he met him by invitation, at his house, and upon Wilkinson’s assurance of regard for the interests of His Britannic Majesty, Connelly unfolded to him the object of his mission. He informed Wilkinson that Great Britain was desirous of assisting the Western settlers in their efforts to open the navigation of the Mississippi. She would join them to dispossess Spain of Louisiana, and as the forces in Canada were too small to supply detachments for the purpose. Lord Dorchester would, in place thereof, supply our men with all the implements of war, and with money, clothing, etc., to equip an array of ten thousand. Wilkinson, in his letter to Miro, says: “After having pumped out of him all that I wished to know, I began to weaken his hopes by observing that the feelings of animosity engendered by the late Revolution were so recent in the hearts of the Americans that I considered it impossible to entice them into an alliance with Great Britain; that in this district, particularly in that part of it where the inhabitants had suffered so much from the barbarous hostilities of the Indians, which were attributed to British influence, the resentment of every individual was much more intense and implacable. In order to justify this opinion of mine I employed a hunter, who feigned attempting his life. The pretext assumed by the hunter was the avenging the death of his son, murdered by the Indians at the supposed instigation of the English. As I hold the commission of a civil judge, it was of course to be my duty to protect him against the pretended murderer, whom I caused to be arrested and held in custody. I availed myself of this circumstance to communicate to Connelly my fear of not being able to answer for the security of his person, and I expressed my doubts whether he could escape with his life. It alarmed him so much that he begged me to give him an escort to conduct him out of the territory, which I readily assented to, and on the 20th of November he recrossed the Ohio on his way back to Detroit.”
Such was the influence of Wilkinson with the people of the districts of Kentucky and Cumberland, that between the years 1786 and 1792 he thwarted them four times in their designs to invade Louisiana, after preparations had been made for that purpose. His object was to unite the Western settlements with Spain, — not to maintain the integrity of the Federal Union. Circumstances which had occurred several years before this time gave birth to another intrigue of remarkable character, which developed itself in the fall of 1788. The Western portion of North Carolina, known as the Washington District, in 1786 declared itself independent, and organized a government under the name of the State of Frankland. Congress interfered, put an end to the new State, and restored the country to North Carolina. Indignant at the interposition, the secessionists 23ersisted in their designs, and through their displaced governor, on the 12th of September, informed the Spanish minister, Gardoquoi, that they “were unanimous in their vehement desire to form an alliance and treaty of commerce with Spain, and put themselves under her protection.” The settlers of Cumberland river, who were also under the jurisdiction of North Carolina, gave the name of Miro to a district they had formed, as evidence of their partiality for the Spanish Government. The promise of protection which the inhabitants of the two districts received from Gardoquoi was so modified by Miro that the scheme, though prosecuted for a time with great vigor, finally failed from inability on the part of the secessionists to comply with the conditions of recognition.
A company composed of Alexander Moultrie, Isaac Huger, Major William Snipes, Colonel Washington, and other distinguished South Carolinans was formed at Charleston in 1789, which purchased from the State of Georgia 52,900 square miles of territory, extending from the Yazoo to the banks of the Mississippi near Natchez. The Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Spain claimed a portion of this territory. The ulterior designs of the company in the purchase and settlement of the country were carefully concealed for some time. Wilkinson, who was still engaged in the effort to dismember the Union, having heard of this purchase, lost no time in communicating his views to the company and expressing a desire to co-operate with them as their agent. At the same time he addressed a letter to Miro, in which, after telling him that he had applied to the company for an agency, he says: —
“If I succeed, I am persuaded that I shall experience no difficulty in adding their establishment to the domains of His Majesty, and this they will soon discover to be to their interest. . . . You will have the opportunity to modify the plan of the company as your judgment and prudence will suggest, and the interest of the King may require. I will keep you informed of every movement which I shall observe, and it will be completely in your power to break up the projected settlement, by inciting the Choctaws to incommode the colonists, who will thus be forced to move off and to establish themselves under your government.”
Wilkinson’s application for an agency was declined, because of the appointment of Dr. O’Fallon before it was received. He wrote to Miro on the subject of the company’s purposes. After speaking of the dissatisfaction of the members of the company with the Federal Government, he states that he has induced them to become subjects of Spain, “under the appearance of a free and independent state, forming a rampart for the adjoining Spanish territories, and establishing with them an eternal reciprocal alliance offensive and defensive. This,” he continues, “for a beginning, when once secured with the greatest secrecy, will serve, I am fully persuaded, as an example to be followed by the settlements on the western side of the mountains, which will separate from the Atlantic portion of the Confederacy, because, on account of the advantages which they will expect from the privilege of trading with our colony under the protection of Spain, they will unite with it in the same manner, and as closely as are the Atlantic States with France, receiving from it every assistance in war, and relying on its power in the moment of danger.”
In a letter written to Miro on the 20th of June, Wilkinson fully endorses the plans of the company. Miro submits to the Court at Madrid the documents unfolding these plans, accompanied by a despatch in which he sums up the advantages and disadvantages of “taking a foreign state to board with us.” When near the conclusion, he explains how he has excited the hostility and secured the opposition of all the Indian tribes to the Americans. “I have recommended them,” says he, “to remain quiet, and told them if these people presented themselves with a view to settle on their lands, then to make no concessions, and to warn them off; but to attack them in case they refused to withdraw; and I have promised that I would supply them with powder and ball to defend their legitimate rights.”
Both Louisiana and the United States became at this time apprehensive that an invasion of the former would be attempted by the British from Canada. Such an event would impose upon our Government the necessity of determining a course proper to be pursued, should a passage be asked by Great Britain for his troops through our territory or should that passage be made without permission. The opportunity was deemed favorable to the prosecution of our claim to the navigation of the Mississippi, and negotiations were opened with Spain for the purchase of the Island of New Orleans and the Floridas, — but Spain declined our offer of friendship, the only consideration we were then able to give, and the project failed. Miro’s administration terminated in 1791. He was succeeded by the Baron de Carondelet.
Such was the confidence inspired in the Government by the adoption of the Constitution, and the firm and watchful administration of Washington, that, not only in the Eastern States, but in the Western districts also, all intrigues, cabals, and schemes of dismemberment, during the first three years of Carondelet’s administration, had seemingly expired. A brighter era had dawned upon the country; hope had taken the place of doubt in the minds of the people, and the old patriotism, which had borne us through the Revolution, reinstated loyalty in the bosoms of thousands, whose thoughts had been for years ripening for revolt. But the danger was not all over. Some discontented and some ambitious spirits yet remained in the West. Great Britain cast a greedy eye occasionally at the mouth of the Mississippi, and poor torn, bleeding France, which had just murdered her King, sent a sufficient number of her maniac population to our shores to keep the spirit of misrule in action.
Early in the year 1794 a society of French Jacobins, established in Philadelphia, sent a circular to Louisiana which was widely distributed among the French population of the province, appealing to them to take up arms and cast off the Spanish yoke. The alarm which this gave the Baron de Carondelet was increased by a knowledge of the efforts put forth by Genet, the French minister to the United States, to organize and lead an expedition of French and Americans against Louisiana. Armed bands had assembled upon the Georgia frontier to join it, and French emissaries were everywhere stirring up the Western people to aid in the invasion. New Orleans was strongly fortified, and the grim visage of war was again wrinkled for the conflict.
Fear of invasion over, Carondelet addressed himself with great vigor to the unfinished schemes of Miro for dismembering the Union and winning over the Western settlements to Spain. Meantime, the negotiations so long pending between our Government and Spain, on the 20th of October, 1795, culminated in the Treaty of Madrid. By this treaty a boundary line was established between the United States and the Floridas. Spain also conceded to our people the free navigation of the Mississippi from its source to the sea, and agreed to permit them, “for the term of three years, to use the port of New Orleans as a place of deposit for their produce and merchandise, and export the same free from duty or charge, except a reasonable consideration to be paid for storage and other incidental expenses; that the term of three years may, by subsequent negotiation be extended; or, instead of that town, some other point in the island of New Orleans shall be designated as a place of deposit for the American trade.”
It was believed by the provincial authorities that this treaty was formed for the purpose of propitiating the neutrality of our Government in the event of a war, at that time imminent between Great Britain and Spain. They had no faith in its permanency, or that its provisions would be observed by Spain after her European embarrassments had been settled. Instead of arresting, it had the effect to stimulate the efforts of Carondelet in his favorite plan for the acquisition of the Western settlements. He made proposals to Sebastian, Innis, and other early associates of Wilkinson, and through his emissaries approached Wilkinson himself with promises, but it was too late. The Union had become consolidated. The wise counsels of Washington allayed discontent, and the successful campaign of Wayne had given assurance of protection. Wilkinson and his associates, foiled in the designs formed and conducted under more favorable auspices, whatever their aspirations might have been, were too sagacious to revive an enterprise which neither policy nor necessity could excuse, and which a vigilant government was sure to punish. After a few more struggles the Spanish authorities, on the 26th of May, 1798, surrendered to Wilkinson, who, by the death of Wayne, had been promoted, the territory claimed by the Treaty of Madrid, and the Spanish power in America from that moment began to decline.
Morales, the Spanish intendant, construing the letter of the treaty strictly, on the 17th of July, 1799, chose to consider that three years had elapsed since its ratification, and, for the purpose of crippling the commerce of the Western people, issued an order prohibiting the use of New Orleans as a place of deposit by them, without designating in accordance with the treaty any other suitable point. This measure aroused the indignation of the West. An expedition against New Orleans was openly contemplated. President Adams ordered three regiments of regulars to the Ohio, with instructions to have in readiness a sufficient number of boats to convey the troops to New Orleans. Twelve new regiments were added to the army, and an invasion seemed inevitable, and would most certainly have been attempted, had not indications of a popular determination to elect Mr. Jefferson to the Presidency caused the postponement of a project which could not be completed before the close of Mr. Adams’ administration.
No public documents of the period, accessible to me, speak of the suspension by the Spaniards of this prohibitory order, but from the fact that it was renewed afterwards, as we shall have occasion to notice, there can be no doubt that terms of accommodation satisfactory to the Western people were for the time agreed upon.
Napoleon, at this time First Consul, cast a longing eye at the mouth of the Mississippi. His ministers had been instructed to obtain all possible information concerning Louisiana. M. de Pontalba, who had passed an official residence of many years in Louisiana, prepared at their request a very remarkable memoir on the history and resources of that province, which was presented to the French Directory on the 10th of September, 1800. On the 1st of October following, a treaty between France and Spain was concluded at St. Ildephonso, of which the third article is in the following words: —
“His Catholic Majesty promises and engages to retrocede to the French Republic, six months after the full and entire execution of the above conditions and stipulations, relative to His Royal Highness the Duke of Parma, the colony or province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it ought to be after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and the other States.”
France being at war with England when this treaty was concluded, it was carefully concealed, lest England, then mistress of the seas, should take the country from her.
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