“The Militia of Georgia Will Do It in a Fortnight”
The executive branch closely monitored news out of Europe, but it was in Congress that headlines were made. The 1809–10 winter session witnessed vigorous debate in both houses over England and France, America’s commercial life, and national honor. What he read irritated Madison, who wrote at the end of January to a group of Maryland Republicans that national unity was the only means of securing respect for “our National character & rights.” If foreigners were encouraged by “internal discords & distrusts,” then safety, honor, and the national interest would all be endangered. To William Pinkney, still trying to negotiate with the British, Madison blamed Congress for its “passive spirit” and predicted a pendulum shift in the next session when it became clear that Britain would respond only to measures that had bite: “Every new occasion seems to countenance the belief, that there lurks in the British Cabinet, a hostile feeling towards this Country, which will never be eradicated … but by some dreadful pressure from external or internal causes.”35
Madison wrote to Pinkney just as Congress repealed the Non-Intercourse Act and replaced it with Macon’s Bill no. 2, named after North Carolina Republican Nathaniel Macon. This clever but ultimately inconclusive piece of legislation was designed to exert psychological pressure on England and France by restarting formal trade between the United States and the two belligerents in anticipation of the Europeans’ removal of restrictions against the United States. It did so while stipulating that Washington was prepared to reimpose sanctions on whichever of the two would not comply or attacked neutral commerce. The French responded with what turned out to be a hollow gesture: announcing an intention to abide by Macon no. 2 and requesting that the Madison administration do its part by reinvoking nonintercourse with Britain. Madison, who did not expect London to rescind the Orders in Council to begin with, and who had written Pinkney that he was “equally distrustful” of France, fell for Napoleon’s gambit nonetheless and played into French hands.36
If there was one piece of communication that mirrored the state of Madison’s mind during these months, it was that which he received from his attorney general, Caesar A. Rodney of Delaware. The son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Rodney had come to Jefferson’s attention in 1802, after winning a seat in the House. He actively supported Jefferson’s effort to impeach Justice Samuel Chase. Upon Rodney’s defeat at the polls, Jefferson appointed him attorney general, and he retained that position when Madison became president.
Rodney’s supportive letter was more the work of a stirring essayist than that of a legal adviser. “We live in an age without precedent in history,” he wrote, “a solitary neutral, amid a warring world.” International law had come to be irrelevant in the face of “arbitrary orders & decrees of the belligerents.” He condemned a world that would force America to stand alone on principle: “It is in this unexampled state of things, that we are struggling to preserve the moral rule of action.” For Rodney, the choice was clear and there was no turning back: “If we unsheathe our sword, I am most decidedly for selecting our foe … England is our old & inveterate enemy. She has done us more injury. The impressment of our seamen alone is worse than all we have sustained from France.” For this attorney general, it was worth plunging the nation into war just to protect the doctrine of neutral rights. He too believed strongly in the efficacy of privateers as a counterforce to the all-powerful Royal Navy.37
At this point President Madison finally proved himself an unabashed expansionist. To demonstrate, we must begin by asking a seemingly obfuscating question: Who was the Virginian Fulwar Skipwith, and how did he become, ever so briefly, the head of government of an independent republic in North America? In 1810 Skipwith had lived in the neighborhood of Baton Rouge, then a part of West Florida, for only one year when he emerged as the beneficiary of a rebellion against Spanish rule.
In more ways than one, the West Florida Republic foreshadowed that of the Republic of Texas a quarter-century later—including the symbol on its flag, a lone star. The difference between the two minirepublics was Mexican independence from Spain, which occurred well after the West Florida events and long before Texas separated itself. Also of historical note, the ordinarily aggressive president Andrew Jackson proved reluctant, in 1836, to trigger war with Mexico by annexing Texas (annexation did not occur until 1845); and the ordinarily law-abiding James Madison, the president of the United States in 1810, did not wish to wait nine years to annex Spanish territory.
Fulwar Skipwith was well known within the Madison-Jefferson circle. As a young attorney, courting his future wife, Jefferson had been friendly with the Skipwith clan. Patty Jefferson’s half sister married Henry Skipwith, and when Jefferson became an executor of the estate of Patty’s father, he carried on an extensive correspondence with Henry over their common problems as inheritors of John Wayles’s debt. Jefferson most likely came to know his legal protégé and secretary in Paris, William Short, through the Skipwiths: Fulwar was William’s cousin and confidant, Henry his uncle, and they all had financial dealings.
In the mid-1780s, when Jefferson and Short went to Paris, Fulwar Skipwith went to London as a representative of Virginia tobacco merchants, placing clients’ tobacco on the market and overseeing shipments. Jefferson relied on him for occasional favors. More important, when James Monroe sailed to Paris in 1794, at the behest of President Washington, Skipwith accompanied him as secretary of the legation. He remained in Paris for several years after Monroe returned home, rising to U.S. consul general. When Monroe sailed again to France to assist Robert Livingston in managing the Louisiana Purchase, Skipwith was his main contact. An insider to the negotiations, Skipwith was clear when it came to U.S. designs on the Floridas. He understood that no precise delimitation of West Florida’s boundary was ever made, though Monroe had requested it of the French.
Skipwith had a temper. He tangled with Robert Livingston, whose personal honor was wounded as a result of Skipwith’s actions—the consul general, technically Livingston’s subordinate, engaged in discussions with the French to which Livingston was not immediately privy, and wrote to then–Secretary of State Madison on his own. Livingston responded by reducing Skipwith’s salary. Madison was concerned enough about the incident to raise it with President Jefferson.
In 1806 a new round of discussions over the future of West Florida took place in Paris between U.S. representatives and Napoleon. Skipwith was front and center. So was special envoy James Monroe, with whom he again cooperated closely. The pair found themselves equally at odds with Robert Livingston and John Armstrong, who were not only New Yorkers but also brothers-in-law. In succeeding Livingston as U.S. minister, the notoriously prickly Armstrong questioned Skipwith’s financial ethics. This occasioned Monroe, at the start of 1809, to attest to Skipwith’s “perfect integrity and patriotism.” The Virginians were sticking together.38
With his knack for irritating important people, Fulwar Skipwith relocated to West Florida later that year. But before his removal to Baton Rouge, he paid a visit to the State Department in Washington, and we must presume he called on the president. As he was establishing himself as a Louisiana cotton planter and making himself known to his neighbors, it is unclear whether he was in communication with Madison or Monroe. Were they at all surprised, in November 1810, when Skipwith was named governor of the newly self-proclaimed West Florida Republic? It appears not. But if no paper trail exists to suggest that Madison directed Skipwith to do anything, the events that occurred did eventually play into the president’s hands.
In the months leading up to the West Florida takeover, Madison and Jefferson were both giving considerable attention to the politically stressed, militarily vital region where Skipwith had gone. West Florida was a prize oft-mentioned, a prize yet to be won; and New Orleans was an obvious target for an invader, if war were to occur. At the same time Jefferson necessarily brought President Madison in on his nasty little legal battle with Edward Livingston ove
r ownership of the batture, disputed land on the fringes of the Crescent City. Back in 1803, when he was mayor of New York and his brother was in Paris, one of Livingston’s clerks had misused government funds and left a shortfall in the tens of thousands of dollars. Additionally, Edward Livingston was one of five legal scholars to offer advice to the Spanish minister, a business that placed him at odds with the Jefferson administration. At the time Madison and Gallatin urged Jefferson to hold Livingston accountable, and to prosecute him, if feasible, under a law barring ordinary citizens from entering into diplomacy.
The disgraced mayor arrived in Louisiana not long afterward (allegedly with only $100 in cash) and rebuilt his career and reputation in no time flat. Flash-forward to1810, when he interrupted the third president’s retirement by bringing suit against him, because, as president, Jefferson had contended that some valuable batture land Livingston had purchased for himself was public and not private property. The politics of land was, as always in early America, a tangled web.
The situation gets even more complicated. As a longtime supporter of fellow New Yorker Aaron Burr, Edward Livingston bore little sympathy toward Governor Claiborne of the Territory of Orleans, the native Virginian whom Jefferson had appointed and whom Madison left in charge of territorial politics. In May 1810 Claiborne made the long trip to Washington in order to meet with Madison. Not surprisingly, then, Madison reflected the southern governor’s perspective when referring to the anti-Claiborne faction as a “combination” whose aims were not entirely clear. New Yorkers versus Virginians.
That summer the battles involving personalities and politics enlarged. Madison was in regular touch with the Department of State over fallout from the bitter dispute that had earlier occurred between Skipwith and Armstrong in Paris. In mid-August Jefferson was at Montpelier, and just after he departed, the National Intelligencer reprinted a proposed constitution for West Florida, put together by area settlers. (Skipwith may or may not have been directly associated with this document.) Reading intelligence communicated to him by Harry Toulmin, a superior court judge in the Mississippi Territory, Madison expressed concern about the region’s volatility and sent Toulmin’s letter to the State Department, saying it was of pressing interest. This prompted further discussion about the means to suppress filibustering enterprises against the Spanish.
By mid-September ideas gave way to what is today referred to as actionable intelligence. Madison learned of the burning hunger for revolution among Americans in West Florida. He knew (or assumed) that something was to be staged in the hope that the United States would respond with military aid. But the anxious West Florida plotters also acknowledged that significant numbers in the region leaned toward Great Britain, and still others were not prepared to forswear allegiance to the Spanish Crown. In mid-September, before returning to Washington, Madison visited Monticello. Claiborne had not yet left the East Coast. Madison sent word to the acting governor of the territory to keep a “wakeful eye” on Baton Rouge, but nothing more.39
To bring down Spanish colonial rule, a band of American rebels attacked the garrison at Baton Rouge, on the banks of the Mississippi, and forced the Spanish out. Militia loyal to the Spanish were stripped of their weapons and placed under house arrest. On October 27, in convention, the rebels approved a constitution. Three weeks later Fulwar Skipwith was elected governor. His talents were well enough known even before the rebellion that he had been put forward for a judgeship on the highest court of the territory. At that time the Spanish governor rejected his nomination on the grounds that he had been a resident for too short a time and, no less meaningfully, that Skipwith had never declared his loyalty to Spain. Soon afterward the former U.S. consul in Paris was helping to declare West Florida independent.
The declaration he issued was based on natural rights doctrine, stating that because Spain was in political turmoil, responsibility for West Florida’s protection was returned to its people. It was not quite as convincing as Jefferson’s grand appeal to the “candid world” in 1776, but Skipwith knew how to dress a text in colorful garb: “Having been abandoned by a sovereign, whose system and principles of colonization grew up in the past ages of bigotry and persecution; our rights of self-government will not be contested.” So he told the assembled legislators of the new republic in his inaugural address.40
Madison had to appear to honor America’s proclaimed neutrality. He pretended to distance himself from what was happening in Baton Rouge, until the smoke had cleared. As soon as he could, though, he issued a presidential proclamation asserting that the United States already had title to this territory on the strength of the Louisiana Purchase. He made this announcement on October 27, by coincidence the same day that a convention in West Florida adopted a constitution. In his decree, Madison stated that the land from the River Perdido (situated between Pensacola and Mobile) to the Mississippi was a part of the purchase. The United States had not taken possession of it before but would now. It was, he said, “a satisfactory adjustment, too long delayed” and “suspended by events.”
Madison’s claim was debatable. In fact Spain did not agree, and would not agree, to America’s interpretation of the Louisiana Purchase until James Monroe was president. Annexation took place because England and France were otherwise engaged—in 1810 West Florida was a meaningless distraction from the war in Europe. Still, in the mind of Madison no less than Jefferson, the entire Gulf Coast remained potentially an operational base for hostile Europeans. He had acted accordingly.41
The West Florida Republic elected its governor and legislature in late November. The next month, back in the region, Governor Claiborne presented Madison’s proclamation to Fulwar Skipwith. At first Skipwith balked. But Claiborne talked sense into his fellow Virginian, and the West Florida Republic breathed its last. In later years Skipwith told the story differently, asserting that he had always looked favorably upon the president’s policy of immediate annexation of the territory. The precise truth—what went on behind the scenes—cannot be known.
Madison floated the idea that East Florida might also be wrested from Spain during his presidency, though preferably through negotiation. Just after West Florida’s annexation, he gave Georgia’s seventy-one-year-old former governor, George Mathews, the leeway to negotiate with the Spanish for East Florida. In the spirit of the times, Mathews, in spite of his advanced age, interpreted his instructions as permission to lead an army south and to take the land by force if necessary.
Of Irish extraction, Virginia born and Georgia bred, General George Mathews was thoroughly familiar with the Georgia-Florida border, East and West Florida. He had fought the Shawnees in 1774, was wounded on a Revolutionary battlefield, and languished on a British prison ship for two years before witnessing the Yorktown surrender ceremony. Though tarred by his association with the Yazoo fraud, he continued to have friends in high places. Madison had served with Mathews in the First Congress. At a meeting in the President’s House in early 1811, Mathews outlined the dangers emanating from a pro-British faction in East Florida, and Madison listened.
From that point on, as Madison kept his ear to the ground, Mathews remained ready and eager. At the first opportunity he tried to engineer a rebellion in St. Augustine and install a friendly government. But the candidates Mathews had in mind were wary of him and revealed his plot to Spanish authorities. Whether the plot was officially sanctioned or a self-supporting filibuster did not matter to old George Mathews. He wanted to move in and to turn over East Florida to the United States. The Spanish consul, Juan de Onís, caught wind of what was happening and strongly protested. He wanted to know whether Mathews represented the Madison administration.42
“I go to St. Augustine,” Mathews declared, just as the administration realized it had to disavow his activities. “From there our victorious men move on Mobile and Pensacola. But we will not stop. On to Venezuela, to rout the autocratic Spaniards and plant the flag of freedom over all of South America.” It was the wrong time to rely on intimida
tion as a regular form of policy, and Madison knew it.43
In the case of the West Florida Republic, Madison had felt less encumbered. Baton Rouge was only nominally Spanish. In that sense, he had a good understanding of what Burr’s alleged conspiracy had really been about—like Skipwith’s ploy, it was concerned with growth opportunities in southeastern Louisiana and the volatility of Spanish lands generally. In authorizing Governor Claiborne to intercede in Baton Rouge, Madison was generally wary of what could happen when land-hungry frontier types joined their fortunes to a fearless expansionist. He wanted to take no chances that what Burr was thought to have been plotting might occur again under Skipwith’s auspices and spin out of control. In truth, then, Madison was doing in West Florida just what Burr had wanted: permitting a filibuster to open the door to territorial annexation.
Madison committed the United States to the filibuster and gave Skipwith an honorable way out. He could do this because both Claiborne and Skipwith were Virginians—politically nonthreatening ones, at that. Burr, of course, was a New Yorker and a latent threat to Jefferson’s vision of a Virginia Dynasty. Had the battle-hardened Colonel Burr, a company commander during the Revolution, taken Mexico, his political fortunes in the United States might well have revived. Jefferson, as president, had acted out of fear and distrust, doing all he could to scare off any who might otherwise have glorified Burr. Charging Burr with treason and putting him on trial—a political show trial—backfired on him; Marshall had seen to that. In 1810 Madison was at the helm, less impulsive than his predecessor had been three years before. The result was the disempowerment of Fulwar Skipwith and his fellows and the successful incorporation of a piece of Spanish territory.
As for Jefferson, whose retirement was meant to take him out of politics, Baton Rouge appeared to be a clear harbinger of things to come. He advocated a forward policy when he wrote to his former son-in-law John Wayles Eppes, the cousin and husband of his late daughter Maria, and a member of Congress since 1803. Just as Mathews was meeting with Madison in Washington, and aware that Eppes was to be in charge of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Jefferson urged action: “I wish you would authorise the President to take possession of East Florida immediately.” He was convinced that as soon as England learned that Baton Rouge was taken, it would move on Florida—from St. Augustine on the Atlantic west to Pensacola—and do it “pretendedly for Spain.”
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