The Winning of the West

by Theodore Roosevelt

  Blount, the Governor of the Southwestern Territory, acted as vigorously and patriotically as St. Clair and Wayne, and his conduct showed in marked contrast to Shelby’s. He possessed far too much political good sense not to be disgusted with the conduct of Genet, which he denounced in unmeasured terms. He expressed great pleasure when Washington summarily rebuked the blatant French envoy. He explained to the Tennesseeans that Genet had as his chief backers the disappointed office-hunters and other unsavory characters in New York and in the seacoast cities, but that the people at large were beginning to realize what the truth was, and to show a proper feeling for the President and his government.9 Some of the Cumberland people, becoming excited by the news of Clark’s preparation, prepared to join him, or to undertake a separate filibustering attack on their own account. Blount immediately wrote to Robertson directing him to explain to these “inconsiderate persons” that all they could possibly do was to attempt the conquest of West Florida, and that they would “lay themselves liable to heavy Pains and Penalties, both pecuniary and corporal, in case they ever returned to their injured country.” He warned Robertson that it was his duty to prevent the attempt, and that the legal officers of the district must proceed against any of the men having French commissions, and must do their best to stop the movement; which, he said, proceeded “from the Machenations no doubt of that Jacobin Incendiary, Genet, which is reason sufficient to make every honest mind revolt at the Idea.” Robertson warmly supported him, and notified the Spanish commander at New Madrid of the steps which he was taking; at which the Spaniards expressed great gratification.10

  However, the whole movement collapsed when Genet was recalled early in 1794, Clark being forced at once to abandon his expedition.11 Clark found himself out of pocket as the result of what he had done; and as there was no hope of reimbursing himself by Spanish plunder, he sought to obtain from the French Government reimbursement for the expenses, forwarding to the French Assembly, through an agent in France, his bill for the “Expenses of Expedition ordered by Citizen Genet.” The agent answered that he would try to secure the payment; and after he got to Paris he first announced himself as hopeful; but later he wrote that he had discovered that the French agents were really engaged in a dangerous conspiracy against the Western country, and he finally had to admit that the claim was disallowed.12 With this squabble between the French and Americans the history of the abortive expedition ends.

  The attempt, of course, excited and alarmed the Spaniards, and gave a new turn to their tortuous diplomacy. In reading the correspondence of the Spanish Governor, Baron Carondelet, both with his subordinates and with his superiors, it is almost amusing to note the frankness with which he avows his treachery. It evidently did not occur to him that there was such a thing as national good faith, or that there was the slightest impropriety in any form of mendacity when exercised in dealing with the ministers or inhabitants of a foreign State. In this he was a faithful reflex of his superiors at the Spanish Court. At the same time that they were solemnly covenanting for a definite treaty of peace with the United States they were secretly intriguing to bring about a rebellion in the Western States; and while they were assuring the Americans that they were trying their best to keep the Indians peaceful, they were urging the savages to war.

  As for any gratitude to the National Government for stopping the piratical expeditions of the Westerners, the Spaniards did not feel a trace. They had early received news of Clark’s projected expedition through a Frenchman who came to the Spanish agents at Philadelphia;13 and when the army began to gather they received from time to time from their agents in Kentucky reports which, though exaggerated, gave them a fairly accurate view of what was happening. No overt act of hostility was committed by Clark’s people, except by some of those who started to join him from the Cumberland district, under the lead of a man named Montgomery. These men built a wooden fort at the mouth of the Cumberland River, and held the boats that passed to trade with Spain; one of the boats that they took being a scow loaded with flour and biscuit sent up stream by the Spanish Government itself. When Wayne heard of the founding of this fort he acted with his usual promptness, and sent an expedition which broke it up and released the various boats. Then, to stop any repetition of the offence, and more effectually to curb the overbearing truculence of the frontiersmen, he himself built, as already mentioned, a fort at Massac, not far from the Mississippi. All this of course was done in the interests of the Spaniards themselves and in accordance with the earnest desire of the United States authorities to prevent any unlawful attack on Louisiana; yet Carondelet actually sent word to Gayoso de Lemos, the Governor of Natchez and the upper part of the river, to persuade the Chickasaws secretly to attack this fort and destroy it. Carondelet always had an exaggerated idea of the warlike capacity of the Indian nations, and never understood the power of the Americans, nor appreciated the desire of their Government to act in good faith. Gayoso was in this respect a much more intelligent man, and he positively refused to carry out the orders of his superior, remonstrating directly to the Court of Spain, by which he was sustained. He pointed out that the destruction of the fort would merely encourage the worst enemies of the Spaniards, even if accomplished ; and he further pointed out that it was quite impossible to destroy it; for he understood fully the difference between a fort garrisoned by Wayne’s regulars and one held by a mob of buccaneering militia.14

  It was not the first time that Gayoso’s superior knowledge of the Indians and of their American foes had prevented his carrying out the orders of his superior officer. On one occasion Carondelet had directed Gayoso to convene the Southern Indians, and to persuade them to send deputies to the United States authorities with proposals to settle the boundaries in accordance with the wishes of Spain, and to threaten open war as an alternative. Gayoso refused to adopt this policy, and persuaded Carondelet to alter it, showing that it was necessary above all things to temporize, that such a course as the one proposed would provoke immediate hostilities, and that the worst possible line for the Spaniards to follow would be one of open war with the entire power of the United States.15

  Of course the action of the American Government in procuring the recall of Genet and putting a stop to Clark’s operations lightened for a moment the pressure of the backwoodsmen upon the Spanish dominions; but it was only for a moment. The Westerners were bent on seizing the Spanish territory; and they were certain to persist in their efforts until they were either successful or were definitely beaten in actual war. The acts of aggression were sure to recur; it was only the form that varied. When the chance of armed conquest under the banner of the French Republic vanished, there was an immediate revival of plans for getting possession of some part of the Spanish domain through the instrumentality of the great land companies.

  These land companies possessed on paper a weight which they did not have in actual history. They occasionally enriched, and more often impoverished, the individual speculators; but in the actual peopling of the waste lands they counted for little in comparison with the steady stream of pioneer farmers who poured in, each to hold and till the ground he in fact occupied. However, the contemporary documents of the day were full of details concerning the companies; and they did possess considerable importance at certain times in the settlement of the West, both because they in places stimulated that settlement, and because in other places they retarded it, inasmuch as they kept out actual settlers, who could not pre-empt land which had been purchased at low rates from some legislative body by the speculators. The companies were sometimes formed by men who wished themselves to lead emigrants into the longed-for region, but more often they were purely speculative in character, and those who founded them wished only to dispose of them at an advantage to third parties. Their history is inextricably mixed with the history of the intrigues with and against the Spaniards and British in the West. The men who organized them wished to make money. Their object was to obtain title to or possession of the lands, and it was quite a
secondary matter with them whether their title came from the United States, England, or Spain. They were willing to form colonies on Spanish or British territory, and they were even willing to work for the dismemberment of the Western Territory from the Union, if by so doing they could increase the value of the lands which they sought to acquire. American adventurers had been in correspondence with Lord Dorchester, the Governor-General of Canada, looking to the possibility of securing British aid for those desirous of embarking in great land speculations in the West. These men proposed to try to get the Westerners to join with the British in an attack upon Louisiana, or even to conduct this attack themselves in the British interests, believing that with New Orleans in British hands the entire province would be thrown open to trade with the outside world and to settlement; with the result that the lands would increase enormously in value, and the speculators and organizers of the companies, and of the movements generally, grow rich in consequence.16 They assured the British agents that the Western country would speedily separate from the Eastern States, and would have to put itself under the protection of some foreign State. Dorchester considered these plans of sufficient weight to warrant inquiry by his agents, but nothing ever came of them.

  Much the most famous, or, it would be more correct to say, infamous, of these companies were those organized in connection with the Yazoo lands.17 The country in what is now middle and northern Mississippi and Alabama possessed, from its great fertility, peculiar fascinations in the eyes of the adventurous land speculators. It was unoccupied by settlers, because as a matter of fact it was held in adverse possession by the Indians, under Spanish protection. It was claimed by the Georgians, and its cession was sought by the United States Government, so that there was much uncertainty as to the title, which could in consequence be cheaply secured. Wilkinson, Brown, Innes, and other Kentuckians, had applied to the Spaniards to be allowed to take these lands and hold them, in their own interests, but on behalf of Spain, and against the United States. The application had not been granted, and the next effort was of a directly opposite character, the adventurers this time proposing, as they could not hold the territory as armed subjects of Spain, to wrest it from Spain by armed entry after getting title from Georgia. In other words, they were going to carry on war as a syndicate, the military operations for the occupation of the ceded territory being part of the business for which the company was organized. Their relations with the Union were doubtless to be determined by the course of events.

  This company was the South Carolina Yazoo Company. In 1789, several companies were formed to obtain from the Georgia Legislature grants of the Western territory which Georgia asserted to be hers. One, the Virginia Company, had among its incorporators Patrick Henry, and received a grant of nearly 20,000 square miles, but accomplished nothing. Another, the Tennessee Company, received a grant of what is now most of northern Alabama, and organized a body of men under the leadership of an adventurer named Zachariah Cox, who drifted down the Tennessee in flat-boats to take possession, and repeated the attempt more than once. They were, however, stopped, partly by Blount, and partly by the Indians. The South Carolina Yazoo Company made the most serious effort to get possession of the coveted territory. Its grant included about 15,000 square miles in what is now middle Mississippi and Alabama; the nominal price being $67,000. One of the prime movers in this company was a man named Walsh, who called himself Washington, a person of unsavory character, who, a couple of years later, was hanged at Charleston for passing forged paper money in South Carolina. All these companies had hoped to pay the very small prices they were asked for the lands in the depreciated currency of Georgia; but they never did make the full payments or comply with the conditions of the grants, which therefore lapsed.

  Before this occurred the South Carolina Yazoo Company had striven to take possession of its purchase by organizing a military expedition to go down the Mississippi from Kentucky. For commander of this expedition choice was made of a Revolutionary soldier named James O’Fallon, who went to Kentucky, where he married Clark’s sister. He entered into relations with Wilkinson, who drew him into the tangled web of Spanish intrigue. He raised soldiers, and drew up a formal contract, entered into between the South Carolina Yazoo Company and their troops of the Yazoo Battalion—over five hundred men in all, cavalry, artillery and infantry. Each private was to receive two hundred and fifty acres of “stipendiary” lands and the officers in proportion, up to the Lieutenant-Colonel, who was to receive six thousand. Commissions were formally issued, and the positions of all the regular officers were filled, so that the invasion was on the point of taking place.18 However, the Spanish authorities called the matter to the attention of the United States, and the Federal Government put a prompt stop to the movement.19 O’Fallon was himself threatened with arrest by the Federal officers, and had to abandon his project.20 He afterward re-established his relations with the Government, and became one of Wayne’s correspondents;21 but he entered heartily into Clark’s plans for the expedition under Genet and, like all the other participators in that wretched affair, became involved in broils with Clark and every one else.22

  In 1795 the land companies, encouraged by the certainty that the United States would speedily take possession of the Yazoo territory, again sprang into life. In that year four, the Georgia, the Georgia-Mississippi, the Tennessee, and the Upper Mississippi, companies obtained grants from the Georgia Legislature to a territory of over thirty millions of acres, for which they paid but five hundred thousand dollars, or less than two cents an acre. Among the grantees were many men of note, Congressmen, Senators, even judges. The grants were secured by the grossest corruption, every member of the Legislature who voted for them, with one exception, being a stockholder in some one of the companies, while the procuring of the cessions was undertaken by James Gunn, one of the two Georgia Senators. The outcry against the transaction was so universal throughout the State that at the next session of the Legislature, in 1796, the acts were repealed and the grants rescinded. This caused great confusion, as most of the original grantees had hastily sold out to third parties; the purchases being largely made in South Carolina and Massachusetts. Efforts were made by the original South Carolina Yazoo Company to sue Georgia in the Federal Courts, which led to the adoption of the Constitutional provision forbidding such action. When, in 1802, Georgia ceded the territory in question, including all of what is now middle and northern Alabama and Mississippi, to the United States for the sum of twelve hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the National Government became heir to these Yazoo difficulties. It was not until 1814 that the matter was settled by a compromise, after interminable litigation and legislation.23 The land companies were more important to the speculators than to the actual settlers of the Mississippi; nevertheless, they did stimulate settlement, in certain regions, and therefore increased by just so much the Western pressure upon Spain.

  Some of the aggressive movements undertaken by the Americans were of so loose a nature that it is hard to know what to call them. This was true of Elijah Clark’s company of Georgia freebooters in 1794. Accompanied by large bodies of armed men, he on several occasions penetrated into the territory southwest of the Oconee. He asserted at one time that he was acting for Georgia and in defence of her rights to the lands which the Georgians claimed under the various State treaties with the Indians, but which by the treaty of New York had been confirmed to the Creeks by the United States. On another occasion he entitled his motley force the Sans Culottes, and masqueraded as a major-general of the French army, though the French Consul denied having any connection with him. He established for the time being a little independent government, with block-houses and small wooden towns, in the middle of the unceded hunting grounds, and caused great alarm to the Spaniards. The frontiersmen sympathized with him, and when he was arrested in Wilkes County the Grand Jury of the county ordered his discharge, and solemnly declared that the treaty of New York was inoperative and the proclamation of the Governor of Georgia agains
t Clark, illegal. This was too much for the patience of the Governor. He ordered out the State troops to co-operate with the small Federal force, and Clark and his men were ignominiously expelled from their new government and forced to return to Georgia.24

  In such a welter of intrigue, of land speculation, and of more or less piratical aggression, there was imminent danger that the West would relapse into anarchy unless a firm government were established, and unless the boundaries with England and Spain were definitely established. As Washington’s administration grew steadily in strength and in the confidence of the people the first condition was met. The necessary fixity of boundary was finally obtained by the treaties negotiated through John Jay with England, and through Thomas Pinckney with Spain.

  Jay’s treaty aroused a perfect torrent of wrath throughout the country, and nowhere more than in the West. A few of the coolest and most intelligent men approved it, and rugged old Humphrey Marshall, the Federalist Senator from Kentucky, voted for its ratification; but the general feeling against it was intense. Even Blount, who by this time was pretty well disgusted with the way he had been treated by the Central Government, denounced it, and expressed his belief that Washington would have hard work to explain his conduct in procuring its ratification.25