XXVI The Spaniard
Early in April of 1793 a company of French merchants sat at a dinner in New Orleans. Before them magnolias bloomed in the plaza. Out in the harbour their vessels were flying the Spanish flag.
“Spain has declared war against France. A French frigate is sailing for the Gulf.”
Like a bomb the announcement burst in their midst.
The fine and handsome face of Charles De Pauw was lit with determination. He had come over with Lafayette, and had invested a fortune in the new world.
“My ships are in danger. I will haul down the Spanish colours and float the American flag. Long enough have the Frenchmen of Missouri and Illinois endured the Spanish yoke. Long enough have our cargoes been confiscated and our trade ruined by unnecessary and tyrannical restrictions.”
“But America will not help us.”
“The Kentuckians will,” answered De Pauw. “Already they are begging George Rogers Clark to march on New Orleans.”
A huzza rang round the table. “We shall be here to help him.”
“Every settlement that borders the Mississippi will join with us. Spain rules to Pittsburg, dictates prices, opens and closes markets. Will Americans endure that? From New Orleans to British America, Spain stretches an invisible cordon, ‘thus far and no farther.’ All beyond is the private park of Don Carlos IV.”
“What will Congress do?”
“Congress?” echoed another. “What does it matter to those people beyond the Alleghanies? They are very far away. Europe is not so remote. Our interests lie with Mississippi and the sea.”
“But that would dismember the Union.”
“Will it dismember the Union for the Louisianians to break their fetter from Spain and thereby give us a market clear of duty? The Kentuckians, equally with us, are irritated at the Spanish Government. We have a right to strike Spain.”
Charles De Pauw renamed his schooner the “Maria” and sailed out of the Gulf under the Stars and Stripes. On the way to New York he met the frigate returning that brought the French minister, Charles Genet, to Charleston.
Acres of flatboats lay freighted on the dimpling Ohio. Corn, wheat, oats, rye,—the worn-out tobacco lands of Virginia knew nothing like it. But the Spaniard stood at the gate and locked up the river.
“A King?” Americans laughed at the fancy. “A King to check or hinder us in our rights? Who shall refuse us? Are we not Americans?”
“The Mississippi is ours,” cried Kentucky. “By the law of nature, by the authority of numbers, by the right of necessity. If Congress will not give it to us, we must take it ourselves.”
And now France—
George Rogers Clark was profoundly moved by the French crusade for liberty. “We owe it to France to help her. Was not France our friend in the time of trouble?”
Then he wrote to the French minister, tendering his services to France in her arduous struggle:
“I would begin with St. Louis, a rich, large, and populous town, and by placing two or three frigates within the Mississippi’s mouth (to guard against Spanish succours) I would engage to subdue New Orleans, and the rest of Louisiana. If farther aided I would capture Pensacola; and if Santa Fé and the rest of New Mexico were objects—I know their strength and every avenue leading to them, for conquest.—All the routes as well as the defenceless situation of those places are perfectly known to me and I possess draughts of all their defences, and estimates of the greatest force which could oppose me. If France will be hearty and secret in this business my success borders on certainty.—The route from St. Louis to Santa Fé is easy, and the places not very distant.... To save Congress from a rupture with Spain on our account, we must first expatriate ourselves and become French citizens. This is our intention.”
On its errand of good or ill the letter sped to the French minister to the United States, and lo! that minister was Genet, just landed at Charleston.
Genet had come from Revolutionary France, at this moment fighting all Europe, so frightfully had upblazed the tiny spark of liberty borne back by the soldiers of Rochambeau.
André Michaux was instructed to hasten to the Falls of the Ohio with this message to George Rogers Clark:
“The French minister has filled out this blank commission from his Government making you a Marshal of France, Major General and Commander-in-Chief of the French Legion on the Mississippi.”
Thus had Genet answered the letter.
New Orleans was watching. “The Americans are threatening us with an army assembling on the Ohio,” wrote Carondelet in alarm to Spain.
“Ill-disposed and fanatical citizens in this Capital,” he added, “restless and turbulent men infatuated with Liberty and Equality, are increased with every vessel that comes from the ports of France.”
He begged Spain to send him troops from Cuba. He begged the Captain General of Cuba to send him troops from Havana.
Gayoso put his fort at Vicksburg in defence and Carondelet sent up a division of galleys to New Madrid and St. Louis.
But Carondelet, the Governor of Louisiana, had his hands full. Frenchmen of his own city were signing papers to strike a blow for France. He would build defences,—they opposed and complained of his measures. Merchants and others whose business suffered by the uncertainties of commerce took no responsibility as the domineering little Baron endeavoured to fortify New Orleans with palisaded wall, towers, and a moat seven feet deep and forty feet wide.
“It may happen that the enemy will try to surprise the plaza on a dark night,” said the Baron.
All the artillery was mounted. Haughty Spanish cavaliers with swords and helmets paced the parapets of the grim pentagonal bastions. Watchmen with spears and lanterns guarded the gates below. The city was in terror of assault. At every rise of the river Carondelet looked for a filibustering army out of the north. By every ship runners were sent to Spain.
News of the intended raid penetrated even the Ursuline Convent. Sister Infelice paled when she heard it, gave a little gasp, and fainted.
“Clearly she fears, the gentle sister fears these northern barbarians,” remarked the Mother Superior. “Take her to her chamber.”
And St. Louis,—not since 1780 had she been so alarmed. The Governor constructed a square redoubt flanked by bastions, dug a shallow moat, and raised a fort on the hill. Seventeen grenadiers with drawn sabres stood at the drawbridge.
“Immediately on the approach of the enemy, retreat to New Madrid,” was the order of this puissant Governor.
George Rogers Clark, who had planned and executed the conquest of Illinois, burned now for the conquest of Louisiana. And the West looked to him; she despised and defied the Spaniard as she despised and defied the Indian. They blocked the way, they must depart.
Clark’s old veteran officers Christy, Logan, Montgomery, sent word they would serve under his command. The French squadron at Philadelphia was to set sail for the Gulf.
Major Fulton and Michaux, Clark’s right-hand men, travelled all over the West enlisting men, provisions, and money. De Pauw engaged to furnish four hundred barrels of flour and a thousand-weight of bacon, and to send brass cannon over the mountains. In December Clark’s men were already cutting timber to build boats on the Bear Grass. Five thousand men were to start in the Spring, provided Congress did not oppose and Genet could raise a million dollars.
In despair Carondelet wrote home, saying that if the project planned was carried into effect, he would have no other alternative but to surrender.
“Having no reinforcements to hope for from Havana, I have no further hope than in the faults the enemy may commit and in accidents which may perhaps favour us.”
Carondelet gave up. In March he wrote again, “The commandant at Post Vincennes has offered cannon for the use of the expedition.”
Early in January Clark was writing to De Pauw, “Have your stores at the Falls by the 20th of February, as in all probability we shall descend the river at that time.”
Montgomery reported, “arms and ammunition, five hundred bushels of corn and ten thousand pounds of pork, also twenty thousand weight of buffalo beef, eleven hundred weight of bear meat, seventy-four pair venison hams, and some beef tongues.”
With two hundred men Montgomery lay at the mouth of the Ohio ready to cross over. Not ninety Spaniards of regular troops were there to defend St. Louis, and two hundred militia, and the Governor had only too much reason to fear that St. Louis would open her gates and join the invader. All that was lacking was money. Hundreds of Kentuckians waited the signal to take down their guns and march on New Orleans.
But the ministers of Spain and of Great Britain had not been quiet. They both warned Washington. Could he hold the lawless West? It was a problem for statesmen.
Jefferson wrote to Governor Shelby of Kentucky to restrain the expedition.
“I have grave doubts,” Governor Shelby answered, “whether there is any legal authority to restrain or to punish them. For, if it is lawful for any one citizen of the state to leave it, it is equally so for any number of them to do it. It is also lawful for them to carry any quantity of provisions, arms, and ammunition.—I shall also feel but little inclination to take an active part in punishing or retaining any of my fellow citizens for a supposed intention only, to gratify the fears of the ministers of a prince who openly withholds from us an invaluable right, and who secretly instigates against us a most savage and cruel enemy.”
Washington promptly issued a proclamation of neutrality and requested the recall of Genet. From the new Minister of France Clark received formal notice that the conquest of Louisiana was abandoned. But Spain had had her fright. She at once opened the river, and the mass of collected produce found its way unimpeded to the sea.
In June Congress passed a law for ever forbidding such expeditions.
“I have learned that the Spaniards have built a fort at Chickasaw Bluff, on this side of the river,” said General Wayne, one night in September, 1795, summoning William Clark to his headquarters. “I desire you to go down to the commanding officer on the west side and inquire his intentions.”
Why, of all that army, had Wayne chosen the young lieutenant of the Fourth Sub-Legion for this errand? Was it because he bore the name of Clark? Very well; both knew why Spain had advanced to the Chickasaw Bluff.
As Washington went forty years before to inquire of the French, “Why are you building forts on the Ohio?” so now William Clark, on board the galiot, “La Vigilante,” dropped down to New Madrid and asked the Spaniard, “Why are you building forts on the Mississippi?”
Down came Charles De Hault De Lassus, the Commandant himself. “I assure you we have been very far from attempting to usurp the territory of a nation with whom we desire to remain in friendship,” protested the courtly Commandant with a wave of his sword and a flutter of his plume. “But the threats of the French republicans living in the United States,”—he paused for a reply.
“Calm yourself,” replied Lieutenant Clark. “Read here the pacific intentions of my country.”
None better than William Clark understood the virtues of conciliation and persuasion. “I assure you that the United States is disposed to preserve peace with all the powers of Europe, and with Spain especially.”
With mutual expressions of esteem and cordial parting salvos, Lieutenant Clark left his Spanish friends with a mollified feeling toward “those turbulent Americans.”
Nevertheless George Rogers Clark had opened the river, to be closed again at peril.
Among the soldiers at Wayne’s camp that winter was Lieutenant Meriwether Lewis, “just from the Whiskey Rebellion,” he said. Between him and William Clark, now Captain Clark, there sprang up the most intimate friendship.
“The nature of the Insurrection?” remarked Lewis in his camp talks with Clark. “Why, the Pennsylvania mountaineers about Redstone-Old-Fort refused to pay the whiskey tax, stripped, tarred, and feathered the collectors! ‘The people must be taught obedience,’ said General Washington, and, after all peaceable means failed, he marched fifteen thousand militia into the district. The thought that Washington was coming at the head of troops made them reconsider. They sent deputations to make terms about the time of Wayne’s battle. We built log huts and forted for the winter on the Monongahela about fifteen miles above Pittsburg.”
“And so the Spaniards have come to terms?” queried Lewis as Clark still remained silent.
“Yes, they have opened the river.”
“I came near being in the midst of that,” continued Lewis. “Michaux came to Charlottesville. I was eighteen, just out of school and eager for adventure. Michaux was to explore the West. Mr. Jefferson had a plan for sending two people across the Rocky Mountains. I begged to go, and probably should, had not Michaux been recalled when the new French minister came in.”
“Rest assured,” replied Clark solemnly, “no exploration of the West can ever be made while Spain holds Louisiana.”