self that your right is good, and after the explanations that have been given here, you need apprehend nothing from a decisive measure. Your ministers here and at Madrid can support your claim, and the time is peculiarly favorable to enable you to do it without the smallest risk at home. It may also be important to anticipate any designs that Britain may have upon that country. Should she possess herself of it, and the war terminate favorably for her, she will not readily relinquish it. With this in your hand, East Florida will be of little moment, and may be yours whenever you please. At all events, proclaim your right and take possession.

"I am, sir, &c.,

"Hon. JAMES MADISON."

"ROB. R. LIVINGSTON.

A similar communication was addressed to Mr. Pinckney, at Madrid, and reached him before the instructions issued by Mr. Madison, of 29th July, 1803; for on the 2d August, 1803, he informs Mr. Madison that he had received official information from Mr. Monroe and Mr. Livingston that Louisiana was ceded, and that they considered the cession as including West Florida."-(2 For. Rel, 597.)

The effect of these communications of our ministers in France was speedily apparent, both in the conduct of our negotiations with Spain and in the action of our government at home. Instead of pursuing the instructions of the Secretary of State, and seeking to purchase the two Floridas, Mr. Pinckney asserted title to West Florida; and Congress, whilst it passed an act for the establishment of collection districts at New Orleans and Natchez, proceeded cautiously to test the feeling of Spain on the subject, by adding a section to the law, authorizing the President, "whenever he shall deem it expedient, to erect the shores, waters, and inlets of the bay and river Mobile, and of the other rivers, creeks, inlets, and bays emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, east of the said river Mobile and west thereof to the Pascagoula, inclusive, into a separate district.”—(Act 24th February, 1804.)

The pretensions of our minister were firmly and persistently resisted by Spain, whilst great offence was taken at the passage of the act just quoted, and Mr. Jefferson, in his message to Congress of 8th November, 1804, stated the result as follows:

"Soon after the passage of the act of the last session authorizing the establishment of a district and port of entry on the waters of the Mobile, we learned that its object was misunderstood on the part of Spain. Candid explanations were immediately given, and assurances that, reserving our claims in that quarter as a subject of discussion and arrangement with Spain, no act was meditated, in the meantime, inconsistent with the peace and friendship existing between the two nations."

This complaint had been made to our minister in Spain as soon as the news of the passage of the act reached that country; and Mr. Pinckney, on the 1st June, 1804, replying to the complaint, says that he has not yet received any information of the passage of the act, nor instructions on the subject, and recalls to the Spanish minister that he had made "a verbal communication of the contents of an official letter

he had received from Mr. Livingston and Mr. Monroe, that they considered a great part of west Florida, as so called by the English, included in the cession." He adds: "Such letter could not have been written to me by them officially without their having been so informed by the French plenipotentiary and government."

Relying on this inference, which we have already seen was erroneous, Mr. Pinckney informed the Spanish minister that he should. appeal to the French government to support his view, and the Spanish government made a similar appeal to France.

The result was disastrous to the expectations so confidently entertained by Mr. Pinckney, and which were shared by Mr. Monroe, who made the appeal to France, in a letter dated at Paris, on the 8th of November, 1804.-(2 For. Rel., 634.)

M. Talleyrand made reply, on the 21st December, 1804, (p. 635,)

as follows:

"France, in giving up Louisiana to the United States, transferred to them all the rights over that colony which she had acquired from Spain; she could not, nor did she wish to cede any other; and that no room might be left for doubt in this respect, she repeated, in her treaty of 30th April, 1803, the literal expressions of the treaty of St. Ildefonso, by which she had acquired that colony two years before.

"Now, it was stipulated in her treaty of the year 1801 that the acquisition of Louisiana by France was a retrocession; that is to say, that Spain restored to France what she had received from her in 1762. At that period she had received the territory bounded on the east by the Mississippi, the river Iberville, the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain; the same day she ceded to England, by the preliminaries of peace, all the territory to the eastward. Of this, Spain had received no part, and could therefore give none back to France.

"All the territory lying to the eastward of the Mississippi and the river Iberville, and south of the 32d degree of north latitude, bears the name of Florida; it has been constantly designated in that way during the time that Spain held it; it bears the same name in the treaties between Spain and the United States; and in different notes of Mr. Livingston of a later date than the treaty of retrocession, in which the name of Louisiana is given to the territory on the west side of the Mississippi; of Florida, to that on the east of it.

"According to this designation thus consecrated by time, and even prior to the period when Spain began to possess the whole territory between the 31st degree, the Mississippi and the sea, this country ought, in good spirit and justice, to be distinguished from Louisiana. "Your excellency knows that before the preliminaries of 1762, confirmed by the treaty of 1763, the French possessions situated near the Mississippi extended as far from the east of this river as in the quarters of the Mobile; and you must think it as unnatural, after all the changes of sovereignty which that part of America has undergone, to give the name of Louisiana to the district of Mobile, as to the territory near to the north on the same bank of the river, which formerly belonged to France.

"These observations, sir, will be sufficient to dispel every kind of doubt with regard to the extent of the retrocession, made by Spain to

France, in the month of Vendemiare, year 9. It was under this impression that the French and Spanish plenipotentiaries negotiated, and it was under this impression that I have since had occasion to give the necessary explanations when a project was formed to take possession of it. I have laid before his imperial Majesty [Napoleon] the negotiations of Madrid, which preceded the treaty of 1801, and his Majesty is convinced that during the whole course of these negotiations the Spanish government has constantly refused to cede any part of the Floridas, even from the Mississippi to the Mobile.

"His imperial Majesty has, moreover, authorized me to declare to you, that, at the beginning of the year 11, General Bournonville was charged to open a new negotiation with Spain for the acquisition of the Floridas. This project, which has not been followed by any treaty, is an evident proof that France had not acquired, by the treaty retroceding Louisiana, the country east of the Mississippi."-(Am. State Papers, vol. 3, p. 635.)

A similar reply was given to the Spanish government on the 5th Germinal, year 13, (26th March, 1805.)-(2 For. Rel., 659.)

The pretensions of Spain, thus maintained, were never abandoned, nor has there ever been any determination as to their validity. The committee is therefore forced, in the performance of its duty, to express an opinion upon the relative claims of the two countries to this disputed territory-an opinion which necessarily involves an inquiry into the extent of the rights acquired by France under the treaty of St. Ildefonso; for those, and those alone, were acquired by the United States according to the very words of the treaty of 1803.

Prior to the treaty of 1763 the pretensions of the different European powers which had colonized America were the sources of unceasing controversies, and not unfrequently of hostile collision. The pretensions of Spain dated back to the sixteenth century, and claimed to encircle the Gulf of Mexico from the capes of Yucatan to those of Florida. France, according to her grant to Crozat, claimed all the country between the confines of Mexico and the Carolinas, and the vast regions between the Pacific on the west and the colony of Virginia on the east; whilst English pretensions came into conflict with the claims of both those powers.

The treaty of 1763 made a final settlement of the respective pretensions of all the parties. It was agreed that the separation between France and England should be by "a line through the middle of the river Mississippi, from its source to the Iberville, and through the Iberville and the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea." Consequently, England's title was recognized to all the territory east of the Mississippi, except the island of New Orleans, and she thereby became the undisputed owner of the territory in which the lands now claimed by the memorialists are situated. From that date this territory was called, by historians and geographers, West Florida, and continued to be known as such to all the governments of Europe. Spain joined in the relinquishment of title, and guarantied to England, Florida, with Fort St. Augustine, and the Bay of Pensacola, as well as all that Spain possesses on the continent of North America to the east or to the southeast of the river Mississippi.

Under this treaty, England entered into possession of West Florida, proclaimed its boundaries, and held it as her own, without dispute or protest, until Spain, a party to the general war then raging both in Europe and America, conquered it by military force and held it in armed occupation till, in the definitive treaty of peace of 30th January, 1783, England retroceded to her East Florida, and confirmed her with guarantee in possession of West Florida. This fact was perfectly well known to the United States before the cession of Louisiana, and was recognized by treaty with Spain. In Mr. Madison's instructions to Messrs. Livingston and Monroe, on the 2d March, 1803, he says: "The islands within six leagues of the shore are the subject of a British proclamation in the year 1763, subsequent to the cession of the Floridas to Great Britain by France, which is not known to have ever been called in question by either France or Spain."—(2 For. Rel., 542.)

In the treaty between Spain and the United States, on the 27th October, 1795, the 2d article provides that "the southern boundary of the United States, which divides their territory from the Spanish colonies of East and West Florida, shall be designated by a line beginning on the river Mississippi, at the northernmost part of the thirty-first degree of latitude north of the equator, which from thence shall be drawn due east," &c. The 4th article of the same treaty declares that "the western boundary of the United States, which separates them from the Spanish colony of Louisiana, is in the middle of the channel or bed of the river Mississippi."

Numerous other articles in the same treaty designate with the same distinctive particularity the different provinces of Spain which lay contiguous with our territory; one," the Spanish colony of Louisiana, bounded by the Mississippi river, but including the island of Orleans; the other, "the Spanish colonies of East and West Florida, beginning on the river Mississippi.'

These different colonies, known by these distinct appellations to England, to France, to Spain, and to the United States, were in possession of Spain in the year 1800. Her title to the Floridas was derived from England under the treaty of 1783; her title to Louisiana was derived from France under a secret treaty, dated 3d November, 1762, in which it is described as "the whole country known by the name of Louisiana, together with New Orleans and the island on which the said city is situated." Spain, thus in possession of Louisiana and the two Floridas, with titles derived from different sources, and at different dates, on the 1st October, 1800, by treaty with France, agrees, six months after the full and entire execution of the conditions and stipulations relative to the Duke of Parma, "to retrocede* to the French republic 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 should be after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other States.

* The French word "rétro-céder" is erroneously translated "cede" in the English text of the treaty of 1803. As the treaty of 1800, between France and Spain, was in French, the French text must of course prevail.

It seems impossible to give two meanings to this stipulation. For more than a generation the lines of demarcation between Louisiana and the Floridas had been settled by a treaty, to which both the contracting powers had been parties. Louisiana and Florida were as distinctly known in 1800 as now in 1858. The contract on its very face professes to give back, to retrocede, to return to France what Spain had received from France. But the Floridas had been acquired from England. As if to place the matter beyond a possibility of doubt or even quibble, Louisiana is retroceded, such as it should be, "after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other States.' Those subsequent treaties have already been cited; they were made, one with England in 1783, the other with the United States in 1795; and in both Louisiana is separated from the Floridas, as a distinct colony, whose eastern boundary is the Mississippi, with the solitary exception of the island of New Orleans.

The only argument ever offered by the United States against so plain a proposition was based on that clause of the description which speaks of Louisiana with the same extent that it had when France possessed it." Our minister contended that, in order to satisfy this clause of the description, they had a right to go back behind the treaty of 1763, revive the claims of France as they existed before the settlement made in that treaty, and thus carry on pretensions eastward to the Perdido.

The committee cannot but conclude that these pretensions were wholly unfounded; that they were a mere afterthought has already been made apparent by the correspondence of our ministers. Our government knew, long before its acquisition of Louisiana, that the Floridas had not been transferred by Spain to France. Mr. Livingston's letters are constantly filled with statements of his efforts to prevent Spain from making a transfer. He states that the French were ignorant that the Floridas were not included in their purchase till he proved it to them; but whilst this assertion shows the knowledge of our government, it is apparent that Mr. Livingston had been deceived by the French diplomatist, for, in the letter of Mr. Talleyrand, we discover that in 1802"General Bournonville was charged to open a new negotiation with Spain for the acquisition of the Floridas." pears to your committee, on a careful review of the whole subject, that no candid mind can resist the conclusion that, however justifiable may have been the pretensions of our government, on the score of policy, and as an effect to the unjust encroachments of Spain in other quarters, and to her spoliation of our commerce, the territory of West Florida was not acquired by the cession from France in 1803, but was de jure an appanage of the Spanish crown. If this conclusion be correct, the titles of the memorialists are perfect, and ought to be confirmed.

It ap

But whether or not the foregoing views of the committee shall meet the concurrence of the Senate, no doubt exists of the fact that Spain was sovereign de facto of the disputed territory at the date of the sales and grants now under consideration. On this branch of the subject a short diversion will be useful, by way of episode, as explanatory of