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Jefferson and his Colleagues, A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty
Chapter V. In Pursuit of the Floridas
by Johnson, Allen
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The purchase of Louisiana was a diplomatic triumph of the first
magnitude. No American negotiators have ever acquired so much for
so little; yet, oddly enough, neither Livingston nor Monroe had
the slightest notion of the vast extent of the domain which they
had purchased. They had bought Louisiana "with the same extent
that it is now 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," but
what its actual boundaries were they did not know. Considerably
disturbed that the treaty contained no definition of boundaries,
Livingston sought information from the enigmatical Talleyrand.
"What are the eastern bounds of Louisiana?" he asked. "I do not
know," replied Talleyrand; "you must take it as we received it."
"But what did you mean to take?" urged Livingston somewhat
naively. "I do not know," was the answer. "Then you mean that we
shall construe it in our own way?" "I can give you no direction,"
said the astute Frenchman. "You have made a noble bargain for
yourselves, and I suppose you will make the most of it." And with
these vague assurances Livingston had to be satisfied.
The first impressions of Jefferson were not much more definite,
for, while he believed that the acquired territory more than
doubled the area of the United States, he could only describe it
as including all the waters of the Missouri and the Mississippi.
He started at once, however, to collect information about
Louisiana. He prepared a list of queries which he sent to
reputable persons living in or near New Orleans. The task was one
in which he delighted: to accumulate and diffuse information--a
truly democratic mission gave him more real pleasure than to
reign in the Executive Mansion. His interest in the trans-
Mississippi country, indeed, was not of recent birth; he had
nursed for years an insatiable curiosity about the source and
course of the Missouri; and in this very year he had commissioned
his secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to explore the great river and
its tributaries, to ascertain if they afforded a direct and
practicable water communication across the continent.
The outcome of the President's questionnaire was a report
submitted to Congress in the fall of 1803, which contained much
interesting information and some entertaining misinformation. The
statistical matter we may put to one side, as contemporary
readers doubtless did; certain impressions are worth recording.
New Orleans, the first and immediate object of negotiations,
contained, it would appear, only a small part of the population
of the province, which numbered some twenty or more rural
districts. On the river above the city were the plantations of
the so-called Upper Coast, inhabited mostly by slaves whose
Creole masters lived in town; then, as one journeyed upstream
appeared the first and second German Coasts, where dwelt the
descendants of those Germans who had been brought to the province
by John Law's Mississippi Bubble, an industrious folk making
their livelihood as purveyors to the city. Every Friday night
they loaded their small craft with produce and held market next
day on the river front at New Orleans, adding another touch to
the picturesque groups which frequented the levees. Above the
German Coasts were the first and second Acadian Coasts, populated
by the numerous progeny of those unhappy refugees who were
expelled from Nova Scotia in 1755. Acadian settlements were
scattered also along the backwaters west of the great river:
Bayou Lafourche was lined with farms which were already producing
cotton; near Bayou Teche and Bayou Vermilion--the Attakapas
country--were cattle ranges; and to the north was the richer
grazing country known as Opelousas.
Passing beyond the Iberville River, which was indeed no river at
all but only an overflow of the Mississippi, the traveler
up-stream saw on his right hand "the government of Baton Rouge"
with its scattered settlements and mixed population of French,
Spanish, and Anglo-Americans; and still farther on, the Spanish
parish of West Feliciana, accounted a part of West Florida and
described by President Jefferson as the garden of the
cotton-growing region. Beyond this point the President's
description of Louisiana became less confident, as reliable
sources of information failed him. His credulity, however, led
him to make one amazing statement, which provoked the ridicule of
his political opponents, always ready to pounce upon the slips of
this philosopher-president. "One extraordinary fact relative to
salt must not be omitted," he wrote in all seriousness. "There
exists, about one thousand miles up the Missouri, and not far
from that river, a salt mountain! The existence of such a
mountain might well be questioned, were it not for the testimony
of several respectable and enterprising traders who have visited
it, and who have exhibited several bushels of the salt to the
curiosity of the people of St. Louis, where some of it still
remains. A specimen of the salt has been sent to Marietta. This
mountain is said to be 180 miles long and 45 in width, composed
of solid rock salt, without any trees or even shrubs on it." One
Federalist wit insisted that this salt mountain must be Lot's
wife; another sent an epigram to the United States Gazette which
ran as follows:
Herostratus of old, to eternalize his name
Sat the temple of Diana all in a flame;
But Jefferson lately of Bonaparte bought,
To pickle his fame, a mountain of salt.
Jefferson was too much of a philosopher to be disturbed by such
gibes; but he did have certain constitutional doubts concerning
the treaty. How, as a strict constructionist, was he to defend
the purchase of territory outside the limits of the United
States, when the Constitution did not specifically grant such
power to the Federal Government? He had fought the good fight of
the year 1800 to oust Federalist administrators who by a liberal
interpretation were making waste paper of the Constitution.
Consistency demanded either that he should abandon the treaty or
that he should ask for the powers which had been denied to the
Federal Government. He chose the latter course and submitted to
his Cabinet and to his followers in Congress a draft of an
amendment to the Constitution conferring the desired powers. To
his dismay they treated his proposal with indifference, not to
say coldness. He pressed his point, redrafted his amendment, and
urged its consideration once again. Meantime letters from
Livingston and Monroe warned him that delay was hazardous; the
First Consul might change his mind, as he was wont to do on
slight provocation. Privately Jefferson was deeply chagrined, but
he dared not risk the loss of Louisiana. With what grace he could
summon, he acquiesced in the advice of his Virginia friends who
urged him to let events take their course and to drop the
amendment, but he continued to believe that such a course if
persisted in would make blank paper of the Constitution. He could
only trust, as he said in a letter, "that the good sense of the
country will correct the evil of construction when it shall
produce its ill effects."
The debates on the treaty in, Congress make interesting reading
for those who delight in legal subtleties, for many nice
questions of constitutional law were involved. Even granting that
territory could be acquired, there was the further question
whether the treaty-making power was competent irrespective of the
House of Representatives. And what, pray, was meant by
incorporating this new province in the Union? Was Louisiana to be
admitted into the Union as a State by President and Senate? Or
was it to be governed as a dependency? And how could the special
privileges given to Spanish and French ships in the port of New
Orleans be reconciled with that provision of the Constitution
which, expressly forbade any preference to be given, by any
regulation of commerce or revenue, to the ports of one State over
those of another? The exigencies of politics played havoc with
consistency, so that Republicans supported the ratification of
the treaty with erstwhile Federalist arguments, while Federalists
used the old arguments of the Republicans. Yet the Senate advised
the ratification by a decisive vote and with surprising
promptness; and Congress passed a provisional act authorizing the
President to take over and govern the territory of Louisiana.
The vast province which Napoleon had tossed so carelessly into
the lap of the young Western Republic was, strangely enough, not
yet formally in his possession. The expeditionary force under
General Victor which was to have occupied Louisiana had never
left port. M. Pierre Clement Laussat, however, who was to have
accompanied the expedition to assume the duties of prefect in the
province, had sailed alone in January, 1803, to receive the
province from the Spanish authorities. If this lonely Frenchman
on mission possessed the imagination of his race, he must have
had some emotional thrills as he reflected that he was following
the sea trail of La Salle and Iberville through the warm waters
of the Gulf of Mexico. He could not have entered the Great River
and breasted its yellow current for a hundred miles, without
seeing in his mind's eye those phantom figures of French and
Spanish adventurers who had voyaged up and down its turbid waters
in quest of gold or of distant Cathay. As his vessel dropped
anchor opposite the town which Bienville had founded, Laussat
must have felt that in some degree he was "heir of all the ages";
yet he was in fact face to face with conditions which, whatever
their historic antecedents, were neither French nor Spanish. On
the water front of New Orleans, he counted "forty-five
Anglo-American ships to ten French." Subsequent experiences
deepened this first impression: it was not Spanish nor French
influence which had made this port important but those "three
hundred thousand planters who in twenty years have swarmed over
the eastern plains of the Mississippi and have cultivated them,
and who have no other outlet than this river and no other port
than New Orleans."
The outward aspect of the city, however, was certainly not
American. From the masthead of his vessel Laussat might have seen
over a thousand dwellings of varied architecture: houses of
adobe, houses of brick, houses of stucco; some with bright
colors, others with the harmonious half tones produced by sun and
rain. No American artisans constructed the picturesque balconies,
the verandas, and belvederes which suggested the semitropical
existence that Nature forced upon these city dwellers for more
than half the year. No American craftsmen wrought the artistic
ironwork of balconies, gateways, and window gratings. Here was an
atmosphere which suggested the Old World rather than the New. The
streets which ran at right angles were reminiscent of the old
regime: Conde, Conti, Dauphine, St. Louis, Chartres, Bourbon,
Orleans--all these names were to be found within the earthen
rampart which formed the defense of the city.
The inhabitants were a strange mixture: Spanish, French,
American, black, quadroon, and Creole. No adequate definition has
ever been formulated for "Creole," but no one familiar with the
type could fail to distinguish this caste from those descended
from the first French settlers or from the Acadians. A keen
observer like Laussat discerned speedily that the Creole had
little place in the commercial life of the city. He was your
landed proprietor, who owned some of the choicest parts of the
city and its growing suburbs, and whose plantations lined both
banks of the Mississippi within easy reach from the city. At the
opposite end of the social scale were the quadroons--the
demimonde of this little capital--and the negro slaves. Between
these extremes were the French and, in ever-growing numbers, the
Americans who plied every trade, while the Spaniards constituted
the governing class. Deliberately, in the course of time, as
befitted a Spanish gentleman and officer, the Marquis de Casa
Calvo, resplendent with regalia, arrived from Havana to act with
Governor Don Juan Manuel de Salcedo in transferring the province.
A season of gayety followed in which the Spaniards did their best
to conceal any chagrin they may have felt at the
relinquishment--happily, it might not be termed the surrender--of
Louisiana. And finally on the 30th of November, Governor Salcedo
delivered the keys of the city to Laussat, in the hall of the
Cabildo, while Marquis de Casa Calvo from the balcony absolved
the people in Place d'Armes below from their allegiance to his
master, the King of Spain.
For the brief term of twenty days Louisiana was again a province
of France. Within that time Laussat bestirred himself to
gallicize the colony, so far as forms could do so. He replaced
the cabildo or hereditary council by a municipal council; he
restored the civil code; he appointed French officers to civil
and military posts. And all this he did in the full consciousness
that American commissioners were already on their way to receive
from him in turn the province which his wayward master had sold.
On December 20, 1803, young William Claiborne, Governor of the
Mississippi Territory, and General James Wilkinson, with a few
companies of soldiers, entered and received from Laussat the keys
of the city and the formal surrender of Lower Louisiana. On the
Place d'Armes, promptly at noon, the tricolor was hauled down and
the American Stars and Stripes took its place. Louisiana had been
transferred for the sixth and last time. But what were the metes
and bounds of this province which had been so often bought and
sold? What had Laussat been instructed to take and give? What, in
short, was Louisiana?
The elation which Livingston and Monroe felt at acquiring
unexpectedly a vast territory beyond the Mississippi soon gave
way to a disquieting reflection. They had been instructed to
offer ten million dollars for New Orleans and the Floridas: they
had pledged fifteen millions for Louisiana without the Floridas.
And they knew that it was precisely West Florida, with the
eastern bank of the Mississippi and the Gulf littoral, that was
most ardently desired by their countrymen of the West. But might
not Louisiana include West Florida? Had Talleyrand not professed
ignorance of the eastern boundary? And had he not intimated that
the Americans would make the most of their bargain? Within a
month Livingston had convinced himself that the United States
could rightfully claim West Florida to the Perdido River, and he
soon won over Monroe to his way of thinking. They then reported
to Madison that "on a thorough examination of the subject" they
were persuaded that they had purchased West Florida as a part of
Louisiana.
By what process of reasoning had Livingston and Monroe reached
this satisfying conclusion? Their argument proceeded from
carefully chosen premises. France, it was said, had once held
Louisiana and the Floridas together as part of her colonial
empire in America; in 1763 she had ceded New Orleans and the
territory west of the Mississippi to Spain, and at the same time
she had transferred the Floridas to Great Britain; in 1783 Great
Britain had returned the Floridas to Spain which were then
reunited to Louisiana as under French rule. Ergo, when Louisiana
was retro-ceded "with the same extent that it now has in the
hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it," it
must have included West Florida.
That Livingston was able to convince himself by this logic, does
not speak well for his candor or intelligence. He was well aware
that Bonaparte had failed to persuade Don Carlos to include the
Floridas in the retrocession; he had tried to insert in the
treaty an article pledging the First Consul to use his good
offices to obtain the Floridas for the United States; and in his
midnight dispatch to Madison, with the prospect of acquiring
Louisiana before him, he had urged the advisability of exchanging
this province for the more desirable Floridas. Livingston
therefore could not, and did not, say that Spain intended to cede
the Floridas as a part of Louisiana, but that she had
inadvertently done so and that Bonaparte might have claimed West
Florida, if he had been shrewd enough to see his opportunity. The
United States was in no way prevented from pressing this claim
because the First Consul had not done so. The fact that France
had in 1763 actually dismembered her colonial empire and that
Louisiana as ceded to Spain extended only to the Iberville, was
given no weight in Livingston's deductions.
Having the will to believe, Jefferson and Madison became converts
to Livingston's faith. Madison wrote at once that in view of
these developments no proposal to exchange Louisiana for the
Floridas should be entertained; the President declared himself
satisfied that "our right to the Perdido is substantial and can
be opposed by a quibble on form only"; and John Randolph, duly
coached by the Administration, flatly declared in the House of
Representatives that "We have not only obtained the command of
the mouth of the Mississippi, but of the Mobile, with its widely
extended branches; and there is not now a single stream of note
rising within the United States and falling into the Gulf of
Mexico which is not entirely our own, the Appalachicola
excepted." From this moment to the end of his administration, the
acquisition of West Florida became a sort of obsession with
Jefferson. His pursuit of this phantom claim involved American
diplomats in strange adventures and at times deflected the whole
course of domestic politics.
The first luckless minister to engage in this baffling quest was
James Monroe, who had just been appointed Minister to the Court
of St. James. He was instructed to take up the threads of
diplomacy at Madrid where they were getting badly tangled in the
hands of Charles Pinckney, who was a better politician than a
diplomat. "Your inquiries may also be directed," wrote Madison,
"to the question whether any, and how much, of what passes for
West Florida be fairly included in the territory ceded to us by
France." Before leaving Paris on this mission, Monroe made an
effort to secure the good offices of the Emperor, but he found
Talleyrand cold and cynical as ever. He was given to understand
that it was all a question of money; if the United States were
willing to pay the price, the Emperor could doubtless have the
negotiations transferred to Paris and put the deal through. A
loan of seventy million livres to Spain, which would be passed
over at once to France, would probably put the United States into
possession of the coveted territory. As an honest man Monroe
shrank from this sort of jobbery; besides, he could hardly offer
to buy a territory which his Government asserted it had already
bought with Louisiana. With the knowledge that he was defying
Napoleon, or at least his ministers, he started for Madrid to
play a lone hand in what he must have known was a desperate game.
The conduct of the Administration during the next few months was
hardly calculated to smooth Monroe's path. In the following
February (1804) President Jefferson put his signature to an act
which was designed to give effect to the laws of the United
States in the newly acquired territory. The fourth section of
this so-called Mobile Act included explicitly within the revenue
district of Mississippi all the navigable waters lying within the
United States and emptying into the Gulf east of the
Mississippi--an extraordinary provision indeed, since unless the
Floridas were a part of the United States there were no rivers
within the limits of the United States emptying into the Gulf
east of the Mississippi. The eleventh section was even more
remarkable since it gave the President authority to erect Mobile
Bay and River into a separate revenue district and to designate a
port of entry.
This cool appropriation of Spanish territory was too much for the
excitable Spanish Minister, Don Carlos Martinez Yrujo, who burst
into Madison's office one morning with a copy of the act in his
hand and with angry protests on his lips. He had been on
excellent terms with Madison and had enjoyed Jefferson's
friendship and hospitality at Monticello; but he was the
accredited representative of His Catholic Majesty and bound to
defend his sovereignty. He fairly overwhelmed the timid Madison
with reproaches that could never be forgiven or forgotten; and
from this moment he was persona non grata in the Department of
State.
Madison doubtless took Yrujo's reproaches more to heart just
because he felt himself in a false position. The Administration
had allowed the transfer of Louisiana to be made in the full
knowledge that Laussat had been instructed to claim Louisiana as
far as the Rio Bravo on the west but only as far as the Iberville
on the east. Laussat had finally admitted as much confidentially
to the American commissioners. Yet the Administration had not
protested. And now it was acting on the assumption that it might
dispose of the Gulf littoral, the West Florida coast, as it
pleased. Madison was bound to admit in his heart of hearts that
Yrujo had reason to be angry. A few weeks later the President
relieved the tense situation, though at the price of an obvious
evasion, by issuing a proclamation which declared all the shores
and waters "lying within the boundaries of the United States"[*] to
be a revenue district with Fort Stoddert as the port of entry.
But the mischief had been done and no constructive interpretation
of the act by the President could efface the impression first
made upon the mind of Yrujo. Congress had meant to appropriate
West Florida and the President had suffered the bill to become
law.
[* The italics are President Jefferson's.]
Nor was Pinckney's conduct at Madrid likely to make Monroe's
mission easier. Two years before, in 1802, he had negotiated a
convention by which Spain agreed to pay indemnity for
depredations committed by her cruisers in the late war between
France and the United States. This convention had been ratified
somewhat tardily by the Senate and now waited on the pleasure of
the Spanish Government. Pinckney was instructed to press for the
ratification by Spain, which was taken for granted; but he was
explicitly warned to leave the matter of the Florida claims to
Monroe. When he presented the demands of his Government to
Cevallos, the Foreign Minister, he was met in turn with a demand
for explanations. What, pray, did his Government mean by this
act? To Pinckney's astonishment, he was confronted with a copy of
the Mobile Act, which Yrujo had forwarded. The South Carolinian
replied, in a tone that was not calculated to soothe ruffled
feelings, that he had already been advised that West Florida was
included in the Louisiana purchase and had so reported to
Cevallos. He urged that the two subjects be kept separate and
begged His Excellency to have confidence in the honor and justice
of the United States. Delays followed until Cevallos finally,
declared sharply that the treaty would be ratified only on
several conditions, one of which was that the Mobile Act should
be revoked. Pinckney then threw discretion to the winds and
announced that he would ask for his passports; but his bluster
did not change Spanish policy, and he dared not carry out his
threat.
It was under these circumstances that Monroe arrived in Madrid on
his difficult mission. He was charged with the delicate task of
persuading a Government whose pride had been touched to the quick
to ratify the claims convention, to agree to a commission to
adjudicate other claims which it had refused to recognize, to
yield West Florida as a part of the Louisiana purchase, and to
accept two million dollars for the rest of Florida east of the
Perdido River. In preparing these extraordinary instructions, the
Secretary of State labored under the hallucination that Spain, on
the verge of war with England, would pay handsomely for the
friendship of the United States, quite forgetting that the real
master of Spain was at Paris.
The story of Monroe's five weary months in Spain may be briefly
told. He was in the unstrategic position of one who asks for
everything and can concede nothing. Only one consideration could
probably have forced the Spanish Government to yield, and that
was fear. Spain had now declared war upon England and might
reasonably be supposed to prefer a solid accommodation with the
United States, as Madison intimated, rather than add to the
number of her foes. But Cevallos exhibited no signs of fear; on
the contrary he professed an amiable willingness to discuss every
point at great length. Every effort on the part of the American
to reach a conclusion was adroitly eluded. It was a game in which
the Spaniard had no equal. At last, when indubitable assurances
came to Monroe from Paris that Napoleon would not suffer Spain to
make the slightest concession either in the matter of spoliation
claims or any other claims, and that, in the event of a break
between the United States and Spain, he would surely take the
part of Spain, Monroe abandoned the game and asked for his
passports. Late in May he returned to Paris, where he joined with
General Armstrong, who had succeeded Livingston, in urging upon
the Administration the advisability of seizing Texas, leaving
West Florida alone for the present.
Months of vacillation followed the failure of Monroe's mission.
The President could not shake off his obsession, and yet he
lacked the resolution to employ force to take either Texas, which
he did not want but was entitled to, or West Florida which he
ardently desired but whose title was in dispute. It was not until
November of the following year (1805) that the Administration
determined on a definite policy. In a meeting of the Cabinet "I
proposed," Jefferson recorded in a memorandum, "we should address
ourselves to France, informing her it was a last effort at
amicable settlement with Spain and offer to her, or through her,"
a sum not to exceed five million dollars for the Floridas. The
chief obstacle in the way of this programme was the uncertain
mood of Congress, for a vote of credit was necessary and Congress
might not take kindly to Napoleon as intermediary. Jefferson then
set to work to draft a message which would "alarm the fears of
Spain by a vigorous language, in order to induce her to join us
in appealing to the interference of the Emperor."
The message sent to Congress alluded briefly to the negotiations
with Spain and pointed out the unsatisfactory relations which
still obtained. Spain had shown herself unwilling to adjust
claims or the boundaries of Louisiana; her depredations on
American commerce had been renewed; arbitrary duties and
vexatious searches continued to obstruct American shipping on the
Mobile; inroads had been made on American territory; Spanish
officers and soldiers had seized the property of American
citizens. It was hoped that Spain would view these injuries in
their proper light; if not, then the United States "must join in
the unprofitable contest of trying which party can do the other
the most harm. Some of these injuries may perhaps admit a
peaceable remedy. Where that is competent, it is always the most
desirable. But some of them are of a nature to be met by force
only, and all of them may lead to it."
Coming from the pen of a President who had declared that peace
was his passion, these belligerent words caused some bewilderment
but, on the whole, very considerable satisfaction in Republican
circles, where the possibility of rupture had been freely
discussed. The people of the Southwest took the President at his
word and looked forward with enthusiasm to a war which would
surely overthrow Spanish rule in the Floridas and yield the
coveted lands along the Gulf of Mexico. The country awaited with
eagerness those further details which the President had promised
to set forth in another message. These were felt to be historic
moments full of dramatic possibilities.
Three days later, behind closed doors, Congress listened to the
special message which was to put the nation to the supreme test.
Alas for those who had expected a trumpet call to battle. Never
was a state paper better calculated to wither martial spirit. In
dull fashion it recounted the events of Monroe's unlucky mission
and announced the advance of Spanish forces in the Southwest,
which, however, the President had not repelled, conceiving that
"Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of
changing our condition from peace to war." He had "barely
instructed" our forces "to patrol the borders actually delivered
to us." It soon dawned upon the dullest intelligence that the
President had not the slightest intention to recommend a
declaration of war. On the contrary, he was at pains to point out
the path to peace. There was reason to believe that France was
now disposed to lend her aid in effecting a settlement with
Spain, and "not a moment should be lost in availing ourselves of
it." "Formal war is not necessary, it is not probable it will
follow; but the protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor
of our country, require that force should be interposed to a
certain degree. It will probably contribute to advance the object
of peace."
After the warlike tone of the first message, this sounded like a
retreat. It outraged the feelings of the war party. It was, to
their minds, an anticlimax, a pusillanimous surrender. None was
angrier than John Randolph of Virginia, hitherto the leader of
the forces of the Administration in the House. He did not
hesitate to express his disgust with "this double set of opinions
and principles"; and his anger mounted when he learned that as
Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means he was expected to
propose and carry through an appropriation of two million dollars
for the purchase of Florida. Further interviews with the
President and the Secretary of State did not mollify him, for,
according to his version of these conversations, he was informed
that France would not permit Spain to adjust her differences with
the United States, which had, therefore, the alternative of
paying France handsomely or of facing a war with both France and
Spain. Then Randolph broke loose from all restraint and swore by
all his gods that he would not assume responsibility for
"delivering the public purse to the first cut-throat that
demanded it."
Randolph's opposition to the Florida programme was more than an
unpleasant episode in Jefferson's administration; it proved to be
the beginning of a revolt which was fatal to the President's
diplomacy, for Randolph passed rapidly from passive to active
opposition and fought the two-million dollar bill to the bitter
end. When the House finally outvoted him and his faction, soon to
be known as the "Quids," and the Senate had concurred, precious
weeks had been lost. Yet Madison must bear some share of blame
for the delay since, for some reason, never adequately explained,
he did not send instructions to Armstrong until four weeks after
the action of Congress. It was then too late to bait the master
of Europe. Just what had happened Armstrong could not ascertain;
but when Napoleon set out in October, 1806, on that fateful
campaign which crushed Prussia at Jena and Auerstadt, the chance
of acquiring Florida had passed.
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