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History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson/First/II:12

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History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson

by Henry Adams
The First Administration of Thomas Jefferson, Part II, Chapter 12
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Chapter 12: Pinckney's Diplomacy edit

Though Yrujo's language was strong, and his anonymous writings in the press were indiscreet, he had, down to the summer of 1804, laid himself open to no just official censure; for whatever the Secretary of State might think, no one could seriously blame a foreign minister for obtaining the best legal advice in America on an abstract question of international law. The protests with which Yrujo contented himself, vigorous as they were, could neither by disavowed by his Government, nor answered by Madison. Had he stopped there, his triumph would have been signal; but fortunately for Madison, the Spaniard, with all the high qualities of his nation, had also its weaknesses, besides having the love of intrigue inherent in diplomacy. Yrujo was in his political training more American than Spanish. At home in Philadelphia, son-in-law to Governor McKean, and well acquainted with the methods of party politics, he burned to counteract the influence of the Administration press, and had no other means of doing so than by acting on Federalist editors. As no one but himself knew even a part of the truth about the Spanish imbroglio, he was obliged to be the channel for conveying his own ​information to the public; and from time to time Madison read in opposition newspapers anonymous letters which bore plain marks of Yrujo's peculiar style. He had already published a pamphlet on the Louisiana cession. After his hot protest against the Mobile Act, in March, 1804, the Spanish minister left Washington, without taking leave of the Secretary of State. At length his indiscretions enabled Madison to enjoy the pleasure of seeing him keenly mortified.

Among other Federalist newspapers in Philadelphia was one called the "Political Register," edited by William Jackson, patriot and secretary to George Washington. In September, 1804, six months after the passage-at-arms over the Mobile Act, Yrujo, then in Philadelphia, asked for an interview with Jackson, and urged him to oppose the course which the President had taken against Spain. "If you will consent," he said, "to take elucidations on the subject from me, I will furnish them, and I will make you any acknowledgement." He charged the Administration with wishing for war, and with intriguing for a rebellion among the Spaniards of West Florida.

That Yrujo or any other diplomatic agent was quite ready to use money, if by doing so he could obtain objects necessary for his purposes, need not be doubted,—although corruption of this kind in the affairs of the United States has left few traces even on the most secret diplomatic records of England, France, and Spain. In the ethical code of diplomacy ​the offer of money to an editor for inserting information was no offence, but discovery was fatal; and for this reason perhaps Yrujo told the truth when he afterward said that the use of money was not in his mind. Had he meant to bribe, he would not have exposed himself to detection, or put himself, without need, in the hands of a person over whom he held no power. Nevertheless, his blunder deserved the punishment which quickly followed.

A few days after his interview with Jackson, Yrujo left Philadelphia to visit Jefferson at Monticello. Sept. 20, 1804, immediately after his departure, Jackson printed an affidavit narrating the attempt which Yrujo had made upon his virtue, and detailing every expression of the minister which could do him most injury. As though to make Yrujo's position still more mortifying, Jackson sent this affidavit to President Jefferson ten days or more before publishing it; and when Yrujo, ignorant of the betrayal, after passing Madison's door at Montpelier without the courtesy of stopping to inquire for the Secretary's health,[1] at last reached Monticello, not only his host, but every one except himself, had heard of the diplomatic scandal to which he was a party.

Jefferson received his visitor with the usual hospitality, and said not a word on the subject. Being obliged to return to Washington, the President left Yrujo, two days later, under the protection of his ​daughter Mrs. Randolph, and set out to meet his Cabinet on the last day of the month at the Federal city. Madison was delayed at Montpelier, and could not attend the Cabinet meeting, but wrote a few days afterward:[2]—

"Jackson, I find, has lost no time in giving publicity to the affair between him and Yrujo. What course the latter will take, remains to be seen. Should circumstances of any kind be thought to urge a close of the business with him, or any other arrangement with respect to it, why might not one of the other secretaries, or even Mr. Wagner, be made a channel of your sentiments and determinations? . . . Should the door be shut against further communication [through] Yrujo, and Pinckney's situation at Madrid not be contradicted, a direct communication with Cevallos appears to be the next resource."

Already Madison flattered himself with the hope that he was to be relieved from relations with the Spaniard, whose continuance at Washington he had asked as a favor from Don Carlos IV. only three years before.

Jefferson's delicacy and hospitality were worthy of a great lord of Spain, and did honor to his innate kindliness; but they put Yrujo in an attitude so mortifying, that when he returned to Washington and learned what had taken place in his absence, he was overcome with shame at finding himself charged with calumniating his host at the moment of claiming ​his hospitality. He immediately prepared a counter-statement and took it to the President, who replied that the matter was one which should properly belong to Madison. Yrujo then printed his letter in the "National Intelligencer," where Madison first saw it. For the moment the matter went no further; but Madison was fixed in his purpose of effecting Yrujo's recall, and when in the following spring he instructed his minister at Madrid to ask this favor, he alleged the affair of Jackson among the reasons which justified his request.

Pichon, who was in charge of the French legation, cordially disliked Yrujo, and did nothing to help him against Madsion, although the relations between Spain and France were those of close alliance; but Madison next suffered a severe loss in the removal of Pichon, and in the arrival, Nov. 23, 1804, of the first minister sent by France to the United States since the departure of Adet in President Washington's time. The new appointment was not a happy one. Pinchon had carried friendliness so far as on several serious questions to take sides with the United States government against his own, and had fallen into disfavor with Napoleon in consequence. The new minister was little likely to repeat this blunder. Napoleon liked military discipline in all things; and he sent as his minister to Washington a former general of the Republic, Louis Marie Turreau, best known for the extreme severities he was charged with having inflicted on the Vendeans in 1794. Like most of ​the republican generals, including even Moreau and Bernadotte, Turreau accepted the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire, and was for private reasons anxious to obtain some position far removed from France. According to his own story, he had during the Vendean war been so unfortunate as to be saved from death, in a moment of extreme danger, by a woman's self-sacrifice. In token of his gratitude he married his preserver; but from that time his life became a long regret. His wife's temper was terrible; his own was querulous and morbidly depressed. Although he could speak no English, had no diplomatic experience and little taste for general society, he sought the post of minister resident at Washington in order to escape his wife. To his extreme annoyance, she followed him to America; and Washington resounded with the scandal of their quarrels, which reached the extremity of pitched battles. He wrote to his friends in the French Foreign Office that he was almost mad with mortification and despair.

Such a minister was not happily chosen for the difficult task on hand; but Bonaparte loaded him with other burdens, of a kind even more embarrassing to a diplomatist. At best, the position of a French minister in America was not agreeable. The mere difference in habits, manners, amusements, and the want of a thousand luxuries and pleasures such as made Paris dear to every Frenchman, rendered Washington a place of exile. Perhaps nothing but fear of the guillotine could have reconciled even ​republican Frenchmen to staying in a country where, in the words of Talleyrand, there was no Frenchman who did not feel himself a stranger; but if this were true while France was a republic fighting the battles of American democracy, it became doubly true after Bonaparte had crushed French liberties and made himself the foremost enemy of republican ideas. Turreau arrived at Washington about six months before Bonaparte took the title of Emperor; and he found that as representative of Napoleon I. he could never hope for a friend in the United States, unless it were among a few bankrupt adventurers, who to retrieve their broken fortunes would have liked to see an 18th Brumaire at New Orleans, which should give an imperial crown and the mines of Mexico to Aaron Burr and his troop of embryo dukes and marshals.

As though to embarrass his representative to the utmost, Bonaparte deprived him of the only means by which he could win even the venal respect of a money-making people. At one stroke the First Consul had annulled and sent to protest all the drafts drawn under Rochambeau's orders by the fiscal administrator of St. Domingo.[3] His avowed reason was that every bill of exchange or draft on the public treasury which did not purport to rest on the authority of a letter from the minister authorizing the expenditure, should not be paid. The true reason was that he had ​determined to waste no more money on St. Domingo, but to sacrifice his army there under cover of a war with England, which required all the means then at his disposal. Rochambeau's expenditures were becoming wild; but thus far his drafts on the Treasury were regularly drawn. They had been taken in good faith throughout the West Indies and in every commercial city on the American seaboard; they rested on the national credit of France, and their repudiation destroyed French credit in America, public and private. Before Turreau sailed for his post, the credit of his Government was at an end in the United States. Not only had the drafts drawn in St. Domingo been refused payment, but Pichon's had also suffered the same fate; and neither the new minister nor his consuls could find a man in Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York to advance money on their official signatures. Turreau complained bitterly to Talleyrand of the penury and mortification to which he was condemned. In one of his despatches[4] he reported that at a tavern in Baltimore one of the French agents, not known to be such, was offered French government paper at fifty per cent discount, and at the same time five per cent premium for drafts on the British government. "In short, we are brought to such a state of affairs that private discredit follows the discredit of the nation, and I experience it for my own individual drafts." ​

Owing to these circumstances, Turreau declared that his position was hardly tolerable; but even apart from such matters, he found a formidable legacy of diplomatic difficulties left by Pichon to be be settled. The question of trade with St. Domingo, of boundary on both sides of Louisiana, the Spanish imbroglio, the unpaid claims on France, and the repudiated drafts negotiated by Pichon in the United States, were all matters which Turreau was required to master and manage; but none of them gave him more trouble than the personal quarrel between his colleague Yrujo and the Secretary of State.

Yrujo's affair with Major Jackson occurred in September, 1804, and Turreau, reaching Washington in the following November, was soon obliged to take part in Yrujo's feuds. Not only the tone of his instructions, but the increasing certainty that Spain must side with France in the war against England, obliged him to make common cause with the Spanish minister, who came from Philadelphia to Washington in order to invoke his services. The result was told in a despatch to Talleyrand:[5]—

"Following your instructions and the request of M. d'Yrujo, I consented to an interview with him at Mr. Madison's. . . . I had no trouble in perceiving from the outset of the conversation that Mr. Madison and M. d'Yrujo cordially detested each other, and in the discussion that their passions took the place of reason and law." ​

This discussion naturally turned on the question of West Florida; and unfortunately for Madison, Turreau's instructions on that point were emphatic in support of Spain. Turreau was obliged to enter the lists in defence of Yrujo's position.

"I mixed in the discussion only in order to represent to Mr. Madison, who is unwilling to stop at the treaty of 1762, that in general the last conventions were those which ought to guide in negotiations; otherwise, if each party invoked the antecedent ones in favor of his system, we should be forced to go back to the Deluge to find the primitive title. 'But, General!' replied Mr. Madison, 'we have a map which probably carries to the Perdido the eastern limit of Louisiana!'—'I should be curious to see it, sir; the more, because I have one which includes Tennessee and Kentucky in Louisiana. You will agree that maps are not titles.' The Secretary of State closed this session, which lasted two long hours, by saying that if Spain had always conducted herself toward the United States as well as France had done, the difficulties would not have taken place. I did not think myself called upon to appear very grateful for this kind of cajolery."

Turreau did not want keenness of insight; and this early experience gave him no high respect either for Madison or for the American system of government. His despatch explained that the dispute was in great part due to the fact that the Louisiana purchase had been made a battle-ground in the Presidential election just ended; that the opposition, by depreciating its importance, had driven the party in power to exaggerate its value; and that the Administration, to ​assure itself of victory, had committed itself to the policy of obtaining Florida by one means or another, till it could no longer recede. Yrujo's indiscretions had helped to make it impossible for Jefferson to withdraw with dignity from his position.

"For the rest," continued Turreau, "I have made every effort to reconcile M. d'Yrujo with the Secretary of State, and if I have not succeeded, it is the fault of the latter. He is dry (sec), spiteful (haineux), passionate; and his private resentments, still more than political difference, will long keep him apart from M. d'Yrujo. Nevertheless, as I am on very good terms with Mr. Madison, whom I was about to ask to dine with me, I sent my first aide-de-camp to ask him whether he would be pleased to meet the Spanish minister at dinner; and in consequence of his very civil and even obliging answer, I had them together at my table, where I again attempted a reconciliation. M. d'Yrujo would have agreed to it; but the Secretary of State cannot forgive."

Finally, Turreau called Talleyrand's attention to the question whether it was for the interest of France and Spain that Yrujo should be kept at Washington:—

"Doubtless the Government here wishes for his recall, and regards this step as the duty of the Court at Madrid, the more because Mr. Pinckney has been recalled; but ought the Spanish minister to be changed because the American government wishes it? This point deserves attention. These people here have been well spoiled; it is time to send them back to their proper place." ​

The quarrel with Yrujo was the more unfortunate because it happened at a moment when Charles Pinckney, the American minister at Madrid, showed extreme want of discretion. The President had not intended to leave Pinckney unassisted. After the conclusion of the Louisiana treaty, in May, 1803, Madison supposed that Monroe, in obedience to his instructions, would go at once to Madrid and take the negotiation from Pinckney's hands.[6] For reasons that will hereafter appear, Monroe decided against this step, and went to London instead. On learning the change of plan, Madison warned Pinckney[7] to make no propositions to the Spanish government, which was not yet in a humor to receive them with favor. Pinckney, restive under restraint, managed to keep up an appearance of diplomatic activity that greatly vexed the Secretary of State. Madison complained[8] to the President that his minister at Madrid teased the Spanish government on the subject of Florida, which he had been ordered not to touch without the presence or the advice of Monroe; forbidden to make but permitted to accept offers, he was continually offering to accept; while Livingston at Paris, equally restive under the imposed authority of Monroe, could not resist the temptation to stimulate Pinckney and offer advice both to France and Spain. Madison's complaints ​were well founded; but when he wrote in this sense to Jefferson, he had not begun to appreciate the full measure of diplomatic activity which his minister at Madrid was capable of displaying.

Yrujo always managed to embarrass the American government without seriously committing his own; but Pinckney showed no such forbearance, and by the close of the year 1804 drew Madison into a mortifying position. He began his activity in July, 1803, immediately after hearing that Monroe had given up the proposed visit to Madrid, and had gone to London. Without waiting to learn how this change of plan and the purchase of Louisiana might affect the President's views toward Spain, Pinckney, to use his own words,[9] "pushed the new propositions respecting our claims in that positive and decided manner which the circumstances of Europe and the particular situation of Spain seemed to me to warrant." Cevallos contented himself with parrying this attack by giving to Pinckney the written opinion obtained by Yrujo from the five American lawyers in support of his argument that the United States, by their treaty with France of Sept. 30, 1800, had renounced their right to demand indemnity for losses sustained from French cruisers.[10]

Both parties next appealed to the French ambassador at Madrid. The Prince of Peace, though irritated by the sale of Louisiana, quickly saw that his ​only chance of retaining Florida was to conciliate Bonaparte; and Pinckney, who knew that the French ambassador at Madrid had been instructed to support Monroe in negotiating for Florida, counted on the same aid in order to maintain a threatening attitude. The result was soon seen. Pinckney, disturbed by the news of Yrujo's protest against the sale of Louisiana, turned to the French ambassador for advice.[11] Beurnonville accordingly wrote to Talleyrand for instructions; but Talleyrand had already sent to the Spanish embassy at Paris a note of sharp remonstrance against the protest.[12] Beurnonville, learning this, asked the Prince of Peace for explanations; and Godoy hastened to assure him that Bonaparte might be at ease on this score, for orders had been sent to New Orleans to surrender the province without opposition, and already Yrujo had been instructed to change his tone at Washington.[13] Soon afterward Cevallos formally notified Pinckney that the King renounced his opposition to the cession of Louisiana.[14] In due time Yrujo sent to the State Department a formal note to the same effect.[15]

At the cost of recognizing the Louisiana cession, ​Godoy pacified Bonaparte, who stood in need of Spanish support. From the moment Pinckney begged in vain for help from the French ambassador at Madrid, although the need of aid increased from day to day. Just as his first and least important point, the withdrawal of Yrujo's protest, was gained at Madrid, the Government at Washington created new difficulties about his path. At the moment when Beurnonville, Talleyrand, and Pinckney wrung from King Charles his adhesion to the Louisiana treaty, the Senate at Washington, Jan. 9, 1804, ratified the Spanish claims convention, which had been negotiated by Pinckney nearly eighteen months before, and had been held an entire year under consideration by the Senate. The last article of this convention provided, as usual with such instruments, that it should have no effect until ratified by both parties, and that the ratifications should be exchanged as soon as possible. So far from performing its part of the contract, the Senate had at one moment refused to ratify at all, and after reconsidering this refusal, had delayed ratification an entire year, until the relations of the two parties had been wholly changed. The idea that the King of Spain was bound to ratify in his turn, implied excessive confidence in his good-nature; but Madison, in sending the ratified treaty to Pinckney, suggested no suspicion that Charles IV. might have changed his mind, and gave not a hint to Pinckney of the course to be followed in such a contingency. The Mobile Act had not yet become law, and Yrujo ​was waiting for its signature by the President before waking Madison from his dreams of doing what he pleased with Spanish property.

Early in February, 1804, Madison sent these new instructions to Pinckney, inclosing the ratified treaty, and instructing him in effect to press the reserved claims for French spoliations in Spanish ports. The despatch reached Pinckney in May, and he went at once to Cevallos for the ratification. To his great annoyance Cevallos made difficulties. During the discussion, Cevallos received from Yrujo a copy of the Mobile Act, which he sent to Pinckney May 31, with a demand for explanations. Pinckney replied in a tone little short of dictatorial.[16]

"Permit me on this subject to remind your Excellency," said he, "that on the first intelligence being received of the cession of Louisiana, I communicated verbally to your Excellency and the Prince of Peace the contents of an official letter I had received from Mr. Livingston and Mr. Monroe, informing me that they considered a great part of West Florida, as so called by the English, as included. Such letter could not have been written officially to me by them without their having been so informed by the French plenipotentiary and government."
Pinckney urged that the two subjects should be kept separate. "Do not show the United States that you have no confidence either in their honor or justice,—qualities on which they value themselves more than on power or wealth." ​

Unfortunately Pinckney's note obliged Spain to show want of confidence in the "honor or justice" of the United States, unless indeed she meant to acquiesce in losing Florida as well as Louisiana. Pinckney next appealed to the French ambassador for help.[17] "I took the course of giving Mr. Pinckney an obliging but vague answer," said Beurnonville, writing for instructions to Talleyrand. Cevallos, on his side, wrote to Admiral Gravina, the Spanish ambassador at Paris, instructing him to remonstrate with Talleyrand against Pinckney's conduct. After a month's delay, Cevallos, in answer to Pinckney's letters, sent a sharp note,[18] offering to ratify the convention on three conditions,—one being that the reserved claim for French spoliations should be abandoned, and another that the Mobile Act should be revoked.

Without waiting for further instructions, or even consulting Monroe at London, Pinckney next wrote to Cevallos a letter which surpassed all indiscretions that Madison could have imagined. Requesting Cevallos "merely to answer this question," whether ratification was refused except on the conditions specified, he added:[19]—

"I wish to have your Excellency's answer as quickly as possible, as on Tuesday I send a courier with circular letters to all our consuls in the ports of Spain, stating to ​them the critical situation of things between Spain and the United States, the probability of a speedy and serious misunderstanding, and directing them to give notice thereof to all our citizens; advising them so to arrange and prepare their affairs as to be able to move off within the time limited by the treaty, should things end as I now expect. I am also preparing the same information for the commander of our squadron in the Mediterranean, for his own notice and government, and that of all the American merchant-vessels he may meet."

Cevallos immediately answered[20] that as he could not comprehend the motive for "breaking out in the decisions, not to say threats," of this letter, or how it was possible that Pinckney could have the authority of his government for such conduct, he should by the King's order transfer the negotiation to Washington. Pinckney rejoined by despatching his circular letter, which created a panic in the Mediterranean. He then informed Cevallos that so soon as his affairs could be arranged, he should send for his passports and quit Madrid.[21]

Although this step was in the highest degree improper, Pinckney had some excuse for his conduct. Left without instructions in the face of an emergency which might have been foreseen at Washington, he argued that his government which had officially annexed West Florida, meant to support its acts with a strong hand. He thought that the issue presented by Cevallos ​was such as the President was bound to take up, and he knew that the only chance of carrying the points which the President had at heart was in energetic action. For three years he had watched the peremptory tone of France and England at Madrid, and had been assured by the common voice of his diplomatic colleagues that threats alone could extort action from the Spanish government. He had seen the Prince of Peace, after resorting to one subterfuge after another, repeatedly forced to cower before the two great robbers who were plundering Spain, and he explained to Madison the necessity of imitating their example if the President meant that Spain should cower before the United States. Perhaps he felt that Godoy looked on the President at Washington as the jackal of Bonaparte, and he may have wished to prove that America could act alone. His eager ambition to make himself as important as the representatives of France and England in the eyes of Europe might imply vanity, but rested also on logic.

The first result of this energetic tone was not what Pinckney had hoped. Cevallos was outwardly unmoved; Pinckney's violence only caused him to lay aside that courtesy which was the usual mark of Spanish manners. His official notes were in outward form still civil enough, but in two or three conversations Pinckney listened to a series of remarks as blunt as though Lord Harrowby were the speaker. Pinckney reported to Madison the tenor of ​these rough rejoinders.[22] Cevallos told him that the Americans, ever since their independence, had been receiving the most pointed proofs of friendship and generosity from Spain, who, as was well known, received no benefit from them,—on the contrary, their commerce was extremely injurious to Spain; the Spanish government had ten times more trouble with them than with any other nation, and for his part, he did not wish to see the trade with the United States extended. Spain had nothing to fear from the United States, and had heard with contempt the threats of senators like Ross and Gouverneur Morris. The Americans had no right to expect much kindness from the King; in the purchase of Louisiana they had paid no attention to his repeated remonstrances against the injustice and nullity of that transaction, whereas if they had felt the least friendship they would have done so. They were well known to be a nation of calculators, bent on making money and nothing else; the French, and probably in the result all the nations having possessions in the West Indies, would be materially injured by them, for without a doubt it was entirely owing to the United States that St. Domingo was in its present situation.

Pinckney received [23] at the same time what he called secret intelligence on which he could implicitly rely, ​that Cevallos meant to create indefinite delays to the ratification, for Yrujo had written that neither these nor the French spoliation claims, nor West Florida, would induce the American government to depart from its pacific system. France had indeed gone to the point of advising and even commanding Spain to relinquish her claim on Louisiana, and this was the reason why Spain had so quietly given it up; but in regard to the spoliations, France preferred not to see them paid, as the more money Spain paid America the less she could pay France, and France knew as well as Spain how little serious was the American government in the idea of abandoning its neutrality.

Pinckney having done his worst, found himself in a position extremely awkward. Although he threatened to leave Spain, and proclaimed that he meant soon to demand his passports, he did not venture to take this last step without instructions. Cevallos, excessively perplexed by his conduct, could not conceive that he should act thus without some definite authority. Boldly as Cevallos talked, he was in truth greatly alarmed by the idea of war. The French representative at Madrid wrote to Talleyrand that Pinckney had terrified the secretary beyond reason:[24]—

"The difficulty of making himself understood by M. de Cevallos in a language with which he is not familiar, excites Mr. Pinckney to fly out in terms beyond moderation and proper civility. He positively threatens war, ​and loudly announces his resolution shortly to demand his passports. The truth is that he is preparing to depart, and finds himself almost deprived of power to remain, not only in consequence of his personal altercation with the minister, but also of the care with which he has taken the public into his confidence. . . . M. de Cevallos seems to me to be quite seriously alarmed at the results this may have."

Ten days later the Frenchman reported that Cevallos was more uneasy than ever.[25]

"'If the Emperor,' added M. de Cevallos, 'would but say a word, and let the United States understand that he is not pleased at seeing them abuse the advantages which they owe to their strength and to the nearness of their resources over an ally of France, this would reconcile all difficulties, and save his Majesty the necessity of exacting satisfaction for an insult which is as good as inflicted.'"

The Frenchman, having not instructions, contented himself with suggesting that the Emperor had more pressing matters on hand. "'So,' said M. de Cevallos, 'France will have caused our actual misunderstanding with our neighbors, and we are to expect no service from her influence!'"

While Cevallos thus invoked the aid of France, the news of Pinckney's war slowly crossed the Atlantic. No sooner did it arrive than Yrujo in the middle of October, shortly after his attempt to seduce the patriotism of Major Jackson, wrote to the Secretary ​of State a formal letter,[26] repeating what had already been said to Pinckney at Madrid. Madison's reply was studiously moderate and conciliatory.[27] He explained as best he could the offensive language of the Mobile Act, and announced that a special minister would soon reach Madrid, to hasten the adjustment of all territorial disputes; he deprecated the demand for an abandonment of the French claims, and argued that such a condition of ratification was not supported by international law; he urged Yrujo to give assurances of an unqualified ratification, but he said not a word about Pinckney's performances, and gave it to be understood that Pinckney would be recalled. A few days afterward he wrote to Monroe, ordering him in haste to Spain. "The turn which our affairs at Madrid have taken renders it expedient in the judgment of the President that you should proceed thither without delay."[28] In another letter, written at nearly the same time, he was more explicit:[29]—

"Pinckney's recall has been asked by the Spanish government, and a letter of leave goes to him. I suspect he will not return in good humor. I could not permit myself to flatter him, and truth would permit me to praise him. He is well off in escaping reproof, for his agency has been very faulty as well as feeble." ​

The first attempts to overawe Spain had failed. Pinckney, not disavowed but ignored, fell into the background; and once more Monroe stepped forward to rescue the Administration. When these instructions were written, he had already reached Paris on his way to Madrid; but Madison, undeterred by Pinckney's disaster, still persisted in advising him to place his main reliance "in a skilful appeal to the fears of Spain."[30]

  1. ↑ Pichon to Talleyrand, 18 Brumaire, An xiii. (Nov. 9, 1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
  2. ↑ Madison to Jefferson, Oct. 2, 1804; Jefferson MSS.
  3. ↑ Note du Premier Consul, 2 Floréal, An. xi. (April 22, 1803); Correspondance, viii. 288.
  4. ↑ Turreau to Talleyrand, 23 Floréal, An xiii. (May 13, 1805); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
  5. ↑ Turreau to Talleyrand, 6 Pluviôse, An xii. (Jan 27, 1805); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
  6. ↑ Madison to Monroe, July 29, 1803; State Papers, ii. 626. Madison to Pinckney, July 29, 1803; State Papers, ii. 614.
  7. ↑ Madison to Pinckney, Oct. 12, 1803; State Papers. ii. 570.
  8. ↑ Madison to Jefferson, April 9, 1804; Jefferson MSS.
  9. ↑ Pinckney to Madison, Aug. 2, 1803; State Papers, ii. 597.
  10. ↑ Cevallos to Pinckney, Aug. 23, 1803; State Papers, ii. 604.
  11. ↑ Beurnonville to Talleyrand, 18 Nivôse, An xii. (Jan. 9, 1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
  12. ↑ Talleyrand to D'Hervas, 12 Nivôse, An xii. (Jan. 3, 1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
  13. ↑ Beurnonville to Talleyrand, 21 Nivôse, An. xii. (Jan. 12, 1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
  14. ↑ Cevallos to Pinckney, Feb. 10, 1804; State Papers, ii. 583.
  15. ↑ Yrujo to Madison, May 15, 1804; State Papers, ii. 583.
  16. ↑ Pinckney to Cevallos, June 1, 1804; State Papers, ii. 618.
  17. ↑ Beurnonville to Talleyrand, 18 Prairial, An xii. (June 7, 1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
  18. ↑ Cevallos to Pinckney, July 2, 1804; State Papers, ii. 619.
  19. ↑ Pinckney to Cevallos, July 5, 1804; State Papers, ii. 620.
  20. ↑ Cevallos to Pinckney, July 8, 1804; State Papers, ii. 620.
  21. ↑ Pinckney to Cevallos, July 14, 1804; State Papers, ii. 621.
  22. ↑ Pinckney to Madison, July 20, 1804; MSS. State Department Archives.
  23. ↑ Pinckney to Madison, July 20, 1804; MSS. State Department Archives.
  24. ↑ Vandeul to Talleyrand, 7 Thermidor, An xii. (July 26, 1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
  25. ↑ Vandeul to Talleyrand, 18 Thermidor, An xii. (Aug. 6, 1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
  26. ↑ Yrujo to Madison, Oct. 13, 1804; State Papers, ii. 624.
  27. ↑ Madison to Yrujo, Oct. 15, 1804; State Papers, ii. 625.
  28. ↑ Madison to Monroe, Oct. 26, 1804; State Papers, ii. 631.
  29. ↑ Madison to Monroe, Nov. 9, 1804; Works, ii. 208.
  30. ↑ Madison to Monroe, Nov. 9, 1804; Works, ii. 208.
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