authorised by congress to agree" to relinquish, and in future to forbear to use, the navigation of the river Mississippi, from the point where it leaves the United States down to the ocean." After the war was ended, a majority of congress had agreed to barter away, for twentyfive years, their claim to this navigation.

A long and intricate negotiation between M. Gardoqui, the minister of his catholic majesty, and the secretary of foreign affairs, had taken place at New York in the interval between the establishment of peace and of the new constitution of the United States, but was rendered abortive, from the inflexible adherence of M. Gardoqui to the exclusion of the citizens of the United States from navigating the Mississippi below their southern boundary. This unyielding disposition of Spain, the inability of the United States to assert their claims to the navigation of this river, and especially the facility which the old congress had evinced to recede from it for a term of years, had soured the minds of the western settlers. Their impatience transported them so far beyond the bounds of policy, that they sometimes dropped hints of separating from the Atlantic states, and attaching themselves to the Spaniards. In this critical state of things, the president found abundant exercise

for

for all his prudence. The western inhabitants were in fact thwarting his views in their favour, and encouraging Spain to persist in refusing that free navigation which was so ardently desired both by the president and the people. The adherence of Spain to the exclusive use of the lower Mississippi, and the impolitic discontents of the western inhabitants, were not the only embarrassments of Washington in negotiating with the court of Madrid.

In 1794 four Frenchmen left Philadelphia, empowered by M. Genet, the minister of the French republic, to prepare an expedition in Kentucky against New Orleans. Spain, then at war with France, was at peace with the United States. Washington was officially bound to interpose his authority to prevent the raising of an armed force from among his fellow citizens to commit hostilities on a peaceable neighbouring power. Orders were accordingly given to the civil authority in Kentucky, to use all legal means to prevent this expedition; but the execution of these orders was so very languid, that it became necessary to call in the aid of the regular army. General Wayne was ordered to establish a military force on the Ohio, for the purpose of forcibly stopping any body of armed men who, in opposition

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opposition to remonstrances, should persist in going down that river.

Many of the high-spirited Kentuckians were so exasperated against the Spaniards, as to be very willing to second the views of the French minister, and under his auspices to attack New Orleans. The navigation of the Mississippi was so necessary for conveying to proper markets the surplusage of their luxuriant soil, that to gain this privilege, others were willing to receive it from the hands of the Spaniards, at the price of renouncing all political connexion with the United States. While these opposite modes of seeking a remedy for the same evil were pursuing by persons of different temperaments, a remonstrance from the inhabitants of Kentucky was presented to Washington and congress. This demanded the use of the Mississippi as a natural right, and at the same time charged the government with being under the influence of a local policy, which had prevented all serious efforts for the acquisition of a right, essential to the prosperity of the western population. It spoke the language of an injured people, irritated by the maladministration of their public servants, and hinted the probability of a dismemberment of the union, if their natural rights were not vindicated by government. To

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appease

appease these discontents, to restrain the French from making war on the Spaniards with a force raised and embodied in the United States, and at the same time, by fair negotiation, to obtain the free use of the Mississippi from the court of Madrid, was the task assigned to Washington. Difficult and delicate as it was, the whole was accomplished. Anterior to the receipt of the remonstrance, the president, well knowing the discontents of the interior people, and that the publication of them would obstruct his views, had directed the secretary of state to give assurances to the governor of Kentucky that every exertion was making to obtain the free navigation so much desired. The strong arm of government was successfully exerted to frustrate the expedition projected by the French minister against New Orleans. While these matters were pending, major Thomas Pinckney was appointed envoy extraordinary to the court of Madrid; and in

the year 1795 he concluded a treaty with his catholic majesty, in which the claims of the United States on the subject of boundary and the navigation of the Mississippi were fully conceded. By these events, the discontents of the western people were done away; tranquillity was restored between the Atlantic and western states; and all points in controversy Letween

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between the United States and Spain were satisfactorily adjusted. The most material of these, the free navigation of the Mississippi, had been the subject of discussion, in the hands of different negotiators, for almost the whole of the last fifteen years.

Great were the difficulties Washington had to encounter in amicably settling all matters with Spain; but much greater stood in the way of a peaceable adjustment of various grounds of controversy between the United States and Great Britain.

Each of these two nations charged the other with a breach of the treaty of peace in 1783, and each supported the charge against the other with more solid arguments than either alleged in their own defence.

The peace terminated the calamities of the war, but was far from terminating the resentments which had been excited by it. Many in the United States believed that Great Britain was their natural enemy, and that her views of subjecting the United States to her empire were only for the present suspended. Soon after the peace, Mr.John Adams had been deputed by the old congress to negotiate a treaty between the United States and Great Britain; but the latter declined to meet this advance of the former. While he urged on the court

of