.SLJ F 369 .S63 Copy 1 — - HISTORICAL SUMMARY AND ARGUMENT IN SUPPORT OF THE CLAIM OF THE Louisiana Parishes OF East and ^yyest Feliciana, East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Helena, Tan- gipahoa, 'Vyashington, and St. Tammany. WASHINGTON, D. C. GIBSON BKOTHERS, PEINTERS. 1884. I f 6 HISTORICAL SUMMARY AND ARGUMENT IN SUPPORT OF THE CLAIM OF THE LOUISIANA PARISHES East and West Feliciana, East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Helena^ Tangipahoa, Washington, and St. Tammany. The petition of tlie police juries of tlie above-named eiglit subdivisions of tlie State of Louisiana respectfully represents to the Senate and House of Kepresentatives in Congress as- sembled — That they are styled, in the aggregate, the Florida parishes. Tliat these claimants are the guai'dians in their corporate ca pacity of the property interests of their respective comnmni- ties, both corporeal and incorporeal ; and they believe that in their corporate capacity they are the successors and presump- tive heirs of the defunct State of West Florida, not heirs to its sovereignty, but inheritors of its common domain, which was captured by their ancestor from the King of Spain in the fort at Baton Rouge on the 23d day of September, A. D. 1810. Hence their rights, if any they have, were vested anterior to their becoming an integer of the State of Louisiana. The following narrative of events, which ensued upon the conquest, is offered by the claimants to sustain the inherited title to the conquered soil wliich is alleged in their petition, and which they solicit the Congress to recognize, viz : Simultaneously with the conquest of the fort all the em- blems of Spanish authority — civil, military, and clerical — were extirpated from the Baton Rouge district. And on the expul- sion of the Spanish authorities the conquerors proceeded to found a State, wliich proclaimed itself to the woi^d as " The Free, Sovereign, and Independent State of West Florida." {National Intelligencer, Oct. 2%tJi, 1810.) As a State it was never recognized by any established mem- ber of the family of nations, l)ut it was created and consoli- dated and endowed with all the attributes of sovereignty by the will and commandment of a power which has breathed life into many other new States in this New World — the sov- ereign people! Although by a strict construction of the rules of the law of nations, our ancestors may have failed to consolidate a govern- ment firmly enough knitted to assume to itself the attributes requisite to the investiture of sovereign dominion, if they failed to acquire such national proportions as would attach to their creation the right of eminent domain, neverthless they tried hard and made rapid strides in that direction, inas- much as they estal)lished a system of interior government satisfactory to themselves, which legislated, negotiated, levied taxes, and waged war. What State ever made more rapid strides to consolidation than that record shows in a brief exis- tence of two months and thirteen days ? It has already been admitted that the State of West Florida was never recognized ^^ selons les i^egles^'' of the hackneyed code which prevails with nations which were old before Ke- publics were born into the world ; yet it was recognized by the people who founded it, and they maintained for their little Kepublic, while it lived, an active, defiant, separate exis- tence, until the Government at Washington, in response to an invitation from the government at Baton Rouge, moved its troops into the territory of its little friendly neighbor and as- sumed the jurisdiction " in the name and on behalf of the people of the United States." We reiterate and expect to demonsti-ate that the occupation was suggested and the jurisdiction was proclaimed by virtue of the invitation extended by the supreme governing power of the State of West Florida, and not for the purpose avoivedm the President's proclamation of Oct. 27th, 1810, which avowed the design of the United States to be to hold the conquered domain subject to '''■pending negotiations with Spain. The doubt which militates against our hypothesis rests upon two acts of sovereignties exercising their functions at two capitals very remote from each other in the days before railroads or telegraph lines were dreamed of. The government at Baton Houge on tlie 10th day of October, A. D. 1810, formulated a diplomatic note proposing to the Government at Washington a series of clearly stated and germane propositions. On the 2Tth day of October the President at Washington issued his proc- lamation ordering Governor Clail)orne to assume jurisdiction. The interval between the dates of the two acts is short, but not so short as to demonstrate our hypothesis to be a physical impossibility. On the other hand, it is impossible to assume that a President of the United States ordered the invasion of a friendly neighbor without the concurrence of the authorities of the invaded State and without the consent of Congress ! In further demonstration of the proposition that the true motive for the occupation was suppressed and that the avowed motive was disingenuous we cite the origin, progress, and fail- ure of " the pending negotiations with Spain," In the mes- sage of Mr. Jefferson of 1803 occurs a paragraph which by erroneous interpretation was construed into a claim to the wliole Valley of the Mississippi without a break in its contin- uity. Popular clamor lashed the waters into a wild roar of in- dignation against Spain for withholding the delivery of West Florida, which, according to the language of the message, we had bought and paid for in 1803. In 1805 Mr. James Mon- roe, a most accomplished diplomatist, had been sent to Spain and France to negotiate with tliose powers for a rectification of l)Oundaries conforming to the popular interpretation of the delusive paragraph of the message of 1803. The claim to West Florida was scouted by the king of Spain and l)y our vendor, the Emperor Napoleon, and by the concurrent testimony of Pi-ince Talleyrand and Barbe Marbois, the French Minister, who negotiated tiie treaty of 1803. (See American State Pa- pers for dispatches of Mr. Monroe, unpublished secret and con- fidential message of Dec'r 6, 1805 ; Barbe Marbois', the F]-ench negotiator. History of the Louisiana Cession ; also letter of Prince Talleyrand to Gen'l Armstrong, American State Pa- pers, Foreign Relations, vol. II, p. 634.) The cunnilative proofs evoked by the researches and nego- tiations of Mr. Monroe against the claim of the United States to any part of "West Florida were so conclusive and crushing tliat the claim was virtually abandoned at the close of the mis- sion of Mr. Monroe in 1805. Even Mr. Jefferson, who ad- vanced and pressed the claim, hrqjliedly abandons it in his secret and confidential message. And in another recorded in- stance, in 1809, we find him counselling his successor to cast aside the peaceful policy of slow diplomacy, and " in the event of war with Great Britain you must take Baton Houge, or they will, and thereby cut off New Orleans from the West and the balance of the Union." Jefferson'' s Correspondence^ vol. 4, j?p. 131, 132, Char- lottesville edition. Hence we conclude that the " pending negotiations with Spain," which were galvanized by the proclamation of Oct. 27, 1810, were not pending, but were dead and abandoned. The trve reasons for the suppression of the rea/ motive for the occupation will be found in Mr. Madison's letter to Mr. Jeffer- son of Oct. 19th, 1810. Madison's Writings, vol. II, pp. 484,485. We hope that by the above historical review "we have con- clusively demonstrated that the United States did come into the Baton Rouge district by the invitation of our ancestor, and did not come for the purpose avowed in the proclamation. In case it should be admitted that the jurisdiction and posses- sion were assumed in the guise of an invited guest, the com- ing in that guise was a substantial acceptance by the Govern- ment at Washington of the series of clearly stated and ger- mane propositions submitted by the Government at Baton liouge in its diplomatic note of Oct. 10, 1810, which note ma}' be, without violence to truth or common sense, be styled the embodiment of preliminaries for a proposed treaty, the most beneficial of which to the United Slates was the tender of possession and jurisdiction, and the most favorable to the peo- ple of the State of West Fhu-ida was the reservation of title to the conquerors of the soil. State Papers Foreign Relations, v. Ill, ]>. 395. In the above connection it is pertinent to inquire if the United States did not come by the invitation of the Baton Rouge government, what color of right had they to invade the territory of a friendly State, which was very young and very helpless ? A sovereign State annexed by proclamation of the President ! That is a pi-ecedent for which the models must be searched for in the history of British India, where aforetime principalities, provinces, States, and empires have been an- nexed by proclam.ition of tlie Governor-General; here, how- ever, in this western hemisphere, the practice has not found much favor or frequent imitation. It is confessedly a weak point in our case that the inchoate treaty did not mature before the demise of our ancestors into a full-blown treaty, digested into articles, signed, sealed, deliv- ered, and ratified amid tlie pomp and circumstance of a cere- monious diploniatic transaction, and we admit that the want of those solemn forms raises o, prima facie showing against our claim. Nevei'theless, we hold that the acceptance by the United States of the preliminary, which was most conducive to its own safety and grandeur, as effectually clinched and guaranteed the preliminary which reserved to us the title to the soil, as though they were attested l)y a treaty which had passed through all the completed ceremonials which subse- quently preserved for the State of Texas its broad and mag- nificent domain, which was aquired by identical means. These are the foundations of our claim to the conquered soil. If they are in]])erfect l)y reason of the l)i-ief existence and unrecognized attitude of our ancestor, they are at the very least as tenable and valid as a title by Presidential proclama- tion and an al)sorbing act of Congress "enlarging the limits," etc., &c. Befoi-e dismissing this l)ranch of om- reclamation we beg leave to call the attention of Congress to two singular and al)- nornial conditions deducible from our statement above: (f) Our ancestors are the only actors in successful revolution in the New World from whom the fruits for which they risked their necks have been wrested ; (2) the domain of our de- ceased ancestor is the only fragment of the wide public domain of this big Republic which is held Ijy virtue of a Presidential proclamation and by act of Congress ! And we say this with full knowledge that the ambiguous language of the treaty of 1803 has been strained to give color of title to the United States, and that the treaty of 1819 does indisputably transfer to the United States all the title which the King of Spain had to the Baton Rouge district at the date of the treaty. Should our title to the soil be denied, in that event we beg leave to remind the Congress that the United States did, by the a(;t of our ancestor, acquire at a most opportune moment full possession and jurisdiction over a scope of territory abso- lutely essential to the protection of its fertile empire in the valley of the Mississippi — a scope of territory which, had it remained under the jurisdiction of Spain, an ally of Great Britain during the war of 1812, would have afforded fatal fa- cilities to the enemy to blockade the city of New Orleans from above, and would have left wide open an important gate to the great valley. Those calamities were averted by the jurisdiction and pos- session derived from our ancestor, and hj that inestimable boon General Jackson was enabled to construct a dyke across the river entrance to the Bayou Manchac, and hj that means to obstruct the passage of hostile fleets into the Mississippi river, 100 miles above New Orleans, and likewise to secure an uninterrupted line of land travel for the advance or retreat of his army to or from New Orleans. And wliile executing these necessary works he was enal)]ed to recruit his cav.nlry horses, which were worn out by forced marches in the Creek and Florida wars, on the succulent pastures of East Baton Rouge and the Felicianas. The possession of our ancestor's domain was a tower of strength to the United States; to illustrate still further its paramount importance as a war aid from the mouse to the lion, we state from authentic history that Gen. Coffee received orders at Baton Rouge December 17, 1814, to repair without sleeping to the relief of the threatened city, mucI on the evening of the 19th he reported with twelve hundred mounted volunteers from a camp within tifteen ujiles of the city. That was the force which disputed every foot of Pack- enham's advance from Lake Borgne, and lighted him the way to dusky deatli on the bloody field of Chalmette ! Other services rendered by the little dead to the great living Republic may without offensive boastfulness be here enum- erated ; for instance, the daring frontiersmen, under whom we claim, opened millions of acres of fertile field and virgin for- est which had been hitherto fenced and sealed against the ad- vancing cohorts of civil and religions liberty ; wilds out of which magically uprose the log school-house, the unpretending meeting-house, and all the emblems which denote the approaches of Anglo-American civilization. It may likewise be truth- fully claimed that the State of Alabama owes its splendid sea- port, and the State of Mississippi its long line of sea front, to the terror inspired ])y the arms of the little Lone Star Repub- lic in its vigorous siege of the Spanisli city of Mobile in the winter of 1810. — {Letter of the Spanish Governor Jbolch to Secretary of State, Dec. 2, 1810 ; State Papers, Foreign Rela- tions, vol. Ill,])- 397.) Not least; perhaps, of the legacies l)equeathed by our dead ancestor was a famous lot of arms purchased for the forces be- sieging Mobile, and which were placed at the service of Gen- eral Jackson to arm the volunteers asseml)led for the defence of New C)rleans. — {Attorney - GeyieraV s Opinion in case of Henri de la Francia.) Your memorialists do not question the fact that the logical consequences of displaying the Stars and Stripes over the do- main was to swallow up like Aaron's rod the weaker sover- eignty and the Lone Star, which was the symbol of its power. But we do question whether the same cogent logic swallowed up rightfully all the trophies and fruits which wei'e wrested by our ancestor from the otiicer of the King of Spain in the fort at Baton Rouge, fruits and trophies which, by the custom of the nations of the New World, invariably attach to conquest. Were all the i-ights to the soil which had been acquired by a daring band of adventurous frontiersmen at peril of their necks likewise swallowed up by the display of the more powerful em- blem \ Did it utterly annihilate all the prizes of the valor which fired the signal-gun aimouncing that the grapple be- 8 tween the Saxon and the Latin race had commenced ? Those old ancestors of ours were the heralds of a long line of victories and famous deeds of arms, such as no nation as young as the United States can inscribe upon an untarnished shield ? They were the heralds of San Jacinto, Palo Alto, Resaca de la Pal- ma, Matamoras, Monterey, Buena Yista, of Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Chapultepec, Molino del Rey, Mexico ! The charter of our equities springs from the Uring of that famous signal gun. Although its legitimate fruits may be temporarily withheld, its pi-egnant significance cannot be diminished. And now, after having disclosed to the Congress a chain of title almost without a flaw to a large l)ody of land which has been administered as part and parcel of the public domain, after having disclosed a series of daring achievements which added to the National domain many millions of acres of valua- ble land, we appeal to the Congress for fair ai'bitration on oui* right to the soil which our ancestor conquered and governed. If denied title to the soil we appeal in the alternative to the obligation resting upon a magnanimous Government to reward unrequited services, which greatly redounded to the National grandeur and safety. In conclusion, your memorialists will add that tlioiigh they have been long postponed, they still look with undiminished confidence for fair arbitration upon the equities they have alleged. They press for no solution of the question of their rights and inherited claiins which will embarass the Govern- ment b}' reason of its dealings with the domain in question, or which will in any manner impeach the justice and generosity of the Government. The}' renew their prayer for the measure of relief embodied in the two bills whicli were before the Com- mittee on the Public Lands of the XLVIItli Congress, and it is matter of indifference to them whether the relief comes in the shape of indemnity for shrinkage of tlieir patrimony or in re- quital of services, or as a price for the reUnquishment of their title. liespectf Lilly submitted by — HENRY SKIP WITH, Agent and Attorney in Fact for the Florida Parishes. 1 TRRftRV OF CONGRESS ilili 014 543 14» ' I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 5431487