The glory seekers; the romance of would-be founders of empire in the early days of the great southwest

Foreword

OVER the scenes of the exploits traced in these pages the sun of glory is now high risen. The wilderness has been transformed into proud and populous States. Men whose daring and ambition outweighed their sense of justice prevised in early days the quick-dawning greatness of the land. Eager for possession, while yet it was a wilderness, their i predatory enterprises smacked of mediaeval violence. Usually of desperate spirit, they staked their lives on the venture, to

" — win their way with falchion's force. Or pave the path with many a corse. "

Sheep now browse over thousands of unmarked graves of adventurers who invaded Spanish territory bent on conquest ; for in almost every raid they paid the mortal penalty of their rashness, and their doom in some degree absolved their transgression.

Yet not all of those reckless gamesters were rude, unschooled desperadoes. Among them are numbered youths of education and respectable connections, whose brief lives lend to the annals the glamor of wild romance. Their vi FOREWORD

deeds are hardly registered on the sedate pages of national history, although for decades they inspired emulation throughout the South and the West. As time recedes, the incidents of those bold days will diminish in the historical perspective, yet they will continue for generations to furnish themes for story and drama. Those garnered in this volume form a particular group.

W. H. B.

NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT

A S an index to the sources from which these chapters . /jk were mainly drawn, and also as an acknowledg- ^ j^nient of his obligation to them, the writer gives the following authorities, with the feeling that the first three in the list are entitled to special recognition : Gayarre's " History of Louisiana," Yoakum's " History of Texas," Pickett's " History of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi," Humphrey Marshall's " History of Kentucky," Monette's " History of the Valley of the Mississippi," Foote's " Texas and the Texans," J. H. Brown's, Holley's, and Thrall's histories of Texas, Ramsey's "Annals of Tennessee," Haywood's " History of Tennessee," Martin's "History of Louisiana," Thomas Marshall Green's "Spanish Conspiracies," Goodspeed's "The Province and the States," William Jay's "The Federal Government and Slavery," Giddings's "Florida Exiles," Kendall's "Santa Fe Expedition," H. H. Bancroft's " North Mexican States and Texas," Vol. IL The principal histories of the United States were also frequently consulted.

Chapter I

Page The Southwest after the War of Independence — Adventurers and Discontents — Spanish Obstructions — Wilkinson's Treasonable Enterprise — A Spaniard's Prophecy 15

CHAPTER n

Plots for Disunion — Genet, "Citizen" Minister from France, Arrives — Attempts to Raise an Army of Conquest in America — Much Disloyalty — Bold Schemes Frustrated 39

Chapter XVI

Captive Train Started for Mexico City — Terrors of the Journey — Strange Scenes and Experiences — Pestilence and Chains — Liberty at Last 325

INDEX 339

LIST OF PORTRAITS

Page Aaron Burr, American conspirator .... Frontispiece

Governor Estevan Miro, Spanish Provincial Governor

of Louisiana 30

General James Wilkinson, an instigator of plots with

Spanish Governors 46

" Citizen " Genet, Minister from France to the United

States 50

General George Rogers Clark, Revolutionary hero

who espoused Genet's cause 54

Governor Isaac Shelby, of Kentucky 58

Governor William Blount, of Tennessee .... 66

Governor William C. C. Claiborne, of Louisiana . . 96

Ellis Bean, of the Nolan Expedition 128

Jose Maria Morelos, Mexican revolutionist . . . 154

Xavier Mina, Spanish-American revolutionary adventurer 234

Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, Government explorer of the

Great Southwest 248

Mrs. Myra Clark Gaines, the renowned heiresslitigant 284

General Edmund P. Gaines, Commander of the Department of the Southwest 294

Mirabeau B. Lamar, President of Texas 300

George Wilkins Kendall, historian of the Texas- Santa Fe Expedition 312

Chapter I

The Southwest after the War of Independence — Adventurers and Discontents — Spanish Obstructions — Wilkinson's Treasonable Enterprise — A Spaniard's Prophecy.

HIS is mainly the story of men who, standing on the rugged confines of civilization in America at an early period of our national life, sought distinction by attempting to hitch their wagons to the star of empire.

In the tales of early American adventure we e n - counter some picturesque characters, and frequently have fairly to gasp for breath at the audacity of their schemes. Especially is this true of those daring spirits who operated in the Southwest, that grand theatre of historic melodrama, — of perilous exploits, projects of conquest, and dreams of sovereignty. The opportunities that unfolded to their visions embraced the subjection of territory extending anywhere from the Alleghany mountains to Yucatan. For the most part they probably were limited to founding a republic or an empire in the vast regions between the Lower Mississippi and the Rio Grande rivers. This extensive region seems to have excited more fanciful pictures of pomp and power in the minds of imaginative glory seekers than any other part of the American continent. During the period of three or four decades following the War of Independence, all paths of exploitation appear to have led toward this broad domain. That long war being at an end, left many men inured to military life, and many disappointed politicians, with limited opportunities for the exercise of their singular talents. Naturally enough, thousands of them pushed to the frontiers. To the west were desert and mountain wilderness, to the northwest an unexplored and supposedly barren region peopled only with savages. But beyond Louisiana and the steppes of Texas was a civilized nation numbering many millions of people.

The strained political conditions of our country during that era and the chaotic state of affairs in Mexico combined to incite questionable enterprises. The Mexicans were struggling fitfully to shake off the oppressive rule of Spain, encouraged by the revolutionary success of their northern neighbors, but showing neither their strength nor singleness of purpose. It seemed to be the conviction of all that the vast area of woodland and prairie, fertile and inviting, lying between the territories of the United States and the Mexican frontier was destined to become at an early day prosperous and rich. Texas, a Mexican province, was practically uninhabited and neglected. All it required was to open the gateways, take possession, and invite a flood of immigrants from Europe, from the Atlantic States, from everywhere. That done, and a power established, it would be easy to seize Mexico, to liberate the people from Spanish tyranny, and to incorporate the whole in one grand empire. And if the United States should by that time be having trouble in steering its ship of state, — well, the grand empire might then expand to the eastward.

Just when and how these magnificent schemes had their inception, is debatable. They were not original with Aaron Burr, although he is about the only one who, in this generation, is remembered by any but careful students of history as having entertained them ; nor was he the last who attempted to bring them to a realization. James Wilkinson had been plotting for years before Burr floated his puny rafts down to the Mississippi, but neither was he the first. The Southwest Territory, before the erection of the States of Kentucky and Tennessee, teemed with rugged fellows who, for one cause or another, had designs on Spanish possessions. They had marked the Floridas and Louisiana for their own. And they did not halt at that. They schemed also for the dismemberment of the Union, with the view of incorporating its States and Territories bordering on the Mississippi with provinces to be wrested from Spain, and the forming of an independent government. The leading residents of that part of the Union engaged in such treason almost before the Constitution was adopted. They plotted with and against the Spanish provincial governors. The latter knew they were the mark for constant intrigues, and it would have been quite unlike them if they had not reciprocated such compliments.

Indeed, the ramifications of the various intrigues during the last years of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth were so extensive that an essay to portray the circumstances which led to the freebooters' expeditions in the Southwest would be futile without giving special attention to them. To appreciate the predatory movements of those gentlemen of the high hand it is necessary to outline in passing the history of Spanish and American relations then existing.

While we find romances, there are also ugly spots disclosed in those early American annals. It is just as well to remind ourselves occasionally of those stains, lest we forget, in our tendency to idealize indiscriminately the lives of our forbears, that justice and patriotism were not always the prompters of their actions. State historians, particularly of the section now considered, have sinned constantly in such indiscriminate praise. They have sinned both by omission and commission. Some crimes they have studiously concealed, while others they have sugar-coated and passed along to posterity as virtuous actions.

The American people, as a people, can well afford to be candid in their history. It is but justice to those of our forefathers who were steadfast in loyalty to remember that there were some others who lapsed. It has come about that in the minds of the people two names stand for all there ever was, in the formative period of our nation, of disloyalty to the Union. Arnold and Burr are the only renegades to the sacred cause of a free and united country, and they are made to suffer vicariously for the sins of thousands. It is just as well to uncover some of the smaller traitors of those days — it is pertinent to the stories of our adventurers.

Late in 1784 there appeared in Kentucky a young man of exceptionally plausible manners and agreeable presence. There is no fiction about this. The stranger was a forceful embodiment of self-assertion, self-possession, and selfseeking. He was about twenty-eight, of excellent physique, not tall, but strongly built, with mobile and almost handsome features. Add to these attractions a high military title, and who can wonder that he created a great deal of interest among the people of Lexington, with whom he announced that he had come to cast his fortunes? He was James Wilkinson, some six years before colonel and brevet-brigadier general in the American Army of the Revolution. He came now from Philadelphia, where for some time he had been connected with commercial concerns ; and it was as the representative of such an association, it was understood, that he emigrated to the frontier.

Before following his career, let us take a glimpse at his past. Born in Maryland, he early began the study of medicine. The war with the mother country breaking out he was one of the first to enlist as a private ; served at the siege of Boston, and immediately began to receive commissions. He was soon a brigade-major under St. Clair, and happened to be present in the house where General Charles Lee was captured. The British dragoons who purloined that military fakir overlooked Wilkinson, who straightway became an adjutant on the staff of General Gates with the rank of colonel. He was in at the killing at Saratoga, and was present in the most showy uniform of the Continentals at the surrender of Burgoyne. It may have been because of his exceptional uniform that Gates selected him as official messenger to carry his report of the victory to the Congress, which was then sitting at Yorktown.

Wilkinson was at that date hardly twenty-one, but precocious — rather in audacity, it is hinted, than in military skill. But whatever the reason, he was at that period a favorite with General Gates. He set out for Yorktown in a showy manner, having a military guard. It would naturally be supposed that he made an eager and hurried trip with such glorious news for the nation's council. Not so. He took more than dignified leisure, stopped long at the inns, posed as a hero of the victory to admiring yokels in barrooms, received their applause, and repeated the entertainment at the next tavern.

At length, and still more leisurely, he arrived at Yorktown, having been on the road nearly a month. But even then he did not report his arrival for two days. The uniform and accoutrements had become tarnished by the journey, and he took that time to preen himself up to his normal glitter, and to prepare a grandiloquent oration with which to deliver his message. Finally he presented himself before the venerables, who had long before received the news through the weekly papers. They listened with some impatience to his bumptious rhetoric ; after which he hung around, hoping they would reward him for having arrived with the report at all. But he had his friends, and one of them suggested the propriety of voting him a sword, whereupon a disgusted old Scotch member exclaimed :

" I think ye 'd better gie the lad a pair o*" spurs ! '"' While the tardy spur-heel was grumbling at the ingratitude of Congress, his friends were busy. He must have been a good lobbyist, for before he left he was brevetted a brigadier. Soon after that he got involved in the

Conway cabal by talking loosely, for which he pleaded excuse by declaring it was during a convivial hour. Gates now turned upon and denounced him, but Wilkinson maintained, as he ever did when caught in a questionable mix, that he worshipped honor as the jewel of his soul. He and the general talked pistols behind the meetinghouse at eight o''clock, but came to an understanding and merely took coffee. Wilkinson then was appointed secretary to the Board of War, but quarrelled again with Gates, its president, v/hom he accused of treachery in the Conway affair, and resigned after serving only a few days. Just prior to this he resigned his newly-acquired commission of brevet-brigadier, because all the forty-seven colonels of the army, who were older than he, raised such a protest at the favoritism of it.

There was something peculiar about those two resignations which left the young warrior out of the service. That they were altogether voluntary can hardly be credited. " It was a retirement," says Irving, " which we apprehend he richly merited, and we doubt whether his country would have been the loser had he been left to enjoy it for the remainder of his days." But Wilkinson did not propose to quit a loser. He went to Philadelphia, got in with some of the thrifty patriots who were valiantly badgering Arnold and taking supply contracts, and in a short time was clothier-general of the army. The year that the war closed he sought new fields of operation far beyond the Alleghanies. It is said he had already squandered the money he made as clothier-general.

Here we have in this war hero among the border populace a man of talent and an accomplished demagogue. He had a convincing manner, and the tricks of the popular declaimer and agitator — captivations most effective for the time and the people. No man in the territory was more adroit, or fonder of adulation ; and he at once adapted himself to his new environment.

The inhabitants of the new country from the Alleghany and Appalachian mountains to the Mississippi, and north of the Floridas, were in a complaining mood. The lands they occupied along the Ohio and the Southwest rivers that flowed to it, or to the father of waters, were fertile and productive, but the value of those great arteries of transportation was greatly impaired by the denial by the Spaniards in Louisiana to the Americans of the right of navigation of the Mississippi. They shut that great river to the commerce of the American Territories. This was in support of the old policy of Spanish statesmen to keep Louisiana a wilderness — a barren shield, or buffer, between Texas and Mexico and English and French aggression from the North and East. This, of course, before the American Revolution. It was argued that to allow the province to become populous and wealthy would make it too tempting a prize for the cupidity of her neighbors. The scheme involved a line of forts along the Mississippi, and the limitation of settlement to a small colony around New Orleans.

While this policy of exclusion could not be maintained, the Spanish governors of Louisiana adhered to their dominion of the Mississippi, first by absolute prohibition, and later (for years subsequent to the Revolution) by tariffs that absorbed all profits of traffic to New Orleans. Although the Spaniards allied themselves with the Americans in the war with England, and took West Florida by conquest, the alliance was forgotten when peace came, and she erected as many restrictions as possible against the American frontiersmen and their trade. To be sure, Spain's war on Great Britain had not been out of sympathy for the United States, but in order to enforce her claim to the exclusive right to the navigation of the Gulf of Mexico. Her possessions, with the capture of West Florida, encircled the Gulf. Now, if she should lose the exclusive right to the navigation of the Mississippi, she would lose that of the Gulf also. And she considered that the reward due her for having jumped in and fought with the Americans in their hour of gi-eat need was that exclusive right.

It must be remembered also that, even after the relinquishment of the absurd old Spanish claim to the whole country eastward to the Alleghanies, they yet owned a considerable territory east of the Mississippi, including the Natchez district. So, considering the international politics of the times, the claim of the Spaniards to the great river was not without the color of reason ; and her imposition of duties of forty per cent or more on the goods and produce sent down from the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and other rivers to her valuable market was clearly within her right. But it was rough on the American settlers. Their produce could not be transported over mountain ranges to the East in those days, and much of their crops rotted in the new-cleared fields. Add to this the constant depredations of the savages, which the Federal government was ill able to repel, and which occasioned great hardships to the westerners, and the cause of their discontent may easily be understood.

After James Wilkinson had traded and planted in Kentucky three years under these conditions, using all his arts and influence to increase the clamor of the people and to incite them to blame the government for all their distress, he turned speculator. He had figured out a possible way to beat the Spanish tariffs, and he plunged all his means and credit on the desperate move of putting it into execution. And it was nothing so innocent as simple smuggling, either. He bought up a cargo of tobacco, bacon, whiskey, and flour. It was all cheap, and what he could not pay for, which was most of it, he easily got on credit. He loaded the stuif on flatboats, and in June, 1787, shipped with it for New Orleans. He was not much of an admiral, but he did not have to go far from land, and the nature of his cargo afforded good cheer for the journey. And so he floated down the Tennessee to the Ohio, and on to the forted Mississippi, where Spanish guards and Spanish guns disputed the way.

Still the ex-brevet-brigadier drifted on. No such trader had ever before come down that old watercourse. Never such a browbeating, threatening, authoritative, wheedling, deceiving commodore of a backwater fleet had ever come that way ; and he got to New Orleans intact, where, of course, everybody who had been overawed or hoodwinked by him said he would come to grief — that his whole shipment would be seized by Governor Miro, and sold. Either that or the shipper would pay the duties.

Well, this was the first time neither of those things happened to an American coming there, and everybody had a right to be astonished. But let them wait and see how this exceptional individual transacts business.

As usual, Governor Miro ordered the cargo seized. But that was before he met the owner. Soon Wilkinson presented himself before His Excellency. Now this Spanish governor was not any kind of fool, nor a tyro at his business. He had dealt with men of all kinds and many nationalities in holding his province aloof from the rest of the world, and so far none had cajoled him much. And it may as well be admitted at once that it is nothing particularly to the discredit of his acumen that he gave under now, for the record does not show that any living man, from President Washington down to the humblest river guard on the border, ever came in contact with this man Wilkinson without being made a dupe or a cat's-paw of. Miro simply became one of them. First thing anyone knew he was giving banquets to his illustrious visitor — was not he a great warrior, a general from a victorious army and a great war ? Had not Wilkinson had a chance to tell him about it ? — and how could one hear, and look upon the man, and doubt ?

The facts are that he had heard about Wilkinson. There had been correspondence between them. Miro understood that the ex-warrior was a man of extensive influence with the discontented Americans. Wilkinson soon convinced him of it, and in a short time was permitted to sell his cargo duty free. But that did not terminate his visit. He remained at New Orleans on intimate terms with the Governor. This, and the privilege of trading down the Mississippi and with the Spaniards, was much wondered at. News about it reached Kentucky and mystified the people — most of them. And along in September, Wilkinson took his departure, going by sea around to his old home, Philadelphia, and thence across country to Kentucky.

This is what had transpired. The wily American had approached the Spanish governor with a proposition in the interest of Spain. He related how greatly incensed the people of Kentucky and Tennessee were, how much they desired the freedom of the Mississippi, and asserted, no doubt with impressive exaggeration, how bitter their feehng was against their government for not securing for them without delay the exemptions they desired. Wilkinson would enter into a compact, for certain considerations, to head a defection in Kentucky, secure the cooperation of the leading citizens, to separate the Territory from Virginia and from the Union, and to bring it under the protection and sovereignty of Spain. In this revolution Tennessee and Mississippi no doubt would join. With both attached to Louisiana, that immense province would have no further trouble in monopolizing the navigation of the Mississippi ; that river would then flow through the middle of the extended Spanish possessions, with the United States having no frontage on it below the Ohio. Nor would it be necessary longer to keep Louisiana unpeopled as a safeguard against encroachments on Texas.

It was a grand, glittering, audacious scheme. Perhaps no other man west of the Alleghanies could have won the confidence of Miro in its feasibility — the Spaniard would have doubted the capacity of any other to caiTy it through. That Wilkinson convinced him by evidence other than words that he already had a number of influential associates enlisted in the treasonable undertaking, is certain. In fact, several were no doubt actual partners with him in the cargo he had brought — he had different partnerships in others following, through many years. And the theory has been advanced by some that Wilkinson's whole object in his traitorous engagement with Miro was to secure an exclusive trading privilege which, in a short time, must enrich him. But as a matter of truth, this adroit veteran of the Revolution had greater designs than those he disclosed to Governor Miro. He had contracted visions of a great and independent State, of which he would be the ruler. Sovereignty had been rapidly shifting. Spain was declining — he did not believe the political conditions of the world would permit her long to hold these desirable American provinces. To wrest them from her, after the great region from the Ohio to the Floridas had been wrested from the United States, would be a simple military stroke. In the combined territory an army of twenty thousand men could be raised. As for the American government, it would have enough to do to keep together what would be left, without attempting a war to restrain her troublesome border districts from seceding.

As Miro looked at it, the realization of the plan would restore Spain's waning prestige on the continent, and be a glorifying stroke for himself ; but his range of vision was not the same as Wilkinson's. However, he took the latter at his offer, and they immediately set at work "making out the papers." If it were not for those papers, and the letters which the Governor received from Wilkinson, the fact of the conspiracy would never have been proved to the convincing of the American people of the depths of Wilkinson's villainy. All other proofs he took care to destroy or vitiate. No plotter was ever more cunning at covering up the tracks he left in the path? of obloquy. He was a long calculator, was Wilkinson, and the combinations of guile which he operated are often as puzzling as they are amazing.

During his long stay at New Orleans, on his first visit, he reckoned that suspicions would go out, and that they might reach Washington. So he cultivated the intimacy of one Daniel Clark, at that time assistant to the Secretary of the Province. Clark was twenty-one years old, an Irishman by birth, but a naturalized Spanish citizen, and a shrewd fellow, as his career amply proves. To hoodwink the United States officials, Wilkinson induced Clark to write a memorial which some time later was addressed by the latter to the American Secretary of State, complaining that Wilkinson had by intimidation extorted from Governor Miro the privilege of trading to New Orleans, in the interest of the people of his Territory ; thus making out a case for Wilkinson's patriotism, although not for his politeness to foreign neighbors. This memorial was of great value to Wilkinson years afterward, as will appear.

Soon after arriving home, Wilkinson addressed a letter to Senor Gardoqui, the Spanish minister to the United States,

Governor Don Estevan Miro Spanish Proiuncial Governor of Louisiana in which he discussed his negotiations with Governor Miro. In this letter he declared he had nothing to hope for from the Union, and that if his proposition to Miro were rejected by Spain, he would open negotiations with Great Britain, which power had already been in communication with him on similar business. It is likely that he used this argument to hasten Miro's consent to his proposition in the first instance, and he now used it to induce the Spanish court to approve of Miro's decision. And probably it was true, for Great Britain made the same proposition, that is, a proposal to send a force to combine with the Americans of the Southwest for the conquest of Louisiana, to others ; it being this scheme which, a few years later, got Senator Blount of Tennessee on the gridiron. Anyway, Miro sent a glowing account of the prospect to his government, in which he wrote: "The delivering up of Kentucky into his Majesty's hands [meaning his Spanish Majesty], which is the main object to which Wilkinson has promised to devote himself entirely, would foi'ever constitute this Province a rampart for the protection of New Spain."" Texas was then called New Spain.

Miro at the same time advised against the colonization enterprises which Minister Gardoqui, at Philadelphia, was approving, including the opening of Louisiana to trade with Americans under a twenty-five per cent tariff. A grant had already been given Colonel George D. Morgan, another Revolutionary veteran, who founded New Madrid under its authority. This also displeased Wilkinson, who feared Morgan was treading on his preserves. He wrote Miro his objections, which that functionary thought reasonable, for he advised his government that the colonization plans, which Gardoqui had placed in the hands of one D'Arges, would conflict with General Wilkinson's. He stated further that if the}^ were continued, D'Arges might expose the general's projects and cause Wilkinson to be arrested; that Wilkinson objected to anyone else participating in a confidential proceeding upon which depended his life and honor. Continuing Miro said :

" Hence I consider as a misfortune the project of D'Arges, because I look upon the commercial franchises which he has obtained for the western colonists .... as destructive of the great design which has been conceived ! The western people would no longer have any reason to emigrate, if they were put in possession of a free trade with us. This is the reason why this privilege should be granted only to a few individuals having influence among them, as is suggested in Wilkinson's memorial ; because, on their seeing this advantage bestowed on these few, they might be easily persuaded to acquire the like by becoming Spanish subjects. ... I can conceive of but one case which would justify the granting to those people the free exercise of their religion ; that is, if Kentucky could not be prevailed upon to give herself up to his Majesty without this condition."

But the question of religion did not trouble Wilkinson. He could swear on the holy evangelists of Almighty God quite as impressively as a Catholic as anything else. He already was talking of becoming a Spaniard. Among his first letters to Miro he said : " I have collected much European and American news, and have made various interesting observations for our political designs. It would take a volume to tell you all. I pray you to content yourself with this assurance — all my predictions are verifying themselves, and not a measure is taken on both sides of the mountains which does not conspire to favor ours. . . . I beg you to be easy, and to be satisfied that nothing shall deter me from attending exclusively to the object we have in hand ; and I am convinced that the success of our plan will depend on the disposition of the court."