The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
FOREIGN RELATIONS / MISSISSIPPI RIVER TERRITORIAL DISPUTE
While we were preparing such modifications of the propositions of
your letter of October the 4th as we could assent to, an event
happened which obliged us to adopt measures of urgency. The suspension
of the right of deposit at New Orleans, ceded to us by our treaty with
Spain
showed the necessity of making effectual arrangements to
secure the peace of the two countries against the indiscreet acts of
subordinate agents. For the occlusion of the Mississippi is a state of
things in which we cannot exist.
Our circumstances are so
imperious as to admit of no delay as to our course; and the use of the
Mississippi so indispensable, that we cannot hesitate one moment to
hazard our existence for its maintenance. If we fail in this effort to
put it beyond the reach of accident, we see the destinies we have to
run, and prepare at once for them. Not but that we shall still
endeavor to go on in peace and friendship with our neighbors as long
as we can, if
our rights of navigation and deposit are respected; but as we
foresee that the caprices of the local officers, and the abuse of
those rights by our boatmen and navigators, which neither government
can prevent, will keep up a state of irritation which cannot long be
kept inactive, we should be criminally improvident not to take at once
eventual measures for strengthening ourselves for the contest. It may
be said, if this object be so all-important to us, why do we not offer
such a sum so as to insure its purchase? The answer is simple. We are
an agricultural people, poor in money, and owing great debts. These
will be falling due by instalments for fifteen years to come, and
require from us the practice of a rigorous economy to accomplish their
payment; and it is our principle to pay to a moment whatever we have
engaged, and never to engage what we cannot, and mean not faithfully
to pay. We have calculated our resources, and find the sum to be
moderate which they would enable us to pay, and we know from late
trials that little can be added to it by borrowing. The country, too,
which we wish to purchase, except the portion already granted, and
which must be confirmed to the private holders, is a barren sand, six
hundred miles from east to west, and from thirty to forty and fifty
miles from north to south, formed by deposition of the sands by the
Gulf Stream in its circular course round the Mexican Gulf, and which
being spent after performing a semicircle, has made from its last
depositions the sand bank of East Florida. In West Florida, indeed,
there are on the borders of the rivers some rich bottoms, formed by
the mud brought from the upper country. These bottoms are all
possessed by individuals. But the spaces between river and river are
mere banks of sand; and in East Florida there are neither rivers, nor
consequently any bottoms. We cannot then make anything by a sale of
the lands to individuals. So that it is peace alone which makes it an
object with us, and which ought to make the cession of it desirable to
France.
to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1 February 1803
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