The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
NEW ORLEANS
SIR,-This letter, with the very confidential papers it encloses, will
be delivered to you by Mr. Barrett with his own hands. If there be no
war between Spain and England, they need be known to yourself alone.
But if that war be begun, or whenever it shall begin, we wish you to
communicate them to the Marquis de La Fayette, on whose assistance we
know we can count in matters which interest both our countries. He and
you will consider how far the contents of these papers may be
communicated to the Count de Monimorin, and his influence be asked
with the court of Madrid. France will be called into the war, as an
ally, and not on any pretence of the quarrel being in any degree her
own. She may reasonably require then, that Spain should do everything
which depends on her, to lessen the number of her enemies. She cannot
doubt that we shall be of that number, if she does not yield our right
to the common use of the Mississippi, and the means of using and
securing it. You will observe, we state in general the necessity, not
only of our having a port near the m9uth of the river, (without which
we could make no use of the navigation at all) but of its being so
well separated from the territories of Spain and her jurisdiction, as
not to engender daily disputes and broils between us. It is certain,
that if Spain were to retain any jurisdiction over our entreport, her
officers would abuse that jurisdiction, and our people would abuse
their privileges in it. Both parties must foresee this, and that it
will end in war. Hence the necessity of a well-defined separation.
Nature has decided what shall be the geography of that in the end,
whatever it might be in the beginning, by cutting off from the
adjacent countries of Florida and Louisiana, and enclosing between two
of its channels, a long and narrow slip of land, called the Island of
New Orleans. The idea of ceding this, could not be hazarded to Spain,
in the first step; it would be too disagreeable at first view; because
this island, with its town, constitutes, at present, their principal
settlement in that part of their dominions, containing about ten
thousand white inhabitants of every age and sex. Reason and events,
however, may, by little and little, familiarize them to it. That we
have a right to some spot as an entrepot for our commerce, may be at
once affirmed. The expediency, too, may be expressed, of so locating
it as to cut off the source of future quarrels and wars. A
disinterested eye, looking on a map, will remark how conveniently this
tongue of land is formed for the purpose; the Iberville and Amit
channel offering a good boundary and convenient outlet, on the one
side, for Florida, and the main channel an equally good boundary and
outlet, on the other side, for Louisiana; while the slip of land
between, is almost entirely morass or sandbank; the whole of it lower
than the water of the river, in its highest floods, and only its
western margin (which is the highest ground) secured by banks and
inhabited. I suppose this idea too much even for the Count de
Montmorin at first, and that, therefore, you will find it prudent to
urge, and get him to recommend to the Spanish court, only in general
terms, "a port near the mouth of the river, with a circumjacent
territory sufficient for its support, well defined, and
extra-territorial to. Spain," leaving the idea to future growth.
to William Short, 10 August 1790
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