Aranda’s Notes on Negotiations with John Jay, 3 August 1782
Aranda’s Notes on Negotiations with John Jay
1st session, Paris, 3 August 1782
On Saturday the 3rd of August, Sir John Jay came at ten o’clock in the morning, and on his entering my study, I showed him a big Map of North America, whose title read:
“Amerique septentrionale avec les routes, distances en milles, villages et établissements—les 8 feuilles françois et anglois—par le Dr. Mitchel traduit de l’anglois par Le Rouge Ingenieur Geographe du Roa rue des grands Augustins 1753.”
“North America so Doctor Mitchel zu London in 1775 ten jahr ansgegeben jetzaber in des franzosische ubersetzet.”1
He informed me that there were other partial and provincial maps. I replied that I would show them to him later, because we should first consider the matter in the large and in its totality in order to draw a line of demarcation between the territories that would be kept by Spain and those by the 13 United States; such line, in my opinion, should run from the principal and ineffaceable points without arguing over a hundred leagues more or less; that in any case that dividing line would have to run, in greater part, through the lands of the Indians, whom each of us would have to pacify in order to have peaceful boundaries between both Empires.
This observation having been accepted in general, I asked Jay where he would draw his dividing line. He replied that a separation was already marked out, notably the Mississippi River, and pointed with his finger to its source, tracing it down almost to new Orleans. I asked him then, if his idea was to deprive us of all of Western Florida which, besides having been ours in former times, we had recently reconquered from England.
He replied that inasmuch as the Colonies had claimed for themselves the rights of England, including these acknowledged boundaries, one could not deny them boundaries running from the source of the Mississippi to where the true boundary of Western Florida began. I immediately used his own argument to refute his proposition, pointing out that Spain, having reconquered Florida, which had been the basis for fixing the whole of the Mississippi as the boundary in the treaty of Paris, Spain had claimed for herself, through the reconquest of that province, all rights under that treaty.2
He rejoined, arguing that when the Colonies had been settled under the authority of the British Crown, they claimed, according to their charters or titles, an indefinite extension at their backlands, and that that part of the Mississippi which was not the former boundary of Florida, was not included in the Spanish reconquest, but belonged to England and consequently to the Colonies, her representatives.
I told him that such an extension conceived to have been granted by the British Crown to her Colonies, gave equal rights in these imaginary spaces to any other monarch; and even Spain was able to draw her boundaries from Louisiana and the coast of Florida, from both sides, going upwards between parallel lines, to the less known and frozen country of the North, but in this form the lines would overlap, and the maps would be reduced to lineal squares, with equal rights to each party: that it appeared more likely that he who already held the mouth of the Mississippi, and its interior course over a long distance, would have the right to consider it as his perpetually;3 and finally, that he must abandon his claims based on undefined lines on the English maps, for even the one I showed him, had them, and I had always considered that they did not signify anything; that the territory the Colonies had inhabited and possessed, appeared on the very same map, as well as on the provincial ones that we would consider later; that all the territory, we were looking at, beyond the principal line of the boundaries of the Colonies, was Indian land, to which both parties had equal rights, or equally unjust claims, and that for this reason we should divide it between us by means of clearly defined points, after which each one would dress that naked body according to its resources.4
I aired my views about the division, always bearing in mind that the course of the rivers, from a certain point downwards at least, remained with only one proprietor. He asked me to mark it out on the map clearly, and I agreed, offering to send him one map bearing a clear demarcation which he might peruse, reserving for a later occasion his doubts, concerning which in turn I would seek to give satisfaction.
Let me now state my reasons:
As regards that part of the line in controversy, I explicitly picked the end of the Lakes, starting in at Superior, following their borders until the end of the Erie or Oswego, in such position that there would be nothing disputable to its rear, and with the idea in mind that Spain would erect forts at certain points, which were in sight of her neighbor, and would be able to permit, or otherwise, trade within her possessions. Then I went down to the junction of the Grand Kanawha with the Ohio, tracing it to the largest entry into North Carolina, with the idea of continuing to run the demarcation line through some line of sight, such as a lake, in the land of the Apalachees, or George River, but without reaching it and only marking the end of the line as an indication, and without continuing it when it approached the boundary between Georgia and Florida, until finding out which would be the definitive one.
Mr. Jay asked me why I stopped there, without continuing the line to the lake; I answered him that, since East Florida was still an English possession, we should not draw interior lines therein, to which he agreed.
The point that I had in mind on fixing the principal boundary in that way, was to force the Americans to adopt a more moderate position, and to counteract Mr. Jay’s pretension to the whole Mississippi as a boundary line.
Don Gilberto Maxent5 showed me a map with a dividing line that he had drawn and which he had sent to Senor Don José de Galvez, and of which I took a copy. In this he had drawn a straight line, starting above the Lakes, passing through [Lake] Michigan, and continuing directly to the same point in East Florida, next to the Guillmard River,6 and to what is called the tip of Florida.
My first explanation embraces whatever modification, from the Lakes downwards, that is from North to South, which is the territory known to us, and therefore more important to us, than that from the Lakes upwards. To leave the use and navigation of the Lakes, which are interconnected, such as the so-called Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie or Oswego, and Ontario, to the Americans, shall please them, while to us they are useless because they do not connect with our rivers. To divide them would cause disturbances in that distant wilderness.
This first proposal, which had been formulated early in the day, was meant to demonstrate that we were entering into negotiations, and that we have opened the door to the Americans to set forth all their own views, by which we shall be governed subsequently.
The dividing line that I have drawn, therefore, is marked with red, and the others that were to come would each be indicated by a different color.7
D, in Spanish, SpMaAHN: Estado, leg. 3885, exp.1, doc. 6, translated by the editors of JJUP. Partly in , 2: 355–64.
1. This version of the Mitchell map—engraved by Thomas Jefferys (d. 1771), geographer to the king—with both French and German titles, was published by Georges Louis de Rouge, Atlas amériquain septentrional (Paris 1778). On the use of other versions of this map in the peace negotiations with the British, see : 382–84. On the various boundary lines proposed in negotiations with Aranda, see the map on p. 36.
2. Aranda is stating here that Britain’s possession of Florida was the basis on which she had been conceded the navigational servitude discussed in “John Jay Opens Negotiations with Aranda” (editorial note) on pp. 29–31, 31n4. International law supported his contention that Spain’s entrance into the war against Britain and her conquest of territory on the east bank of the Mississippi had nullified any concessions made to Britain in the Treaty of 1763 and thus removed any possibility that Britain could transfer the rights conveyed to it by the treaty to the United States. See , 40–45.
3. In Article VII of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France ceded “east Louisiana,” with the exception of New Orleans, to Britain with the proviso that the navigation of the Mississippi would be equally free to the subjects of both nations from its source to the sea.
4. For French support for Aranda’s contentions about the basis on which boundaries in this region should be determined, see La Luzerne to Vergennes, 11 Feb. 1780, , 1: 27–33, which the present discussion reprises, and Rayneval’s Memoir on the Boundaries between Spain and the United States, 6 Sept. 1782, below.
5. Probably Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent, a wealthy French-born fur trader who had established himself in New Orleans. After Louisiana passed to Spanish control in 1766, Maxent cooperated with Spanish governors, including Bernardo de Gálvez, whose father-in-law, he became. See J. Leitch Wright Jr., Florida in the American Revolution (Gainesville, Fla., 1975), 94.
6. The Chattahoochee, the eastern boundary of West Florida.
7. These discussions began without an exchange of powers, on which see JJ to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 17 Nov., note 38, below. For their continuation, see Aranda’s Notes on Negotiations with John Jay, 19–30 Aug. 1782, below.