Relations with Spain. several notes addressed to you by Mr. Pizarro in relation to the transactions during the campaign of General Jackson against the Seminole Indians, and the banditti of negroes combined with them, and particularly to his proceedings in Florida without the boundaries of the United States. In the fourth and last of these notes of Mr. Pizarro, he has given formal notice that the King, his master, has issued orders for the sus pension of the negotiation between the United States and Spain until satisfaction shall have been made by the American Government to him for these proceedings of General Jackson, which he considers as acts of unequivocal hostility against him, and as outrages upon his honor and dignity; the only acceptable atonement for which is stated to consist in a disavowal of the acts of the American General thus complained of, the infliction upon him of suitable punishment for his supposed misconduct, and the restitution of the posts and territories taken by him from the Spanish authorities, with indemnity for all the property taken, and all damages and injuries, public or private, sustained in consequence of it. Within a very few days after this notification, Mr. Pizarro must have received, with copies of the correspondence between Mr. Onis and this Department, the determination which had been taken by the President to restore the places of Pensacola, with the fort of Barancas, to any person properly authorized on the part of Spain to receive them, and the fort of St. Mark to any Spanish force adequate to its protection against the Indians, by whom its forcible occupation had been threatened for purposes of hostility against the United States. The officer commanding at the post has been directed to consider two hundred and fifty men as such adequate force, and, in case of their appearance with proper authority, to deliver it up to their commander accordingly. the part of the Spanish commanders, but for the terms in which Mr. Pizarro speaks of the execution of two British subjects taken, one at the fort of St. Mark, and the other at Suwanee, and the intimation that these transactions may lead to a change in the relations between the two nations, which is doubtless intended to be understood as a menace of war. It may be, therefore, proper to remind the Government of His Catholic Majesty of the incidents in which this Seminole war originated, as well as of the circumstances connected with it in the relations between Spain and her ally, whom she supposes to have been injured by the proceedings of General Jackson; and to give to the Spanish Cabinet some precise information of the nature of the business, peculiarly interesting to Spain, in which these subjects of her allies, in whose favor she takes this interest, were engaged, when their projects of every kind were terminated in consequence of their falling into the hands of General Jackson. In the month of August, 1814, while a war existed between the United States and Great Britain, to which Spain had formally declared herself neutral, a British force, not in the fresh pursuit of a defeated and flying enemy, not overstepping an imaginary and equivocal boundary between their own territories and those belonging, in some sort, as much to their enemy as to Spain, but approaching by sea, and by a broad and open invasion of the Spanish province, at a thousand miles or an ocean's distance from any British territory, landed in Florida, took possession of Pensacola and the fort of Barancas, and invited, by public proclamations, (document No. 1,) all the runaway negroes, all the savage Indians, all the pirates, and all the traitors to their country whom they knew or imagined to exist within reach of their summons, to join their standard, and wage an exterminating war against From the last-mentioned correspondence, the the portion of the United States immediately borSpanish Government must likewise have been dering upon this neutral and thus violated terrisatisfied that the occupation of these places in tory of Spain. The land commander of this BritSpanish Florida by the commander of the Ameri-ish force was a certain Colonel Nicholls, who, can forces was not by virtue of any orders received by him from this Government to that effect, nor with any view of wresting the province from the possession of Spain, nor in any spirit of hostility to the Spanish Government; that it arose from incidents which occurred in the prosecution of the war against the Indians, from the imminent danger in which the fort of St. Mark was of being seized by the Indians themselves, and from the manifestations of hostility to the United States by the commandant of St. Mark's and the Governor of Pensacola, the proofs of which were made known to General Jackson, and impelled him, from the necessities of selfdefence, to the steps of which the Spanish Government complains. driven from Pensacola by the approach of General Jackson, actually left to be blown up the Spanish fort of Barancas when he found it could not afford bim protection; and, evacuating that part of the province, landed at another, established himself on the Appalachicola river, and there erected a fort from which to sally forth with his motley tribe of black, white, and red combatants against the defenceless borders of the United States in that vicinity. A part of this force consisted of a corps of colonial marines, levied in the British colonies, in which George Woodbine was a captain, and Robert Christie Ambrister was a lieutenant. (Nos. 2 b. 59, 60.) As between the United States and Great Britain, we should be willing to bury this transaction It might be sufficient to leave the vindication in the same grave of oblivion with other transof these measures upon those grounds, and to actions of that war, had the hostilities of Colonel furnish, in the enclosed copies of General Jack-Nicholls terminated with the war; but he did son's letters, and the vouchers by which they are not consider the peace which ensued between supported, the evidence of that hostile spirit on the United States and Great Britain as having Relations with Spain. sonal interview with Earl Bathurst and Lord to ratify that treaty, and would send back the put an end, either to his military occupations, or to his negotiations with the Indians against the United States. Several months after the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent, he retained his post, and his party-colored forces in military array. By the ninth article of that treaty (No. 2 b.) the United States had stipulated to put an end, immediately after its ratification, to hostilities with all the tribes or nations of Indians with whom they might be at war at the time of the ratification, and to restore to them all the possessions which they had enjoyed in the year 1811. This article had no application to the Creek na-ister that the British Government had refused tion, with whom the United States had already made peace, by a treaty concluded on the 9th day of August, 1814, more than four months before the Treaty of Ghent was signed. Yet Colonel Nicholls not only affected to consider it as applying to the Seminoles of Florida, and the outlawed Red Sticks, whom he had induced to join him there, but actually persuaded them that they were entitled, by virtue of the Treaty of Ghent, to all the lands which had belonged to the Creek nation within the United States in the year 1811, and that the Government of Great Britain would support them in that pretension. He asserted (No. 2. a. c.) also this doctrine in a correspondence with Colonel Hawkins, then the agent of the United States with the Creeks, and gave him notice in their name, with a mockery of solemnity, (No. 9,) that they had concluded a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, and a treaty of navigation and commerce, with Great Britain, of which more was to be heard after it should be ratified in England. Colonel Nicholls then evacuated his fort, which, in some of the enclosed papers, is called the Fort at Prospect Bluff, but which he had denominated the British post on the Appalachicola; took with him the white portion of his force, and embarked for England with several of the wretched savages whom he was thus deluding to their fate, among whom was the prophet Francis or Hillis Hadjo, and left the fort, amply supplied with military stores and ammunitions, to the negro department of his allies. It afterwards was known by the name of the Negro Fort. The negro fort, however, abandoned by Colonel Nicholls, remained on the Spanish territory, occupied by the banditti to whom he had left it, and held by them as a post from whence to commit depredations, outrages, and murders, and as a receptacle for fugitive slaves and malefactors, (No. 14,) to the great annoyance both of the United States and of Spanish Florida. In April, 1816, General Jackson wrote a letter to the Governor of Pensacola, calling upon him to put down this common nuisance to the peaceable inhabi tants of both countries. That letter, together with the answer of the Governor of Pensacola, (No. 15,) has already been communicated to the Spanish Minister here, and by him doubtless to his Government. Copies of them are, neverthe less, now again enclosed; particularly as the letter from the Governor explicitly admits that this Colonel Hawkins immediately communicated fort, constructed by Nicholls in violation both of to this Government the correspondence between the territory and neutrality of Spain, was still no him and Nicholls, here referred to, (copies of less obnoxious to his Government than to the which, marked Nos. 1 to 5, are herewith en-United States; but that he had neither sufficient closed,) upon which, Mr. Monroe, then Secretary of State, addressed a letter (No. 10) to Mr. Baker, the British Chargé d'Affaires at Washington, complaining of Nicholls's conduct, and showing that his pretence that the ninth article of the Treaty of Ghent could have any application to his Indians was utterly destitute of foundation. Copies of the same correspondence were transmitted to the Minister of the United States, then in England, with instructions (No. 11) to remonstrate with the British Government against these proceedings of Nicholls, and to show how incompatible they were with the peace which had been concluded between the two nations. These remonstrances were accordingly made, first in per force nor authority, without orders from the Governor General of Havana, to destroy it. It was afterwards, (No. 23,) on the 27th of July, 1816, destroyed by a cannon shot from a gun vessel of the United States, which, in its passage up the river, was fired upon from it. It was blown up with an English flag still flying as its standard, and immediately after the barbarous murder of a boat's crew belonging to the Navy of the United States, by the banditti left in it by Nicholls. In the year 1817, Alexander Arbuthnot, of the island of New Providence, a British subject, first appeared as an English trader in Spanish Florida, and as the successor of Colonel Nicholls in the employment of instigating the Seminole and out Relations with Spain. lawed Red Sticks to Indian hostilities against the United States, by reviving the pretence that they were entitled to all the lands which had been ceded by the Creek nation to the United States in August, 1814. As a mere Indian trader, the intrusion of this man into a Spanish province was contrary to the policy observed by all the European Powers in this hemisphere, and by none more rigorously than by Spain, of excluding all foreigners from intercourse with the Indians within their territories. It must be known to the Spanish Government whether Arbuthnot had a Spanish license for trading with the Indians in Spanish Florida, or not; but they also know that Spain was bound by treaty to restrain by force all hostilities on the part of those Indians against the citizens of the United States; and it is for them to explain how, consistently with those engagements, Spain could, contrary to all the maxims of her ordinary policy, grant such a license to a foreign incendiary, whose principal if not his only object appears to have been to stimulate those hostilities which Spain had expressly stipulated by force to restrain. In his infernal instigations he was but too successful, (No. 49.) No sooner did he make his appearance among the Indians, accompanied by the prophet Hillis Hadjo, returned from his expedition to England, (No. 50,) than the peaceful inhabitants on the borders of the United States were visited with all the horrors of savage war-the robbery of their property, and the barbarous and indiscriminate murder of women, infancy, and age. conformity to the solemn engagements contracted by their nation, to restrain by force those Indians from hostilities against the United States, would be found encouraging, aiding, and abetting them, and furnishing them supplies for carrying on such hostilities. The officer in command immediately before General Jackson was, therefore, specially instructed to respect, as far as possible, the Spanish authority, wherever it was maintained; and copies of those orders were also furnished to General Jackson, upon his taking the command. In the course of his pursuit, as he approached St. Marks, he was informed direct from the Governor of Pensacola that a party of the hostile Indians had threatened to seize that fort, and that he apprehended the Spanish garrison there was not in strength sufficient to defend it against them. This information was confirmed from other sources, and, by the evidence produced upon the trial of Ambrister, is proved to have been exactly true. By all the laws of neutrality and of war, as well as of prudence and of humanity, he was warranted in anticipating his enemy by the amicable, and, that being refused, by the forcible occupation of the fort. There will need no citations from printed treatises on international law to prove the correctness of this principle. It is engraved in adamant on the common sense of mankind. No writer upon the laws of nations ever pretended to contradict it. None, of any reputation or authority, ever omitted to assert it. At Fort St. Mark, Alexander Arbuthnot, the After the repeated expostulations, warnings, and British Indian trader from beyond the seas, the offers of peace, through the Summer and Autumn firebrand by whose touch this negro-Indian war of 1817, on the part of the United States, had been against our borders had been rekindled, was found answered only by renewed outrages, and after a (No. 34) an inmate of the commandant's family detachment of forty men, under Lieutenant Scott, and it was also found that, by the commandai (No. 51 a.) accompanied by seven women, had himself, councils of war had been permitted to been waylaid and murdered by the Indians, (No. be held within it by the savage chiefs and war61,) orders were given to General Jackson, and riors; that the Spanish storehouses had been apan adequate force was placed at his disposal to propriated to their use; that it was an open marterminate the war. It was ascertained that the ket for cattle known to have been robbed by Spanish force in Florida was inadequate for the them from citizens of the United States, and protection even of the Spanish territory itself which had been contracted for and purchased by against this mingled horde of lawless Indians and the officers of the garrison; that information had negroes; and, although their devastations were been afforded from this fort by Arbuthnot to the committed within the limits of the United States, enemy of the strength and movements of the they immediately sought refuge within the Flo-American army; that the date of departure of rida line, and there only were to be overtaken. The necessity of crossing the line was indispensable; for it was from beyond the line that the Indians made their murderous incursions within that of the United States. It was there that they had their abode; and the territory belonged, in fact, to them, although within the borders of the Spanish jurisdiction. There it was that the American commander met the principal resistance from them; there it was that were found (No. 38) the still bleeding scalps of our citizens, freshly butchered by them; there it was that he released the only woman who had been suffered to survive the massacre of the party under Lieutenant Scott. But it was not anticipated by this Government that the commanding officers of Spain in Florida, whose especial duty it was, in express had been noted by the Spanish commissary; and ammunition, munitions of war, and all necessary supplies furnished to the Indians. The conduct of the Governor of Pensacola was not less marked by a disposition of enmity to the United States, and by an utter disregard to the obligations of the treaty, by which he was bound to restrain, by force, the Indians from hostilities against them. When called upon to vindicate the territorial rights and authority of Spain, by the destruction of the negro fort, his predecessor had declared it to be not less annoying and pernicious to the Spanish subjects in Florida than to the United States, but had pleaded his inability to subdue it. He himself had expressed his apprehensions that Fort St. Mark would be forcibly taken by the savages from its Spanish gar Relations with Spain. rison; yet, at the same time, he had refused the passage up the Escambia river, unless upon the payment of excessive duties, to provisions destined as supplies for the American army, which, by the detention of them, was subjected to the most distressing privations. He had permitted free ingress and egress at Pensacola to the avowed savage enemies of the United States. Supplies of ammunition, munitions of war, and provisions, had been received by them from thence. They had been received and sheltered there from the pursuit of the American forces, and suffered again io sally thence, to enter upon the American territory, and commit new murders. Finally, on the approach of General Jackson to Pensacola, the Governor sent him a letter (No. 33) denounc ing his entry upon the territory of Florida as a violent outrage upon the rights of Spain, commanding him to depart and withdraw from the same, and threatening, in case of his non-compliance, to employ force to expel him. there able and willing to fulfil the engagements of Spain towards the United States, or of restraining by force the Florida Indians from hostilities against their citizens. The President of the United States, to give a signal manifestation of his confidence in the disposition of the King of Spain to perform with good faith this indispensable engagement, and to demonstrate to the world that neither the desire of conquest, nor hostility to Spain, had any influence in the councils of the United States, has directed the unconditional restoration, to any Spanish officer duly authorized to receive them, of Pensacola and the Barancas, and that of St. Mark's, to any Spanish force adequate to its defence against the attack of the savages. But the President will neither inflict punishment, nor pass a censure' upon General Jackson, for that conduct, the motives for which were founded in the purest patriotism; of the necessity for which he had the most immediate and effectual means of forming It became, therefore, in the opinion of Gene- a judgment; and the vindication of which is ral Jackson, (No. 54,) indispensably necessary to written in every page of the law of nations, as take from the Governor of Pensacola the means well as in the first law of nature-self-defence. of carrying his threat into execution. Before He thinks it, on the contrary, due to the justice the forces under his command, the savage ene- which the United States have a right to claim mies of his country had disappeared. But he from Spain, and you are accordingly instructed knew that the moment those forces should be to demand of the Spanish Government that indisbanded, if sheltered by Spanish fortresses, if quiry shall be instituted into the conduct of Don furnished with ammunition and supplies by Jose Mazot, Governor of Pensacola, and of Don Spanish officers, and if aided and supported by Francisco C. Luengo, commandant of St. Mark's, the instigation of Spanish encouragement, as he and a suitable punishment inflicted upon them, had every reason to expect they would be, they for having, in defiance and violation of the enwould reappear, and, fired, in addition to their gagements of Spain with the United States, ordinary ferociousness, with revenge for the aided and assisted these hordes of savages in chastisement they had so recently received, would those very hostilities against the United States again rush with the war-hatchet and the scalp- which it was their official duty to restrain. This ing knife into the borders of the United States, inquiry is due to the character of those officers and mark every footstep with the blood of their themselves, and to the honor of the Spanish defenceless citizens. So far as all the native Government. The obligation of Spain to reresources of the savage extended, the war was strain, by force, the Indians of Florida from hosat an end; and General Jackson was about to tilities against the United States and their citirestore to their families and their homes the zens, is explicit, is positive, is unqualified. The brave volunteers who had followed his standard, fact that, for a series of years, they have received and who had constituted the principal part of shelter, assistance, supplies, and protection, in the his force. This could be done with safety, leav-practice of such hostilities, from the Spanish ing the regular portion of his troops to garrison his line of forts, and two small detachments of volunteer cavalry to scour the country round Pensacola, and sweep off the lurking remnant of savages who had been scattered and dispersed before him. This was sufficient to keep in check the remnant of the banditti against whom he had marched, so long as they should be destitute of other aid and support. It was, in his judg-measure to exculpate, individually, those officers; ment, not sufficient, if they should be suffered to rally their numbers under the protection of Spanish forts, and to derive new strength from the impotence or the ill-will against the United States of the Spanish authorities. commanders in Florida, is clear and unequivocal. If, as the commanders both at Pensacola and StMarks have alleged, (Nos. 32, 42,) this has been the result of their weakness rather than of their will; if they have assisted the Indians against the United States to avert their hostilities from the province which they had not sufficient force to defend against them, it may serve in some but it must carry demonstration irresistible to the Spanish Government, that the right of the United States can as little compound with impotence as with perfidy, and that Spain must immediately make her election, either to place a force in FloHe took possession, therefore, of Pensacola rida adequate at once to the protection of her and of the fort of Barancas, as he had done of territory, and to the fulfilment of her engageSt. Mark, not in a spirit of hostility to Spain, ments, or cede to the United States a province, but as a necessary measure of self-defence; giv- of which she retains nothing but the nominal ing notice that they should be restored when-possession, but which is, in fact, a derelict, open ever Spain should place commanders and a force to the occupancy of every enemy, civilized or Relations with Spain. savage, of the United States, and serving no other earthly purpose than as a post of annoyance to them. against the violent seizure of the forts and places; against the blowing up of the Barancas, and the erection and maintenance, under British banners, of the negro fort on Spanish soil; against the negotiation by a British officer, in the midst of peace, of pretended treaties, offensive and defensive, and of navigation and commerce, upon Spanish territory, between Great Britain and Spanish Indians, whom Spain was bound to control and restrain-if a whisper of expostulation was ever wafted from Madrid to London, it was not loud enough to be heard across the Atlantic, nor energetic enough to transpire beyond the walls of the palaces from which it issued, and to which it was borne. That the purposes, as well of the negro-Indian banditti, with whom we have been contending, as of the British invaders of Florida, who first assembled and employed them, and of the British intruding and pretended traders, since the peace, who have instigated and betrayed them to destruction, have been not less hostile to Spain than to the United States, the proofs contained in the documents herewith enclosed are conclusive. Mr. Pizarro's note of 29th August speaks of His Catholic Majesty's profound indignation at the "sanguinary executions on the Spanish soil of the subjects of Powers in amity with the The connexion between Arbuthnot and NiKing;" meaning Arbuthnot and Ambrister. Let cholls, and between Ambrister, Woodbine, and Mr. Pizarro's successor take the trouble of read- McGregor, is established beyond all question, by ing the enclosed documents, (Nos. 49, 58,) and he the evidence produced at the trials before the will discover who Arbuthnot and Ambrister court-martial. I have already remarked to you were, and what were their purposes; that Ar- on the very extraordinary circumstance that a buthnot was only the successor of Nicholls, and British trader from beyond the sea should be Ambrister the agent of Woodbine, and the sub- permitted by the Spanish authorities to trade altern of McGregor. Mr. Pizarro qualifies Gen- with the Indians of Florida. From his letter to eral Jackson's necessary pursuit of a defeated Hambly, dated 3d May, 1817, (see the document savage enemy beyond the Spanish Florida line marked G, in the proceedings of the court-maras a shameful invasion of His Majesty's territory. tial,) it appears that his trading was but a preYet that territory was the territory also of the tence, and that his principal purpose was to act savage enemy, and Spain was bound to restrain as the agent of the Indians of Florida, and outthem by force from hostilities against the United laws from the Creeks, to obtain the aid of the States; and it was the failure of Spain to fulfil British Government in their hostilities against this engagement which had made it necessary the United States. He expressly tells Hambly for General Jackson to pursue the savage across there that the chief of those outlaws was the the line. What, then, was the character of Nich-principal cause of his (Arbuthnot's) being in olls's invasion of His Majesty's territory? And the country, and that he had come with an anwhere was His Majesty's profound indignation swer from Earl Bathurst, delivered to him by at that? Mr. Pizarro says, His Majesty's forts Governor Cameron, of New Providence, to cerand places have been violently seized on by Gen-tain Indian talks, in which the aid of the British eral Jackson. Had they not been seized on, nay, Government had been solicited. had not the principal of his forts been blown up by Nicholls, and a British fort on the same Spanish territory been erected during the war, and left standing as a negro fort, in defiance of Spanish authority, after the peace? Where was His Majesty's profound indignation at that? Has His Majesty suspended formally all negotiation with the Sovereign of Colonel Nicholls for this shameful invasion of his territory, without color of provocation, without pretence of necessity, without shadow or even avowal of a pretext? Has His Majesty given solemn warning to the British Government that these were incidents "of transcendent moment, capable of producing an essential and thorough change in the political relations of the two countries?" Nicholls and Woodbine, in their invitations and promises to the slaves to run away from their masters and join them, did not confine themselves to the slaves of the United States. They received with as hearty a welcome, and employed with equal readiness, the fugitives from their masters in Florida as those from Georgia. Against this special injury the Governor of Pensacola did earnestly remonstrate with the British admiral, Cockburn. (See document marked No. 25.) But against the shameful invasion of the territory; Hambly himself had been left by Nicholls as the agent between the Indians and the British Government; but having found that Nicholls had failed in his attempt to prevail upon the British Government to pursue this clandestine war in the midst of peace, and that they were not prepared to support his pretence that half a dozen outlawed fugitives from the Creeks were the Creek nation; when Arbuthnot, the incendiary, came, and was instigating them, by promises of support from Great Britain, to commence their murderous incursions into the United States, Hambly, at the request of the chiefs of the Creeks themselves, wrote to him, (Nos. 47, 6,) warning him to withdraw from among that band of outlaws, and giving him a solemn foreboding of the doom that awaited him from the hand of justice if he persevered in the course that he pursued. Arbuthnot nevertheless persisted; and while he was deluding the wretched Indians with the promise of support from England, he was wri ting letters for them (No. 49 BCDEF) to the British Minister in the United States, to Governor Cameron, of New Providence, to Colonel Nicholls, to be laid before the British Government, and even to the Spanish Governor of St. Augustine, and the Governor General of the |