In the last resort the question of the navigation of the Mississippi had to be decided between the Governments of Spain and the United States; and it was chiefly through the latter that the westerners could, indirectly, but most powerfully, make their influence felt, in the long and intricate negotiations carried on towards the close of the Revolutionary War between the representatives of Spain, France, and the United States, Spain had taken high ground in reference to this and to all other western questions, and France had supported her in her desire to exclude the Americans from all rights in the vast regions beyond the Alleghanies.  At that time the delegates from the southern, no less than from the northern, States, in the Continental Congress, showed much weakness in yielding to this attitude of France and Spain.  On the motion of those from Virginia all the delegates with the exception of those from North Carolina voted to instruct Jay, then Minister to Spain, to surrender outright the free navigation of the Mississippi.  Later, when he was one of the Commissioners to treat for peace, they practically repeated the blunder by instructing Jay and his colleagues to assent to whatever France proposed.  With rare wisdom and courage Jay repudiated these instructions.  The chief credit for the resulting diplomatic triumph, almost as essential as the victory at Yorktown itself to our national well-being, belongs to him, and by his conduct he laid the men of the West under an obligation which they never acknowledged during his lifetime. [Footnote:  It is not the least of Mann Butler’s good points that in his “History” he does full justice to Jay.  Another Kentuckian, Mr. Thomas Marshall Green, has recently done the same in his “Spanish Conspiracy.”]

    Jay and Gardoqui.

Shortly after his return to America he was made Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and was serving as such when, in the spring of 1785, Don Diego Gardoqui arrived in Philadelphia, bearing a commission from his Catholic Majesty to Congress.  At this time the brilliant and restless soldier Galvez had left Louisiana and become Viceroy of Mexico, thus removing from Louisiana the one Spaniard whose energy and military capacity would have rendered him formidable to the Americans in the event of war.  He was succeeded in the government of the creole province by Don Estevan Miro, already colonel of the Louisiana regiment.

Gardoqui was not an able man, although with some capacity for a certain kind of intrigue.  He was a fit representative of the Spanish court, with its fundamental weakness and its impossible pretensions.  He entirely misunderstood the people with whom he had to deal, and whether he was or was not himself personally honest, he based his chief hopes of success in dealing with others upon their supposed susceptibility to the influence of corruption and dishonorable intrigue.  He and Jay could come to no agreement, and the negotiations were finally broken off.  Before this happened,