Note 12 — CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE (continued 3)

The Spaniards at New Orleans, from the first settlement of the country west of the Alleghany Mountains, sought to attach it to the province of Louisiana. Knowing the powerful efficacy of gold, in producing such results, they dispensed it with a liberal hand, to such as made New Orleans their market. The attachment of the first settlers, to the free institutions of our country, baffled every attempt to detach them from it.

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Comment by R. G. T.––The Spanish conspiracy was, in the main, “baffled” by the prompt action of our general government. George Rogers Clark and several other leading Kentuckians were quite willing to be “detached,” for a consideration. The fact is, that at first the sense of national patriotism was weak, west of the Alleghanies; the eighteenth century had closed before efforts at separation from the East were commonly regarded as treason. The interests of the Western people apparently were centered in the south-flowing Mississippi; they seemed to have at the time little in common with the East. So long as Spain held the mouth of the river, many Western leaders thought it not improper that the West should ally itself with that power; when our government finally purchased the Spanish claim, the Western men had no further complaint. See Roosevelt’s treatment of the Spanish conspiracy, in his Winning of the West, III., ch. iii.––R. G. T.