present western boundary of the state of Florida, whereas the boundary intended was the Iberville River, just north of New Orleans. The dispute was between the United States and Spain, for France had ceded all she owned, whatever it might be, but Napoleon was master of Spain, and negotiations were actually with him. Napoleon cared nothing for the bit of territory, but it was important to the United States because it contained the mouths of many rivers whose upper waters were beginning to attract settlers. Ever since 1803 Napoleon had used this situation to influence American policy, offering to secure title when the United States might be of use to him, and withdrawing when the need had passed. On the whole Madison got the best of the game; for in 1810, as the result of a revolution by some American settlers in the region, he took possession of Baton Rouge and about half of the disputed area. The United States, however, had as yet no good international title. and nonin Up to this time, however, Napoleon had reason to think Napoleon of the United States as a friendly and almost docile power, tercourse. for the commercial policy of restrictions, although not adopted to please him, was actually what he wanted, as it cut off an important branch of English trade. He had, to be sure, disapproved of the nonintercourse act, as it had allowed trade with the allies of France, which it had forbidden with her. As long as there was a possibility that England and the United States might come to terms, however, he had remained quiescent, in fact friendly, fearing an alliance between the two countries. When the disavowal of the Erskine treaty had made certain a period of ill feeling between them, he actively expressed his disapproval. He first ordered all American vessels within the range of his influence to be sequestered, that is, held for official examination, on the ground that those in French ports were violating United States law, and that those in the ports of French allies should not be allowed to trade while trade with France was prohibited. On The Cadore letter. Madison accepts the Cadore letter. March 23, 1810, the Rambouillet Decree ordered the sale of this property, amounting to $8,400,000, and consisting of 51 vessels in France, 44 in Spain, 28 in Naples, and 11 in Holland. Napoleon was in hopes that this order might cause a reëstablishment of the embargo, which he would be glad to see, and the property which he held might be used to secure concessions from the United States, and to prevent retaliation. The main purpose of his policy, the cutting off of England's trade with the United States, was still secure. Very different was the situation created by the Macon Bill number two, which threw the restrictive system to the winds and unsealed one of England's best markets. Napoleon promptly, but secretly, ordered the absolute confiscation of all the American property sequestered and sold, to clear up accounts for the past, and on the same day, August 5, 1810, dictated a letter which his foreign minister, Cadore, communicated to the United States. This announced that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan "are revoked, and after November 1, they will cease to have effect, . . . it being well understood that in consequence of this declaration the English are to revoke their Orders in Council and renounce the new principle of blockade which they have wished to establish," or that the United States "cause their rights to be respected by the English." "His majesty loves the Americans. Their prosperity and their commerce are within the scope of his policy." Madison received this letter with delight, and requested England to revoke her Orders. The Marquis of Wellesley, who had now succeeded Canning in the management of English foreign affairs, replied that Cadore's letter made the repeal conditional on the action of England, and that the Decrees were actually being enforced. Napoleon did not hasten to explain the ambiguity. In fact he had no intention of abandoning his continental system, but proposed, even if England withdrew her Orders, to secure his ends by internal regulations. Madison, however, was not aware of this RELATIONS WITH FRANCE AND ENGLAND 113 intention, and as England still refused to recall her Orders, he issued a proclamation under the authority of Macon Bill number two, reviving nonintercourse with that country on February 2, 1811. Congress sustained him by an act of March 2, but word soon reached America that Napoleon still seized all vessels violating the Decrees, and during the spring the balance hung between peace and war. Monroe, who had become Secretary of State, was in favor of breaking negotiations with France; Madison still clung to his belief in Napoleon. The latter, at the critical moment, released the American vessels he held. The administration decided in his favor; a new minister, Joel Barlow, the poet, was sent to France, and Napoleon had the satisfaction of closing the American market to England once more. It was already beginning to be evident that he might look to the United States for still more active assistance. The situation was changing in the United States. A new A new generation. generation was coming to the front, composed of young men born during or after the Revolution, whose boyhood had been filled with tales of that war. They felt a greater confidence in the future of the country, a more unreasoning patriotism than the older men who had been so long at the helm, and their pride was stung by the bickering, ineffectual neutrality which we had for twenty years been practicing. One group of such young leaders came from South Carolina. That state was now ready to play a leading part in the national life. A long struggle between the planters of the coast and the frontier farmer element descending from the mountains, had been brought to a close in 1808 by a constitutional arrangement between the sections, by which each controlled one house of the legislature. The spread of the plantation system resulting from the expanding cultivation of cotton was soon to make the state a political unit. The South Carolina leaders, some sprung from the cultivated English and Huguenot stock about Charleston, some from the sturdy Scotch-Irish The influence of the frontier. element of the piedmont, were freed from state contests, and prepared to turn their united attention to national affairs. In the new Congress William Lowndes and John C. Calhoun appeared for the first time, while Langdon Cheves had been a member for but a part of the previous session. These were all for war, but, except for their inherited antipathy to England, were impartial as between France and England. Calhoun would fight both. The direction in which this energy would turn was determined by the young men of another section. The frontier had been expanding with great rapidity. Population had stretched along both banks of the Ohio and parts of the Mississippi, the Tennessee, and the Cumberland. This advance had not been with regular, closed front, as Washington had advised, but along the lines of most attraction or least resistance. The government under the Republicans had rapidly extended the purchase of Indian lands, with the general idea of obtaining the possession of river banks rather than of steady progressive occupation. In 1804 the minimum amount of public land sold, was reduced to one hundred and sixty acres, the minimum price remaining at two dollars an acre, and the method being that none was sold by private sale until after it was offered at public auction. New land offices were opened at convenient points in the West, and, under the credit system established in 1800, the settler could buy land that was on the market for eighty dollars down, eighty more at the end of two years, and similar payments at the end of the third and fourth years. This did not satisfy the restless frontiersmen, who pressed on, seeking the most attractive spots or impelled by a desire for change, regardless of government regulations. They settled in land not yet placed on sale, or even in regions not yet purchased from the Indians, and asked that, when these locations were actually surveyed, the settler be given the right to purchase at the minimum price by private sale before the public auction took place. At first |