A late suspension by the Intendant of New Orleans of our right of
deposit there, without which the right of navigation is impracticable,
has thrown this country into such a flame of hostile disposition as
can scarcely be described. The western country was peculiarly sensible
to it as you may suppose. Our business was to take the most effectual
pacific measures in our power to remove the suspension, and at the
same time to persuade our countrymen that pacific measures would be
the most effectual and the most speedily so. The opposition caught it
as a plank in a shipwreck, hoping it would enable them to tack the
western people to them. They raised the cry of war, were intriguing in
all the quarters to exasperate the western inhabitants to arm and go
down on their own authority and possess themselves of New Orleans, and
in the meantime were daily reiterating, in new shapes, inflammatory
resolutions for the adoption of the House.
As a remedy to all this we determined to name a minister extraordinary
to go immediately to Paris and Madrid to settle this matter. This
measure being a visible one, and the person named peculiarly proper
with the western country, crushed at once and put an end to all
further attempts on the Legislature. From that moment all has become
quiet; and the more readily in the western country, as the sudden
alliance of these new federal friends had of itself already began to
make them suspect the wisdom of their own course. The measure was
moreover proposed from another cause. We must know at once whether we
can acquire New Orleans or not. We are satisfied nothing else will
secure us against a war at no distant period; and we cannot press this
reason without beginning those arrangements which will be necessary if
war is hereafter to result.
For this purpose it was necessary that the negotiators should be fully
possessed of every idea we have on the subject, so as to meet the
propositions of the opposite party, in whatever form they may be
offered; and give them a shape admissible by us without being obliged
to await new instructions hence. With this view, we have joined Mr.
Monroe to yourself at Paris, and to Mr. Pinckney at Madrid, although
we believe it will be hardly necessary for him to go to this last
place.