rize an act which the Constitution declared
should never be lawful except with the assent of nine States. So the
secretary went on with his negotiations and came to terms with the
Spanish minister.

In April the secretary was called upon to report to Congress what was
the position of these negotiations. Then it first publicly appeared that
a treaty was actually agreed upon which gave up the right to the
Mississippi for a quarter of a century. But it was also speedily made
plain by various parliamentary motions that the seven votes, which the
friends of such a treaty had relied upon, had fallen from seven--even
could that number in the end have been of use--to, at best, four. The
New Jersey delegates had been instructed not to consent to the surrender
of the American right to the use of the Mississippi; a new delegate from
Pennsylvania had changed the vote of that State; and Rhode Island had
also gone over to the other side. "It was considered, on the whole,"
wrote Madison, "that the project for shutting the Mississippi was at an
end."

These details are not unimportant. Forty-five years afterward Madison
wrote that "his main object, in returning to Congress at this time, was
to bring about, if possible, the canceling of Mr. Jay's project for
shutting the Mississippi." Probably it had occurred to nobody then that
within less than twenty years the Province of Louisiana would belong to
the United States, when their right to the navigation of the river could
be no longer disputed. But so long as both its banks from the
thirty-first degree of latitude southward to the Gulf remained foreign
territory, it was of the last importance to the Southern States, whose
territory extended to the Mississippi, that the right of way should not
be surrendered. If a treaty with Spain could be carried that gave up
this right, and the Southern States should be compelled to choose
between the loss of the Mississippi and the loss of the Union, there
could be little doubt as to what their choice would be. It was not a
question to be postponed till after the Philadelphia Convention had
convened; if not disposed of before, the convention might as well not
meet.

Madison's letters, while the question was pending, show great anxiety.
He was glad to know that the South was of one mind on this subject and
would not yield an inch. He was quite confident that his own State would
take the lead, as she soon did, in the firm avowal of Southern opinion.