bears the name of New Madrid. This particular
scheme originated in the fertile brain of one Col. George Morgan, a
native of New Jersey, but long engaged in trading on the Mississippi. He
originally organized a company to acquire lands under the United States,
but meeting with little response to his proposition from the Continental
Congress, in 1788 he turned to Spain. With Gardoqui, who was then in New
York, he was soon on a footing of intimacy, as their letters show; for
these include invitations to dinner, to attend commencement at
Princeton, to visit one another, and the like. The Spainard, a
cultivated man, was pleased at being thrown in with an adventurer who
was a college graduate and a gentleman; for many of the would-be
colonizers were needy ne'er-do-wells, who were anxious either to borrow
money, or else to secure a promise of freedom from arrest for debt when
they should move to the new country. Morgan's plans were on a
magnificent scale. He wished a tract of land as large as a principality
on the west bank of the Mississippi. This he proposed to people with
tens of thousands of settlers, whom he should govern under the
commission of the King of Spain. Gardoqui entered into the plan with
enthusiasm, but obstacles and delays of all kinds were encountered, and
the dwindling outcome was the emigration of a few families of
frontiersmen, and the founding of a squalid hamlet named after the
Iberian capital. [Footnote: Gardoqui MSS., Gardoqui to Morgan, Sept. 2,
1788. Morgan to Gardoqui, Aug. 30, 1788. Letters of Sept. 9, 1788, Sept.
12, 1788; Gardoqui to Miro, Oct. 4, 1788, to Floridablanca, June 28,
1789. Letter to Gardoqui, Jan. 22, 1788.]

Clark's Proposal.

Another adventurer who at this time proposed to found a colony in
Spanish territory was no less a person than George Rogers Clark. Clark
had indulged in something very like piracy at the expense of Spanish
subjects but eighteen months previously. He was ready at any time to
lead the Westerners to the conquest of Louisiana; and a few years later
he did his best to organize a freebooting expedition against New Orleans
in the name of the French Revolutionary Government. But he was quite
willing to do his fighting on behalf of Spain, instead of against her;
for by this time he was savage with anger and chagrin at the
indifference and neglect with which the Virginian and Federal
Governments had rewarded his really great services. He wrote to Gardoqui
in the