River,"
created out of land ceded to the national government by North Carolina
in 1789. He was also during this period the superintendent of Indian
affairs for this part of the country. In 1791 he laid out Knoxville
(Tennessee) as the seat of government. He presided over the
constitutional convention of Tennessee in 1796, and, on the state being
admitted to the Union, became one of its first representatives in the
United States Senate. In 1797 his connexion became known with a scheme,
since called "Blount's Conspiracy," which provided for the co-operation
of the American frontiersmen, assisted by Indians, and an English force,
in the seizure on behalf of Great Britain of the Floridas and Louisiana,
then owned by Spain, with which power England was then at war. As this
scheme, if carried out, involved the corrupting of two officials of the
United States, an Indian agent and an interpreter, a breach of the
neutrality of the United States, and the breach of Article V. of the
treaty of San Lorenzo el Real (signed on the 27th of October 1795)
between the United States and Spain, by which each power agreed not to
incite the Indians to attack the other, Blount was impeached by the
House of Representatives on the 7th of July 1797, and on the following
day was formally expelled from the Senate for "having been guilty of
high misdemeanor, entirely inconsistent with his public trust and duty
as a senator." On the 29th of January 1798 articles of impeachment were
adopted by the House of Representatives. On the 14th of January 1799,
however, the Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, decided that it
had no jurisdiction, Blount not then being a member of the Senate, and,
in the Senate's opinion, not having been, even as a member, a civil
officer of the United States, within the meaning of the constitution.
The case is significant as being the first case of impeachment brought
before the United States Senate. "In a legal point of view, all that the
case decides is that a senator of the United States who has been
expelled from his seat is not after such expulsion subject to
impeachment" (Francis Wharton, _State Trials_). In effect, however, it
also decided that a member of Congress was not in the meaning of the
constitution a civil officer of the United States and therefore could
not be impeached. The "conspiracy" was disavowed by the British
government, which, however, seems to have secretly favoured it. Blount
was enthusiastically