he acquisition of West Florida
became a sort of obsession with Jefferson. His pursuit of this phantom
claim involved American diplomats in strange adventures and at times
deflected the whole course of domestic politics.

The first luckless minister to engage in this baffling quest was James
Monroe, who had just been appointed Minister to the Court of St. James.
He was instructed to take up the threads of diplomacy at Madrid where
they were getting badly tangled in the hands of Charles Pinckney, who
was a better politician than a diplomat. "Your inquiries may also be
directed," wrote Madison, "to the question whether any, and how much, of
what passes for West Florida be fairly included in the territory ceded
to us by France." Before leaving Paris on this mission, Monroe made
an effort to secure the good offices of the Emperor, but he found
Talleyrand cold and cynical as ever. He was given to understand that it
was all a question of money; if the United States were willing to pay
the price, the Emperor could doubtless have the negotiations transferred
to Paris and put the deal through. A loan of seventy million livres to
Spain, which would be passed over at once to France, would probably put
the United States into possession of the coveted territory. As an honest
man Monroe shrank from this sort of jobbery; besides, he could hardly
offer to buy a territory which his Government asserted it had already
bought with Louisiana. With the knowledge that he was defying Napoleon,
or at least his ministers, he started for Madrid to play a lone hand in
what he must have known was a desperate game.

The conduct of the Administration during the next few months was hardly
calculated to smooth Monroe's path. In the following February (1804)
President Jefferson put his signature to an act which was designed
to give effect to the laws of the United States in the newly acquired
territory. The fourth section of this so-called Mobile Act included
explicitly within the revenue district of Mississippi all the navigable
waters lying within the United States and emptying into the Gulf east
of the Mississippi--an extraordinary provision indeed, since unless the
Floridas were a part of the United States there were no rivers within
the limits of the United States emptying into the Gulf east of the
Mississippi. The eleventh section was even more remarkable since it gave
the President authority to erect Mobile Bay and River into a separate
revenue d