the commissioners of
the United States represented a people already holding the whole Ohio
Valley, as well as the Illinois. The circumstances of the treaty were
peculiar; but here they need to be touched but briefly, and only so far
as they affected the western boundaries. The United States, acting
together with France and Spain, had just closed a successful war with
England; but when the peace negotiations were begun, they speedily found
that their allies were, if any thing, more anxious than their enemy to
hamper their growth. England, having conceded the grand point of
independence, was disposed to be generous, and not to haggle about
lesser matters. Spain, on the contrary, was quite as hostile to the new
nation as to England. Through her representative, Count Aranda, she
predicted the future enormous expansion of the Federal Republic at the
expense of Florida, Louisiana, and Mexico, unless it was effectually
curbed in its youth. The prophecy has been strikingly fulfilled, and the
event has thoroughly justified Spain's fear; for the major part of the
present territory of the United States was under Spanish dominion at the
close of the Revolutionary war. Spain, therefore, proposed to hem in our
growth by giving us the Alleghanies for our western boundary. [Footnote:
At the north this boundary was to follow the upper Ohio, and end towards
the foot of Lake Erie. See maps at end of volume.] France was the ally
of America; but as between America and Spain, she favored the latter.
Moreover, she wished us to remain weak enough to be dependent upon her
further good graces. The French court, therefore, proposed that the
United States should content themselves with so much of the
trans-Alleghany territory as lay round the head-waters of the Tennessee
and between the Cumberland and Ohio. This area contained the bulk of the
land that was already settled [Footnote: Excluding only so much of
Robertson's settlement as lay south of the Cumberland, and Clark's
conquest.]; and the proposal showed how important the French court
deemed the fact of actual settlement.

Thus the two allies of America were hostile to her interests. The open
foe, England, on the contrary was anxious to conclude a separate treaty,
so that she might herself be in better condition to carry on
negotiations with France and Spain; she cared much less to keep the west
than she did to keep Gibraltar, and an agreement with the United States
about the former left her