The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 102, July 1998 - April, 1999 Page: 325
559 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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1999 Filibuster James Long and the Monroe Administration 325
with a W. W. Walker. An ambitious man who was said to be fascinated by
the romanticism of Walter Scott and the military accomplishments of
Napoleon, Long soon grew restless over his relatively mundane exis-
tence and began to search for an outlet for his aspirations.
Such an outlet was provided by the Adams-Onis treaty's third article,
which stated that the United States would surrender its claim to Texas.
This provision went against the thinking of many Americans on the sub-
ject. As early as 1804, for example, Thomas Jefferson had asserted that
the Rio Grande was the southwestern boundary of the Louisiana territo-
ry. According to Jefferson's argument, several early eighteenth-century
maps showed that France, the original claimant of Louisiana, had
claimed up to the Rio Grande ever since La Salle established a short-
lived settlement in 1685, with Louis XIV himself asserting this boundary
in 1712. Indeed, the French sent several subsequent expeditions to
reassert this claim, even though Spain achieved uninterrupted occupa-
tion of the province from 1716 onward. The subsequent exchanges of
Louisiana between France and Spain in 1762 and 18oo, reasoned
Jefferson, did nothing to change this boundary. Thus, with the
Louisiana Purchase, the southwestern boundary of the United States
became the Rio Grande.4
Conditioned to Jefferson's arguments, much of the American public
(westerners in particular) were enraged when they read the third article
of the Adams-Onis treaty and lamented the "surrender" of such a valu-
able territory as Texas. "If it be true," wrote the editors of the Nashville
Clarion upon first hearing of the proposed pact, "[then] more good land
is given up on Red River than Florida is worth five times fold." The
Washington Gazette also regretted the loss of Texan land, "a league of
which is justly deemed of more value to the United States than the
5'"James Long" in Walter Prescott Webb and H. Bailey Carroll (eds.), The Handbook of Texas (2
vols. plus supplement; Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1952), II, 76; Allen Johnson, et
al. (eds.), Dzctionary of American Biography (20 vols.; NewYork: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928-37),
XI, 376; Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, "Life of James Long," in Charles Adams Guhck, et al.
(eds.), The Papers of Mzrabeau Buonaparte Lamar (6 vols.; Austin: A. C. Baldwin & Sons), II, 53;
Dunbar Rowland, Hstory of Mississzppi, The Heart of the South (2 vols.; Chicago and Jackson: S. J.
Clarke Pubhshing Co., 1925), I, 501; Malcolm D. McLean (comp.), Papers Concerning Robertson's
Colony in Texas (18 vols.; Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1974-93), I, 187, 191;
William Horace Brown, The Glory Seekers. The Romance of Would-Be Founders of Empire in the Early
Days of the Great Southwest (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 19o6), 242.
4 Thomas Jefferson, "The Limits and Boundaries of Louisiana," in Documents Relating to the
Purchase and Exploration of Louisana (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Company,
1904), 23-45; "French in Texas" in Webb and Carroll (eds.), Handbook of Texas, I, 647-648;
Donald E. Chipman, Spanish Texas, 15x9-182 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), 105,
112-113; Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, Feb. 4, 1816, in H. A. Washington (ed.), The
Writings of Thomas Jefferson (9 vols.; New York: Riker, Thorne, & Co., 1853-1854), VI, 551;
Richard Stenberg, "The Boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase," Hispanic American Historical
Review, 14 (Feb., 1934), 32-64; Richard Stenberg, "The Western Boundary of Louisiana,
1762-1803," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 35 (Oct., 1931), 95-1o8.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 102, July 1998 - April, 1999, periodical, 1999; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101219/m1/382/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.