SPANISH NEGOTIATION-CONNECTICUT. 647 XXXI. 1818. Oct. 31. Mermentau and Calcasiu, crossing the Red River at CHAPTER Natchitoches, and extending to the Missouri, that river thence to its source to be the boundary. Adams offered, as his ultimatum, to accept as a boundary, the Sabine as far as the thirty-second degree of north latitude, a line thence due north to the Red River, that river to its source, the crest of the Rocky Mountains to the fortyfirst degree of north latitude, and a line thence due west to the Pacific. Onis offered to agree to the Sabine and Nov. 16. a due north line to the Missouri, and the course of that river to its head. The American claim to extend to the Pacific he pronounced a novelty, now heard of for the first time, and as to which he had no instructions. Adams rejoined by withdrawing his late offer as to Nov. 30. boundary, proposing to let that question lay over for the present, and to settle the other points first. He took occasion, at the same time, to go into a long and very warm vindication of all Jackson's proceedings in Florida, which he defended on the ground taken by Jackson himself, that the war with the Seminoles had originated entirely in the instigations of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, who were described as only "pretended traders," and by implication as British emissaries, whom the Spanish commander was accused of having encouraged and abetted; a view of the case still more elaborately and zealously maintained in a dispatch of the same date to Erving, the American minister in Spain. The re-election of Wolcott, and the complete triumph April of the toleration party of Connecticut, had been followed by an act authorizing a convention, which presently met at Hartford, to frame a Constitution for that state. August. This Constitution, ratified soon after by the people, in its Oct. 12. general model and in most of its provisions, was but a continuation of the old charter government, upon which, XXXI. CHAPTER in his moderating speeches to the Legislature, Wolcott had bestowed many well-merited eulogies. The old 1818. Board of Assistants, somewhat increased in numbers, became a senate. The election of the representatives and the sessions of the Legislature were to be annual instead of biennial, as before. The governor was allowed the privilege of stating his objections to such bills as had passed both Houses; but if a majority still persisted, these objections availed nothing. The Legislature also retained all its old prerogatives of appointments to office. The most notable changes were the extension of the right of suffrage to all tax-payers, and the abolition of the old religious establishment. An article of the Bill of Rights, while acknowledging the duty of worship, provided, however, that no person should be compelled to join, or be classed with, or be taxed by any church or religious association against his consent. "All societies of Christians" within the state were to be entitled to the equal privilege of taxing their own members; but those members might withdraw at pleasure, on filing a written notice with the clerk of the society of intention to do so. New Hampshire adopted this same policy the next year by a legislative act. Another change made on Wolcott's recommendation, but in a decidedly anti-democratic direction, gave to the judges of the highest court, hitherto elected annually, a tenure of office for good behavior. The Constitution of the new state of ILLINOIS, com. Aug. 26. pleted about the same time, hardly differed from that of Indiana, except in assigning a four years' term to the governor and senators, half the senators to go out biennially. An annuity of $1000, for twelve years, had already (1816) been granted to the united Chippewas, Ottawas, and Potawatomies, of the Illinois and Milwaukie, in con INDIAN CESSIONS. 649 XXXI. 1818. Oct. sideration of the cession of a tract twenty miles wide, CHAPTER including Chicago, and extending back southwesterly to the Kankakee and Fox Rivers. Considerable additional cessions in Illinois and Indiana, at an expense of $9850 in perpetual annuities, were now obtained from the Potawatomies, the Weas, the Miamis, and the Delawares, which latter tribe, having sold all their lands, agreed to remove west of the Mississippi. The Indian tribes of Ohio, the Wyandots, Delawares, Senecas, and Shawanese, with some bands of the Potawatomies, Ottawas, and Chippewas, by a treaty negotiated the year before, and again the present year rati fied with modifications, had ceded all their remaining lands in that state, about four millions of acres, embracing the valley of the Maumee. For this cession $14,000 were paid to the several tribes, in various proportions, in the name of damages suffered from the British during the late war: $500 to the Delawares; $10,000 annually, forever, to the Wyandots, Senecas, Shawanese, and Ottawas; and $3300 annually, for fifteen years, to the Potawatomies and united Chippewas and Ottawas. Some 300,000 acres were also reserved in various tracts, and assigned to different bands, families, and individuals, under the idea, which failed, however, to be carried out, that the Indians might adopt the habits of civilized life, and become a part of the settled population. The states of Kentucky and Tennessee received also a much-coveted enlargement, in a cession by the Chickasaws of all that tract included between the Mississippi and the northern course of the Tennessee River. The Chickasaw villages were mostly lower down the Mississippi, this tract having been used as hunting grounds. Considerable reservations were, however, made to certain chiefs; and besides presents to them, the United States agreed Oct. 19. 1817. Sept. 27. XXXI. CHAPTER to pay to the nation, in consideration of this cession, $70,000 annually for fifteen years. The United States 1818. paid the money, but the benefit inured to individuals; for the whole of this tract was already covered by old Virginia and North Carolina grants. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the apparently successful restoration of specie payments, the ignorance, mismanagement, and selfish schemes of the directors of the new National Bank threatened to involve the country in new monetary confusion. The resumption of payment by the state banks had caused their notes to be received as specie in the payment of the third and fourth installments of the bank stock; and as the United States stocks had risen above par, it was principally in those notes that these instalments had been paid. Even the stocks actually paid in by the private subscribers, to the amount of about fourteen millions, had, under the option secured in the charter, been redeemed by the government, principally with state bank notes received for duties, and of which the treasury was thus mainly cleared. The mass of state bank paper thus put into the hands of the National Bank gave it a vast power, which, if used with prudence, firmness, and a resolution to reduce the state banks to a real specie-paying condition, might possibly have accomplished that object without any very violent crisis. But the managers of the bank had much more in view their own private interests than those of the public. Baltimore had originally subscribed four millions to the stock, as much as Philadelphia, twice as much as either New York or Boston, and a vast deal more than she was able to pay for. This subscription was really made by a hundred or two speculating individuals, mostly warm Democratic politicians, but by a piece of trickery familiar in the bank management of AFFAIRS OF THE NATIONAL BANK. 651 XXXI. that city, it had been taken in the names of some fifteen CHAPTER thousand persons, half the entire number of stockholders throughout the Union; and under the rules for vot- 1818. ing laid down in the charter, a vastly disproportioned influence had been thus secured by these Baltimore speculators in the choice of the directors of the mother bank. It was principally to enable them to meet their installments that the practice had been introduced of discounting notes secured only by pledges of stock, not merely at its par value, but at the extravagant rates of from thirty to fifty per cent. above par, to which the speculators had succeeded in raising it. The true policy would have been strictly to limit their own issues till the state banks had been brought to a sound condition; but the directors were intent only on inflating the value of their own stock; and, under the leadership of Jones, late Secretary of the Navy, appointed a government director and elected president, himself one of the speculators, they had commenced a course of free loans, which had helped, for the moment, to cheat the country with a delusive appearance of prosperity. In utter ignorance of the theory of trade, the directors had also entered on the impracticable scheme of equalizing the exchanges at their own expense, by requiring all the branches north of Charleston to receive each other's notes as cash, in other words, to redeem them in specie. Taking advantage of this rule, the Baltimore branch, under the presidency of James A. Buchanan, the mercantile and managing partner of that ancient Democratic politician, General Smith, had commenced a course of most profuse loans, large amounts being taken by the president and cashier without any security whatever. During the suspension of specie payments, the Baltimore bank paper being the worst of all, very large importa |