The Spanish American Frontier 1783 1795

Through an amazing web of intrigue and diplomacy the irrepressible frontiersmen of the old South-West burst their way to the Mississippi. When Roosevelt wrote his Winning of the West, little that was certain could be told of this story. Dr. Whitaker has pursued every clue to the Spanish archives, where the servants of a declining empire carefully recorded every letter and interview and bargain concluded in their colonies on the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi. From the material so gathered, he has reconstructed a fascinating story of relations between roughneck backwoodsmen of the Daniel Boone breed and courtly representatives of the king of Spain; Scots fur-traders and the half-breed chiefs of the Creek and Cherokee; picturesque rascals like O'Fallon and Tom Washington, and venal legislatures. The influence of this frontier underworld on the formal diplomacy between Spain and the United States has been clearly brought out; and the significance of it, as a conflict between two different civilizations, adequately appreciated. Twelve eventful years of this conflict are concluded by the Madrid negotiations of 1795 between Thomas Pinckney and Manuel de Godoy, and the treaty of San Lorenzo, which cleared Spanish obstructions from our westward advance. - Introduction.