J.C.A. Stagg

The Madison Administration and Mexico: Reinterpreting the Gutiérrez-Magee Raid of 1812–1813

IN the summer of 1810 , the collapse of the Spanish-American empire seemed imminent. Since Napoleon's invasion of Spain in May 1808, French armies had advanced steadily throughout the Iberian peninsula and by February 1810 they had reached the outskirts of Cádiz. At that point the principal means of organized resistance to the French invasion, the Supreme Central Junta, was dissolved and its authority transferred to a Regency Council whose members assembled on the Isla de Léon near the port of Cádiz. As he reported these developments to Washington, the American chargé d'affaires, George W. Erving, predicted that the Spanish would make a last-ditch stand, but of Napoleon's final triumph he had no doubt. Accordingly, he made plans to return home. ¹ 1

     The repercussions were soon felt in the New World. In April 1810, the cabildo of Caracas, anticipating that Joseph Bonaparte would soon consolidate his usurpation of the Spanish throne, rejected the authority of the Regency Council and established an autonomous junta to rule on behalf of Ferdinand VII, the legitimate Bourbon monarch imprisoned in France. In Washington, the administration of James Madison could hardly ignore these events, and the president and his secretary of state quickly concluded that the final crisis of Spanish authority in the New World was at hand.² Their problem was how to respond. Beginning in June 1810, Madison dispatched agents to the Spanish colonies of Buenos Aires, Chile, Cuba, East and West Florida, Mexico, and Venezuela. These agents had varying assignments, but common to all was the administration's desire to acquire information on developments in these colonies, to spread sentiments of good will should they break with Madrid, and to assess prospects for expanding trade.³ 2

     Joel Roberts Poinsett in Chile became the best known of these agents, but of more immediate importance were the activities of those in the Spanish colonies bordering on, or adjacent to, the United States--Cuba, East and West Florida, and Mexico.⁴ Accounts of the missions undertaken by William Wykoff, Jr., George Mathews, John McKee, John Hamilton Robinson, and William Shaler have long been staple items in the narratives of how the United States established political relations with the colonies of the Spanish borderlands, and by the middle of the twentieth century historians had reached certain conclusions about the ends and means of American policy for that region. The consensus was that Madison exploited Spanish weakness by using agents to subvert colonial rule in the Floridas and Texas as a prelude to adding these provinces to the United States. American expansion along the Gulf Coast thus proceeded by methods that could not bear close scrutiny--secret agents, clandestine operations, filibusters, and the promotion of insurrection against a nation with which the republic was at peace. Indeed, some scholars have even seen in Madison's methods early "covert operations" of a sort not dissimilar to those associated with the role of the CIA in twentieth-century American foreign policy.⁵ 3

     West Florida has always seemed the most flagrant case. Madison's agent, it is said, incited the American-born residents of West Florida to rebel, and after they had done so the president annexed the province as far eastward as the Perdido River in October 1810. Yet these missions into the Spanish borderlands were complicated episodes, and their complexity should warn historians against making overly broad or simplistic generalizations about what took place. In the case of West Florida, for example, it is inaccurate to assert that Madison sought to overthrow the Spanish regime. Rather, he assumed that colonial rule would become defunct as all legitimate authority in Spain itself expired. The president's real concern was with what would fill the vacuum he anticipated emerging along the Gulf Coast. His difficulties were compounded by the fact that the United States claimed the coast for itself--by right of purchase in 1803 in the case of West Florida and Texas and, in the case of East Florida, by right of compensation for spoliation claims dating from the Quasi-War of the 1790s.⁶ If Madison failed to vindicate these claims, he risked forfeiting them to Joseph Bonaparte or, worse, watching Great Britain seize either Cuba or the Gulf Coast in order to prevent Napoleon gaining control of routes to the larger and more valuable colonies of Spanish America. 4

     In West Florida, Madison's solution was not to subvert the colony but to direct his agent, Wykoff, to suggest that American settlers there bridge the impending interregnum by forming a convention to invite the United States in as Spain's successor.⁷ A convention was set up, but the interregnum never came. Fearing reprisals from Cuba, the American settlers panicked and declared independence in September 1810. Caught off guard, the president had little choice but to annex the territory they controlled in order to preserve the position that it had been part of Louisiana as sold to the United States by France in 1803.⁸ Turning his attention to the remainder of West Florida and to East Florida, Madison then tried to implement the policy of the "No Transfer" resolution of January 1811, namely that administration agents could use American forces to occupy these regions in the event of either their seizure by a foreign power or their voluntary surrender to the United States by the local authorities. The result was a fiasco. The agent, Mathews, exceeded his instructions by organizing a force of American-born Spanish subjects to overthrow the East Florida government and deliver the province to the United States. Disgusted and embarrassed, Madison disavowed the agent and his actions in April 1812.⁹ 5

     But what of Mexico and Texas? Historians have assumed that Madison's agent, William Shaler of Connecticut, had instructions to encourage rebellion on the Louisiana-Mexico border to seize Texas for the republic. Shaler, it is believed, responded by organizing a filibuster, the celebrated and colorful Gutiérrez-Magee raid, so named for its leaders, the Mexican rebel José Bernardo Maximiliano Gutiérrez de Lara and former United States army lieutenant Augustus W. Magee. As evidence of Shaler's hand in the filibuster, historians have pointed to his acquaintance with its leaders, his correspondence with the State Department reporting its progress, and finally his effort in the spring of 1813 to replace Gutiérrez as leader of the Mexican rebels with another Spanish-American revolutionary, José Álvarez de Toledo y Dubois. ¹⁰ On learning of Shaler's intervention in June 1813 , Madison repudiated it also, but historians have attributed that decision to the need to avoid complications with Spain and other European powers and not to any real disapproval of the filibuster itself. A re-examination of Shaler's correspondence, however, supplemented by some recently discovered letterbooks and diaries he kept throughout 1812 and 1813 , throws new light on both the agent's actions and the policies of the administration that sent him on his mission in 1810 . ¹¹ Considered as a whole, the corpus of Shaler papers now available to historians suggests that a reappraisal of the Gutiérrez-Magee raid is in order, especially the notion that it was an expansionist policy to be implemented by subversion. Put simply, it was not.

6

     The belief that the Gutiérrez-Magee raid reflected Madison's desire for Texas rests on four propositions. The first is that Shaler received instructions to incite insurrection in Texas. The second is that Shaler followed orders and camouflaged the nature of his activities in reports to the State Department. The third is that the failure of federal and state officials to suppress the filibuster as a violation of the 1794 Neutrality Act resulted from a series of tacit understandings among those same officials to advance its goals. The fourth is that Madison's decision in the summer of 1812 to send John Hamilton Robinson on a mission to Nemesio Salcedo, the commandant-general of the Internal Provinces of Mexico, represented yet another effort to assist the filibuster by misleading Spanish officials about American policy in the borderlands. None of these propositions can stand independently from the others. To the extent that any of them can be questioned, the argument that the filibuster was administration policy is undermined. If all the propositions can be faulted, the argument is untenable. 7

     The weakest of these propositions is the belief that Shaler was authorized to organize a filibuster. He was not. The instructions for his mission have long been available, but they have either been misunderstood by historians or, more often, overlooked altogether.¹² Madison first met Shaler in February 1810, and a few weeks later Secretary of State Robert Smith recalled him to Washington as the administration began receiving reports of the latest developments in Spain and its colonies. As Smith put it, these reports signified nothing less than the imminent dissolution of "the Colonial relationship of Spanish America to their parent Country," and the president asked Shaler to accept an appointment as agent for commerce and seamen in order to undertake missions to Cuba and Mexico.¹³ 8

     Shaler received several instructions from the State Department, the most important of which were dated June 18, 1810. In both Cuba and Mexico, the agent was to "diffuse the impression that the United States cherish the sincerest good will towards the people of Spanish America as neighbours, as belonging to the same portion of the Globe, and as having a mutual interest in cultivating friendly intercourse." As "the establishment of the Spanish Colonies into independent States" was "more or less in prospect," Shaler was then directed to "bring into view the peculiar relation of the United States to the Floridas and the considerations which ought to reconcile the other parts of Spanish America to an eventual incorporation of them into our Union." In Mexico, should Shaler's "conversations" be "drawn to the South Western boundary of Louisiana, it will be sufficient," Smith wrote, "to let it be understood that the United States will carry into that discussion, particularly in case it should take place with a neighbouring instead of a foreign authority, a spirit of amity and equity, which, with a like spirit on the other side, forbids any unfavorable anticipations."¹⁴ Three days later, State Department chief clerk John Graham went further. Sending Shaler additional information describing the administration's position on the extent of Louisiana, he declared: "There is no wish here to insist on the Rio del Norte [Río Grande] as one of the Boundaries."¹⁵ 9

     In other words, Shaler's assignment, in addition to gathering information and discussing trade, was to seek out successor regimes in Cuba and Mexico and persuade them not to adhere to the positions taken by Madrid in its disputes with the United States over the boundaries of Louisiana and the future of East Florida. Those same instructions also pledged the United States to refrain from "interference of any sort" in the "internal system or European relations" of Cuba and Mexico, whatever these might be. The administration sought only "friendly relations" and "liberal intercourse," while its desire for "conversations" on common border problems implied these matters could be settled by negotiations and treaties. Nothing in these instructions required Shaler to organize a filibuster, nor did they contain anything that would have sanctioned such conduct if he did so. 10

     How, then, did Shaler become associated with a filibuster? His mission had two parts. The first directed him to Havana to meet with the Spanish governor and to take "the pulse of Cuba as to an estimate of the inducements [of the] incorporation of that Island with the United States in comparison with those of an adherence to the Spanish Main." The second was to acquire a passport for "some port in Mexico," preferably Veracruz. Thereafter, he was to make his way to the interior "where the local authority of Mexico may reside" and carry out his instructions.¹⁶ Shaler, however, failed to obtain a passport, and after fifteen month's residence in Cuba he was expelled in November 1811. He left for New Orleans, arriving there in the third week of December. Moreover, developments in Mexico, as they were reported in Louisiana newspapers in the early weeks of 1812, left no doubt that Shaler could not reach the interior of Mexico via Veracruz in the near future.¹⁷ The agent was at a loose end, looking for alternative ways to resume his mission. 11

     He did not wait long. On March 23, 1812, the governor of Orleans Territory, William C. C. Claiborne, introduced Shaler to Gutiérrez. The Mexican, a supporter of the rebel priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, had left Texas for Washington in September 1811. His purpose had been to seek assistance for the remnants of Hidalgo's cause, but while crossing the Neutral Ground between Mexico and Louisiana (see Figure I) he lost his papers and could not establish his credentials in the capital in December 1811. Still, the administration was not unsympathetic. It had already received notice of his plans from army officers in the Southwest, notably Lieutenant Colonel Zebulon Montgomery Pike at Fort Claiborne in Natchitoches, and Secretary of War William Eustis hinted that assistance could be forthcoming on the understanding that American troops might enter Mexico to extend the occupation of Louisiana to the "banks of the Rio Grande."¹⁸ Gutiérrez rejected this suggestion, and the administration forbore from pressing it.¹⁹ It then returned Gutiérrez home, paying his passage to New Orleans and instructing Claiborne to deal with him as he saw fit.²⁰ 12

Figure I: Texas and the Neutral Ground, 1810–1813.

     What impact did this meeting have on future developments on the Louisiana-Texas border? There is no doubt the administration sent Gutiérrez home to continue working for Mexican independence, especially if it gave credence to information it had received from Pike and others about the extent of revolutionary sentiment in Texas and to a warning, also forwarded by Pike, that Salcedo in the Internal Provinces might attack Orleans Territory to punish "the Rascally Americans" for their seizure of West Florida.²¹ In that context, it made sense to return Gutiérrez, but it cannot be argued that Madison and his colleagues also encouraged him to organize a filibuster involving Americans as the way to resume his struggle. On the contrary, Eustis was quite careful in his conversations with Gutiérrez to make his suggestion of American aid contingent on the latter's accepting the view that the United States did have a claim to the Río Grande, precisely because, as the Mexican recalled, "he made me see that in no other way could they give aid, because they were today at peace with all nations." That statement rejected filibustering as a policy option, and thereafter the administration and Gutiérrez agreed on no more than that it was "expedient," as Secretary of State James Monroe put it, "for him to go back to [his] country to fetch the documents necessary to undertake the purchase of arms, and to report the friendly disposition of this country to favor the Republic of Mexico."²² 13

     If that was the result of the meeting in Washington, however, it was never clearly communicated to Claiborne, and the governor, after receiving Gutiérrez, was at a loss. He therefore introduced him to Shaler, who saw an opportunity to restart his mission.²³ The agent took the Mexican under his wing and advanced him small sums of money--probably amounting to between $400 and $500--to pay for food, clothing, and accommodation.²⁴ He then accompanied Gutiérrez to Natchitoches, arriving on April 18, 1812. Throughout this journey, Shaler not only paid expenses for the Mexican but also offered him advice on political matters, assuming that the cultivation of a personal relationship might advance the goals of his mission. Shaler advised the administration of these decisions.²⁵ Monroe gave his approval in May 1812, informing the agent as he did so that Madison wished him to "proceed immediately to Mexico in fulfilment of [his] original instructions."²⁶ 14

     Gutiérrez was no stranger to Natchitoches. He had passed through the settlement in 1811 in the company of another of Hidalgo's supporters, José Menchaca. In a later account, Gutiérrez recalled that he and Menchaca had planned that the latter would recruit troops, including Americans, for the purpose of seizing San Antonio de Béxar and establishing a provisional revolutionary government. The former, when in Washington, would seek arms and aid once Menchaca had established the provisional government.²⁷ While in Washington in December 1811, Gutiérrez learned that Menchaca had betrayed their cause and returned to the service of Spain.²⁸ It is almost certain, therefore, that after Gutiérrez reached Natchitoches, he had to repair the damage resulting from Menchaca's defection by reviving whatever schemes and contacts he had made earlier. Did Shaler know about these activities and was he involved in them? That he knew something of them is clear from his letters to the State Department during the spring and summer of 1812, but the same correspondence shows equally clearly that Shaler was hardly privy to every move made by Gutiérrez and that he came to disapprove of almost every aspect of the Mexican's behavior. 15

     Shaler's initial friendliness for Gutiérrez was thus short-lived. After May, his letters reveal such mounting unease about Gutiérrez that by July the agent concluded that the Mexican cut a "weak and sorry" figure, too readily given to "ridiculous flights of vanity." This discomfort arose, in part, because Shaler sensed he had misjudged his character, but more important, because he suspected Gutiérrez was "playing a double part" with him about his plans. So far as Shaler could tell, those plans did encompass filibustering, and Shaler became convinced that Gutiérrez had reached "private and confidential" understandings with Americans throughout the Southwest. Among them he mentioned John Adair of Kentucky, the former United States senator and supporter of Aaron Burr. Yet the Mexican's plans also seemed to be predicated on assistance from France, or at least Shaler so reported after learning that an agent of Napoleon had visited Gutiérrez and offered him money, arms, and the services of French officers. None of these arrangements, Shaler told Monroe, would favor American interests in the borderlands.²⁹ 16

     Historians have questioned the reliability of Shaler's accounts of his dealings with Gutiérrez. Their skepticism, uninformed by any knowledge of Shaler's instructions, reflects a reluctance to believe that the agent could have ever transmitted to Washington so much information about a filibuster unless he had also participated in its organization. The suspicion that Shaler was involved in the filibuster, coupled with the assumption that his actions must have conformed to his instructions, fueled the belief that the agent's mission was clandestine in nature and subversive in purpose. The details of his letters to Monroe were then adduced as evidence of both his involvement in the filibuster and his desire to provide a record that concealed the extent to which the administration sanctioned his conduct.³⁰ The availability of Shaler's instructions, however, renders this approach as doubtful in value as it is unnecessary in practice, and if the agent's letters are read in the light of his instructions, any difficulties in deciphering both their meaning and the purpose of his mission disappear. Their contents can be read as a fair description of his own activities and opinions. 17

     It was in this spirit that Shaler reported to Monroe. As he did so, he warned that the filibuster Gutiérrez was planning could not advance administration policy, and at one stage in his efforts to acquire a better understanding of the Mexican's behavior he pointedly inquired whether a raid into Texas was what Madison had intended. Moreover, in his letters as well as in some essays on the prospects for Spanish-American independence that he wrote in early 1812, Shaler unequivocally stated that his own preference for Mexico was not for filibustering but for direct American intervention to counter the spread of British influence. That Great Britain would meddle in Mexico Shaler took for granted. He assumed that the impending war between Great Britain and the United States would also produce war with Spain. Once the latter development occurred, Shaler feared that Great Britain would remove the Cádiz regency to Mexico and use the colony as a base against the United States. His solution was that the United States army, not a filibuster, should occupy the Neutral Ground and open communications with the Mexican rebels.³¹ 18

     Nowhere in this correspondence is there any clear proof that the agent was directing or influencing the activities of Gutiérrez in significant ways as the latter went about organizing the filibustering force, the Republican Army of the North. The only possible exceptions to this statement are Shaler's admissions, first on June 12, 1812, that he assisted Gutiérrez in drafting a letter to Ignacio Lopez Rayón, the rebel leader near Mexico City, and then, six days later, that he also advanced the sum of $100 as a contribution for "printed proclamations" that Gutiérrez wished to send into Mexico. The first step was not inconsistent with instructions that directed Shaler to make contact with a successor regime in Mexico. The second was more problematic, and Shaler evidently hesitated before taking it. But he did not conceal from Monroe what he had done and told the secretary of state he had thought it "proper" to make the advance.³² 19

     This sense of propriety very likely arose from Shaler's feeling that he owed Gutiérrez some favors in return for the fact that the agent intended to use the Mexican for his own purposes. In drafting the letter Gutiérrez sent to Rayón, Shaler also took the opportunity to inform the latter of his mission and to explain Madison's policies toward Mexico and Great Britain. When Gutiérrez sought money for printing a few days later, Shaler probably thought he should reciprocate for the use he was making of the Mexican's couriers, and he told Monroe he hoped that one of these couriers would return to Natchitoches within the month "with an exact account of the state of the revolution in the interior of Mexico."³³ In each case, though, it seems that the ultimate purposes of his mission were uppermost in Shaler's mind rather than any particular desire to advance the organization of a filibuster. 20

     More important, by midsummer 1812 Shaler also concluded that the filibuster would take place, regardless of his feelings. He voiced misgivings by telling Gutiérrez that the administration, no matter how much its members might wish for Mexican independence, would not approve any "unauthorized proceedings by men unknown, not under their control, and in no way possessing their confidence." The Mexican dismissed these concerns, responding that if Americans should volunteer their services "all the world would regard him as a fool not to profit by the circumstance."³⁴ At that point, Shaler might have given up and had no further contact with Gutiérrez. He did not do so because that step also risked forfeiting the best opportunity he might have to enter Mexico for his mission. Moreover, Shaler had a long-standing and deeply felt sympathy for the cause of republicanism in Spanish America, and to the extent that this sentiment included Mexico in 1812, the agent simply withdrew the expectations he had earlier invested in Gutiérrez and transferred them to Augustus W. Magee, a United States army officer who had resigned his commission in June 1812 and joined the filibuster.³⁵ 21

     Again, the goals of his mission rather than those of the filibuster were Shaler's main concern. He hoped that Magee and other Americans in the filibuster would provide a guiding hand and prevent the Mexicans from running into "the extravagance of revolutionary injustice and tyranny." To both Claiborne and Monroe, the agent continued "to reprobate such an expedition as contrary to law, and good policy," but he also confessed that he regarded the larger issues at stake in the independence of Mexico to be of such vital importance that it was better the filibuster succeed rather than fail. And if the raid were "well conducted" and resulted in a republican enclave in Texas, Shaler predicted he could then start his mission to reach the interior of Mexico.³⁶ Acting partly in accordance with the view that he should not enter Mexico with a band of rebels and partly because he was indisposed by illness, Shaler did not accompany the filibuster when it left the Neutral Ground on August 8, 1812. He remained at Natchitoches, biding his time. 22

     As he did so, Shaler composed a long essay on the future of the New World. He returned to themes he had tried to bring to the attention of the administration earlier in the year, reshaping them to accommodate his belief that Napoleon would emerge victorious in Europe and that Great Britain would be compelled to make peace with the United States to maintain its empire as a counterweight to French hegemony. The agent then planned the reorganization of the Americas after the fall of Spain. He projected a series of confederated states, some linked to Great Britain (Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo), others connected to the United States (Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, Cuba, and East and West Florida), while the "remaining Spanish provinces on the Continent of America," Mexico included, were to be "united into Sovereign independent States, under such forms of government as their respective inhabitants shall elect." In so far as these ideas had relevance for the filibuster, Shaler predicted that "the provinces north and west of the Istmus of Darien" would retain their existing boundaries. Those boundaries, he added, would be the "most natural" "political limits" for that "sovereign state."³⁷ Nowhere did the essay even hint that Texas would become part of the United States. 23

     Even so, Shaler's conduct placed him, and by implication the administration, in an ambiguous position. A fair reading of the agent's essays and letters from Natchitoches demonstrates that he did not approve of or contribute much to the organization of the Gutiérrez-Magee raid. At the same time, though, Shaler's correspondence reveals that he had decided to use the filibuster as a means of carrying out Madison's instructions. In choosing this tactic, Shaler was probably more guilty of a certain naivete about the possible consequences of his actions than he was of a deliberate disregard of the president's policy. The agent had initially believed he could manipulate Gutiérrez for his own purposes, then found he could not. Unwilling to abandon his mission on that account, he chose to follow in the wake of a filibuster to enter Mexico. That decision, almost inevitably, created the impression that the administration was backing the filibuster. The impression was inaccurate, but it explains why many twentieth-century historians concluded that an attempt to detach Texas was the first major policy decision of the United States toward the Mexican nation as it struggled to come into existence.

24

     The significance of the other assumptions underlying the view that the filibuster was administration policy--the belief that American officials assisted the raid by deliberately failing to prevent it and the Robinson mission as a diversionary tactic--can now be placed in perspective. Undeniably, officials on the southwestern frontier were slow to implement the 1794 Neutrality Act, and their apparent negligence on this score could have been compounded by the decision of Brigadier General James Wilkinson in August 1812 to remove from Fort Claiborne to Baton Rouge troops that might have stopped the raid at the outset.³⁸ Yet it is only in hindsight that these actions, or failures to act, can be seen as evidence that the officials concerned either wished to see the filibuster depart or understood that the administration wished it to depart. Moreover, the administration itself, after receiving additional information on filibustering in the Southwest, also took further steps in response. That these steps were ineffective need not be adduced as evidence they were never meant to succeed. 25

     Here the role of Claiborne was critical. Had the administration wished to aid and abet the filibuster by not obstructing it, the governor's co-operation was essential, either by his not enforcing the neutrality legislation or by his enforcing it in ways defeating its purpose. Should Claiborne's conduct be understood in that light?³⁹ As far as the governor might have been influenced by personal views, it can be admitted he was an expansionist, eager to enlarge Louisiana at the expense of West Florida and Texas. In January 1812 he had even suggested to Brigadier General Wade Hampton, then the ranking United States army officer in the Southwest, that he construct three garrisons in the Neutral Ground as a way of controlling bandits and fugitives from justice. Suspecting that Claiborne envisaged this step as a means of absorbing the Neutral Ground, the general referred the request to Washington, where the secretary of war rejected it.⁴⁰ But frustration on that score did not tempt Claiborne into filibustering. As he told Monroe shortly thereafter and specifically with reference to disputes with Spain over Texas, he anticipated that the independence of Spanish America would lead to the establishment of "a Government with which the United States may negociate on all matters interesting to the New World."⁴¹ 26

     Claiborne was also familiar with Shaler and his mission. The two men had first met in Washington in the summer of 1810, and Claiborne, in early 1812, took it for granted that his "friend Captain Shaler" was "stil in the confidence & service of the Government."⁴² Yet when Shaler and Gutiérrez departed New Orleans for Natchitoches, Claiborne advised Shaler not "to shew any further countenance" to the Mexican beyond returning him home. Why? Claiborne regarded Gutiérrez as untrustworthy. The Mexican had made misleading statements about the extent to which the administration wished the governor to assist him, or at least statements that Claiborne could not reconcile with information he had received from Washington. Even worse, the governor mentioned, was that while in New Orleans Gutiérrez had been sought out by "several Intriguers (believed to be acting under foreign influence)." And even though Gutiérrez had "prudently evaded all their efforts, & kept himself whilst here quite retired," Claiborne clearly doubted that the future conduct of his guest would be equally commendable.⁴³ 27

     Moreover, Claiborne knew about the filibuster by early July 1812. His response was to reiterate that he had already issued standing instructions to "the Civil Authority at Natchitoches" to enforce American neutrality.⁴⁴ He took no other action because he had also heard that the expedition would depart only in the event of war against Great Britain, and at that juncture he believed there would be no war. The deliberations in Washington, he predicted, "will end in a War of Words."⁴⁵Once Congress had declared war, the governor was preoccupied with problems east of the Mississippi River, but he returned his attention to Texas on August 5 by requesting Wilkinson to aid the civil authorities against the filibuster.⁴⁶ Next, Claiborne received a letter of resignation from the Natchitoches parish judge, John C. Carr. The judge was probably in sympathy with the filibuster, but had Claiborne also wished to assist it at this stage, he could have simply accepted the resignation and sought a successor.⁴⁷ Instead, the governor rejected the resignation, telling Carr on August 7 to remain in office precisely because "a project to invade the Spanish Province of Tehus, was stil in agitation." Three days later, Claiborne reported that the filibuster had not yet left, and on August 11 he issued a proclamation warning Americans not to join it.⁴⁸ By then the filibuster had gone, but this sequence of events is hardly clear proof that Claiborne stayed his hand to assist it. Neither his control over events nor the information he received permitted him to act in so calculating a fashion. 28

     Thereafter, Claiborne always opposed the filibuster. He well understood that "the movements of the revolutionists in Texas [were] of great concern to [his] Country," but he never derived any satisfaction from them. Nor did his opinion of Gutiérrez improve. The "savage and imprudent conduct" of the Mexican rebels in executing several Spanish officers after the capture of San Antonio in April 1813 appalled him, and he denounced Gutiérrez, in particular, as a "weak, Cowardly and Cruel . . . Tyrant." Indeed, so little faith did Claiborne have in the Texan revolt that he predicted it would fail, and he wished, instead, that the United States would "take possession of the country as far as the River Grande."⁴⁹ After his prediction became true in August 1813, the governor complained that no one had ever told him what the administration wanted anyway. "If it comported with the policy of the General Government to countenance a Revolution in the Interior Provinces of Mexico," he told Madison, "I could and would greatly facilitate it. But all attempts (unauthorized and unassisted) like the one lately put down, are likely to fail, and to be attended with no other effects, than an increase of the Misery of the wretched Inhabitants, and to draw to the Frontiers of Louisiana, a number of Adventurers . . . the greater part [of them] worthless, unprincipled, and a Curse."⁵⁰ This was not retrospective irony. That was never Claiborne's style, and his correspondence provides no evidence he believed the filibuster was a policy he should advance. 29

     Did Wilkinson aid the filibuster? For so long have historians believed that the general was conspiratorial and duplicitous by nature that it is difficult to argue for innocent explanations of his conduct. Nevertheless, the general did not take up his command in New Orleans until July 9, 1812, and there is no evidence he had prior knowledge of the plans and movements of the filibuster. Following his arrival on the Gulf Coast, Wilkinson was overwhelmed by the problems of defending a front of more than six hundred miles--from Natchitoches to Fort Stoddert--with only 1,680 men. His decision to remove troops from Fort Claiborne to Baton Rouge was almost certainly governed by the need to build up defenses east of the Mississippi River, especially along the border with West Florida, which Wilkinson feared would be attacked by Spanish forces en route from Havana to either Mobile or Pensacola. Wilkinson also claimed that his knowledge of developments in the Neutral Ground at this stage was too sketchy to justify action. He received reports about raiding parties and believed they might be under the command of John Adair.⁵¹ But that probably gave Wilkinson pause. Adair was still pressing a lawsuit against him for wrongful arrest during the Burr conspiracy, and the general may have hesitated to confront the Kentuckian again without conclusive proof of his involvement in illegal acts.⁵² Instead, Wilkinson insinuated that the motive for Adair's behavior was more likely to be mere plundering than it was the occupation of Texas or the promotion of Mexican independence. 30

     By August, Wilkinson knew more. He informed the War Department that Magee headed the filibuster and would seize Nacogdoches and San Antonio, actions the general criticized as unlikely to advance Mexican independence. Wilkinson also mentioned he had been visited by an agent from Gutiérrez seeking aid for two thousand men about to join the Republican Army of the North from Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Discounting this claim as "not quite creditable," Wilkinson had responded that the filibuster was illegal and would provoke war with Spain. He therefore threatened to arrest Magee, but added, in an afterthought, that his concern for "the poor Native Mexicans" was such that he would "die to give freedom to an oppressed people." At that point Wilkinson also hinted that the administration itself might consider taking advantage of the unsettled situation in Mexico "to extend our occupances to our Western limits the Rio Grande." He even volunteered his own services for the task but said he would not attempt it without instructions.⁵³ 31

     These statements seem confusing, but they are not an endorsement of filibustering. Moreover, as the American official who had been responsible for the establishment of the Neutral Ground in 1806 following his negotiations with the Spanish commander in Texas, Simón de Herrara, the general knew full well he could not crush the filibuster by sending troops into the region without Spanish consent. Even to seek such consent would be difficult and time-consuming, and under the circumstances that prevailed after the outbreak of war, it was unlikely to be forthcoming. Nor is it necessary in this instance to decide whether Wilkinson actually wished to stop the filibuster or whether he hoped to accomplish what he might have believed were its goals. The administration ignored his hints, expressly instructing him to confine himself to the defense of New Orleans and not risk hostilities with Spain. As for the filibuster, the general was to co-operate with Claiborne in suppressing it to preserve the neutrality of the nation.⁵⁴ 32

     In sum, then, how far can the conduct of American officials in the Southwest be understood as evidence of their wish to assist the Gutiérrez-Magee raid? Judge Carr in Natchitoches was certainly a weak link in the chain of law enforcement, but that aside, should not the failure or the inability of Claiborne and Wilkinson to suppress the filibuster be seen largely as a reflection of the difficulties they encountered in enforcing the law in the no-man's land of the Neutral Ground, difficulties that were compounded by conflicting priorities and chapters of accidents? The accidents, moreover, merely reflect the limited reach of the early American state. They are hardly proof of the ability of the administration to plan a policy of inciting insurrection against Spain and to implement it by a strategy of not enforcing legislation designed to outlaw such a policy in the first place. And if there is no evidence that Madison ever conceived his policy toward Mexico in this manner anyway, there is no reason to suppose that American officials understood they were advancing national goals by not stopping the filibuster. 33

     If so, what sense might be made of the mission of Robinson to Salcedo, the commandant-general of the Internal Provinces at Chihuahua? Did Madison really send this Virginian doctor, explorer, and former member of the Pike expedition to deceive Salcedo about the filibuster and American policy toward Spain?⁵⁵ At first sight, the notion seems unlikely inasmuch as Robinson was not the wisest choice for this task. Salcedo, after all, knew Robinson only too well, having arrested him during the latter days of Pike's expedition in 1807 on the suspicion that the doctor was not an explorer but an agent sent to seduce the Comanche Indians from their allegiance to Spain. Madison could not have forgotten that episode, so his employment of Robinson was probably driven by more compelling considerations, especially if the president believed it was important to select an agent with the requisite geographical knowledge and language skills who could contact Salcedo as rapidly as possible. 34

     The Robinson mission emerged in June 1812 during conversations among Monroe, Robinson, and Pike as Pike passed through Washington from Natchitoches while en route to Canada. Both Robinson and Pike believed that Mexican independence would lead to the addition of Texas and other Spanish provinces bordering on Louisiana to the United States, but they also knew Salcedo was a "jealous," "crafty and suspicious" opponent of both Mexican independence and the American republic. Since the commandant-general had long enjoyed substantial administrative independence from the viceroy in Mexico City, Robinson and Pike anticipated that Salcedo would sustain himself in a quasi-autonomous state from an independent Mexico for as long as he possibly could.⁵⁶ The prospect that Mexico might, in effect, fragment into loyalist and revolutionary regions as it broke away from Spain could have only alarmed the administration. That development might invite British or French meddling in Mexico, and if nothing else it would destabilize the Louisiana border in ways that undermined Madison's desire to maintain the Neutral Ground pending a negotiated boundary settlement. 35

     The likelihood of future "predatory warfare" in the Neutral Ground thus led Madison to dispatch Robinson to Salcedo. Both Robinson and Pike believed that the commandant-general would not relish disorder along the borders of his jurisdiction, especially if Americans might support revolutionary bands in conflict with his forces. On that assumption, the possibility of a mutual agreement between Chihuahua and Washington emerged, provided communications could be established with Salcedo and provided he could be convinced the United States would not violate the Neutral Ground. It became Robinson's task to assure Salcedo that the United States wished to preserve the Neutral Ground until "an amicable negociation" on boundaries could take place. That assurance was coupled with the admission that pressures of war with Great Britain might drive the United States to occupy East Florida and that, if such a development did occur, Salcedo should not regard it as evidence that the administration was contemplating similar actions beyond the Sabine River.⁵⁷ Or, to put it another way, Madison promised Salcedo he would not condone warfare in the Neutral Ground from the American side and that promise necessarily included activities that might be undertaken by Gutiérrez and Magee. 36

     Was Madison sincere? The argument that he was not is itself dependent on the assumption that the president was already committed to filibustering through the agency of Shaler. But if it be accepted that Madison had never authorized Shaler to organize a filibuster, if it be accepted that he did not regard Shaler's reports to Monroe as evidence that the agent was engaged in such activity, and if it be accepted the president assumed that American officials would obey directives to enforce the neutrality legislation, then there is no reason to suppose that his desire to protect the Neutral Ground was insincere. Indeed, when Magee learned about Robinson's mission--in October 1812, as the latter passed through Nacogdoches--he could only surmise that its purpose was to thwart the filibuster. His first reaction was to consider arresting Robinson, but he hesitated to do so and only let him continue his mission after extracting a promise that the doctor would not pass information on to Spanish officials.⁵⁸ Yet Robinson, his later career in filibustering notwithstanding, did provide Salcedo with warnings about the Gutiérrez-Magee raid, and it is entirely reasonable to believe that Madison intended him to do so. 37

     Shortly after Robinson left for Texas, the administration took further steps to keep Americans out of the filibuster. In August 1812, Madison received from Gilbert Taylor, a kinsman in Tennessee, information that supporters of Gutiérrez and Magee were recruiting in that state for the Republican Army of the North. The president forwarded the letter to Monroe, hinting he should direct the governor of Tennessee to act against "the illegal interprize on foot."⁵⁹ Monroe did so on September 3, 1812, and he also sent the same message to the governor of the newly formed Missouri Territory.⁶⁰ Two days earlier, the secretary of state had written to Shaler as well. He informed the agent of Robinson's assignment, describing it as "complementary" to Shaler's own mission. He also alluded to the filibuster and instructed Shaler "to discountenance the measure, so far as the expression of [his] opinion may avail."⁶¹ Yet no more than Robinson's mission itself is this letter proof that Monroe was disingenuous. If the secretary of state had always assumed that filibustering was not one of Shaler's duties, he could have hardly written a letter at that point ordering the agent to stop the Gutiérrez-Magee raid. That would have made no sense. Instead, in the context of Shaler's mission to Mexico, Monroe could only convey the message that the administration did not condone illegal activities. 38

     Neither the instructions to the governors of Tennessee and the Missouri Territory nor the letter to Shaler had any effect, however. From Nashville, Willie Blount reported he had consulted members of the Tennessee General Assembly and the United States marshal for West Tennessee only to learn there was "not the shadow of truth" to the claim that recruiting for Texas was taking place. ⁶² The letter sent to Benjamin Howard in St. Louis probably never reached its destination as there is no record of his having received it or of his making any response. And by the time Shaler received Monroe's letter, along with the news about Robinson, it was early in October and there was little the agent could do. He made no objection to Monroe's description of Robinson's assignment and offered to give his fellow emissary "every aid in [his] power." But the mission itself, Shaler believed, was pointless. Robinson, he wrote, "marches too far in the rear of events." Shaler then predicted that the filibuster would soon "sweep the crazy remains of Spanish government from the Internal Provinces, and open Mexico to the political influence of the U. S. and to the talents and enterprize of our Citizens." ⁶³

39

     After August 1812, Shaler waited for Spanish rule in Texas to collapse. His optimism led him to believe he would enter Mexico in little more than a month, and his hopes were reinforced by the ease with which the filibuster captured Nacogdoches on August 12, 1812. Events thereafter, however, favored neither the filibuster nor the prospects for Shaler's mission. In the first week of November, the raiding party became bogged down at La Bahía del Espíritu Santo (Goliad), besieged by a royalist army led by Manuel María de Salcedo, nephew of Nemesio. The siege was not lifted until February 19, 1813. During that interval, Magee fell seriously ill and died on February 6. But even before his demise, dissension had arisen in the filibuster about its goals and who might be the next leader of its American troops.⁶⁴ 40

     These developments so depressed Shaler that by Christmas 1812 he was on the point of abandoning his mission and returning to Washington. As he informed Monroe, "the feebleness of the councils of the volunteers has raised in my mind strong doubts about their success, unless they should be very much favor'd by circumstances." In the event of the filibuster failing, he continued, "it appears that any longer stay on this frontier, must be without any object of public utility, for then, there will be no possible chance of my proceeding to my destination."⁶⁵ As Shaler reached this conclusion, factions in the filibuster contacted the agent to seek his aid in persuading the administration to intervene in Texas. But Shaler rebuffed these requests, and at the end of February 1813 he remained gloomy about the future, reminding the State Department that the expedition was now "in a very critical situation from the want of an able commander, and vigorous councils."⁶⁶ 41

     Shaler's mood did not improve until April 1813. By then, the filibustering party had been able to leave La Bahía and on April 1 occupied San Antonio. At the same time, a new candidate for its leadership arrived in Natchitoches in the person of the Cuban-born revolutionary José Álvarez de Toledo. Shaler was instantly impressed by his potential to serve the republican cause in Mexico. The agent's letters resumed the optimism they had exuded in the fall of 1812. As he told Monroe on the eve of the fall of San Antonio: "If the revolution . . . in Texas is now conducted with only a little address, its success seems certain, and its effects on the general revolution in Mexico must be incalculably great. . . . Nothing now Sir prevents me from proceeding on my journey but the fear of being regarded as a partizan in the revolution, and thereby committing the government: these reasons . . . will soon cease by the submission of San Antonio."⁶⁷ 42

     That optimism was shattered by the news that the Mexican rebels, allegedly acting on orders from Gutiérrez after the capture of San Antonio, had murdered the Spanish officers who surrendered the town, including Nemesio Salcedo's nephew. The Mexicans in the filibuster then drafted a constitution proclaiming Mexico's independence from Spain and stipulating that Texas was an integral part of the Mexican nation. The "illustrious liberator" Gutiérrez was authorized to appoint a junta to form a provisional government for the protection of the nation, the rights of man, and the Roman Catholic religion. It was also to name a president protector as its highest officer. The junta responded by selecting Gutiérrez.⁶⁸ 43

     Shaler was horrified by these transactions. The problem was not that the Mexicans had declared their independence or that they denied that the United States had purchased Texas in 1803. The agent never complained on those scores. The problem was the "black action" of murdering the Spanish officers and drafting the "absurd revolutionary farce" that passed for a constitution. That document, Shaler fumed, had no purpose other than to permit Gutiérrez to loot the treasury and live "in the style of an Eastern Basha, while everything around him is penury and want."⁶⁹ In a paroxysm of rage, Shaler redefined the fundamental issue at stake in the Mexican revolution as a choice between barbarism and despotism, on the one hand, and humanity and liberty, on the other, and from that moment onward, he never doubted that the revolution had to be redeemed for liberty if his mission was ever to have any purpose or prospect of success. 44

     Toledo became the instrument of redemption. After meeting Shaler in Natchitoches, the Cuban went to Nacogdoches where Shaler, on May 20, 1813, resolved to follow him. He then entered Texas for the first time, but a summons to return to Natchitoches prevented him from immediately placing Toledo at the head of the filibuster.⁷⁰ While in Nacogdoches, though, Shaler received alarming rumors about the character and past activities of the Cuban. Most of them came from Nathaniel Cogswell, a native of Maine who had known Toledo while he was in Philadelphia during the winter of 1811–1812, boarding with an aging American revolutionary, Ira Allen of Vermont. The essence of the rumors was that Toledo, far from being a devotee of Spanish-American independence, was a secret agent of those members of the Spanish Cortes and Regency Council whom Cogswell described as "inveterate foes of the Patriot cause." Toledo had gone to the Southwest, Cogswell warned, to place himself at the head of the filibuster and lay the groundwork for its "utter ruin."⁷¹ 45

     These allegations provoked Gutiérrez. He, too, had met Toledo, in Washington in December 1811, and concluded that the Cuban was "passionately devoted to the cause of the liberty of Mexico."⁷² Thereafter, the two men corresponded on the assumption that Toledo would join the Mexican cause later in 1812. Toledo, however, had failed to honor that undertaking, and now that he was in Nacogdoches, the president protector of Texas refused to trust him. Believing Cogswell's charges, he ordered the Cuban out of Texas.⁷³ Meanwhile Shaler, blinded by rage at Gutiérrez, assumed that the charges were fabrications on the part of those who would oppose Toledo's taking over the filibuster. He responded by gathering affidavits from American supporters of the Cuban to forward to Monroe as proof the allegations were groundless. The agent then began working with these same Americans to set in motion a campaign that lauded Toledo and criticized Gutiérrez, preparatory to the displacement of the latter as commander of the Republican Army of the North. Shaler justified these actions on the grounds that Gutiérrez, in addition to the crimes already staining his character, had missed the chance to spread the revolution to the Pacific by bringing down Spanish rule in the Internal Provinces. He was also neglecting to take precautions against growing signs of a royalist counteroffensive.⁷⁴ 46

     This last matter caused concern in the filibuster. Divisions between Americans and Mexicans had emerged after the capture of San Antonio, and they were exacerbated by the arrival of a royalist army from the Presidio del Norte on the Río Grande under Ignacio Elizondo in June. Elizondo attempted to exploit the situation by offering to spare the Americans if they betrayed Gutiérrez and his Mexicans. Some of the Americans were tempted to do so, and they quarreled at length before rejecting the ploy. Only after they had repelled a royalist attack on June 20 did the Americans become convinced of the need for a change in leadership. They then resolved to accept Toledo as their commander, and one of their number conveyed the news to Shaler: "Old Granny Bernardo is now in the dumps and is now traversing the room behind me while I write this, one minute drumming on the window glass with his fingers and the other catching flies and pinching off their heads."⁷⁵ Even better, the informant added, the Mexican would leave the filibuster and settle in the United States. 47

     On receiving this news, Shaler prepared to set out for Texas on July 20, intending to support plans to "annul Bernardo's absurd government," "to form a junta by the free suffrages of the people," and to "march immediately to the rio grande."⁷⁶ So great did his enthusiasm for the prospects of the Mexican revolution become that two days before his departure Shaler sent the administration yet another essay speculating about the future of Mexico and its relationship with the United States. As in August 1812, Shaler assumed that a free Mexico would include Texas--proof again that his mission never involved the detachment of that province--but more important, he argued that at a future date the United States should negotiate the cession of California from Mexico to lay the foundations for a great American maritime empire in the Pacific, an empire that would "give us a preponderance there that no European power could ever shake."⁷⁷ With his eyes straying toward the Columbia River and Canton, Shaler arrived in Nacogdoches on August 5 where he received a June 5, 1813, letter from the State Department warning him not to interfere in Mexican affairs or "to encourage armaments of any kind against the existing government." The United States, Monroe wrote, wanted peace with Spain, and Shaler was reminded that this was "the spirit of the instructions given [him] at the commencement of [his] service, and they have never since been altered."⁷⁸ 48

     Why did Monroe reprimand Shaler thus? Was it because the poor performance of American arms in the war against Great Britain had instilled in the administration a sense of caution that made meddling in the Mexican revolution seem inappropriate, especially at a time when the United States was looking to the mediation of Russia, a nation in alliance with Spain, as a way out of the conflict?⁷⁹ That argument is inadequate on several counts. It assumes that the administration had previously sanctioned the filibuster; it neglects the fact that by June 1813 the war was going rather better for the United States than it had done in the summer and fall of 1812; and it fails to take into consideration the reality that the administration had decided on its policy with respect to disputes with Spain for the Russian mediation some five weeks before Monroe censured Shaler and that it did so without reference to the issue of Texas.⁸⁰ That being the case, other considerations must have governed the decision that, in effect, ended Shaler's mission. 49

     A sense of those considerations can be gained from assessing the impact of the news from Texas that reached Washington in early June. An account of the fall of San Antonio, of the murder of the Spanish officers (including that of Manuel María de Salcedo), and of the impending takeover of the filibuster by Toledo appeared in a Baltimore newspaper on June 2, 1813, three days before Monroe reprimanded Shaler. That account was printed under a Natchitoches dateline of May 7, 1813.⁸¹ Shaler had also written letters to Monroe at this time--on May 2 and 7, 1813--and they, too, had reached Washington by the first week in June.⁸² Their contents provide several clues as to why the administration acted so abruptly. Indeed, these letters and accounts revealed that an alarming and dangerous situation was emerging in Texas, and the administration responded by removing its agent from the region. 50

     The murder of the Spanish officers at San Antonio was distressing enough. Monroe was "much shocked at the massacre" and lamented that "any American citizens have engaged in the contest between the two parties in Mexico."⁸³ The inclusion of the nephew of the commandant-general of the Internal Provinces among the victims would surely have led Madison and Monroe to wonder about Robinson's mission. So far they had heard nothing from Robinson, but even if he had been successful, would any agreement made with Salcedo hold up after these latest developments? They did not have to look far for an answer. Shaler, in his letter of May 2, mentioned that Robinson had passed through Natchitoches en route to Washington. Shaler never mentioned whether Robinson had accomplished his assignment or not, but he did say that the doctor was hastening back to lay proposals before Monroe for an expedition into Texas that he wished to undertake with Toledo. The only other detail Shaler provided was that Robinson and Toledo differed over the size of this expedition. Only one conclusion was possible. Robinson had failed and was now planning another filibuster into Mexico.⁸⁴ 51

     News about Toledo would have also disturbed the secretary of state. Monroe knew Toledo, having met him in Washington in the winter of 1811–1812 when the Cuban had proposed the formation of an Antillean confederation comprising Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo to resist British encroachments on the Spanish-American empire. Monroe had liked the scheme and gave its author a letter of introduction to Shaler, whom the administration assumed was still in Havana.⁸⁵ Toledo, however, did not go to Cuba, and after March 1812 he ceased to offer explanations for not doing so.⁸⁶ Instead, in October 1812 he had contacted the Spanish minister in Philadelphia about betraying the Mexican rebels, and by November it seems Monroe had learned of the Cuban's questionable dealings with royalist Spain.⁸⁷ Exactly how much credit Monroe gave these rumors is difficult to tell, but he could only have been further alarmed when he read in Shaler's May 1813 letters that the Cuban had arrived in Natchitoches in the company of a Frenchman named Jean-Jacques Paillette, the very same Napoleonic agent whom Shaler had accused of trying to corrupt Gutiérrez in the spring of 1812.⁸⁸ Shaler now saw nothing suspicious in that circumstance, but would Monroe have felt that Toledo deserved the benefit of the doubt about his intentions, given his past actions and the company he kept? It seems unlikely. Shaler was about to deliver the Texan revolt into the hands of a dangerous and unscrupulous character. 52

     Other items in Shaler's May 1813 letters also embarrassed Monroe. They contained fulsome tributes to Toledo, whose "candour and honorable views" Shaler "every day more admire[d]."⁸⁹ It was important, the agent continued, "to the U. S. as well as to humanity, that as mild an impulse should be given to [the Mexican] revolution" as possible, and "a man of humanity with talents, and an enlightened mind, such as [he took] Genl Toledo to be [could] give such an impulse." Thus Shaler announced his intention to set out for Nacogdoches to give the Cuban "the direction of affairs," and he expressly sought the approval of the president.⁹⁰ Madison did not approve. He now had unmistakable evidence that his agent had departed entirely from both the letter and the spirit of his 1810 instructions, and he decided to end the business. Monroe then wrote to Shaler, reprimanding him and ordering him not to enter Mexico. 53

     The final details of the Gutiérrez-Magee raid can be quickly told. Shaler's intrigue to transfer command of the Revolutionary Army of the North to Toledo was successful. Gutiérrez made no resistance. Toledo then struggled to prepare his force to meet the royalist counteroffensive under the new commanding general of the Eastern Internal Provinces, Joaquín de Arredondo y Mioño, but it was to no avail. The royalists decisively defeated the filibuster at Medina on August 18, 1813 . The defeat crushed Shaler, who reported that the "fatal disaster" was "conclusive of the revolution in the neighboring provinces, perhaps forever." ⁹¹ He returned to Washington, where he reported in person to Madison and Monroe in December 1813. On that occasion, Monroe, referring to the filibuster and the events of 1813, queried the agent with "friendly politeness": "You knew," he asked, "that the U. S. would not take any part in that business?" Shaler admitted that he "knew it well." ⁹²

54

     In conclusion, the argument that the Gutiérrez-Magee raid embodied an American policy to subvert Spanish Texas for territorial aggrandizement cannot be sustained. William Shaler was not instructed to organize a filibuster; he never attempted any such undertaking while in Natchitoches; and his letters and essays do not reveal that his goal was to detach Texas from Mexico. Nor did American officials in the Southwest conspire to aid the filibuster by not enforcing the law, and Madison did not mislead Spanish officials in Mexico about his policies for the borderlands. More important, Shaler's conduct throughout his mission was governed by his desire to carry out his instructions. His task was to contact leaders of the revolution near Mexico City, and he exploited the filibuster as a means to that end. When he did intervene directly in the politics of the Gutiérrez-Magee raid in the spring of 1813, it was because he had convinced himself that he had to redeem the Texan revolt from barbarism and tyranny. Such conduct certainly complicated Shaler's mission by implicating the administration in the filibuster, but that situation should be distinguished from the view that the United States had always sanctioned and encouraged the raid into Texas at every stage until the first week of June 1813. 55

     It might be noted, too, that Shaler's mission turned out to be far more difficult than Madison had allowed for in 1810. The agent's orders were to contact a successor regime in Mexico without intervening in the affairs of the province. Those goals were probably inherently contradictory, and they became more so over time as the Spanish put up a stronger resistance and persisted far longer than either Madison or Shaler anticipated. At best, Shaler had to walk a fine line. He eventually crossed the line, becoming inexorably drawn into the politics of the filibuster as he did so. Nevertheless, it makes no sense to assume that Madison wished to acquire Texas anyway after 1812. Such a move risked irreparably damaging relations with Spain at the very moment the administration was over-straining the limited resources of the nation in a war for Canada. It also needlessly jeopardized longer-term prospects for negotiating treaties to settle the boundaries of Louisiana. And all of the other evidence about Madison's policy toward Spain at this time suggests that the president's preoccupations were with security matters and territorial disputes east of the Mississippi River, not with the issues of Spanish-American relations to the west. The administration had no reason to back the Gutiérrez-Magee raid for any purpose at all. 56

     This last point suggests that the main obstacle to understanding the filibuster of 1812–1813 has been a failure to appreciate the role Texas played in American diplomacy in the early nineteenth century. Although the United States had staked out a claim to Texas as well as to East and West Florida for negotiations with Spain after the Louisiana Purchase, the quest for the latter provinces was always of far greater importance than that for the former. As early as February 1804 , the Jefferson administration was prepared to consider relinquishing claims in Texas in return for secure possession of the Floridas, although no negotiations with Madrid on that basis were ever brought to a conclusion before the French invasion of Spain in 1808 disrupted all official contacts between the United States and Spain until 1816 . ⁹³ Returning to the problem in that year, the Madison administration then mapped out a strategy that envisaged the United States ultimately dropping the claim to Texas in return for the Floridas while at the same time emphasizing that concessions on Texas should not prejudice other claims to the Columbia River and the Pacific coast. ⁹⁴ That the Pacific was of greater commercial and strategic interest to the United States than Texas was certainly suggested by Shaler himself in letters and essays he forwarded to Washington throughout his mission. In that sense, the larger significance of the agent's mission was not that it revealed any administration predilection for subversion or even that it was a prelude to later American expansion into Texas. Instead, it formed part of the groundwork for a very different accomplishment in early American diplomacy, the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819.

57

J.C.A. Stagg is professor of history and editor of The Papers of James Madison at the University of Virginia. He thanks the following for their assistance: Ned Brierly, Lewis K. Gould, Roger Kennedy, James E. Lewis, Kenneth Lockridge, Holly C. Shulman, Sergio Velasco, and the readers for the William and Mary Quarterly. For help with Mexican and Spanish documents, thanks are due to Mary Hackett and Leonard Sadosky. For facilitating access to the William Shaler letterbooks in the Gilder Lehrman Collection, the co-operation of Paul Romaine and his colleagues is greatly appreciated.

Notes

¹ Erving to Robert Smith, Jan. 25, Feb. 7, 9, 15, 16, 1810, in Diplomatic Dispatches of the Department of State, Spain, Record Group 59, National Archives, Washington, D. C. For the French invasion of Spain, see Gabriel H. Lovett, Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain, 2 vols. (New York, 1965), 1:133–414.
² Statements on Madison's decisions in 1810 are based on the editorial note "Madison and the Collapse of the Spanish-American Empire: The West Florida Crisis of 1810" and the sources cited therein, in Robert A. Rutland et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison, Presidential Series, 4 vols. to date (Charlottesville, Va., 1984– ), 2:305–20 (hereafter cited as Madison Papers, Presidential).
³ For some of the instructions issued to agents for the Spanish colonies, see William C. C. Claiborne to William Wykoff, Jr., June 14, 1810, in Territorial Papers of the Department of State: Orleans, Record Group 59, National Archives; Smith to Wykoff, June 20, 1810, ibid.; Smith to William Shaler, June 18, 1810, William Shaler Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), Philadelphia; Smith to Joel Roberts Poinsett, June 28, 1810, in William R. Manning, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States Concerning the Independence of the Latin-American Nations, 3 vols. (New York, 1925), 1:6–7; Smith to Poinsett, Aug. 27, 1810, Joel Roberts Poinsett Papers, HSP; and Smith to William Harris Crawford, June 20, 1810, Domestic Letters of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives.
⁴ J. Fred Rippy, Joel R. Poinsett, Versatile American (Durham, N. C., 1935), 35–60.
⁵ The most recent statement of this consensus can be found in Frank Lawrence Owsley, Jr., and Gene A. Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800–1821 (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1997), a synthesis of much 20th-century research on the Spanish borderlands, notably that by Isaac J. Cox, Julia K. Garrett, Rembert W. Patrick, Julius W. Pratt, and Harris G. Warren as listed in their bibliography; ibid., 226–34. For studies that liken Madison's policies to "covert operations," see Charles D. Ameringer, U. S. Foreign Intelligence: The Secret Side of American History (Lexington, Mass., 1990), 31; John J. Carter, Covert Operations as a Tool of Presidential Foreign Policy in American History from 1800 to 1920: Foreign Policy in the Shadows (New York, 2000), 29–42; Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency (New York, 1996), 87–107, 111; Edward F. Sayle, "The Historical Underpinnings of the U.S. Intelligence Community," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 1 (1986), 10–11; and Joseph B. Smith, The Plot to Steal Florida: James Madison's Phony War (New York, 1983).
⁶ "Madison and the Collapse of the Spanish-American Empire," 307, 309–10.
⁷ On the role of conventions in republican theory in bridging interregnums and other extraordinary situations, see Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969), 306–43.
⁸ "Madison and the Collapse of the Spanish-American Empire," 312–19.
⁹ This matter is controversial. Although Mathews's instructions did not authorize insurrectionary activities, many historians have argued that the administration condoned his actions by failing to prevent them. It is certainly true that on several occasions Mathews made suggestions for overthrowing the East Florida government, but he also coupled them with requests for arms and troops on the grounds that the task could not be accomplished without them. The administration never responded to these suggestions. Its failure, or refusal, to do so should be viewed as a tacit reminder to Mathews that he should pursue only the goals outlined in his instructions. See Mathews to James Monroe, June 28, Aug. 3, Oct. 14, 1811, Territorial Papers of the Department of State: Florida, Record Group 59, National Archives; Mathews to Monroe, Jan. 23, 1812, Letters Received by the Secretary of War, Registered Series, Record Group 107, National Archives. See also Patrick, Florida Fiasco: Rampant Rebels on the Georgia-Florida Border 1810–15 (Athens, Ga., 1954), 1–127; Cox, "The Border Missions of General George Mathews," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 12 (1925–1926), 309–33; Rufus Kay Wyllys, "The East Florida Revolution of 1812–1814," Hispanic American Historical Review, 9 (1929), 415–45; and Paul Kruse, "A Secret Agent in East Florida: General George Mathews and the Patriot War," Journal of Southern History, 18 (1952), 193–217. For Madison's reaction, see Madison to Thomas Jefferson, Apr. 24, 1812, Madison Papers, Presidential, 4:346.
¹⁰ These points have been made by American and Mexican scholars relying on U. S., Mexican, and Spanish sources. The most frequently cited Mexican and Spanish sources--the Béxar Archives, the Operaciones de Guerra series, and the correspondence of Luis de Onís with the Spanish viceroy in Mexico City and the Foreign Ministry of the Spanish Regency--contain many references to the insurrectionary activities of Gutiérrez and Shaler, with their authors assuming the latter acted on orders from Washington. See, for example, Peter Samuel Davenport to Bernadino Montero, May 2, 1812, and Manuel María de Salcedo to Nemesio Salcedo, June 3, 1812, Béxar Archives (microfilm copy), University of Texas at Austin; Marzelo de Zoto to Montero, Apr. 6, 1812, and Felix Trudeaux to Montero, May 3, 1812, both in Archivo General Historia, Mexico, Operaciones de Guerra, Manuel de Salcedo (typescripts in the Library of Congress); Onís to Eusibio de Bardaji, Apr. 1, 1812, Correspondence of the Spanish Legation in the United States, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Estado, Madrid, legajo 5554 (microfilm copy); and Onís to Francisco Javier de Venegas, Feb. 14, Apr. 1, 1812, printed in Lucas Alamán, Historia de Méjico desde los Primeros Movimientos que Prepararon Su Independencia en el Año de 1808, Hasta La Época Presente, 5 vols. (Mexico City, 1849–1852), 3:app. 45–47. For relevant secondary literature, see Harold A. Bierck, Jr., "Dr. John Hamilton Robinson," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 25 (1942), 651 n. 45; Carlos E. Castañeda, Our Catholic Heritage in Texas 1519–1936, 7 vols. (Austin, Tex., 1936–1958), 6:67–120; Donald E. Chipman, Spanish Texas, 1519–1821 (Austin, Tex., 1992), 233–37; [Julia] Kathryn Garrett, "The First Newspaper of Texas: Gaceta de Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 40 (1937), 203, and Green Flag over Texas: A Story of the Last Years of Spain in Texas (New York, 1939), 119, 120, 134; Richard W. Gronet, "The United States and the Invasion of Texas, 1810–1814," The Americas, 25 (1969), 281–306; Virginia Guedea and Jaime E. Rodríguez O, "How Relations between Mexico and the United States Began," in Rodríguez and Kathryn Vincent, eds., Myths, Misdeeds, and Misunderstandings: The Roots of Conflict in U. S.-Mexican Relations (Wilmington, Del., 1997), 21–22; J. Villasana Haggard, "The Neutral Ground between Louisiana and Texas, 1806–1821," La. Hist. Q., 28 (1945), 1054–55; Peggy K. Liss, Atlantic Empires: The Network of Trade and Revolution, 1713–1826 (Baltimore, 1983), 201–02; Joseph B. Lockey, ed., "An Early Pan-American Scheme," Pacific Historical Review, 2 (1933), 439–44, and "The Florida Intrigues of José Álvarez de Toledo," Quarterly Periodical of the Florida Historical Society, 12 (1934), 152; James C. Milligan, "José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, Mexican Frontiersman, 1811–1841" (Ph. D. diss., Texas Tech University, 1975), 46–47, 50, 52–75; Owsley and Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists, 13, 42–44, 46, 52, 58, 60; Dick Stewart, Frontier Swashbuckler: The Life and Legend of John Smith T (Columbia, Mo., 2000), 135–44; Francisco Valdés-Ugalde, "Janus and the Northern Colossus: Perceptions of the United States in the Building of the Mexican Nation," Journal of American History, 86 (1999), 568–69; Josefina Zoraida Vázquez and Lorenzo Meyer, The United States and Mexico (Chicago, 1985), 21–22; Harris Gaylord Warren, "Southern Filibusters in the War of 1812," La. Hist. Q., 25 (1942), 294–95, and The Sword Was Their Passport: A History of American Filibustering in the Mexican Revolution (Baton Rouge, 1943), 9–10, 22–24, 27, 30–32, 59; and David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (Albuquerque, 1982), 9–10, and The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, 1992), 298–99. See also the entries relating to the Gutiérrez-Magee raid in Walter P. Webb et al, eds., The Handbook of Texas, 3 vols. (Austin, Tex., 1952–1976), 1:749–51, 2:596.
¹¹ Three volumes of letterbooks and diaries kept by Shaler between Dec. 27, 1811, and Sept. 4, 1814, are in the Gilder Lehrman Collection, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City.
¹² Of all students of the Gutiérrez-Magee raid, only Roy F. Nichols consulted Shaler's instructions; see his "William Shaler: New England Apostle of Rational Liberty," New England Quarterly, 9 (1936), 76–77, and Advance Agents of American Destiny (Philadelphia, 1956), 84–85.
¹³ Smith to William Pinkney, June 13, 1810, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State: All Countries, Record Group 59, National Archives.
¹⁴ Smith to Shaler, June 18, 1810, William Shaler Papers, HSP. Shaler also received directions from John Graham, on June 15, 1810, with respect to the travel and financial arrangements for his mission, and from Smith, on June 16, 1810, relating his duties as an agent for commerce and seamen; Shaler Family Papers, HSP.
¹⁵ Graham to Shaler, June 21, 1810, William Shaler Papers, HSP. That Shaler understood the administration was flexible on the western boundary of Louisiana he revealed in a later letter where he tried to anticipate the response of Spain's colonies to the collapse of the empire. Only Cuba and Mexico, he believed, would care about the Floridas. To Cuba, the U. S. could make trade concessions, while to Mexico, Shaler wrote, "we have sufficient indemnity to offer in the western line of demarcation"; Shaler to Smith, Nov. 19, 1810, Consular Dispatches of the United States, Havana, Record Group 59, National Archives.
¹⁶ See note 14 above.
¹⁷ Shaler to Monroe, Nov. 13, Dec. 27, 1811, Consular Dispatches, Havana; Shaler to Monroe, Jan. 7, 1812, Communications from Special Agents of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives; Louisiana Gazette and New-Orleans Daily Advertiser, Feb. 14, 1812.
¹⁸ Pike to Eustis, Oct. 28, 1811, Letters Received by the Secretary of War, Registered Series, Record Group 107, National Archives, docketed as received on Nov. 23, 1811. Similar information was transmitted by John Sibley, U. S. agent to the Caddo Indians; see Sibley to Eustis, Sept. 19, 24, Oct. 24, 1811, ibid.
¹⁹ Elizabeth H. West, ed., "Diary of José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, 1811–1812," American Historical Review, 34 (1928–1929), 71–72.
²⁰ Ibid., 77; Claiborne to Graham, Mar. 31, 1812, in Dunbar Rowland, ed., Official Letter Books of W.C.C. Claiborne, 1801–1816, 6 vols. (Jackson, Miss., 1917), 6:68–69 (hereafter cited as Claiborne Letter Books).
²¹ This information had come from a deposition sworn by John Ganiere before Sibley on Sept. 17, 1811, and forwarded to Washington by Pike on Oct. 28, 1811 (see note 18 above).
²² West, ed., "Diary of José Bernardo Gutiérrez," 71, 73.
²³ Claiborne to Shaler, Apr. 7, 1812, in Claiborne Letter Books, ed. Rowland, 6:71–72.
²⁴ Exactly how much money Shaler advanced to Gutiérrez is difficult to determine. The agent's accounts, filed at the end of 1813 in the correspondence he sent to the State Department (see Communications from Special Agents), reveal that the Mexican leg of his mission, from January 1812 to December 1813, cost $3,069.38. In an explanatory note, Shaler stated that advances to Gutiérrez through May 1813 amounted to $428.15, though the total for various receipts relating to the expenses of the Mexican in 1812 comes to the slightly higher sum of $443.28. These records confirm that Shaler supported Gutiérrez but not that he funded the filibuster.
²⁵ Shaler to Monroe, Mar. 23, 31, 1812, Communications from Special Agents; Shaler to Madison, Mar. 23, 1812, in Madison Papers, Presidential, 4:259–60 and notes.
²⁶ Monroe to Shaler, May 2, 1812, in William Shaler Papers, Library of Congress.
²⁷ Gutiérrez to the Mexican Congress, Aug. 1, 1815, in Charles Adams Gulick, ed., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, 6 vols. (Austin, Texas, 1921–1927), 1:4–12.
²⁸ West, ed., "Diary of José Bernardo Gutiérrez," 71.
²⁹ Gutiérrez claimed he communicated to both Claiborne and Shaler "all the propositions that have been made to me by different parties and individuals"; Gutiérrez to Graham, May 16, 1812, in Correspondence Relating to the Filibustering Expedition Against the Spanish Government of Mexico, 1811–1816, Record Group 59, National Archives. Shaler reached a different conclusion; Shaler to Monroe, Mar. 31, May 17, 22, June 12, 23, 27, July 12, 1812, in Communications from Special Agents.
³⁰ For doubts about the plausibility of Shaler's letters, see Garrett, Green Flag over Texas, 135; Gronet, "United States and the Invasion of Texas," 285; Owsley and Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists, 46, 49, 60; and Warren, "Southern Filibusters in the War of 1812," 297, and Sword Was Their Passport, 27, 31.
³¹ Shaler to Monroe, May 17, 1812, in Communications from Special Agents. Three numbered papers by Shaler, entitled "Essays on the Revolution in So. America," were written between his departure from Havana and the end of January 1812, when he gave them to Claiborne to forward to Washington; see Claiborne to Paul Hamilton, Jan. 23, Feb. 1, 17, 1812, in Rowland, ed., Claiborne Letter Books, 6:38, 45, 57. The essays are meditations on the future of the New World, based on the assumption that Spain would lose its American empire. This subject had preoccupie